Samsung SGH-X700 (Rs. 8,700)
This is the best of the lot—the X700 is another chunky candy bar with a well rounded feature set. It has a 1.3 megapixel digital camera with video and flash, an MP3/AAC player, Bluetooth, FM radio, 35mb of phone memory with a microSD/TransFlash memory card slot, GPRS as well as EDGE! The screen is a regular 176x220 resolution one—that’s probably the only problem I can point out in this phone. I usually prefer either clamshells or sliders, if this wasn’t the case, I would have bought the X700 right away.
When I said ‘very few’ I didn’t realize there would be just three phones that actually fit in the ‘budget’ label. So let’s take a look at one model from…
Nokia 6230i (Rs. 10,000)
Yeah, it’s old, but it’s still got pretty much everything. A 1.3 megapixel digital camera with video, Bluetooth, MP3/AAC player, FM radio, 32mb phone memory with an ancient MMC memory card slot, GPRS and even EDGE support. The only problem is the price, which is a little higher than the rest of the phones. But that comes up after you actually find someone selling this phone!
And now that we’ve touched the 10k barrier, why exclude the…
Sony Ericsson K750i (Rs. 10,000)
Grab this bestseller while you can, it won’t be available when the stocks run out. The K750i is the most feature rich in the all-in-one category, giving a fabulous quality 2 megapixel camera with auto-focus and video recording, MP3/AAC playback, Bluetooth, FM radio with RDS, 38mb phone memory with a Memory Stick PRO Duo slot. The display is a medium sized, 172x220 resolution one, and there’s no EDGE network support, but GPRS is available. I’ll say it again: grab it while you still can.
There’s a big market for all-in-one phones, but it’s still surprising that a country like India—one of the fastest growing mobile phone markets in the world—has only five options available.
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