What is it with music artists and technology? Dr Dre is a co-founder of Beats Headphones; will.i.am is the driving force behind the PULS smartwatch; and Jay-Z owns the music streaming service Tidal.
It’s a trend that appears to be taking off in South Africa, too.
Mi Casa frontman J’Something is the creative director for Huawei in Africa. And now, hip hop star and music producer Cassper Nyovest has released his own branded smartphone in partnership with AG Mobile.
When I first heard about the AG#Hashtag a couple of weeks ago I was both excited and a little nervous.
Excited because South African based AG has been doing some innovative things in an attempt to carve out a space for itself in the fiercely-competitive African smartphone market. Its new baby is being punted as a mid-range flagship phone good enough to take on the big names.
Nervous because Nyovest had apparently had a fair bit of input into the design of the device and I was wondering whether this would turn out to be a good or a bad thing.
Well, I recently received an AG#Hashtag to review and got the opportunity to find out for myself.
It certainly makes a strong first impression. To paraphrase Henry Ford, you can have it in any colour you like, as long as you like fire engine red – or should that be Ferrari red, given the hip hop connection? Red, I’m told, is Nyovest’s favourite colour.
Yes, the body and back is made of plastic but it feels reassuringly solid in the hand, with no creaking. Some attractive metallic detailing, including the silver AG logo on the nicely curved back, add a hint of the high life.
Think lovechild of a pre-S6 Samsung Galaxy and those Nokia Lumias of the same period.
It’s a big phone – the kind we used to call a phablet before most handsets swelled in size – which is a tick in its favour in my books, but those with small hands may find it a tad unwieldy.
The 5.5-inch, Gorilla Glass touchscreen is nice and bright, making for a pretty good web browsing, video watching and gaming experience, although those who’ve been exposed to ultra high definition displays on recent flagship devices may find the AG#Hashtag’s 720 x 1 280 IPS screen a little lacking in detail.
Pleasingly for a sub-R4 000 phone, the new AG supports LTE connectivity, unlocking the benefits of 4G downloads to those with the data bundles to match.
The 13 megapixel rear-facing camera takes some pretty decent pics in good light but, like most phones in this segment, low-light snaps are grainy and indistinct. The decidedly oddball shutter release sound effect also takes some getting used to.
The 5 megapixel selfie camera isn’t bad either and the front-facing flash is a useful touch for after-dark snaps.
Battery life is good, with the 2 500mAh cell delivering a solid day’s juice with medium to heavy use. Road warriors will like the ability to remove the back of the phone and pop in a replacement battery, something that made me nostalgic for the pre-unibody smartphones of yore.
It comes loaded with an acceptably recent version of the Android operating system (5.1 Lollipop) and is commendably close to the stock Android experience, although I’d have preferred that it didn’t come pre-installed with the AG Mobile and Nyovest apps, as well as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp and WeChat.
That said, I’m hardly this phone’s target market for whom these may well be drawcards.
It comes with 16GB of internal storage, although only 8GB or so of this is available thanks to the OS and aforementioned bloatware, but that’s easily upgraded with an after-market MicroSD card.
So is the AG/Cassper collab chart-topper material? For the price I think it’s pretty good value for money.
It’s due to go on sale on Tuesday and will be available exclusively through MTN’s retail outlets and call centres.
Contracts start at R229 monthly over 24 months. If you prefer to pay cash, it’ll set you back R3 499 on prepaid.
If you’re a Nyovest fan, or just in the market for an attention-grabbing, reasonably-priced mid-range smartphone, the AG#Hashtag is definitely worth a look.