On a trip to Tesco Ant spotted this, the Neon Android from a company called Bluechip. There, next to the “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”, is this bargain-bucket SIM-free phone. It’s £79.97 with a Tesco SIM card and, although the specs aren’t exactly stellar, it could be worth considering for a Christmas present.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Bluechip? Whoooo?????” It seems to be a rebrand of the Umeox A502 (I know, we’re not exactly familiar with Umeox). It has a 3.2″ HVGA capacitive 480×320 pixel screen, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and a 3.2 megapixel camera.
Tesco also have the Bluechip BC5i “Big Button” phone, which kinda looks like a calculator but is ideal for the elderly.
not sure HTC will be so happy with that wallpaper!
Any specs?
seen the new HTC Ville? http://tinyurl.com/cz353jk
Quite a bargain, but it seems to lack 3G. It does have Wifi, however. What I couldn’t seem to find out is how much internal memory or what processor it has, so one can only presume that it’s about the minimum to get by (64MB and ~600MHz ARM5). It also has Android 2.2. On the plus side, it appears to have a capacitive screen. Not half bad for the money. I’m sure with a bit of hacking one could make it run some of the better apps around.
Looking on ebay at around the same price range, there’s quite a few Chinese units with a very similar spec, so definitely a good deal I’d say. The Chinese ones seem to have dual core processors (in a strange ARM7 + ARM9 configuration), and 512MB ROM + 256MB RAM.. Wonder how it compares…
Having had one of those chinese phones, they aren’t *really* dual core. One of the cores is used to run the radio interface, the other runs the OS.
Just bought one to see me through while my HTC Desire S is being repaired. Sluggishly slow, but I’ll put up with that for the money. What seems to render it totally useless however, is that there seems to be no cellular data connectivity whatsoever! It’s fine with WiFi turned on, but once you’re out and about, there’s no data available! Ture that 3G seems to be missing, but data isn’t slow, it’s non-existent! Anybody got any ideas? (Yes, “Data enabled” is ticked in settings!)
…”Ture” = “True”…
OK, I’ve fixed it. There was a process called “engineer mode” running. I stopped it. Now I have data. Yay me!
how did you find and stop this Leo? Having same issue, I only want this as a cheap backup phone, and it isn’t even doing that currently
I advise not to get this phone as i have cracked the screen and cannot find a replacement anywhere
I advise not to get this phone as i have cracked the screen and cannot find a replacement anywhere
Anyone know how to turn GPS on, every time I try navigation in Maps it says its off and asks me to turn it on but I cant find out how
I strongly advise against this phone, mine lasted only 6 weeks before becoming completely lifeless. It fails to respond to being plugged in to a charger at all. Manufacturer does not reply to correspondence and no spares/replacement availability in the UK from what I can tell. The major supermarket I bought it from (unfortunately have lost receipt now) no longer stock the item. I have read other reviews from people with a similar experience but sadly not until after I had bought it. It is a cheap phone but not if it only lasts 6 weeks, a complete waste of money.
Would agree George. Never found GPS on it and never got data on it but as a phone it worked and believe it or not can be reasonably good mini kindle with amazons app. Big problem is it cant receive service txts so it went back this morning to that major supermarket. Fortunately I hadnt lost my receipt and here is hoping they cant fix it and I get a refund. With my luck though, they will fix it