Wind Mobile has released one Android phone, the Huawei U8100, and there are plenty of rumors that the Motorola Milestone XT720 is in the works. Now add another rumored Android offering: the Alcatel OT-980. This slider phone runs on the Qualcomm MSM7227 chipset at 600 MHz and features a 2 megapixel camera, a resistive 320 x 240 2.8 inch display screen, WiFi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0, and GPS with an accelerometer. Internal memory is 194 MB. Yes, 194 megabytes, but the standard micro-SD card slot allows up to 32 GB of additional storage.
Clearly this phone is nowhere as powerful as the rumored Moto. You’ll find the same CPU in HTC’s Aria and Legend, the Sony-Ericsson Xperia X8, and the upcoming LG Optimus Chic, and this lower-cost chipset has been around a year and a half. The OT-980’s resistive screen responds to pressure rather than touch, as a capacitive screen does. All the higher-end Android phones have capacitive screens, with multitouch. While resistive screens work well with a stylus, the OT-980 doesn’t provide one.
While Mobilesyrup states the OT-980 will have Android OS 1.6 (Donut), the Alcatel site says it’s got 2.1 (Eclair) now, so who knows what this will ship with. Especially when you note the Alcatel site doesn’t even list Canada as an option to see what’s sold there! The link above takes you to a spec sheet for Alcatel USA.
The OT-980 was first launched in July in France.