Smart-phones are cool. Smart-phones change the way you interact with the web and online services, completely. Social services like Twitter and Facebook and FourSquare, are simply elevated to a whole new level, when you have a smart-phone in your hand. Add a great camera and GPS into the mix, and the smart-phone, for many, becomes almost all the personal computer you’ll ever need. But, there’s a downside. At least here in South Africa, smart-phones a̶r̶e̶ have been EXPENSIVE. But. Vodacom yesterday stepped up, and announced that they’ll be selling the lowest priced Android smartphone in South Africa.

How “lowest priced”? R1399 retail. Killer.

The phone is the Vodafone 845, which is a branded version of the Huawei “Joy” handset. It has very acceptable specs for an entry-level smart-phone. The 845 features Android 2.1/Eclair and supports GPRS/EDGE as well as 3G/HSDPA, and has Bluetooth 2.1, WiFi b/g, a digital compass and an accelerometer. The 2.8″, 262k colour, touch display supports the unusual QVGA resolution (320×240), and the camera is a 3.2 megapixel device.

vodafone-845-hand

Mark Taylor, of Vodacom SA, says: “Yet again we’ve been able to leverage the power of Vodafone to bring something unimaginable just a few years ago. This kind of functionality and design has never been available before at anything near this price. Android is a stunning platform which has become a favourite amongst developers worldwide and means that owners can never get bored with their VF845.”