Unboxing the SMART NetPhone

Unboxing the SMART NetPhone

Meet the Smart NetPhone!

We Finally Get to Unbox the SMART NetPhone!

We announced the pricing and details of the Smart NetPhone herecovered the launch at the Jump Experience Center, and now we finally get to play with the actual phone! We did a quick unboxing of the Smart Netphone earlier this afternoon and I just want to share our initial impressions as well as several photos. We’ll do a full review after a few days of using it extensively.

What’s inside the box?

Unboxing it was pretty straightforward. It comes in a dark gray and black box with the NetPhone displayed prominently at the side. To open just pop up the carton below, slide the plastic tray out, and everything’s there! You’ll find the Smart NetPhone, a USB outlet charger with a micro-USB to USB cable, some manuals, and generic headphones.

Back of the Smart NetPhone
Side view

Hardware

If there’s one thing that totally surprised me is how nice the Smart NetPhone is in the looks department. It’s very light at 120 grams and it’s easy to hold as well. It measures 114mm x 56mm x 12.2mm. The Netphone has a great capacitive 3.5? touchscreen with 800×480 pixels display. The resolution doesn’t feel as cheap as other budget Android phones in the market. In terms of the body, the NetPhone is a mix of sleek black and silver gray. There are metal buttons and accents at the side giving it a modern techie look.

In short, the phone doesn’t look like your usual below Php10,000 Android phone. It looks cool.

How about the Software?

The Smart NetPhone is powered by Android 2.2 Froyo and it has SmartNet built on top of it. Froyo runs okay but there are times that the apps will bog down and become sluggish. This is probably because the processor is just  600GHz. If you’re used to the iPhone 4 or higher end smartphones then you’ll definitely won’t be too happy since this isn’t that snappy.

Android Froyo 2.2 with SmartNet

This is my first encounter with Android. I’ve always been on the Apple side of the fence and every now and then I’d be going over to the BlackBerry side. I was pleasantly surprised with the number of useable apps on the Android Market (*cough RIM cough please-take-a-hint*).

Android Market

Anyway, expect the full review which will cover the main feature of the NetPhone — the SmartNet, around Monday or Tuesday. As a teaser, here’s what the homepage looks like with SmartNet built on top.

So what do we think so far?

For a phone that you get for free at Plan 800 and you can get without any contract for less than Php10,000, theSmart Netphone is a great mid-range touchscreen smartphone that Filipinos can enjoy. SmartNet will play a crucial role in getting more Pinoys to do browsing and social networking while on-the-go as well. If you own a higher end smartphone already, the Netphone is turning out to be a good budget back-up. If you don’t have budget yet for the Samsung Galaxy S2, iPhone 4, or HTC Desire, then the Smart Netphone is a respectable, decent, and great stepping stone. :)

Full review soon!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Latest News

Latest Reviews

Best Phones in the Philippines

Best Guides

Recent Posts