Boom. It’s only been two years since they opened shop in the Philippines but Starmobile is fast approaching 1 million users. Last week, the Philippine-owned smartphone company launched their Christmas lineup of 12 more Android devices: 3 smartphones, 5 Diamond series phablets and 4 tablets to complete their 2013 ‘Engage’ line.
I’ve written about Starmobile a number of times and to be quite honest this company’s manufacturing choices makes for great dinner conversation between fellow geeks. For those not in the know, let me allude to an old post I made when the Diamond series first came out in early 2013:
It is a relief that many local manufacturers have raised the bar in terms of quality while maintaining competitive price points. Starmobile is the poster child of such a phenomenon as the phones are designed locally (they are a local startup) but manufactured in China. Outsourcing OEM’s is a normal thing for these more affordable brands but Michael and Katrina have been harping the fact that what separates them from the rest is their QA testing and “small things†such as being able to cram more characters into one SMS vs other brands (and that’s a big deal if you’re on prepaid) that divide text messages into several messages.
Essentially, unlike many brands that simply do a “shopping cart†of looking through phones in a conveyor belt in China and then branding them, Starmobile designs the phones they want to spec such as the finish (type of material such as glass, plastic or metal) and other modifications and then have the devices built. This gives them better control over quality and flexibility with the phones that they intend to release in response to market trends.
In short, Starmobile has the advantage in releasing phones that cater to the local market because they can customize the builds and outsource the manufacturing. The direct competitors only pick out phones from a conveyor belt and slap some branding on.
If we’re to skim through the phones, there are some notable mentions in the flagship models. The D1 of the Diamond line is their dual SIM 5″ phablet with 3000mAh of battery life which is roughly equivalent to two iPhone batteries. The Navi is essentially the “Waze” phone that makes use of Glonass Russian satellites (nI kid you not!) to track GPS positioning.
For those of you who aren’t fond of storing data on the cloud (like iCloud or Google), Starmobile has launched their Sync app, which is by no surprise called Starmobile Sync. It’s essentially a contacts + calendar transfer app that’s meant for less tech savvy people who want to switch from their current feature phone to a Starmobile-branded device. This is a brilliant move to add convenience to the rather huge impediment of transferring contacts from a non-Android device and upgrading to a smartphone. This is sideloaded into every Starmobile phone.
I’ve embedded their entire line of phones and tablets onto this Scribd document so you can have a more detailed look into the new holiday collection:
