The Huawei IDEOS is now available for purchase from Australia Post stores today, Crazy John’s retailers next week and soon from their website, which is great news for all you bargain hunters out there. The IDEOS, which will set you back a mere $159, features Android 2.2, WiFi Tethering, 2.8″ QVGA (*Sigh*) Capacitive Display all powered by an old-school 528MHz CPU. For the price we’re sure it’ll be a great phone, and to see if that is indeed true, Crazy John’s have sent Chris an IDEOS to review for you guys, so you can check out that review possibly the start of next week.
Source: Crazy John's Twitter.
Took the phone off charge today at 7am.
I have e-mail checked every hour, Wi-Fi off when not using it. GPS off and Bluetooth off.
Did about 8 hours of music listening. Made 15 minutes of phone calls. About 30 minutes of WiFi tethering. fiddled with the phone UI a bit but not a lot.
When I got home at 5:30pm the battery was at 28%.
I’m very happy with that.
I’m guessing the Wifi radio will chew a bit of battery power.
Got mine today from Dick Smith. They charged me $229 for mine at the Hornsby store (NW Sydney) not sure why the price was different to Coder above. Package was exactly as described by Coder. Absolutely loving it so far. UI and Touch control are both very slick and responsive. I popped in my existing Virgin Mobile sim and 8Gb SD card, punched in the Virgin APN settings and evertyhing worked perfectly. Screen does not feel cramped to me at all, but then again I’ve never had a large smart phone like an iPhone or Galaxy S, I am upgrading… Read more »
Oh and I didn’t buy from Crazy John’s coz they don’t have any in stock and have NFI when stock is actually arriving
In the last post about the IDEOS someone mentioned that it comes with a free 4gb card and an additional 300mb of data every recharge. Can someone confirm this? (additional data part)
just picked one of these up from Dick Smith’s for $219. Comes with 1GB SD card preloaded. In the box you get: the extra battery cover (yellow), some pretty cheap earbud headphones, USB to micro-USB cable, Australian-style-socket-to-USB power plug, the battery. Phone feels very light in the hand, fits hand really snugly, battery cover feels a little flimsy when taking it off and putting it on but quite solid once its attached. Android is surprisingly quick to respond to touches, seems to be a lot faster than, say, an HTC Wildfire.
Can anyone give any feedback on what the battery life is like for these? Hoping for a full days life with moderate to low usage.
The South Australian Crazy Johns stores haven’t received any stock yet.
Will check Aus Post on monday.
The HW for this phone is superior in specification to an iPhone 3G except for screen resolution & size. Its even made by Foxconn, Apples iPhone manufacturing partner.
really? I had no idea… Does the ideos have any form of hardware accelleration?
Well it’s running froyo, which is pretty nippy (in other words, yes. It does have hardware acceleration). At the moment I’m tossing up between one of these and ordering a Defy for $455 or so from Clove. I had a little go on one in DS the other day and it’s pretty zippy. I’d like to have another try and see if I can type reasonably on it.
This looks like a great device for those who just want a phone to update facebook, email, listen to music…
what a shit phone
I played with the U8230 before we put it on display and it actually wasn’t too bad from what I saw. It wasn’t my HTC Desire, but from turn on it’s a decent budget smartphone and shouldn’t put people off of Android. They feel a little light and plasticky, but aside from that there wasn’t really any issues.
thats nice
Yeah, CJ’s policy is Vodas. $75 in the first 6 months of buying the phone or $25 after that but you can only unlock it via the website with a credit card.
Cheers for the info re:unlocked phone, I think I’ll get one from Dick Smith.
well CJ’s points to voda’s unlock policy from their site. this is voda’s policy
http://vodafone.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2909
Dick Smith is also carrying this phone and it is currently on promotion. $229, I believe, unlocked for her pleasure.
http://dicksmith.com.au/product/E6826/huawei-u8150-android-trade-unlocked-mobile-phone
That the current link for the website, although it’s dead at the time of posting. It does give you the DSE catalogue number though. It’s listed on this page as items you also might like: http://dicksmith.com.au/product/E6825/huawei-u8230-blue-android-trade-unlocked-mobile-phone
Details as of my first post are correct regarding price and stock.
If that’s true, then it’s about the same price as buying a locked one from CJ’s and paying the 80 or so dollars to unlock it…
I’m pretty sure the unlock fee would be something like $40 at most……
I bet the $159 would be a locked phone. And the Mobicity price would be unlocked.
I am interested in getting this as an unlocked, outright purchase to use with my existing Virgin Mobile acount. The article doesn’t mention how they are being offered by Aust Post or Crazy John’s. Would they be offering them unlocked/without sim?
I checked Mobicity but their price is $299??!! What’s the go with that?
Its $199 at Dick Smiths unlocked. It was in their catalogue
I am very interested in this phone. I have been keen to get into an Android phone, but even the very top models are missing some of the features I want. So I’m interested in a good budget option to get my feet wet in the Android waters until the perfect top-end device comes along.
Having Froyo on it for WiFi tethering is a big draw card for me. I’m totally sick of the very dodgy Bluetooth PAN option that I currently use to connect my EeePC through my Nokia E71.
Well, ig still probably get the resistive optimus first,
btw, that reminds me!
This is my first, first post!