Kogan Agora - Always seemed too good to be true

When news about the Kogan Agora first broke it seemed like another vaporware product. Now it appears to be true. While the concept of an Australian directed, Chinese manufactured phone based on Google's Android mobile OS appeared to be quite an accomplishment the low price of between $400 and $500 AUD made me suspicious.

While it is true that the Australian company would not have the overhead of a large multinational such as Nokia, Sony, etc. and feature rich Chinese phones have been available to Australians for quite some time through eBay at similar prices, the likelihood of such an effort succeeding was at best 50/50.

The company's reason for pulling the product at the last minute was that future versions of Andriod would create too many compatibility issues with the phone's designed screen resolution. Something that makes sense however it does not seem like a good enough reason to stop shipping the product. Those that pre-ordered the product would have had had the product they knew they were getting and should the phone prove to be popular enough developers will create versions to accommodate the limited hardware.

As the iPhone has proven a phone manufacturer can do it alone. There is no reason why lower resolution devices should not exist given Android's goal of being an open operating system that lets phone manufacturers mold it into whatever they need it to be.