Hold Off On That Handheld 2.0

Yet another reason to stall that handheld purchase.

With so much instability in the market due to;

1) impending Sony Pre opening,

2) impending Google Android opening,

3) overstock from a slow holiday season,

4) emerging netbook sales eating into the smaller handheld market,

it’s hardly time to commit. Let these competing forces drive prices down a bit. You’ll be glad you did. Besides, with the market so unstable, shady businesses run rampant. As an Engadget blogger writes,

Okay, we don’t really know what’s going on here, but a "Shining" phone that looks almost exactly like the original version of the Kogan Agora Android phone just popped up on Alibaba with a three-day delivery time and a 100-unit wholesale price of $240. Of course, the Agora was just delayed indefinitely, so this could just be nothing; contracting design and development out to faceless Chinese manufacturers like Kogan’s doing is pretty much a deal with the KIRF devil, and those are definitely renders on the site, not actual pictures. Still, we’re dying to see a flood of non-G1 Android handsets shake up the mobile market, and if getting stoked over sketchy Asian copies of semi-vaporware Australian phones is how we have to get our kicks, well, we’re looking for new friends with an extra 24 grand and a healthy sense of forgiveness.