SAPO a5 reinforces bet on Android with mobile at 150 €

(2nd Update) As TeK had announced yesterday, SAPO today announced its first smartphone of its own brand, SAPO a5, a project that was developed over the last year and which had the partnership of TMN and Caixa Mágica , and the manufacture of ZTE. The phone will only go on sale next week, lowering the price bar to 150 euros.

It was up to Celso Martinho, SAPO’s Technical Director, to present this new SAPO project, at Codebits2010, the event that is taking place at Pavilhão Atlântico, stressing that this is “an important step for SAPO that in recent years has reinvented the your project, becoming increasingly multiplatform. Everything we do is always thinking about multiple platforms and different screens ”.

More than simply defining specifications, SAPO a5 went through a more complex customizing process, which involved creating an image of the Android 2.1 operating system, enriched with the applications that SAPO has been developing, including the SAPO Banking , SAPO Mobile, SAPO Futebol and SAPO Cinema, as well as the longtime partner for GPS, NDrive.

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The initial wizard has been improved to make it easier to set up SAPO and Pond accounts, to connect to social networks and share content. Instead of the configuration for Google accounts that defines the first steps of using Android phones, users will have to configure their access to SAPO, either by mail, messenger or other services such as Photos and Videos.

Through this integration, contacts recorded in Pond are now imported into the mobile phone, with all the information and photos from social networks.

SAPO also developed two live wallpapers Energia SAPO and Energia TMn, which monitor the evolution of the battery.

frog a5Celso Martinho guaranteed that this is “a good phone”, with good materials, manufactured by ZTE and with high quality requirements. The operating system is Android 2.1, 512 MB of RAM, 600 MHz ARM processor, a capacitive multi-touch screen with a resolution of 800X480 pixels. The camera has a 5 Mpixels sensor and zoom.

The price of 149.9 euros is valid for sales in the online store, rising to 169.9 euros on traditional circuits.

The price is already very desirable for a phone with these features, although TMN has an Android device for sale with a lower price, the SoftStone, which costs 129.9 euros.

As you would expect, the telephone is accompanied by Internet access tariff plans, with TMN guaranteeing a 50% discount on Internet monthly fees for the first 12 months.

SAPO and TMN did not disclose sales targets, but Pedro Pinheiro, from TMn, said on the sidelines of the conference that the company has “a few thousand” of terminals to sell.

Fatima Hunter

Editor’s Note: The news has been updated with more information. We also corrected a typo in the indication of the RAM memory.2nd update – Technical information about the phone and an image were added.