MTS, a leading Russian mobile operator and retailer, launched initial retail sales of its Glonass 945 smartphone last Friday in a bid to offer the world’s first smartphone with a GLONASS+GPS supported satellite location system.
МТS 945 Glonass is an Android 2.2 based device with a 3.2-inch touchscreen, 2-megapixel camera, 130MB of memory, 3G / Bluetooth / WiFi with an mp3 player and a radio receiver.
For the moment, the device is available only on the company’s online store for a price of 10,990 rubles or 10,490 rubles including a MTS subscription ($387 and $370 respectively).
In the months preceding the launch, expectations about the product have been high. It was even presented to Prime minister Vladimir Putin last December as “the Russian iPhone 4.”
But Mr Putin’s expectation that Russian women could “use it to keep track of their husbands, with their exact current location shown on the map,” has not been fulfilled. In reality, the Russian smartphone, in its functional and technical characteristics, weighs in with a far more modest range of mobile devices.
The launch of MTS’s 945 has been met with reserve on tech-dedicated web sites and even sniggering on certain blogs.
“The 945 smartphone doesn’t match up to the LG P500 Optimus One, which is slightly less expensive. Few will be ready to pay more for the sake of GLONASS,” announced Mobi.ru, a specialized Russian resource.
Engadget, a US web magazine covering gadgets and consumer electronics, found the Russian device similar to Vodafone 945 but expressed hopes that a follow up version would be more “compelling in the design and feature standpoint.”
Although Sitronics, a leading Russian provider of telecommunications solutions, took part in the project, there is not much Russian in the MTS 945. The device is produced by Chinese manufacturer ZTE, equipped by a Qualcomm chipset and supported by a Google-made operating system.
“The ‘menu’ button wasn’t even translated into Russian,” mocked Habrahabr.ru, a Russian blog.
The genuine iPhone 4, available on the Russian market since last September, has recorded relatively modest sales. The device is perceived as an elite rather than a mass-market product particularly due to its steep price, ranging from 34,900 to 39,900 rubles ($1,163 to $1,330), the latter without operator subsidies.
MTS 945 features
- OS: Android 2.2
- Camera: 2 megapixels
- GSM 900/1800, UMTS 2100, Bluetooth 2.1, Wi-Fi 802.11
- GLONASS and GPS combined navigation
- Touchscreen: 3,2″, 240х400, 262,000 colors
- Memory: 130 Mb
- SMS, MMS, e-mail, web browser
- MP3 player, FM receiver
- Standard: alarm, calculator, calendar, address book functions
GLONASS+GPS
Compared to GPS-only solutions, the GPS+GLONASS combination offers improved performance for location-based services (LBS) in some cases. With a surface accuracy fo 4-8 meters, the Glonass is slightly less accurate than the 2-8 meters of GPS, but devices incorporating both GPS and GLONASS, with almost double the combined available satellites for triangulation, obtains surface accuracy within 1-3 meters, making positioning more accurate, especially in dense “urban canyon” environments.
