Kogan's Agora gets tweaked ahead of release -- in Photoshop, anyway

You're bound to face a few hiccups when you're a no-name brand trying to source an Android handset from a no-name ODM buried deep inside a Shenzen industrial park, and it seems Kogan's going through those growing pains right about now. The Australian company still says the Agora and Agora Pro will ship before the end of January (barely), but it looks like they're down to the wire with tweaks to the phone's design. For starters, the soft keys are gone -- not much use for those in Android anyway, last we checked -- replaced with a decidedly WinMo-esque set of home and back keys; the keyboard's been redesigned, too, and the d-pad is looking more usable than it had been before. For the Agora's price point, we're still sold on this thing -- but only if we can get something more than a printout of a pretty render delivered to our doorstep.

[Thanks, Big Mike]

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 13th 2008 4:49PM]

the "redesign" screams of, "psst! we have a shitload of leftover 320x240 screens for the Blackberry Curve that RIM has unloaded after finally releasing their new products en masse... i give you my special price!"

if these turn out to not be vapor, i'd be willing to risk $300 on one. it's like a blackberry but with an OS from this millennium.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 13th 2008 4:54PM]

crap. i just noticed a problem. "2 megapixel camera".

unless this is some really solid quality camera (highly doubtful), all those really cool apps focused on barcode scanning wont work as proven by their counterparts' immense failure on the iPhone.

how dumb do you have to be to design a phone with specs that stray BELOW the reference design? ugh.

[Sofunnytom Posted Dec 13th 2008 5:35PM]

this phone has a touchscreen.... the curve doesnt

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 13th 2008 7:00PM]

Looks like the screen got squished...

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 14th 2008 1:40AM]

Maybe someone from Engadget can confirm, but the width of the "updated" model is about .160" wider than the earlier version? Are these pics equally scaled? Screen on the updated view also looks more like a WQVGA vs the earlier version's S/QVGA.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 14th 2008 3:39PM]

Ugh, I'm sorry, but major mistake on meddling with screen size. Much prefer the former, hate big gaps between the screen and edge of the handset.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 15th 2008 12:42AM]

The chances of this phone materializing in the next 1 month are a billion to one.

If the distributor doesn't even have a sample to show on the web site, a working phone will be multiple months away.

The fact that people are putting money down on a phone that is constantly morphing is rather doggy. It was only a month ago this phone was going to have a full sized touch screen.

Am I the only one that smells a rat?

You would have thought if they went to the trouble of touching up the image they would have fixed the out of sync clocks!