Welcome to Android Headlines’ new world round-up feature, where you can catch all the major Android based news, from right around the globe and on just one page.
We know readers of Android Headlines are not just interested in what’s happening on their own doorstep but we also know how busy everyone is. So now you can keep up to date on Planet Android without having to scour the web for those far away stories.
So on with the news
Today I bring you tales of new launches and new names from as far afield as India, Korea and Australia.
First then to Australia where we have reported before on what had amounted to an Android drought with only a tiny selection of top-notch Android phones available there. Well now, to cater for those Australians who have been hit by the old international recession, Telstra (Oz’s biggest carrier) have announced the release of two low end Android mobiles the X10 Mini and the HTC Wildfire, sometimes known as the ‘Mini Desire’. No prices as yet but the Australians tend to follow the ‘free’ phone with contract model. In any case, this should provide some much needed balance to the Android market there and help consolidate the platform’s future down under.
Elsewhere, Indian carrier Reliance are introducing the first CDMA Android phone there, the Samsung Galaxy i899. Now I hadn’t heard of this particular model, so I had to look it up. Its nice, think Galaxy S Lite. It has a 3.2 inch resistive touchscreen, Android 2.1 and packs a respectable 800Mhz of processor. What’s more Reliance are promising data transfer speeds of over 3 Mbps for downloads and around 1.5 Mbps for uploads. I know people here in London who can’t get that on their home broadband. The i899 also comes ready to play divX video and costs around Rs19,990 ($425)
Meanwhile in South Korea, they’ve just got their hands on the Motorola Milestone (you will probably know it as the Droid) and they’ve got it with a snazzy new keyboard, one that prints Korean characters, which makes sense. What doesn’t is why they are calling the phone the QRTY, shouldn’t that be the í•œêµì„ ë§?
Finally, back home, for me anyway, here in the UK the Chinese company ZTE are teaming up with the carrier 3 to bring us the ZTE Racer, an Android 2.1 phone with a 2.8 inch screen, for as little as £13 ($20) on contract or £110 ($165) without.
We’ll be rounding-up oversees Android news every day now, so you can keep your finger tightly on that global pulse.