South African startup Zest Mobile has launched pre-order sales of its new mobile offering, the T1 smartphone, with the first 1,000 customers offered 1GB of free data each month under the launch package deal.
The Zest T1 is to be sold as part of a package partnership with Afrihost, with customers given 1GB of free data each month for a year as part of the ZAR1,999 (US$186) price of the smartphone.
Customers who pre-ordered the device and have a pre-order code can proceed to purchase their phone as of today, by visiting the Afrihost website to redeem their pre-order voucher.
“Africa needs a homegrown smartphone brand as we have been the victim of foreign firms for quite some time,” David Lindeque, chief executive officer (CEO) of Zest Mobile, told HumanIPO.
“The value proposition these firms offer is simply not good enough. That being said, the notion of simply providing “affordable” but weak devices is also invalid and not worth pursuing. The only way to truly empower consumers is to give them extremely powerful and current devices but that are still affordable.
“We are committed to delivering quality products and consumers will see that commitment from the moment they access our website, to the moment they hold our gift box, to the moment they turn on their device. We are going to merge performance, affordability and quality.”
Zest Mobile said public sales for those that did not pre-order will begin some time this week, but no date was given, although the company previously said all sales would go live tomorrow.
The T1 houses a quad core 1.3 GHz processor, runs on the Android KitKat operating system, and includes features such as dual SIM capacity and an 8 megapixel camera.
