Thursday 18 September 2014

Android One: Three Reasons Why You Should And Should Not Go For These Smartphones

Google released their most anticipated Android One program in India on 15th September. The three partners, Micromax, Karbonn and Spice made their smartphones available immediately on the various e-commerce websites and they were out of stock in no time.

These companies are quite well known in the Indian smartphone industry and Google as their partner does provide them some leverage than the other companies. The three smartphones released with Android One provide a lot of features but they aren’t the best in that price category either.

Why You Should Buy One:

1. Smooth and Fluid Experience: The smartphones on the Android One platform come with Stock Android with none of the bloatware from any of the smartphone companies. Hence, the users will not face the problems in terms of lagginess.

2. Timely Updates: These smartphones come with the latest Android 4.4.4 KitKat and Google has also promised updates for the smartphones for a period of 2 years. Thus, we can expect the phone to get the update along with the Nexus lineup. This gives an upper hand to these smartphones as many flagship phones receive the latest Android upgrade after 1-2 months after its launch.

3. Affordable Price: Google said that there are many people who haven’t yet got their first smartphone and the Android One program will help in reaching out to them with an affordable price tag. The smartphones come at a price of below 7,000 which Google believes is quite affordable as they want to reach the next billion milestone through these smartphones.

Why You Should Stay Away From Them(For Now):

1. Mediocre Hardware: The Stock Android experience might lure many customers but the hardware which is provided in the smartphones is just not upto the mark. Though KitKat is optimized for 512MB smartphones but the chipset which has been provided might give a hard time to power users. A MediaTek chip instead of a Qualcomm chip might upset many since there are a lot of phones which provide better internals than the Android One smartphones.

2. Better Alternatives: The sub-6000 category is choc a block with a plethora of smartphones. The Xiaomi Redmi 1S which was launched recently by Flipkart provides a far superior hardware at an ultra affordable price of Rs. 6000. Motorola Moto E is another device which has better hardware and an affordable price tag attached to it. With the kind of hardware being provided, Google will have to take a lot of initiatives in making people buy their smartphones.

3. Few Partners: Google launched three smartphones with different partners at their event and they are expected to grow in the days to come but right now only three smartphones which are not quite well known worldwide will raise a few doubts in buying these phones. The limited number of smartphones might make people switch to other alternatives such as Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, etc.

Taking the negative points in fray and judging it as per India’s view, Google has hit a bulls eye with this program since these companies sell a large number of smartphones in the rural markets but if they want it to be a worldwide success they really need to step up and provide better hardware with some very well known partners in various countries.

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