T-Mobile has demonstrated the first pay-as-you-go Android handset to go on sale in the UK.
The Pulse, which is manufactured by Huawei, was announced on Thursday. Huawei is best known in the UK for manufacturing mobile broadband dongles for operators such as T-Mobile, and the Pulse marks its entry into the British handset market.
"The T-Mobile Pulse represents another Android milestone from T-Mobile," said Nicola Shenton, who currently heads the operator's handset business in the UK, in a statement. "We introduced the first Android handset, the T-Mobile G1, to the UK back in October 2008, launched our second handset, the G2 Touch, earlier this year and now we're opening up Android-based smartphones to a whole new type of mobile user with the first handset on pay-as-you-go."
"We predicted back in June that we expected one in five T-Mobile mobile internet users will have Android-powered devices by the end of the year, and the launch of the T-Mobile Pulse is a major step in making this a reality," she added.
The pay-as-you-go T-Mobile Pulse will go on sale in the UK in October at £180. Contract pricing is yet to be announced.
Talkback
Loving this Android Device - But So sick of paying for calls I cannot Use
Nine million people in the UK (15% of the population) suffer from permanent, disabling hearing loss.
The estimated demographic figure has ranged from 22 million deaf and hard of hearing to as high as 36 million deaf and hard of hearing worldwide. Of these, only a few million are considered "deaf" and the remainder are hard of hearing but cannot use a phone.
for 30 years this group has had to PAY for Unused "Call Time" and are sick of it.
I will launch a Data only package for registered DEAF users within 3 months in the UK but wishes a a network would provide a worldwide backbone for these services.
the first phone available will be the HTC HERO but other ANDROID phones will be introduced later in the year.
I want to hear from DEAF Users - (especially the angry ones that are fed up with the way DEAF users are treated)
I especially want to hear from developers that can provide as real time as possible SUBTITLES to speech.
Switch on the app and anything heard by microphone could be sent to a server for voice to text and squirted back to the phone. Come on IBM we know you love Android :)
So All you can eat Data Plan - Pay for calls as you go. a Lovely Android Phone and best of all IF your a network it could add millions of LOYAL customers and their mothers and brothers.
They should have being somthing better put in place from the very begining for hard of hearing people, texting services use to cater for that years gone by, but some where along the line they re-introduced flat rates back into the system.
Now that these modern day phones are more than capable of conducting voip calls, they block such applications from working unless you take on the appropriate monthly contract type, its bizarre because at the end of the day what where witnessing is both the isp and mobile markets merge.
It will be the upcoming small fresh mobile company's that win out at the end of the day if they provide a single monthly fee isp deal with such device's, or extension to the home isp options from the main isp company's.
All the phone company is interested in is removing money from your pocket and putting it in theirs. They couldn't care less about anyone's hearing problems.
While the Networks are indeed only interested in Profits - and who can blame them I think there is a huge opportunity for one network to gather in this group and call them their own.
9 million users is a huge market segment to be ignored.
I think a network like Virgin or Tesco even 3 might get behind this demand for services without necessarally canabalising their own user base.
Nothing ventured - nothing gained.
Don't be so sure about Virgin they actually enjoy shafting their own customer base on a regular basis.