It’s not so often you see something come out that makes you do a double-take and wonder if you’re really seeing what you’re seeing.
This was the case when I happened upon Neo’s newly released MC K13. The phone actually has physical keys. Not in a yesteryear slide-out style, but in an even older style – T9 and part of the face of the phone!
Neo is well known for their Neo N002 and Neo N003. We have yet to hear about any planned MT6592 model from Neo, but surely something is in the works. In the meantime we have this little oddity to post about.
Blackberry obviously has their QWERTY keyboard, but this is something different, as it’s T9. T9 is the old style of phone where the keys make up a 3×4 or 4×3 grid. T9 phones themselves aren’t rare at all. They probably make up the majority of phones in the world. What’s rare is that it’s got Android 4.2, a 1.3GHz CPU, and a 3.5″ LCD.
The other specs are somewhat less than spectacular. 480×320, 256MB RAM, 512MB ROM. The SoC is MTK6572M. You might think 320p is terrible, and you’d be correct that it’s not stellar, however on a 3.5″ LCD it’s not so bad coming in at 161ppi.
Once again we have some discrepancy with China brand band coverage. The official site shows in the marketing tab that the MC K13 is GSM+TD, but then two lines later shows 850/900/1800/1900GSM and 850/2100WCDMA , while in the spec tab it shows GSM, then band coverage as 900/1800GSM + 850/2100WCDMA + 1900/2100TD-SCDMA. Even after writing about and enjoying China brands for so long, it still hasn’t ceased to amaze me the lack of attention to things like this from a well known corporation. That’s a rant for another day though.
The price is set at 399 yuan (65 USD). While the MC K13 isn’t something to get super excited about, I do find it very interesting and like to write about these oddities when they come about.
Neo obviously thinks there’s a market for the phone. I for one wouldn’t mind having it for the uniqueness factor, though we would have liked to see slightly higher RAM and storage – perhaps 512/1GB would have been more appropriate.
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