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Feature: Vietnamese hail 1st locally-prouduced, high-end smartphone

Xinhua, May 27, 2015 Adjust font size:

"The debut of Bphone can be seen as a turning point in the Vietnamese technology industry," Do Tuan, an information technology worker in Vietnam's capital Hanoi told Xinhua.

The Vietnamese tech firm BKAV on Tuesday debuted its first domestic-made high-end smartphone, called the Bphone, meeting the expectations local consumers.

"This is the first time Vietnam has such a smartphone which can compete with products from other countries on the market," Tuan said.

"This is Vietnamese product, therefore, it is supposed to win over the heart of Vietnamese consumers before targeting the foreign market," Do Tuan said.

The Vietnamese BKAV claimed that Bphone's design, technical specifications and security are "on the same level" as the flagship products of Apple and Samsung.

"Today is a historic day for all Vietnamese, as a local product is on par with those from powerful countries," the BKAV CEO Nguyen Tu Quang was quoted by local Thanh Nien (Young People) online newspaper as saying at the launching ceremony on Tuesday.

Quang described Bphone's design as "one of the world's most beautiful and a luxury fashion product," adding that the design has already been patented.

Bphone runs on a BOS platform, which BKAV has customized from the Android 5.0, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 801 processor, 3GB RAM, 3, 000-mAh battery, and has a 5-inch full HD display with 441 PPI, according to the company.

Bphone has a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front one, BKAV said, adding that it can also film videos in the 4K resolution.

Bphone is the world's first smartphone to apply TransferJet, which is a new type of short-range wireless transfer technology and "will be the technology of the future," Quang said.

As it has been developed by a security software corporation, it is immune to viruses, junk mail and spyware, as it boasts " extremely high security technologies," Quang said.

The phone will go on sale on June 2, but it will only be available on the company's website. Its 16GB version is priced at 9.9 million Vietnamese dong (458 U.S. dollars), 64GB version at 12. 96 million Vietnamese dong (600 U.S. dollars), and the gold-plated 128GB version at 20.19 million Vietnamese dong (935 U.S. dollars).

"I feel really happy. The launching of the Bphone proves that Vietnamese IT industry has developed further in recent years," Nguyen Diep, an office worker in Hanoi said.

"I am considering buying a Bphone," Diep told Xinhua.

"This is the first high-end product of the Vietnamese IT industry. We should be proud of it," a reader commented on an article about the launch of the Bphone, posted on VNExpress, an online newspaper.

Another reader named Tran Tuan said, "It is so beautiful. I am so proud that Vietnam can make such a phone."

Established in 1995, BKAV Corporation, based in Vietnam's capital Hanoi, is a firm operating in network security, software, smartphone manufacturing and smarthome technology. Endi