Amoi has been an interesting company to watch. They normally make a solid mobile, but haven’t caught on quite like Doogee, Jiayu, THL, Zopp and iNew have. They’ve also been relatively quite recently with not much released over the last several months.
Now comes news of the Amoi Big V A918T. The A918T will be a 2GB RAM MT6592 phone with 2100mA battery, 5″@720p LCD and 8MP rear camera. Not spectacular specs, but the 2GB is nice and this is the ‘youth’ version to be released.
Apparently while many China mobile companies are smartly looking outward to the rest of the world, such as Doogee and iOcean releasing 900/2100MHz phones and Zopo opening retail shops in the West, Amoi has chosen to remain introverted to China and release the A918T with TD-SCDMA only. Perhaps there’s a WCDMA version in the works, but at this point it’s a no go.
The news here is that the A918T reportedly will have HotKnot technology.
What is HotKnot:
HotKnot from MediaTek in a nutshell is proximity pairing technology. It’s nearest relative function wise is NFC.
The difference is that HotKnot does not use an antenna and RF-chip for connectivity. Instead they will be implanting capacitor touch ICs on mobile touchscreens.
The IC implanted touchscreens combined with data from proximity and gravity sensors will enable HotKnot to detect nearby compatible devices.
MediaTek touts HotKnot technology as cheaper than NFC and will allow pairing to devices such as TVs, tablets and smart watches.
The technology is actually quite underway and software packages have already been sent to China mobile partners to give phone makers a head start on getting ready compatibility and marketing wise.
HaoJung Li from MediaTek says “…our first job is to build the infrastructure, making sure that millions of smartphones used in China will actually come with Hotknot.”
Give this a watch so you can get an idea and a good chuckle at the same time.
MediaTek apparently holds 40% of the market share in touch driver chips. FocalTech holds the biggest share of touch controller IC. It makes sense then that MediaTek will be pairing up with FocalTech and according to Li, that is the plan – “We are currently in negotiation with FocalTech to adopt Hotknot.”
While diversity can often be a good thing as it brings innovation and competition to the table, it also can bring woes to the consumer as companies battle it out for which tech will reign supreme. China is notorious for ‘forking’ technology and calling it their own – TD-SCDMA being one of the most obvious rip-offs of Western intellectual property.
HotKnot is truly innovative, but my doubt regarding HotKnot is MediaTek using clout to push China handset makers into using HotKnot as opposed to NFC, in which case it just adds one more reason to stay away from China brands. While NFC is not the most important feature for many users, HotKnot will literally be useless for anyone outside of China for quite a while to come, if not forever.
There is the possibility here that I’m judging the situation incorrectly. Perhaps the technology will catch on and be purchased by China based manufacturers. We know already that China makes just about everything electronic wise, so it wouldn’t be too far fetched for manufacturers to see the potential and begin implementing HotKnot tech in everything.
Still, I will wager on the former bet that HotKnot remain a useful idea which may gain some ground in China, but not much beyond their locale.
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