The 10 Most Massively Popular Smartphones You’ve Never Heard Of
Good old America, land of the hot new smartphone. HTC Ones, iPhones, Samsung Galaxies — these devices are relatively common here and, thanks to the subsidized structure of our wireless plans, mostly within financial reach for large segments of the population. But in the rest of the world, only the elite can afford the ridiculously high price tags these devices command. Look beyond the 1 percent and you’ll see a different picture — a panoply of smartphones being churned out by gigantic corporations you’ve never heard of, and often incorporating features you’ve never dreamed of. These are the smartphones of the world. Meet them now for the first time.
1. KT Tech’s KM-E100 is a middle-of-the-road Android smartphone that happens to come with a massively popular (in South Korea) messaging app called KakaoTalk built in. A genius feature allows owners to split the screen in half and simultaneously chat on both Facebook and KakaoTalk at the same time.
2. China’s 9080W runs Android Jelly Bean and has dual SIM slots, which allows the phone to be used with two carriers at once.
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3. The QMobile Noir Quarto Z4 from Pakistan sports a 5-inch display, a quad-core processor, and 2 GB RAM, all loaded up with Android Jelly Bean. The price? Just under $350 unlocked.
4. The $300 XOLO LT900 was India’s first LTE-enabled smartphone. It comes with a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, a 4.3-inch display, and, thanks to XOLO’s partnerships with Indian carriers, offers the ability to stream movies and TV shows directly to the device over the wireless data connection.
5. The YotaPhone is a beautiful piece of Russian tech that has an e-ink display on its back for notifications like texts and weather.
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6. Brazilian company IGB Eletrônica SA trademarked the “iPhone” name back in 2000. That allows it to sell the iPhone Neo One. Instead of chamfered aluminum, a fingerprint sensor, and iOS, you get a low-end plastic device that runs Android 2.3. But hey, it’s also just $250.
7. The Titanium S5 from Indian smartphone maker Karbonn isn’t made of titanium, sadly. But at least that keeps the price under $200 for a 5-inch Android phone powered by a 1.2 GHz quad-core processor and with an 8-megapixel camera.
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8. Pick up a Nokia in Sub-Saharan Africa, and it’s bound to look a lot like the Asha 303. This BlackBerry-style handset combines both a 2.6-inch touchscreen and a traditional QWERTY keyboard.
9. The Oppo N1 looks like someone took an HTC One and unceremoniously clipped a webcam on top.
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10. This rugged beast from Japanese maker NEC is designed to be the Hulk of phones. The Android handset is built to military specifications, so it’s dustproof, waterproof, and shockproof, and capable of withstanding extreme temperatures and UV exposure.
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