Not too long ago, the sub-£100 smartphone was a pipe dream. Processors, touchscreens, software – it all cost too much. With a big new price drop on the Samsung Galaxy Europa today though, network Three has just put the dumbphone on notice. Now, you can buy an Android phone for under £50.
Back in 2009, T-Mobile teamed up with Huawei to bring us the T-Mobile Pulse, the first attempt at a low price smartphone designed for pay as you go services. That was soon followed by a spate of tiny Android phones with accompanying pricetags (The Pulse Mini, the Vodafone 845), culminating recently in the Vodafone Smart, which rings up just £70 on the till.
Three’s now gone and topped that by reducing the Pay As You Go price of the Samsung Galaxy Europa phone to £49.99 (down from £89.99), which as far as we know, makes it the cheapest Android phone yet, and the most affordable smartphone of all time.
Now to be fair, the Samsung Galaxy Europa isn’t a thrilling phone: it runs Android 2.1 (two versions out of date) on a mediocre 600MHz processor. Last year, we only gave it three stars out of five.
But let’s be clear: this is Android Market access for the price of a new video game, and a smartphone is as smart as the software you run on it. With a few downloads, you can be playing Angry Birds, or using it as a free satnav via Google Maps. To put things in perspective, the 2009 iPhone 3GS still costs £428 unlocked on the online Apple Store.
The newly priced Samsung Galaxy Europa is available on Three today.
