Feature phones used to be exciting, and for many people looking for a no frills device that excels in handling phone calls and text messages feature phones may still be as interesting today as they once were in the 90s. The reality of the current market however, with the price of smartphones dropping at such a rapid clip, makes you seem kind of ignorant if you’re willing to pay anything near the 120 EUR price tag that LG’s S310 commands. For that amount of money you get a 2.2 inch screen with a meager resolution of 176 by 220 pixels and it can only display 262,000 colors. There’s also a 3.2 megapixel camera, FM radio, and that’s it. Yes, it’s quadband GSM/EDGE, meaning it’ll work anywhere in the world, and yes, the body is a svelte 114 mm x 48.4 mm x 10.5 mm and weighs only 86 grams, but spend just 30 EUR more and you’ve got yourself something like the Huawei Ideos.
For 150 EUR the Huawei Ideos give you a 2.8 inch 240 x 320 pixel resolution Android 2.2 running smartphone with GPS, WiFi and 3G. The brand name may be a little funky for those who have traditionally been purchasing handsets from Nokia, Samsung, LG, Motorola and Sony Ericsson, but these days there is a fundamental shift happening in the mobile phone space. New players are entering the market thanks to Qualcomm and their various chipset platforms that literally let phone makers slap some guts inside a plastic case, throw Android on top, and then put it in a box that’s on a truck to your nearest store shelf. The premiums that we once paid for devices that didn’t really do very much, but came in a nicely designed package, are coming to an end. Either get a smartphone or be left in the dust while all your other friends have their heads buried in their screens, trying to find the newest apps to play with.
[Via: Mobile Review]