Australian electronics retailer Kogan plans to enter the US market in February with a  5 inch, $149 Android smartphone that will be available contract-free. The idea is you’ll be able to pick up the Kogan Agora smartphone in the uS and use it on a pay-as-you-go plan from AT&T, T-Mobile, or an MVNO which works on those networks (such as Straight Talk).

The phone is already available for pre-order from Kogan.

Kogan Agora smartphone

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a company push a large Android phone as a contract-free device. Google sells unlocked Nexus 4 smartphones through its website for $349.

But the Google Nexus 4 is hard to come by, due to supply shortages.

Kogan’s phone offers a much cheaper alternative, and  since there’s no subsidy to help bring down the up-front cost of the phone, customers could save hundreds of dollars in wireless carrier fees they’d normally pay over the course of a 2-year contract.

Of course, a phone which sells for $149 isn’t going to offer bleeding edge specs. The Kogan Agora has a 1 GHz dual core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, 512MB of RAM, and just 4GB of built-in storage, although there is a microSD card slot for expansion.

It runs Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, has a 5MP rear camera, and a VGA front-facing camera, supports 802.11n WiFi and HSPA. There’s no 4G LTE support.

The phone also has an 800 x 480 pixel display with a pixel density of 186 ppi, which is pretty low compared to the latest high-end smartphones.

Kogan is taking pre-orders for the $149 smartphone now, and plans to ship the Kogan Agora phone in mid-February

via CNET and Engadget

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,544 other subscribers

14 replies on “Kogan Agora contract-free 5″ Android phone coming in February for $149”

    1. yeah and finding any plan using ATT network for under $50 is very difficult unless it is extremely limited. If there was an ATT MVNO or otherwise that had something similar to T-Mobile’s 5gb 100 minute plan even if it was just non-lte 4G they’d be a winner for me and even $30 is a bit high for me but cards can be found in bulk cheap…so far freedompop is looking better and better at 1 cent per MB with affordable plans just wish they’d activate phones. Pentaband phones can be very expensive.

      1. Doesn’t the StraightTalk plan from Walmart use the AT&T network? I think its like $45/month. I am on Walmart Family Mobile for $40/month and it uses T-mobile towers. I will probably switch to Straightalk because even though data is supposedly limited to 2GB, the T-mobile/Family Mobile network is so slow I am lucky to even hit 1 GB/month..

          1. they throttle after 2.5, maybe even 3.0GB….

            And even then I get 1Mbit/sec speeds. not bad at all.

  1. I ordered my Kogan SIM a few days ago for their new network (atop Telstras 2G and 3G networks, the only other 3rd party on Telstra AFAIK) and I should have it next week some time. This looks like the phone I will probably get when I receive my Pebble (which doesn’t support Windows Phone 7.5). I’m pretty sure they’ll offer it in AU, as Kogan are an Australian company.
    A few years ago when Android was first coming out Kogan got a lot of press when they announced they were going to release a $200 phone (which may have also been called the Agora IIRC) – which would have been the first affordable Android phone on the market. A few weeks later they announced that the release was cancelled because the hardware wasn’t good enough.

    1. I agree that is a nice phone however the bands on it won’t fully support T-Mobile, i’d be limited to edge speed for data and I don’t have $45-$50 every month for straight talk or net 10…

  2. This sounds like a really good deal. Are there any other comparable phones in this price range that I should look into before pre-ordering? I cant keep waiting on the Nexus 4 to be in stock and this price is wayyy lower. (I just hope it actually gets clear reception)

  3. The deal breaker for me on this device is no option for direct video output such as micro-hdmi or mhl. Otherwise, at this price point, I would be comfortable with the WVGA screen since it is the same as my Dell Streak.

  4. Those specs are equal to or better than the Samsung Galaxy S wifi 5.0 which has the same resolution, 384k of ram, and 1ghz single core processor, Sounds to me this will be a nice ugrade to my Galaxy Player.

Comments are closed.