BSNL unveils 'smartphone' for common man

State-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) Friday unveiled a low-cost version of its smartphone, with e-governance applications for common man.

State-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) Friday unveiled a low-cost version of its smartphone, with e-governance applications for common man.

Branded as 'Bharat phone', the mobile device has a three-inch large screen display with provision for dual SIM card and has been priced at ₹ 1,099 to make it affordable to common man.

'The low-cost mobile device will alter the Indian feature phone industry as it has been designed especially for e-governance applications and optimised for internet access to empower common man,' BSNL chairman R.K. Upadhyay said on the occasion.

Visiting Mauritius President Rajkeshwar Purryag, who is city since Wednesday, was present on the occasion with Karnataka Governor H.R. Bhardwaj and state Higher Education Minister R.V. Deshpande.

Designed and developed by Pantel Technologies Ltd, a pioneer in the low-cost tablet PC market, the voicephone's large screen and proprietary Java operating system are suited for other user applications such as mobile banking, tele-healthcare delivery and streaming data delivery.

'As the phone is pre-bundled with attractive voice plan, the mobile handset offers common man the power of internet access at an affordable price and will benefit a wide section of society,' Upadhyay said.

According to Pantel managing director Vijender Singh, the phone has facility to browse, e-mail, to check Facebook and download music, video and Java games.

'Besides facility for dual SIM card, the phone is equipped with 1.3 mega pixel rear camera, Bluetooth for quick sharing of files, a lithium-ion battery with eight-hour charge and 15 days standby, 64MB random access memeory (RAM) and 64MB of internal storage, SMS scheduler, multimedia gaming and mobile tracker,' Singh said.