Casio is really not a brand that interests me. Phones, watches and whatever else it is that they make these days, I’m just not all that moved to buy. I lost interest in their stuff back in the day when I bought a shockproof, waterproof Casio watch that was neither.
Fast forward to the here and now, and it looks like there will soon be a follow up to the wildly uninspiring Casio Commando if the tipster over at Droid Life is accurate. Claiming to have been shown the as yet unnamed Casio device in a focus group, the source gave these specs from memory:
- 4.5″ or 4.7″ Super AMOLED display
- quad-core processor
- NFC
- 4G LTE
- 8MP rear camera
- 2MP front shooter
- 2000 mAh battery
- “latest Android” version
This unnamed Casio is a perfect example of all that is wrong feature bloat. ICS is optimized for multi core processors, but only a 2000 mAh battery? That’s going to make my Thunderbolt battery life seem like a lifetime when this phone is using 4G.
The 8MP rear camera seems like a good idea on paper, but simply cramming more pixels into a flake sized sensor doesn’t automatically mean that you’ll get stellar results. Casio isn’t exactly known for their image quality. Again, 2MP on the front is nice in theory, but we’ll have to wait and see if Casio has gotten it together with their imaging technology.
NFC is the future, and it’s nice that this device will include it, but VZW, Sprint and AT&T have their own preferred payment system. That means that, like the Nexus on Verizon, NFC will be gimped to only work with their own preferred systems, so forget about Google Wallet out of the box.
If this Casio phone sports the same rugged chassis as the Commando, well, that’s a unique selling feature. Then again, prior to this tip popping up I had completely forgotten about the Commando, so I’m not sure how much demand there is for a phone that can survive a drop in the crapper.
If you’re excited about this phone, I think that’s great. Casio will bring a device with all of the latest and greatest features and it should be running ICS if it ever sees the light of day. For me, this is just another “me too” device from a 2nd tier manufacturer attempting to one up everyone else with the specs of this phone.
Source: Droid Life