Showing posts with label Smart Netphone. Show all posts

Sale Watch: What's Happening This Christmas



It’s already December next week, and we’re sure that we’re all excited about the sales that are coming our way. While we’re still populating our comprehensive table of Cherry Mobile Android Phones, we thought it’d be great to alert you on what’s bound to happen this Christmas month.
  • Cherry Mobile has already published its “12 Cherrys of Christmas” price list. If you recall from Cherry Mobile’s promotions last year, they put on promo one Cherry Mobile phone a day, ramping up the sales until they finally released premium phones for a steal. This year, we’re waiting with bated breath, as they may put Cherry Mobile Androids on sale.
  • Even if Cherry Mobile Androids are NOT on sale, they’ve already bumped down the prices to affordable price points. So if you’re no longer in the mood to wait for the Droids to plummet to possibly obscene prices, check out Cherry Mobile’s Droid catalog.
  • The Samsung Galaxy Y has been put on Smart Communications and Sun Cellular’s best plans. On Plan 349 for Smart and Plan 350 for Sun, getting yourself a Droid has now gotten more sensible.


These are the Droid sales we've caught so far; we’ll keep gathering what we can find as the days hurtle into Christmas.

Watch out for more sales and bargain updates!

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Android Industry News -- Android Going Strong





From breaking out into the market in 2007, to achieving its first wave of market boom in 2009, the Android as an ecosystem may well have matured.

Reaching a market penetration that is poised to supplant Nokia, the Android has rendered several platforms irrelevant or unnoticeable:


  • Samsung's Bada OS never really got off the ground, since Samsung became more famous for being the Android phone brand of choice for the mass market.
  • The Symbian OS, already riddled with flaws, bugs and malware, may still have its share of fans, but ultimately, the Android had drowned out the buzz of the latest Symbian OS releases. Not even fancy version names could rescue the Symbian from increasingly sinking into oblivion.
  • Windows Mobile/Windows Phone. Admittedly, a good number of Microsoft fanatics in the tech community are all praises for the Windows Phone OS, let's face it: the market share of Microsoft-powered devices has been falling, especially since the Android is clearly dominating the market.
  • Even the Blackberry is increasingly losing market share, despite being the dominant smartphone in the past. From the iPhone eating through its dominance, and now, with the Android around, pundits are fearing the Research In Motion innovation will go the way of the Palm.
  • Nokia is currently so threatened, that despite the fact that it came into a partnership with Microsoft, rumors are circulating about Nokia also venturing into producing Android phones.

There are so many factors as to why the Droid is dominating the market, and one of these may well be the fact that it shares a lot of common apps available for the iOS. This makes the Android platform far more enticing than the Windows Phone ecosystem, or even the Blackberry ecosystem.

In the Philippines, evidence of the Android Platform making major waves is evidenced by the fact that the major telcos are creating their own Android-centric offerings:

  • Smart Communications, Inc. has its own line of HTC Android plans.
  • Smart also launched its own Android-focused brand, complete with an ecosystem patterned after the BIS/BBM (Blackberry Internet Service/Blackberry Messaging), the Netphone powered by SmartNet.

While Globe didn't seem to make as much waves in the Android arena as much as Smart Communications, here are their most recent developments:

  • Globe Telecom launched the Cloudfone, which, at the time it was launched, was the cheapest Android in the market, at Php 4,990 for a prepaid kit, on its launch. It may still be the cheapest 3G-capable Droid to date, as the Cherry Mobile Eclipse 2.2, only Php 91 cheaper, is not 3G-capable.
  • Globe is also into developing Android-centric apps. One of these is actually pretty innovative and useful: the Globe Calls for Android lets an Android user take advantage of Globe's call offers without making a user edit his contacts' numbers to affix the different number prefixes that are required for the varying offers. Pretty useful for a fan of those call and text offers.

In all, this is starting to become an Android world. Those who fail to adapt may well be left in the dust.



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Photo Credits: Your Mobile Site
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Smart Communications' Netphone: Brilliant Concept, Brilliant PR



Smart Communications seems to have its PR machine run tight. In just around 15 days after the Netphone was launched, we have seen not only the high profile bloggers tote their new Netphones, we've also seen friends colleagues wield brand spanking new ZTE Blades powered by SmartNet, or, as it is known by the brand, the Netphone 701.

Since the different high-profile bloggers have already said their piece about the phone, here is a collection of their opinions about it:


If there's anything we can just say about the whole Netphone 701 campaign, it's that Smart was very brilliant to lock its SmartNet service to the Netphone. While you can sign up for an account and even update your Facebook and Twitter via a SmartNet account on its website, you will not be able to enjoy the full benefits of SmartNet if you were on another Android. We tried using the service via a Cherry Mobile Nova, and, the website does not convert to a mobile site on the Opera Mini. It has the same proportions as the PC-based version. On the Dolphin HD Browser, the proportions are still the same, though it looks a tad bit more bearable. You may probably learn to like posting from SmartNet in landscape mode, but with Facebook for Android or even the mobile browser-based Mobile Facebook, we doubt you'd switch to SmartNet if you were on another Android.

What is more advantageous in having a Netphone is not just the dedicated app for SmartNet; it's really the free use of SmartNet. You can have only Php 1 in your Smart prepaid account, and as long as you keep the settings on "SmartNet" and not "Internet," you'll be fine. You can toggle these settings on the second panel of your Smart Netphone, as Karen Ang mentions in her post. 

Thus, the brilliance of the Netphone is really locked into the SmartNet system. However, the service will only be free until December 31, 2011. After that, expect to pay Php 999 per 1GB of data monthly. Smart also has other denominations in its Always On plan suite, so you may be able to take advantage of SmartNet at lower rates.

Did Smart Communications hit the jackpot by copying the big companies and their whole software/hardware ecosystem (think Apple's iTunes, the Android Marketplace and the Blackberry Internet Service)? Did they also hit a PR jackpot by creating an effective viral campaign with the help of local and influential bloggers? Will Smart Netphone users stay on the system after December 31, 2011? Only time will tell.


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Smart Communications Makes New Waves With The Smart Netphone



Smart Communications is undoubtedly the Philippines' biggest mobile network, with a subscriber base of at least 45 Million, as reported in June 2010. This 2011 saw Smart Communications make very aggressive moves, with the launch of Smart's 4G service via LTE in Boracay this summer 2011, the newsmaking purchase of the majority shares of Sun Cellular, and now, a heavy drive of venturing into the Android scene.

Close on the heels of summer 2011's major moves by Smart Communications, Smart drove heavily into the emerging Android smartphone wave by launching a particularly seductive postpaid line of HTC phones. And now, Smart Communications is making new waves with its own Android, the Smart Netphone.

Smart Communications is not new to the smartphone scene. It is not even new to launching its own smartphone model. Remember the Smart Amazing phone? It was one of the more affordable smartphones to hit the market. Smart made an attempt to make the smartphone readily available to consumers, and the Smart Amazing phone was their answer.

As they say, history repeats itself. Tomorrow's market launch of the Netphone is not a case of "history repeats itself," however. In our opinion, it is more about "Find out what works. Rinse. Repeat."

They say that the key to success is bumping into something that works or brings in results, and then repeating the formula until the results dwindle. With the Netphone, this seems to be seeing that the Android pie is selling like hotcakes at the moment, and wanting a slice of that pie. If it clicks, if it works, we bet Smart Communications will, indeed, "Rinse and Repeat."

Indeed, who wouldn't want a piece of the Android action? At 550,000 Android activations a day, that number alone spells a phenomenal profit. That number says that there's room for quite a few players. And if that isn't impressive enough, we're not sure what is.

The thing is, how do you seduce a brand-conscious Philippine consumer base? Filipinos have been known to have a preference for Nokia. But when Cherry Mobile, Torque and China phones entered the market on the low end, and the iPhone, the Blackberry and the Android posse made a scene on the high end, brand no longer remained relevant. Today, the Filipino cellphone-buying public is more concerned about durability and the gadget's specs. If the Netphone proves to be better than the Cherry Mobile Androids, it may be a viable midrange option for the Android aficionados.

For more information on specs, first impressions and unboxing, please visit these websites:


Here's the Netphone's Official Website:


Smart officially unveils the Netphone to the buying public tomorrow morning.



Photo Credits: Smart Netphone Official Website
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