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To: sinclap who wrote (27619)	10/1/2013 8:23:17 PM
From: sylvester80	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32692

Here is a low end one for $149 unlocked no contract 5" phone that was announced 9 months ago. Kogan announces $149 unlocked Android smartphone with 5-inch screen The Agora offers some interesting specs, including dual SIM slots and a phablet-size display. It's scheduled to reach U.S. shores in about a month. by Rick Broida January 16, 2013 10:05 AM PST reviews.cnet.com The Kogan Agora smartphone, available for preorder now, offers Android 4.0 and a 5-inch screen for $149. You choose the no-contract carrier: AT&T or T-Mobile. (Credit: Kogan) Want a smartphone on the cheap? Usually that means going the subsidized route, signing up for a two-year contract that'll cost you a small fortune by the time you're done. The Kogan Agora is an unlocked Android 4.0 smartphone priced at $149 (plus shipping). Due to arrive in the U.S. next month, it'll support no-contract, pay-as-you-go plans from AT&T and T-Mobile. Oh, and it has a 5-inch screen. To put that in some perspective, the similarly phablet-size LG Optimus Vu 2 and Samsung Galaxy Note 2 sell unlocked for $860 and around $700, respectively. Needless to say, $149 won't buy you quite the same level of specs that you'll get from those models. But as entry-level phones go, the Agora might prove appealing to budget-minded buyers. Built around a dual-core 1GHz Cortex-A9 processor, the Agora features dual cameras (including a 5-megapixel rear one), 2G and 3G SIM slots (which in theory would let you have two different phone numbers, or one SIM for calls/text messages and another for data), and all the other usual goodies like Bluetooth, GPS, and Android 4.0. Obviously the big screen is the big draw here, but unfortunately it runs at a fairly low resolution: 800x480 pixels. The Galaxy Note 2 runs at 1,280x720 pixels, while the Optimus Vu 2 stretches a little higher to 1,280x768. In real-world terms, the Agora is likely to look fairly grainy. The phone also has just 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage, though you can expand the latter via inexpensive microSD cards. So, yeah, it's an entry-level smartphone, albeit one with a huge screen. Engadget got a little hands-on time with one at CES and had this to say: "Those specs should tell you that the Agora phone isn't aimed at the high end, but despite that, the build quality is solid. The square handset looks alright, too. We liked the dimpled back panel and prominent metal Kogan logo, as well as the shiny dark grey rim holding it all together. It's not exactly a Retina display, but it's not notably terrible, and performance-wise, it ranged from slick to jittery depending on how much we were telling it to do in how short a time."I'm hoping for some hands-on time myself in a few weeks, but in the meantime, what's your initial impression of the Agora? Is it worth sacrificing some pixels, some RAM, and 4G in exchange for a price tag that's hundreds less than the competition?

To: sinclap who wrote (27619)	10/1/2013 8:25:12 PM
From: sylvester80	Respond to of 32692

Kogan debuts second Agora smartphone: 5-inch 720p display, 1.2GHz quad-core CPU, Jelly Bean, $189 By Jamie Rigg posted Sep 18th, 2013 at 5:00 PM 66 engadget.com Kogan's Agora brand may not drive techies wild like Galaxies or iThings do, but its motto is clear: try to deliver reasonable hardware at the lowest possible price. The company's first bid for a piece of the smartphone pie launched earlier this year, and today we're learning of its sequel. Design-wise, this second Agora handset is a little curvier than the last, with a soft key replacing its predecessor's physical home button. A 5-inch, 720p IPS LCD display occupies the face, and inside we're looking at a 1.2GHz quad-core MT6589 Mediatek SoC (Cortex-A7), 1GB of RAM and 4 gigs of internal storage, expandable with up to 32GB cards of the microSD variety. It runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, hosts two SIM slots, an 8-megapixel main camera, 2-megapixel front-facer, 2,000mAh removable battery and 3G (850 / 1900 / 2100), WiFi (802.11b/g/n) and Bluetooth 4.0 antennae. Most importantly, it costs $189, £149 or 199 Aussie dollars -- it's up for order now at the relevant source links and is expected to ship to the US, Australia, the UK and other European countries, as well as a couple of Asian markets starting October 3rd. We're hoping to get a review unit through soon, so keep an eye out over the coming weeks for our impressions. In our opinion, anything that rings up at under $200 is worth a fair trial. SHOW FULL PR TEXT SOURCE: Kogan (UK), (Aus), (US & elsewhere)