Made-in-Vietnam smart phone unveiled

Vietnamese tech firm Bkav officially launched its made-in-Vietnam first flagship smart phone Bphone in Hanoi yesterday.

CEO of Bkav Nguyen Tu Quang said that the smart phone was made from 800 different parts, provided by 82 suppliers worldwide.

It is 7.5mm wide with a Sharp 5.0 inch full HD screen, protected with Corning Gorilla Glass, which Samsung and Apple also use for their devices. The full aluminum body handset is equipped with Toshiba’s 3GB RAM, and the Qualcomm CPU Snapdragon 801 quad-core 2.5GHz.

Moreover, the Bphone uses the Transfer Jet technology for data transfer, which boasts 200Mbps speed, 500 times the popular NFC technology.

Mr. Quang said it was the first smart phone in the world to use the Transfer Jet technology.

The phone has unique design which Bkav has applied for the patent for the phone design since 2011. Quang and other CEO said that the Bphone is one of beautiful and smart phone nowadays.

There are three kinds of phones. A 16GB Bphone is sold at VND9.99 million (US$455), whereas the 64GB and 24k gold plated 128GB editions fetch VND12.96 million ($595) and VND20.19 million ($927), respectively.

Bkav Bphone Specs:

According to Mr. Nguyen Tu Quang, Bkav’s outspoken founder, the handset is made from 800 different parts, provided by 82 suppliers in the world with Bkav’s own design, which has been patented since 2011. In terms of specs, Bkav Bphone is a device of 7.5mm of thickness with a Sharp 5.0-inch Full HD display, featuring Corning Gorilla Glass and dressing a full aluminum cover. In addition, it is equipped with 3GB RAM LPDDR3 and powered by the Qualcomm CPU Snapdragon 801 quad-core 2.5GHz. At this point, Mr. Thieu Phuong Nam, CEO of Qualcomm Indochina, said that Bkav is the first Southeast Asia’s firm to directly contract with Qualcomm. That means Bkav is able to get the latest Qualcomm CPU as well as use all of Qualcomm patents in their phones.

The other specs include a 3,000mAh battery accompanied by Quick Charge 2.0, a 5MP front shooter and a 13MP f/2.2 rear camera that is covered with sapphire glasses. This cam is also one of Bphone’s key selling points. There are most modern techs supporting them such as Fast Tracking Auto Focus (used for Samsung Galaxy S6 to help capture fast-moving objects) and UbiFocus (allowing users to choose their focus after having already taken picture). Moreover, Bphone snapper can also take slowmotion video with 120 frames/s. As for operating system, Bkav uses their own one called BOS based on Android Lollipop for the Bphone.

Another outstanding feature about Bphone is that there is a built-in Bkav, the company’s flagship antivirus software, to make this device become “the safest of its kind on earth,” according to the CEO.

A gold plated version of Bphone