Lenovo Ophone finally due in September
updated 03:45 pm EDT, Fri August 7, 2009
Lenovo Ophone September
Lenovo's frequently delayed Ophone should arrive next month on China Mobile, a company spokesperson said today. It should now be called the Ophone O1 and is now confirmed by PC World to use China's government-endorsed TD-SCDMA standard for 3G as well as the Open Mobile System, an equally officially supported variant of Android. In the China Mobile guise, OMS will have custom e-mail and instant messaging apps and will have certain visual similarities to OS X iPhone.
The hardware itself should be suitably high-end with a 3.5-inch 480x240 touchscreen, a 5-megapixel camera, a 624MHz processor, the aforementioned 3G and GPS. It's listed as Wi-Fi ready, though it's unknown if this will come enabled. The Chinese government has lately discouraged handset makers from including Wi-Fi both to promote its 3G network and to have more control over data.
Launching the O1 is partly considered a counter against an increasingly probable China Unicom iPhone deal that may send significant numbers of customers to a smaller but still influential opponent in the Chinese cellular market.
