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One of the benefits of being in Asia is that I am close to a lot of technology that lands here before it gets to the West, sometimes these products are not even available in the West due to 'intellectual property disputes' shall we say. So when the local IT centre had a sale on the other week I popped in and checked out the phone for us$63, looking at the box there were a lot of functions (TV, Radio, MP3, Dual SIM card) AND they were giving a 2Gb memory upgrade to go with it. It didn't take long to get in line....
So how is my cheap-ass chinese phone going after a few weeks? Holy cow Batman! This thing has as many features as my previous us$650 top of the range Nokia. Look at this for a list of features, some that even top of the range Nokias don't have: 
- TV tuner - works pretty good, watch analog TV anywhere you can get reception
- TV Recording - save your TV programs to watch later
- Real Time Dual SIM - stick in 2 SIM cards, even different networks, and get 2 GSM connections, no switching required, individual ring tones and settings for each SIM card!
- Digital Cameras - 1.3 Megapixels - 2 cameras. One in the front, one in the back of the phone but the phot mechanism is slow, not good for moving targets at all
- Video Camera 640*480 resolution - some weird Mjpeg format that can see the frames in playback, but it worksreasonably well, esp considering this is nearly an entry level phone. Both cameras can be used
- Video Calls from the front mounted camera available
- Webcam, plug it in, choose hte option and it installs the drivers automatically (WinXP SP3) et voila - a fully functional webcam!
- Video Player - 3GP, MP4, AVI - this is a bit tricky, I still haven't found the exact setting to convert my videos to play on this phone
- GPRS Class 12 - the fastest GPRS internet (48kbs), unfortunately no EDGE capability (384kbs) - with some slightly technical but easy to follow diagrams to set up the modem so it is more stable than my Nokia connection software
- WAP 2.0 Internet Browser built in
- Up tp 8Gb Memory card, I just took the free 2Gb, and the phone has about 1/2 a Gb of memory on top
- Small and lightweight - 113 * 50 * 18 mm
- MP3 Player - claimed to be with Dolby Surround Sound
- FM Radio, and easy record functionality
- Built in Extendable Antenna for radio and TV, that retracts fully into the body
- Bluetooth 2.0
- USB port for connecting to computer. Can connect as a standard memory stick, no drivers required.
- Recharge via USB port from charger, laptop, or computer
- Voice recorder
- Ebook reader - go to project gutenburg and download as many free eBooks as you like, I use this all the time, whenever I am waiting with 5 minutes or more to spare I pull out the phone and start reading a book
- Calender and multiple alarms
All that for us$63! I tried buying a TV tuner for my laptop the other week, that alone cost $60, try buying a webcam, cheap calculator, cheap digital camera or cheap PDA. This phone pretty much has nearly all the functionality that I need, the photos and video I need better but this is a very nice phone for the price. Unfortunately I do not know the Chinese manufacturer of the phone or I could find out more about the operating system and ability to add applications. I have seen the phone offered in several different bodies and different model numbers for various companies, likely a central company manufactures "white label" phones to the smaller phone companies who brand them and resell them. The model I have is the G-net G521. Really it is amazing how quickly these things are developing and how cheaply.
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