YugaTech | Philippines, Tech Reviews Blog

Since Research in Motion (RIM) is taking a long time to release the BlackBerry Bold 9900 in the Philippines, grey-market sellers are making a killing with these handsets by directly importing them from the US.

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Cosmic Technologies is also coming out with what could be the cheapest Android smartphone in the Philippines, the Cherry Mobile Eclipse 2.2. It’s the first Android phone to have a suggested retail price of under Php5,000.

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Torque Philippines outs yet another triple-SIM phone — the Torque T100 Thrice — and they’re touting it as the cheapest one of its kind in the market.

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LG Philippines will launch its very own Android phone this July. Called the LG Optimus GT540 (also known as LG Swift elsewhere), it will probably take the crown as the cheapest Android smartphone in town.

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True to their words, LG Philippines launched today the cheapest fully touchscreen phone in the Philippines – the LG KP500 or the LG Cookie. My prediction of under Php15k was surpassed — it’s actually just Php11,900.

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First heard of this line of 3G phones (LG KU250) a couple months back during a dinner meeting with several Smart executives and MediaQuest President Doy Vea. They mentioned that this LG phone has been chosen by the GSM Association in their “3G for All” campaign. Their February press release indicates at least 12 GSM operators will be introducing this model in their respective networks.

Globe Telecoms was also there with their CEO being quoted saying:

As the first to commercially launch 3G & HSDPA in the Philippines, we at Globe Telecom are most excited with the announcement of the “3G For All” winner in this Congress, as this breakthrough initiative of the GSMA will enable us to improve handset affordability, one of the barriers to 3G service adoption in the Philippines. We believe that there is a huge un-served, mass-market segment in the Philippines which this “3G for All” initiative will address; we look forward to 3G becoming a mass-market proposition within the next years. We commend the GSMA in its efforts to support the industry with a timely and effective market intervention ensuring that the price gap between 2G and 3G handsets is being narrowed by the delivery of this affordable, feature-rich 3G handset.

Inquirer.net also posted the news the other day that Smart made an announcement on the LG unit. The unit will retail for P6,290 (around USD$130) though I think they’ll be much cheaper in Greenhills and street stalls. Before this, there wasn’t any 3G capable phones out there that sells less than Php10 that I know of. On top of the 3G capability, the LG KU250 supports GPRS (but no EDGE), 10MB shared memory and external micro SD card slot, bluetooth and USB as well as a 1.3MP camera.

Second inline from the GSMA recommendation is the Nokia N6151 which has an almost similar features as the LG one but I guess the price was the major deciding factor.