Time to get "Smartphoned"
Whether you support the iPhone, the Blackberry or the Android - it seems that New Zealand has finally been hit with the smartphone bug. There are times when it seems impossible to walk around without seeing someone playing Angry Birds, or checking Facebook on the go. I myself - after a few years of avoiding it - also bought a smartphone just this year.It does seem that smartphones are not only increasing in availability and variety, but also popularity. There have been many speculations as to which platform is most popular right now, but the most common element is undoubtedly the cost of a smartphone. Just slap "smart" on it and suddenly the price hikes up a couple of hundred dollars, some even exceeding the $1000 mark. Many would say that the price doesn't really justify the product itself, but at the end of the day it comes down to what you use it for and whether you think the purchase price is worth it.For many people, the price tag on smartphones is a real deterrent. Unless you're keen on tying yourself to a plan and scoring a handset subsidy from your carrier, sometimes a smartphone is out of reach.Well not anymore: in the last few weeks both 2degrees and Vodafone NZ launched lower-priced smartphones just short of the Christmas season. At the end of October 2degrees announced that as of November 1st, they would have their first exclusive smartphone: the Ideos. Created by the Chinese tech company Huawei, the Ideos launched as one of the first few lower priced smartphones that are still able to run the latest Android release, 2.2 Froyo.The Ideos will be available with a significantly smaller price tag of $379. It even managed to get an impressive review from Engadget.com, who said: We were pretty impressed; clearly, you're not going to mistake it for a Droid X [sold in NZ as the Motorola Milestone] but Huawei has definitely put some effort into engineering this thing so that they were able to make it cheaply without making it feel like it would come apart in your hands."However, just this week Vodafone announced that will also be selling an even lower-price smartphone called the Vodafone 845 which is priced at $199. The dealer launch on Saturday saw the price lowered from $399 to $199. It seems they were waiting for 2degrees to launch only to have a smartly timed counter-offer. Unlike the Ideos however it runs Android 2.1, which is actually quite good as it is.Of course, like everything - you pay for the features, so you can't expect a $200 handset to compare to something like a $1000 one. Regardless, it seems that the fight between the 845 and the Ideos is quite close, featuring the same sized touch screen of 2.8".What is definite is that smartphones are getting ready to take over the mobile phone market in New Zealand. Are you ready to be 'smartphoned'?[Image credit: Wired]