TechCrunch » zzzPhone

zzzPhone goes Android for real this time

John Biggs — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 13:31:55 +0000

zzzPhone, makers of the zzzPhone, have announced that their latest version now supports Android, making it what appears to the second Android phone in existence. The company has two of them in China right now and is taking orders for their $119 base model. You can add Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, pico-projectors, television tuners, and a Hell’s Angel and his lady.

The website is nigh on unusable right now but I ordered a zzzPhone with Android and it should arrive in 10 business days. As I’ve said before, this business model is solid: task some factory in China to build custom phones for fickle consumers. Sadly, I think zzzPhone’s presentation is definitely keeping this model from taking off and here’s hoping the company can survive long enough to make some of the $5.75 back it spent on website design.

I want zzzPhone to succeed. You so rarely see little guys trying to make it in this space and zzzPhone is quite clearly a little guy. But it can be done. After all, look at Cookie Puss. Tom Carvel did his own commercials and we all know how well that turned out. You can still buy Fudgie the Whale today.

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zzzPhone gets Aaandroid!

John Biggs — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:29:59 +0000

If you’ll recall, zzzPhone is offering “customized cellphones” straight from China with touchscreens and dual facing cameras. In short, these are bargain basement phones with some capacity for upgrade – the base model has been circulating in Asia and Africa for a few years now – and it was running some sort of mad Linux hybrid when we last left off.

Now, however, that the world is looking at Android the company is promising Android phones by November along with a few odd additions like a $225,000 gold model studded with beautiful diamonds. The more I look at the website, the more dubious I am. As Sascha at Gearlog points out:

I’ve spoken to both their China-based management team and to zzzPhone’s US representative Jesse Nowlin, and I don’t think they’re scam artists. But I do think they’re in over their heads. First, they took a bunch of orders on phones that didn’t work in the US, so they couldn’t deliver them. Then they started delivering phones, but some of the purchasers seem underwhelmed with what they got.

The expectation is that Android will start hitting most manufacturers – Chinese and otherwise – next month and that almost every low-end smartphone coming out of southern China will have an Android variant – after all, it’s free. Watch yourself with these guys – although I can attest to their earnest belief in the product, I’m not sure they can deliver.

UPDATE – I totally missed this TV commercial. Much clearer now.

The zzzPhone is real, on its way soon

Peter Ha — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 22:57:31 +0000

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I just got back from checking out the zzzPhone and I can say without a doubt that it’s real. It’s definitely not a scam, but the first generation ran into some problems with the manufacturer and they don’t work stateside. I’m told the newest generation is on its way very soon. Maybe within a month. The OS is still uncertain and could be Symbian or Windows CE. Android is also in the works as well as Skype for the upcoming model. An interesting tid bit on the zzzPhone is that there are eight different motherboards to accommodate the customization that’s making the zzzPhone so enticing. Another really cool feature, at least, on the old model is the inclusion of a 20-minute internal backup battery. That’s right, it works without the removable battery for up to 20-minutes. We should be getting a demo unit in the coming weeks of the US-compatible version. Stay tuned.

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Is this the zzzPhone?

John Biggs — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 21:14:57 +0000

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I just got out of a meeting with EcoCarrier.com, of whom I’ll post in the next few days. One thing that struck me immediately, however, is that these guys had a working 3-SIM cellphone with touchscreen and keypad called the Eco123 which looks surprisingly like a rebadged zzzPhone. While I wish neither of these companies any ill-will, it’s nice to see the hardware and I can report that the OS isn’t Windows Mobile or Symbian and is, in fact, a proprietary amalgam Java and whatever touchscreen magic the client wants to implement. Think of this as the first “white box” phone and leave it at that, friends, and if zzzPhone promises a cool phone for not much money, believe them. The folks at EcoCarrier told me these things cost $108 each in bulk.

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zzzPhone real but not running WinMo

John Biggs — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:18:15 +0000

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I did a piece for the NYT on the zzzPhone, an a la carte manufacturer that lets you pick and choose your functionality online and then makes your cellphone to order. I talked to the folks for the story and discovered that the phone doesn’t run Win Mo or Windows CE but a “windows-compatible” operating system that some are calling Symbian but which I suspect is a Linux-based OS with Java compatibility. They also sent some images of the final hardware.

Would I send my money to these guys? Probably not. Their story is compelling but the product looks a little half-baked right now — the hardware isn’t even finalized. Maybe in a year, once they iron out the kinks, but by then Dell or someone will be offering the same thing. Hopefully they’ve got a patent.
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From China, Cellphone à la Carte [NYT]

Build-to-order zzzPhone is, well, something

Matt Hickey — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:19:34 +0000

[photopress:btophone.jpg,full,right]Now this is an interesting concept we can’t believe we haven’t seen before. Well, we have a little bit, but not like this. USA’s zzzPhone lets you customize your next mobile phone like you might customize a computer: you choose a base model, then add the screen, camera, and other features as you see fit.

The dual-SIM, GSM handsets can accomidate cameras up to 7-Megapixels, 4GB of internal memory, TV tuners, Skype, and other hotness that you won’t find on most phones. They can run Windows Mobile or “equivalent” operating systems, whatever that means.

They start at $150, and are available for configuration now.

zzzPhone [Product page, via Computer World]