#netphone

officially launched the Netphone 701, their very own branded Android phone that's exclusively hooked up to the SmartNet. Check out our first impression of the device and thoughts regarding the Netphone ecosystem after the jump. While we've already discussed the hardware used for this project (a ZTE Blade) and the dedicated internet plans and prices under the Netphone line, here are some more information we gathered during our interview with Smart reps yesterday. The Netphone attempts to address that widening gap by offering very affordable "always on" internet plans to access popular social networks and enable IP-based messaging. The Hardware: Netphone 701 The handset used in this roll-off is very intriguing. The catch here is that you're only able to subscribe to the special Netphone plans when you use the Netphone 701 so comparing it to other Android handsets becomes moot. The Netphone platform and SmartNet The Netphone platform sits on top of Android 2.2 and acts like a collection of Android apps so, essentially, you can copy these apps (the APK files) to another Android handset and they should work. In the case of the Netphone 701, some functionalities might not work since there's an OEM API that's attached to it. Read more in our articles including "Smart Netphone first impressions" and "realme C100, C100i now official, specs and price in the Philippines".