Wiwos Super: India's First Indic Enabled Dual SIM Android Smartphone

[rajanmehta 4,056]

Robosoft Partners With WIWO Mobiles To Launch India's First Indic Language Enabled Dual SIM Android Smartphone

Robosoft which is mobile app development company has partnered with Banglore based United Telecom to launch India's First Local Languages enabled Dual SIM Android.

The phone is targetted primarily at value segment and huge number of users not very comfortable with English Language.

Launched at an MRP of Rs 5,499, it's even available for as little as Rs 4,299 here >> http://kalpadeals.co...&product_id=758 (No idea about website reliability)

Specifications:

• 2.8" Capacitive 240x400 Resolution.
  
• The phone supports 6 languages including English, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam.
  
• Android 2.2, 512MB RAM, Expandable Memory upto 32GB
  
• GSM Dual SIM. GPRS, Edge. GPS. Bluetooth. 3 MP Camera. FM.
  
• 1500mAh Battery
  
• No WiFi
  

Review. Thanks Medianama.

Quite similar to other Android phones, Wiwos Super comes with five home screens. The main home screen comprises of large shortcut icons providing access to various core phone functions like Phone, Music, Torch, Radio, Camera and SMS. Robosoft stated that Wiwos is primarily targeting tier-3 cities for these phones.

The phone offers an English language interface during the initial boot, although users can change the language to any of Indic languages be heading over to Settings Menu and selecting the ‘Language and Keyboard‘ option. Following this, the phone’s interface gets converted to a mixture of English and the selected language.

For instance, if the user chooses Kannada as the language, all the menu options, alerts and core phone functions like Contacts, Messaging, Calendar, Calculator, Search, Gallery and Radio are rendered in Kannada, while apps like Gmail, Google Maps, Google Play (previously Android Market) remain in English.

What’s interesting and important though is that Wiwos Super is pre-loaded with language keyboards for Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam, allowing users to type in these respective languages across various third party apps on the phones.

While these keyboards are in the form of regular QWERTY keyboards, they comprise of all the alphabets with a sliding bars of ‘matras’ above the keyboard. Robosoft informed MediaNama, that these soft keyboards mimic the way people traditionally write text and do not require people to learn esoteric key combinations to generate native language glyphs.

Indic Language Implementation:

On being asked how they were able to implement Indic fonts and IME on Android, Robosoft stated that they modified the stock text- drawing pipeline of Android 2.2, in order to render South Indian language text. The company claimed that its text-drawing facilities work entirely with TrueType fonts, unlike other renderers which depend on custom bitmap fonts. It also claimed that its text renderer now works with any TrueType fonts that is freely and commercially available.

Future OS Updates?

Robosoft stated that rolling out newer OS updates like Gingerbread or Ice Cream Sandwich to these Indic Android phones is completely the prerogative of the handset manufacturer and they have no say in it.

OEM Exclusivity?

On partnering with other OEMs for these phones, Robosoft stated they have partnered with only WIWO Mobile as of now and did not comment on tie-ups.

Our Take:

We have been playing with the phone for few days now and felt that the touch sensitivity was pretty good with a rare lag in the phone’s performance, which is quite impressive considering the modest specs of the phone. We were able to send and receive Hindi and Kannada SMS with ease, although there is a minor learning curve involved in the process, as one would experience with any new keyboard.

Also, one thing that really impressed us was the phone’s battery life. While most of the Android phones are known to offer poor battery life, we were able to get a battery life of three days with a moderate usage of the phone including always-on mobile data, push email and moderate usage of social networking apps.

Issues:

While the ability to type in Indic languages is pretty good, it does come with some caveats:

- If the user sends text message in Indic languages, the receiver should also have a phone which supports Indic languages, failing which the text appears in a series of blocks. This is quite an obvious one.

- The phone doesn’t deliver same search results irrespective of the language typed, forcing users to switch between languages. For instance, if one searches for any contact in their phonebook in English, it delivers relevant contact details instantaneously, however if they try to replicate the same using any other language, the phone offers zero results. This becomes more noticeable when one tries to download apps from the Google Play Store, since there is no dedicated Indic app store.

Suggestions:

- The shortcut icons on the home screen are currently in English, irrespective of the phone’s language. It would be nice to see shortcut icons in the home screen in respective languages whenever the user changes the phone language.

- Considering this is an Indic phone, perhaps Robosoft or Wiwos could partner with content companies to preload apps that provide Indic content.

[Genius 817]

Good to see this

Hope to see better KB in Hindi

[ni0987 179]

Good, at least some one started work on it.

Certainly things will improve. Thumbs up to Robosoft & WIWO.

[sougatadc 358]

Rajan ji, I've found on made-in-india Samsung Galaxy Y and Ace Duos (GSM+CDMA) handsets indic fonts open on stock applications like Gmail, messaging or Facebook and Bangla, Hindi etc text inputs can be done using Panini or Multiling keyboards. As these handsets have installed Indian language fonts, real-time rendering of texts occur while typing, making it easy to compose.

Can Galaxy Ace Duos be classified in this category?

[sougatadc 358]

^^^

I checked Ace Duos and Galaxy Y (Galaxy Y Duos will be similar for sure) for access of indic fonts on various applications. As there are resident fonts on the handsets, vernacular websites, posts, SMSs, mails etc open flawlessly through all the stock applications.

I checked by editing phonebook contact name replacing English with Bangla. It showed caller's name in Bangla.

Only requisite was installing an input application (Multiling or Panini are free on Play Store) which are not pre-loaded.

So imho, Ace Duos may well be crowned as the first indic language dual SIM android.

[sgiitk 32]

No big deal. If you have root, then just install the fonts in the fonts directory. If you want to sms as well, get the Panini keyboard from the market. Only some sandhi's and halants show up funny, but readable/

[sougatadc 358]

^

Sanjay ji, my contention wasn't about readability or ease of writing of indic fonts on android handsets. The topic is on a dual sim android phone which supports indic fonts. The question is which one is the first in this category.

Question of rooting or installing fonts doesn't arise here.

[rajanmehta 4,056]

Let X, Y OR Z phone be called the First to support Indian Languages, i have no issues with that. Infact Thanks Sougataji for highlighting Galaxy Ace Duos and Y support for indian languages. I think HTC Explorer is also having built in support for some indian languages.

But my main grouse is with Google being so pathetic in having built in support for major indian languages in Android. By built in support i mean you just select the language in options and the entire phone interface, all apps and character input should support that particular language. Even some good old Nokias have that. The population speaking, following each major Indian Language like Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Marathi and many others would easily cross the numbers of many countries entire population. You will see support for some tiny language spoken in a part of the world whose population will be less than a single state of India but they ignore indian languages altogether. Now in ICS, there is native support for some indian languages but again not much. With less than 5% of total android devices having ICS and a person using a 25-30K ICS phone may not use indian languages altogether.

I expected much better from Android being open source and linux based in this regard but it's not to be.

[sougatadc 358]

^

Yes, I totally agree with Rajan ji.

Many languages with miniscule population-base get featured as important languages by many MNCs and gadget manufacturers while our languages get ignored.

Our Hindi is the 4th major language worldwide (49 crore speakers) and Bangla takes the 6th major place (30 crore). Punjabi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya etc are no less important, rather they are having more impact than many other languages recognized worldwide. see here.

This is high time that MNCs recognize our languages.

[Venkatagiri 53]

This phone is now available for Rs2990 including shipping within India

[mailgujarat 0]

This phone is now available for Rs2990 including shipping within India

where?? any URL?

[Venkatagiri 53]

^^^ That is easy.

Please visit: http://adexmart.com/wiwos/3939-wiwo-super.html

If you are buying one write review on using it.