With new Android phones releasing month after month, there can be no definitive way to declare a particular phone to be the best buy for too long. That’s why we’ve made it a monthly habit to keep updating the Best Android phones to buy list, so that potential buyers have one place to seek advice.
Phones under Rs. 10,000
There is a growing number of options in this cost conscious smartphone range, with every manufacturer trying to one-up the other by marginally improving the features. As a rule of the thumb, I’m not even going to consider all those phones with resistive touchscreens, and with good reason. As of now, we declare the newly launched Samsung Galaxy Pop S5570 as the champion of the paisa vasool range.
It’s an upgrade to the popular Galaxy 5 i5500 model and it brings about some important changes — the screen size is bumped up from 2.8 inches to 3.2 inches, although it still has the low QVGA (320 x 240 pixel) resolution. But for the price, we can forgive Samsung of this sin.
The camera resolution is upped from the pitiful 2 megapixel to the not-so-pitiful 3.2 megapixel. It still lacks autofocus and an LED flash; don’t expect great photo quality from it.
The most important change is that it runs Android 2.2 Froyo from start, unlike the Galaxy 5 which still runs Android 2.1, with no clear update roadmap in sight. It may not be the most recent Gingerbread (2.3) version, but we still appreciate it running a fairly recent version, given how fast Google churns out OS updates every year.
It still has the i5500′s 600 MHz processor, and with the same QVGA resolution and the Froyo performance optimizations, you can expect the User Interface to fly swiftly. Apart from this, the Galaxy Pop also adds a proximity sensor and a compass to the package.
Connectivity is sorted with 3.5G (HSDPA), Wi-fi 802.11n and A-GPS support. It sells for Rs. 9,000 — the same price that its predecessor was sold at when launched. For the price, we think the Galaxy Pop S5570 is a good package for the Android lover who likes to hold back on splurging hard earned money.
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