Back in 2009, the Saygus VPhone made an appearance and at that time it was believed to be one of the more powerful Android devices around, but then it promptly vanished back into development, never to be heard from or seen again, at least until now.
For those who have never heard of the Saygus VPhone or who may have forgotten its specs, it has an 800×480 resolution display along with a slide-out keyboard while running on a 624Mhz Marvell PXA312 processor. It also comes with a 5MP rear-facing camera and a VGA front-facing camera, and for those of us who may are now spoiled with Android’s Gingerbread 2.3, the Saygus VPhone was expected to come shipped with Android’s Donut 1.6. Old school, I know.
As it turns outs, the device is has now been approved by Verizon’s “Open Development Initiative” (ODI), almost two years after it was sent in for approval. According to Chad Sayers, CEO of Saygus, it was apparently due to the tough approval process which caused the handset to be delayed nearly two years, but it looks like the company is not letting go and are now working on ironing out the bugs.
No word on when or how much the device will be sold for when it is released, but given that most budget Android devices come loaded up with better specs (and later versions of Android), is there a reason anyone would even consider the Saygus VPhone? However given that the iPhone 3GS was released a little over two years ago and that there are still buyers out there, we don’t see why the Saygus VPhone can’t enjoy similar success.