July 2011 Android smartphone buyers Guide Budget droids with HVGA screens

Since it release, the best budget Android phone in the market has been the LG Optimus One. As competition arrived, the prices of the Optimus One adjusted with the market, and more than six months after it was released, it is still the best budget Android. It is now selling for as low as Php9,800 with an official one year LG warranty.

The Optimus One has a 320 x 480 (HVGA) pixel resolution, which is improtant since this was the original Android reference screen resolution, which means good app compatibility.  The 3.2 inch TFT capacitive touchscreen display is big enough and the 600MHz processor and 512MB of RAM make this phone fast enough. It runs Froyo (Android) 2.2, which is good enough even if not updated (and an update to 2.3 is promised). This allows you to install apps on the SD card making the low internal storage of budget phones less of an issue.

 

When the price went below 10K, we stopped recommending the 240 x 320 screen resolution budget offerings which we had been recommending. The 320 x 480 is well worth the additional 1-2K.

But our favorite budget Droid now faces some serious competition.

Cherry Mobile Cosmo. Get past the Cherry branding. Cherry is an ODM which sells phones manufactured by third parties under their own brand name. The Cherry Mobile Cosmo is actually a Spice Mi-310. These are the official Cherry Mobile Cosmo specifications:

• Android 2.2 (Froyo)
• Qualcomm MSM 7227 600Mhz
• 3.2" HVGA Capacitive Touchscreen
• ROM: 512MB / RAM: 256MB
• Dual Band GSM / GPRS / EDGE
• WCDMA / HSDPA
• 2MP Camera
• Portable Wifi Hotspot
• WIFI / Bluetooth / 3G / GPS
• FM Radio
• Standard Micro USB 2.0
• 3.5mm Stereo Audio Jack
• Expandable Memory up to 16GB

Priced a Php6,900 is has similar specifications to the Optimus One and is a very good alternative.  It is not as good as the Optimus One coming with only half the RAM, a smaller battery (1300 mAh instead of 1500 mAh) and a lower specification camera. It also apparently cannot handle 32GB MicroSD Cards, being limited to 16GB. But it is priced Php2,900 lower, roughly about 33% less.

Alcatel OT-990. Another new offering is the Alcatel OT-990. Specifications are similar to the Cosmo, but it comes with a larger 3.5-inch screen, a 5MP auto focus camera and can handle 32GB MicroSD cards. Price is supposed to be about Php10K. Basically, the OT-990 will have a larger screen and higher MP camera, with the Optimus One having more RAM and a larger battery.

At this price Optimus One looks like better tried and tested choice, but a 3.5-inch screen 320 x 480 screen is a big plus factor. That is the screen size and resolution is that of an Apple iPhone 3GS. 

Others. You also have two offering from Torque, dual sim Androids at Php7,999 at Php9,999... but those are honest to goodness "China phones" manufactured by companies who we cannot identify. One is a know-off of an HTC, the other a iPhone 4 look-a-like (down to the buttons). We will hold off on recommending these for now until we find out more about them.

The choice is yours, but it is great to have choices.

Update: The Alcatel OT-990 is available for Php9,999, but that is a temporary promotional price. The regular price is Php14,999, which is much higher than the Samsung Galaxy Ace which has better specs.

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Simple guide to updating and installing software in Fedora 15

Caveat. I am by no means a Linux Expert. I used Mandrake and Red Hat Linux for three years almost seven years ago on my desktop, and only got back around to using it again in December of 2010. Last December I installed Ubuntu 10.10, and Ubuntu is a really nice distribution to use, especially if you are new to Linux. Install and use. Nothing much else to do. I never even thought of writing a guide, there is really no need to.

Last week I decided to try out Fedora 15, mainly because I was interested in the new Gnome 3 graphical user interface. Getting Fedora installed and updated is a little bit more tricky. Since Fedora is a test bed for cutting edge Linux technology this is to be expected. But actually, if you know what to do, it is pretty easy.

Updating the Operating System. Fedora 15 has a graphical user interface for updates. Just click Software Updates in Applications, and install the updates you want to install.

There is a bug, which is a known issue. If you got Fedora 15 at release and updated on a regular basis it should not affect you. If you are installing it now, there seems to be some conflict with some earlier and later updates. There is a very simple work around. Update via command line. Its not as hard as it sounds.

In Application bring up the Terminal and type in the command "su" without the quotation marks and type in your password.

After that, type in the following command "yum update" again without the quotation marks, and press Enter. Fedora 15 will install all available updates. It is that simple.

Updating Firefox. Fedora 15 will come with Firefox 4. There are plenty of ways to update to Firefox 5, but since you got used to using the terminal already, this is really the easiest way to do things. So after updating Fedora just type in this code (if you closed the previous terminal you will need to type "su" and your password again) and press enter:

yum install firefox

Adding productivity software. The great thing about Linux is the amount of free software. You can install LibreOffice, which is office suite compatible with Microsoft Office documents, spreadsheets and presentations in the same way by entering the following command:

yum groupinstall "Office/Productivity"

You can also add Gimp, which is a Photo Editing software similar to Photoshop (although the basic Fedora install already comes with a simple photoeditor for cropping, rotating and enhancing pictures):

yum install gimp

Adobe Flash, Codecs, Google Dropbox and more. You can add a application called Autoplus+ which will make it easy to install Flash, Codes and some very useful software. In the terminal type the following code:

su -c yum -y --nogpgcheck install http://dnmouse.org/autoplus-1.1-8.noarch.rpm

Launch Autoplus+ from the applications and install what you want with a mouse click. I have wrote about Autoplus+ a few days ago at this link.

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