Hold on, you’re telling me this Curved AMOLED phone costs less than PHP 10K??? (when converted)
Itel (not to be confused with Intel) has been on a roll lately. Their last phone, the S23 Plus, has been a huge hit in the budget phone market to the point it is disruptive. What other company offers 8GB RAM and 128GB at a sub PHP 5K price point? No one else except Itel.
Now the company is shooting its second disruptive phone. It is the enhanced version of the S23 called the S23 Plus. By “Plus” they REALLY MEAN PLUS! It replaces the old IPS LCD screen with a CURVED AMOLED one, something you’re not supposed to see on a budget phone. It also has a clean design and a camera island reminiscent of the iPhone 15 Pro. Or maybe even Transsion’s Tecno Spark 10 Pro.
This is a 6.78″ display with FullHD+ resolution. It only has 60Hz refresh rate but with the price tag Itel is going for, that’s something to compensate so that its price doesn’t go any higher.
The company also did not cheap out on the cameras. These components are often the most expensive so you would think they would just use the typical ones. Wrong. Here, a 50MP Primary Camera is present alongside a 32MP Selfie! This is a budget phone isn’t it? The other sensor is a 2MP depth camera.
It uses a UNISOC T616 chipset. The company still has to make a profit somehow. They could do that by sacrificing some important components so as long as they perform well within the expected price range. This is an octa-core chipset with a performance somewhere close to the Helio G99 but with a weaker clock speed. It comes with 8GB RAM and 256GB ROM. Both of these are expandable. RAM virtually, up to 16GB. The ROM via a MicroSD Card.
The phone has a 5000mAh battery with 18W USB-C fast charging.
In addition to its curved OLED screen, it uses an optical fingerprint scanner. Something of which is only seen in sub-15K midrangers or more. It also has 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 6/6e, Dual-band Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. A unique feature of the phone is its AI Assistant “Aivana” with GPT features which allows it to behave like an AI Chatbot in lieu of ChatGPT. When active, a Dynamic Island-like bar appears, making Itel one of many companies to implement this method (which HONOR did first, by the way).
It comes in Elemental Blue or Lake Cyan. The phone is expected to be priced below USD 200 or about PHP 10K when converted. It came out in Ethiopia first but its price is yet to be announced.
Source: YugaTech, Jumia Nigeria