Under its latest Android One programme, Google has started selling affordable yet feature-packed smartphones in association with local vendors. Google is primarily responsible for providing hardware reference boards and software support under the initiative. In order to provide the first-hand experience of the Android One phones to consumers, Google is scheduled to place Wi-Fi-equipped mobile demo trucks dubbed as ‘Showroom on Wheels’ at 600 locations across 20 cities. The company has also hired 30,000 people who will work as ambassadors and talk about the Android One smartphones. Sundar Pichai, the head of Google’s Android and Chrome units, has said that Android Devices will get direct software updates from Google and will get early access to Android updates just like Nexus devices. He added that the company is presently working in partnership with Acer, HTC, Panasonic and others to develop more devices under Android One. Google aims to launch the smartphone in Indonesia, Philippines and other South Asian countries by end-2014, with further launches in other countries in 2015. Spice Android One Dream UNO Mi-498 is among the three Android One smartphones and is available at a price of Rs. 6,299. It is equipped with a 4.5-inch IPS FWVGA (480x854p) display and sports a 1.3GHz MediaTek quad-core processor, Mali-400MP graphics and 1GB RAM. The smartphone offers 4GB of internal storage capacity that can be further extended with the help of a microSD card slot of up to 32GB capacity. It also features 10GB Spice Cloud cloud storage space along with 35GB Google Drive space. Additionally, the phone has a 5MP rear camera with LED flash, a 2MP front-facing camera and a 1700mAh battery.
