Take a trip with Agora the explorer. The Kogan Agora is a new Android phone that costs just £119, with two SIM card slots to save you money when travelling.
The Agora has a large 5-inch touchscreen, continuing the trend for large screens. The resolution is a blocky 480x800 pixels though, giving it 186 pixels per inch of detail -- by way of comparison, the similarly priced Orange San Francisco 2 offers 267ppi.
Underneath the screen is a 1GHz Cortex-A9 dual-core processor with a stingy 512MB of RAM. It's running the ageing Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich with access to apps from Google Play. The phone sports a 5-megapixel camera and a second camera for video chats, with 4GB of memory and a microSD card slot for storage.
The dual-SIM slot makes the Agora handy if you have wandering feet: travellers can keep their home SIM card in the phone so friends and family can get hold of you, but you can pop in a cheap local SIM too so you're not paying exorbitant international rates when you just want to call a cab, or go online to check your email or look at Google Maps. And while you're at home, you can have work and personal SIMs in the phone at the same time to save carrying round two phones.
It's about time the Agora arrived: Australian company Kogan, which also makes affordable TVs, has been talking about the Agora for four years.
You can only buy the Agora directly from Kogan. That's a risky strategy -- it didn't work even for Google, which tried and failed to get the original Nexus One off the ground selling directly, and has had terrible supply problems with its high-end Nexus 4. But we salute Kogan's different approach and wallet-friendly pricing.
Of course, whether the phone measures up to budget heroes like the Huawei G300 remains to be seen, so look out for our review still to come to see if it's worth parting with your hundred quid.
What do you think of the Kogan Agora? Are cheap Android phones a bargain or a false economy? Tell me your thoughts in the comments or on our Facebook page, and keep it CNET for the coolest gadgets and most powerful kit unleashed at CES.
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Comments 8
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anonymous 10 January, 2013 09:52
how does the dual sim work? can only 1 be active at a time?
anonymous 10 January, 2013 10:24
This is a great phone for the price. Stock android too is that?
Rich Trenholm 10 January, 2013 10:59
There are two varieties of dual-SIM phone: standby dual-SIM phone lets you use one SIM at a time and you have to manually switch between them; while active dual-SIM phones have both SIMs working at the same time, so you can make and receive calls from either at any time.
anonymous 10 January, 2013 13:41
512MB of RAM????????too small&limited
m1ke 11 January, 2013 17:19
This looks to be excellent value for money. I'm tempted to order one rather than wait for ever to get a Nexus 4. The only thing is, I'm not sure about these large phones and would have preferred a 4 inch to this 5 inch one.
anonymous 14 January, 2013 10:40
For the price its amazing
http://versusio.com/en/kogan-agora-vs-apple-iphone-4-8gb
has a lot of benefits over the iPhone 4 for instance and having two sims is great if u have a contract and a pay as you go, or if u live abroad its great to stay connected on your old number and get a new sim to make cheap calls where you are! The downsides are the import duties aren't paid so these will be charged on arrival and as they're produced for shipment worldwide you may need a plug converter or to wire it yourself!! still, its a quarter of the price of other smartphones :D just a little extra edffort!!!
anonymous 2 February, 2013 21:09
Having purchased 2 Kogan laptops and an Android 10" tablet, I've been impressed with them overall. They use cheap Chinese OEM items, but ensure specs are appropriate for the UK and quality control is good. But be aware that the software is not custom. The tablet came with Mandarin (or similar) as the default language; I had to use my initiative to guess what the menu options said to change it to English. The other issue is obtaining spare parts and accessories is somewhat difficult, given they are not "mainstream" items, and Kogan do not sell any themselves. Overall, if you know what you're doing, they can be excellent purchases, but not for the unprepared.
anonymous 21 May, 2013 09:52
I have one an d am impressed (for the price).
Yes, it's a bit short of memory and I do force close things to keep it going...the Facebook app in particular is a no-no if you want the phone to be responsive, and games like templerun need all the help they can get.
But the Dual SIM (both active!) is an absolute winner for me - you can set voice/text/data to a EITHER SIM, to off, or to "Ask" - and it works. I have my personal GiffGaff and a work Vodafone running happily side by side and select the SIM to use when making calls and texts, and use the GG for data. Wifi is a bit weak, and occassionally ignores an AP completely - I know that the AP in the local Cafe works, and I used to use it, but now the phone will NOT connect (but only affects that AP).
And the kids LOVE it - although an evening spent playing Cut The Rope does eat the battery! I get two days of casual phone/text/browsing, a bit more it I turn off WiFi when not using, and only a day if the kids get the phone for a few hours in the evening...