Arun’s blog

The ‘Use and throw’ concept seems to be fast catching up among youth of this metropolis as they throng electronics shops to buy the cheaper and feature rich mobile phones imported from China and South Korea.

These phones, which vie for showroom space with costly mobiles, whose companies spend heavily on sales promotion, are selling like hot cakes, but face “reliability problems.”

Named SIGMATEL-T33, PANASONIO, iPHONE-N380, YXTEL-E51, ZTCT58 and CECT-K698, tbey have now become a rage among the mobile phone user community.

“After these phones started entering Chennai early this year, there was a growing demand for them and now it is phenomenal. On an average we sell at least 25-30 phones a month and their features are a major attraction for buyers,” Sheikh Abullah, a retailer in the busy Ritchie Street said.

“These phones are available at a lesser rate than branded phones. many youth prefer to buy them, just to showcase their status symbol,” Tamil Nadu Electronic Technician’s Association
President M Benjamin told the media.

Priced between Rs 2500 to Rs 6500, they have large screen size and high output sound quality. Many buyers, instead of spending a huge amount to purchase a branded mobile, prefer to buy these, he said

For instance by spending Rs 6,500 one can get a dual SIM phone enabled with large screen display, radio, GPRS and Blue Tooth connectivity, which would have cost more if it were a
branded phone, he said.

Earlier only a few shops stocked such phones. But today at least 10 shops in Ritchie Street do brisk business, he said.

On the reliability of these phones, he said one would not be able to buy the necessary parts for even a minor problem as spares are not readily available.

“Earlier there was not much demand but today along with other Chinese goods, approximately one lakh phones are shipped here thrice a week” Association Vice-President K Hasan said.

Hasan also concurred with Benjamin’s views on these phones, saying none of them carry a guarantee. Once a problem occurs, one either has to spend a huge amount of money or just
buy another phone, he said.

“I bought this phone because all my friends have it. I like the sound quality and the large screen display and those features made me buy it” Sandeep a student of a popular city
college said.

“These days phones have also become a status symbol and I am not interested in investing a huge amount for a top end branded phone” he said.

On the safety of these phones, a popular brand phone retailer said “it remains a question mark”.

The ROKR E8 is the latest mobile phone/media player from Motorola and ticks all the right boxes when it comes to media playback on a mobile phone.

The candy bar shaped ROKR E8 comes with ModeShift technology that switches the device from a phone to a media player and to a camera with a touch of a button. The phone also features a navigation wheel for scrolling through your music, contacts and images effortlessly.

The ROKR E8 includes 2GB of internal memory and a microSD card slot to add an additional 4GB if required. The media player supports the usual audio formats like MP3, AAC, WAV and WMA and has a 3.5mm headphone jack and A2DP stereo Bluetooth for connecting to wireless speakers.

Being a small device, the ROKR E8 has a 2 inch QVGA screen and only weights 100 grams.

Probably the biggest drawbacks of the phone are that it only has a 2 megapixel camera with no flash and the phone lacks Wi-Fi and 3G, which is becoming more and more popular with other manufacturers.