It’s a well known fact that there are some very cool phones available in Asia, especially in Japan and Korea… But there are also some great devices available in China and Thailand. Unfortunately most Japanese and Korean phones don’t use GSM – but Chinese and Thai devices do, and some are even tri-band, making them akin to a best kept secret – rare here, feature packed, yet reasonably priced and compatible with North American carriers!
The i-mobile 902 is a tri-band GSM phone manufactured by Taiwanese giant Asus for the Thai market. At first glance this device is very similar to the Sony Ericsson K750i, but that’s where the similarities end – instead of the K750i’s pretty decent 2 megapixel CMOS camera with auto-focus, macro and LED flash, the 902 features a very good 5 megapixel CCD camera (supplied by Sony) with auto-focus, macro and xenon flash. Furthermore, it’s capable of recording video at 30 fps with a resolution of 640×480 pixels (DVD quality).
While being only tri-band and missing EDGE, this device offers a decent set of modern features, including a QVGA display, audio/video player, Bluetooth, and a microSD card slot – but by most accounts, the camera on this phone may just be the best currently available on a GSM device, especially when it comes to low-light performance! Since I really like camera phones, I’ve purchased an i-mobile 902 while I’m waiting for the Nokia N95 to be released, and I’ll be putting it to the test…
Posted by tnkgrl 
