As the bigger names in cellphones fight over megapixels and megahertz, newer players are finding different arenas to expand. The front page of one of India’s leading newspapers informed us that Olive have launched India’s first QWERTY cellphone with three sim cards - two GSM and one CDMA. In essence, this means that one can carry three phone connections on the same handset. Meanwhile, an ad campaign from Spice informs us that the company has come out with handsets that have two expansion card slots, allowing you to store so much more on the same handset.
While we do applaud all this innovation, we cannot help but wonder just how many cards one can stick into a single phone? Surely all these connections and memory cards will take a heavy toll of the phone’s processing power and battery. And of course, losing one of these devices literally would mean losing everything. But still, there’s no denying the fact that phones today are packing in so much more. Whether that is good or bad is up to the users to decide. Needless to say, we would love to hear your take on this.
The folks at Olive Telecommunications have come out with a phone called Olive FrvrOn. In terms of features, it is pretty much low-end with a 1.5 inch display, FM radio, polyphonic ringtones and stereo headset. The price is very much low-end too - Rs 1,699. However, what grabbed our attention was the fact that the phone can run on any -yes, any-AAA battery. “A user upon running out of electricity charge in the supplied LiOn battery can simply slot in any AAA battery available into the phone, and stay connected,” says the press release. Now, that’s interesting. The catch is that battery life on lower end phones is pretty good as a rule, although such a device would definitely be right at home in rural areas where power availability is spotty at best.
