With the Netphone 701 and the Samsung Galaxy Y Netphone Edition out in the market, it seems that next question is rather obvious. What’s next for Netphone and SmartNet? A couple of tech savvy Internet friends have actually been suggesting that SmartNet, the “wonder app” that makes Netphone possible should be available for download so that any Android phone can be turned into a Netphone.
The cat is out of the bag.
The bag is really big and we have several cats inside.
There’s a bag and this is the second cat.
In the absence of a catchy introduction, we present to you the second Netphone model. The first Netphone which gained global attention was a rebranded ZTE Blade, donned as the Netphone 701. For those of you who were really interested about the SmarNet platform but wanted a different phone model, SMART now has the Samsung Galaxy Y running on SmartNet. It is free on the following plans:
Data Lite Plan 500
All-in Plan 800
Prepaid Kit: PHP 5,990 (insane OMG!!!)
You can preorder starting now, from October 1 to October 14 2011.
RESERVE THE SAMSUNG GALAXY Y NETPHONE EDITION NOW.
The Samsung Galaxy Y is a good entry level phone running on Android 2.3. Announced during the middle of this year, the phone will be out by the end of this year. SMART was able to install their SmartNet platform on top of it. So, if you’re looking for a more up to date Android device from Samsung and SMART, this is definitely something to look forward to.
The launch of the second Netphone from Samsung reinforces the SmartNet ubiquity of being more than just one phone. Netphone is here to stay and this is only the beginning.
So the new TVC for SMART’s Netphone is out. Decent phone. Amazing SmartNet services for dirt cheap. But after seeing the TVC, now I know what the number 1 benefit of Netphone will be. The commercial is above. Below is what I think it’s really telling us.
Well here it is! The moment you’ve been waiting for — NETPHONE PRICING SCHEMES! The first Netphone will be available on both prepaid and postpaid plans. You can hop on to www.netphone.ph for all the details but to sum up everything:
This is the list of plans on postpaid. And here is the list of daily and monthly “bite sized” plans for data.
If you look closely, there is an obvious “sweet spot” in the pricing scheme under the “all-in” unlimited monthly data for PHP 999 a month as apart from unlimited IM and social stream usage (that’s SmartNet, Facebook and Twitter), you also get 3,500 SMS messages and 200 minutes of voice calls. Insane. I’d change my 8 year old plan if I could.
If you’ve all been curious as to what exactly the Netphone can do, there’s a guided tour on the Netphone site.
UPDATE: Actual Netphone pricing for both prepaid and postpaid plans over here.
Dropped by SMART this afternoon to meet up with Louie. On the latest list of things to study would be the highly anticipated 701, the first of the Netphone smartphones. Exciting! Back in February, I was able to play with a pre-alpha release. This is the real thing and it comes in a nice box reminiscent of how I loved unboxing G.I. Joe toys as a kid. As I still need to charge the phone and get some much needed sleep here’s a little unboxing for you after the jump.