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- CES 2015: The Saygus V2 smartphone Preview
Monday, 12 January 2015
320GB storage, a 21MP camera, fingerprint scanning and a
4600mAh-equivalent battery. Too good to be true?
You haven't heard of Saygus yet, but if its claims are true, it's a name worth remembering.
On a simple stand tucked away at the back of the South
Hall, the Salt Lake City-based company is demoing its first smartphone,
the V2 (V squared). Founder Chad Sayers says that his team is composed
entirely of smartphone enthusiasts, and that the company makes nothing
but this smartphone - and that's why it couldn't help but design a
device that packs in every last bit of cutting edge tech they could lay
their mitts on.
The spec reads like a phone nerd's wish list, and includes
a few bits of neat-sounding technology we haven't seen before. A 5in,
1080p 'ArcticLink III' sunlight-readable screen. 64GB of built-in
storage, and two microSDXC slots, supporting up to 128GB a piece (that's
320GB of potential storage, folks). A side-mounted fingerprint scanner.
A 21MP rear camera and a 13MP front camera, both with optical image
stabilisation.
And there's more. NFC. An IR transmitter for TV control.
Harman/Kardon speakers. Built-in wireless Qi charging. Wireless HDMI
capability from Silicon Image. Some battery-boosting jiggery-pokery
claimed to make the 3100mAh battery perform like a 4600mAh unit. 4G LTE
too, of course, but augmented by technology from Fractal Antenna that
Chad Sayers claims will add a bar to your mobile reception wherever you
are.
Out of the box the V2 runs Android 4.4.4 and will be
updated to Lollipop in the near future, but interestingly the device can
boot other OSs from microSD too - Sailfish and Linux, for example.
The only unexceptional feature is the Qualcomm 801 chipset
inside, running at 2.5GHz - and even that's the equivalent of the
silicon inside pretty much every phone in our Top 10. Oh, and the screen
isn't 2K, but at 5in the extra pixels would be wasted anyway.
All of the above is housed in a IPX7 waterproof and
impressively compact aluminium and magnesium case with a carbon Kevlar
bumper around the screen and more carbon round the back. The tiny screen
bezel makes it feel like a smaller device than a 5in screen would
usually demand.
We're told the design is likely to be tweaked, which is no
bad thing - a sophisticated, HTC One (M8)-esque beauty this ain't. The
units we saw were rough around the edges and not representative of the
finished product, so it wasn't possible to get an idea of performance.
Really, all we have to go on are the claims of the press release - but
if they're true, this is going to be a device to watch very closely
indeed.
Saygus is aiming to have devices to market in February and
is already taking registrations for pre-orders. Stuff will be the first
region outside of the US to test the device - and you'll be first to
know if it lives up to that preposterous specification. We do hope so.