For long Indian mobile phone market has been dormant. Not in terms of sales but in terms of innovation that can be done with the mobile devices in India. It took the entry of Indian mobile companies like Micromax and Spice Mobile to kick start a revolution. India is now turning out to be a test bed for mobile phone types. Global majors like Apple, RIM, Samsung and Motorola still continue to be elusive with their phone launches. They continue to launch their phones in India only when they are done with the rest of the world. Yet India got two phones which are first of its kind. A 3D phone from Spice Mobile and World’s lightest smart phone which weighs 55 grams from Micromax.

If these phone launches are an indication of things to come then there will more of these kind. You cannot ignore India anymore. India which signifies a country within a country within a country has the appetite for all kinds of phones. The expensive ones and the cheap ones. After all, it is home to the most expensive home on earth and the most inexpensive shanty on earth, which are separated by only a few miles.

Here are India’s 10 amazing phones  :

Sturdy phone – Nokia 1100 : Mobile is a style statement to some and it is an investment to some. Nokia 1100 is for people who think mobile phone as an investment. 1100 is the sturdiest phone ever which withers Indian weather. The keypad is designed in such a way that dust cannot get in and cannot obstruct the free movement of the keys and thus increasing the longevity. Indian weather is not exactly conducive to touch screen phones as most of India is a dust bowl.

3D phone – Spice View D : World’s first 3D phone from Spice Mobiles. It didn’t get much attention it deserved from the tech world as India continues to get step-motherly treatment from the global phone manufacturers and the tech blogs. Spice should be commended for launching a first of a kind phone, first in India. Read more about View D here.

TV and AC remote  – Micromax X235 : A bar style phone which has most of the goodies found in a mobile phone. Micromax X235’s most important USP is its remote which can operate a TV, DVD or AC. Just for the people who are sick and tired of using multiple remotes and in addition dealing with a phone. That could be quite a handful and X235 comes in handy.

Torch  Phone : A mobile phone with a torch. When someone came up  with this idea, then that idea would have been immediately quashed. It doesn’t sound like brilliant idea. This is where vision comes in. Whoever came up with the idea, implemented it and produced an actual phone out of it should be commended. Once the first phone with torch came in, more than 123 phones were launched with this nifty little feature and 111 phones are launched in the price range of Rs. 1K- Rs. 5K. A great mobile phone for areas which suffer with erratic power supply. 

Ultra-violet torch phone – Spice M4580 : Who would have thought? Indian currency is not yet six sigma ready. 4 in a million currency notes are fakes. Might not look much to you but imagine withdrawing 5000 rupees and getting four thousand rupee notes which are fake. That wouldn’t be pretty would it? Spice M4580, an ultra-violet torch phone is designed to ferret out the fake notes. Cannot be used for the ATM situation described above but most useful for traders who deal with currency notes from customers and suppliers.

Gaming phone – Micromax Gamolution G4 : Microsoft must be beaming about its new Kinect gaming device but Micromax had launched a simple device without all the hoopla. All with an inexpensive mobile phone which can turn any screen into a gaming device using motion sensors. Nice.

Alpha Keypad – Lava B5: Give your phone to any kid who can read alphabets and the first question the kid would ask is – Why are the keys jumbled up? Well there is research about the QWERTY keyboard and how it makes typing easier on the keyboard. But would the same layout be necessarily replicated on to a phone? A good question for the Blackberry maker Research in Motion. Alpha keypad phone arranges the keys on the mobile phone in the order in which you and I have learnt them. Successful or not, this phone sure had gone far from conventional thinking.

Hybrid powered phone  – Olive FvrOn: If Nokia, Airtel or Samsung have to succeed then they have to sell it to India’ rural population. Its existing crop of phones don’t have anything to offer that audience. Olive which is launching varied products across categories has launched a hybrid-powered phone which can run on a battery and a AAA battery.  By now it is almost redundant to mention who would use this phone.

72 day battery standby – Zen Mobile M25: A 72 day battery standby time, probably the longest running battery for a mobile phone. This can be useful as a secondary phone if you are using a power sucking smartphone. M25 is a dual-SIM phone which has video playing capability, 1.3 megapixel camera, FM Radio and loud speaker. Read more here’.

Micromax Modu – World’s lightest smartphone : World’s lightest smartphone weighing only 55 gms is launched in India. The modu T is a thin phone, it has a 2.2 inch touch screen and a memory card with 2GB memory capacity which can be extended up to 32GB. Nothing more to say. Actually there is. Read more here.

 

Micromax, Spice, Olive and Zen ruled this list and quite rightly so. They have been at the forefront of launching innovative products to Indian market.

As you can see the phones are not revolutionary. They do not sport a fast processor or a multi-touch screen. All they are trying to do is solve one critical problem -  a phone plus something very useful. That is what any new player entering Indian mobile handset market should be targeting. And none of these are super expensive phones. All these cost less than Rs. 10K and some cost less than Rs. 5K.

PS : Other phones like the dual memory card phones, dual or triple sim phones are worth mentioning.

PPS : These phones or phone types could be available in other markets too. The title is to get your attention to these amazing phones. Since you came this far, that objective is met. Hope you enjoyed reading it. 

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