A new company has started selling phones to whatever specs people want, according to textually.org. The company, zzzPhone (now there’s a unique name!), sells a baseline phone, running Windows Mobile 6, and lets buyers specify exactly what add-ons and extras they want.
Basically, think the Dell of the mobile phone world. Only not as well-known. A better analogy might be “imagine a cheap local PC shop that builds them for you”.
So, you can upgrade the baseline spec phone with things like chrome or gold highlights, gold plating, a paintjob of your choice, GPS, pre-loaded content, built-in flashlight, dual sim card slots, 4Gb of memory, 7 megapixel camera (!) and so on. The result of that is a phone that looks like you want it to look, and does what you want it to do.
And since the company claim to use the same high quality parts as Nokia, Motorola and Samsung, build quality shouldn’t be an issue.
However, I’m going to point out some flaws and things to consider, with the zzzPhone:
1. What’s the warranty going to be like?
2. Erm, it looks like a cheap Chinese knockoff of a Blackberry-ish device!
3. I did a test on their website, and if to add on the extras I’d want, the price jumps from a very reasonable $149 (more on why the price is in dollars in a sec) to a massive $608. That’s not an insubstantial amount, that!
4. It’s not going to work in Europe, anyway. I mean why? Surely, if you can make it tri-band to work on 850, 900 and 1900, it’s not that hard to make it quad-band. That’s aggravating…
So, there you go. In order to get a decently spec’d one, you pay just over 4 times as much. And it’s not got a Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG or any other badge on it.
So, we can safely assign this to the “never going to work in the UK, so might as well get a decent phone” folder.
Agree? Disagree? Leave us a comment and have your say!
October 11th, 2008 at 6:24 am
anyone know how to make a phone