14 DAY TRIAL // Taiwanese company BenQ has just announced two new Android smartphones that will be available for purchase via major carrier Chunghwa Telecom, the A3 and F3.
Customers will be able to pick any of the two smartphones with or without Chunghwa Telecom contracts. Digitimes reports that BenQ A3 will be available for purchase for only NT$5,990 outright, which is about $200 or €150.
On the other hand, the F3 will be slightly more expensive, so Android fans will have to come up with NT$7,990 ($270 / €200) off contract.
However, customers will also be able to grab the BenQ A3 for free when bundled with Chunghwa Telecom contracts that require a fixed monthly rate of NT$533 ($18 / €13). BenQ F3 will be available for as low as NT$390 ($13 / €10) when purchased with the same contract via Chunghwa Telecom.
Unfortunately, there’s no confirmation on what version of Android any of the two BenQ smartphones run, but we know that both are powered by quad-core processors clocked at 1.2 GHz.
Still, the BenQ A3 embeds Qualcomm’s MSM8225Q Snapdragon CPU, whereas the F3 is equipped with MediaTek’s MT6589 processor.
It is also worth mentioning that both smartphones come with similar 4.5-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen displays. No details on the amount of storage and RAM have been provided either, but we suspect they pack 1GB of RAM and 4GB or 8GB of internal memory.
Aside from that, the smartphones have little in common, hence the price difference. For example, BenQ A3 comes with an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with autofocus, LED flash and full HD (1080p) video recording, while the F3 boasts a much better 13-megapixel photo snapper with Sony Exmor RS sensor.
On the connectivity front, both BenQ smartphones offer 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, microUSB and GPS with A-GPS support. They will probably not be available outside Taiwan anytime soon.