General Mobile Cosmos phone joins Android phones army

Android is an open platform and that makes it easier for new manufacturers to produce an Android-powered handset. Take General Mobile for instance and their Cosmos phone. They even made their own Android market, dubbed Storeoid.

In fact, General Mobile will be releasing four new Android phones at the upcoming MWC 2010 in February, the General Mobile Cosmos is just a sample of things to come. Here are the basic specs:

General Mobile Cosmos at a glance

• General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/1900/2100 MHz HSDPA
• Form factor: touchscreen bar
• Dimensions: 112 x 56.5 x 14.9 mm, 150g
• Display: 3.2" 256K color capacitive TFT LCD touchscreen of HVGA resolution (320 x 480 pixels)
• OS: Android 2.0
• Memory: 256 MB internal memory, 128 MB RAM, microSD card slot (up to 16GB)
• CPU: Marvell PXA935 624MHz processor
• Camera: 5 megapixel autofocus camera
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, standard miniUSB port, GPS receiver
• Misc: Accelerometer for screen auto rotate, FM radio, digital compass
• Battery: 1500mAh Li-Ion battery

It actually sounds pretty good on paper but the looks might be a bit more difficult to swallow. Here are the photos of the General Mobile Cosmos that we have. The little voice in our heads that says "Chinese knockoff" is quite insistent. The Cosmos is an original phone of course, but we just couldn't shake the feeling.

General Mobile Cosmos Photo

As for the Storeoid (not Steroid) alternative app store we have some screenshots. Unfortunately, we don't know if the Storeoid app store is connected to the Android Marketplace and if the General Mobile Cosmos can access the applications uploaded to the Market. If it can't and each app in Storeoid has to be uploaded separately, then we have the feeling that Storeoid will be sparsely populated, which will be a major downfall.

The Storeoid app store

More info on the General Mobile Cosmos and it's three other Android-powered compatriots will be available at the MWC 2010. A previous Android phone by General Mobile (a dual SIM no less) is on sale through Amazon in the USA and Turkey, so we expect the situation with the Cosmos to be largely the same.