Starting next Monday, Cubans will be able to acquire a nationally manufactured mobile phone, developed by the Gedeme computer company. The device, called GDM-MB10, will go on sale on September 19 for a price of 16,537.50 pesos, an amount that must be paid virtually, through the EnZona platform.
The mobile will have a six-inch screen, high definition, and a storage capacity of 32 gigabytes and 3 gigabytes of RAM. Its operating system is Android 10 and it will have two SIM card slots. The battery has 3,200 milliamps per hour, the front camera is 5 megapixels and the rear is 8.
In May 2021, Gedeme circulated a sample of 6,000 units as a test of the prototype, which they had been designing for six years. And although the phone was expected to work with its own operating system, designed at the University of Informatics Sciences (UCI), Android 10 ended up being installed.
The newspaper Rebel Youth then announced the “event”, to which he attributed “an architecture designed for the conditions of our country, and with software and systems developed by national institutions”, a promise that Gedeme was ultimately unable to fulfill.
“They are Chinese mobiles assembled in Cuba,” one reader quipped, while others asked that they be sold at “moderate prices,” “accessible to the entire population.”
At that time, the company predicted the release of three models: the GDM-T22, the GDM-N23 and the GDM-A21L, with very modest characteristics, which caused a barrage of ridicule and criticism by specialists and technology enthusiasts.
Since the sale was announced, in 2021, the public raised numerous doubts not only regarding the quality of the phones, but also about the currency in which they would be marketed. “They are Chinese mobiles assembled in Cuba,” one reader quipped, while others asked that they be sold at “moderate prices,” “accessible to the entire population.”
In the diary workers, who also echoed the news, a user demanded that university students and professors, who were required to work remotely during the pandemic, be “facilitated to sell through purchase and payment mechanisms that are not exactly the current ones from Etecsa and the MLC collection stores”.
Despite the fact that the news has had little impact on the company’s social networks, several users have already pointed out that the cost of the cell phone that will be marketed next Monday does not correspond to its characteristics. It is not a high-end phone and it does not have its own operating system.
In addition, the fact that, at a time of extreme vigilance on the part of the Government, a telephone assembled and conditioned by an official technology company has not ceased to raise suspicions. Arbitrary internet outages and the use, in legal proceedings, of confidential telephone information provided by Etecsa to State Security are some of the arguments against the GDM-MB10 telephone.
“That must come, of course, with all the parakeets to spy”, a young computer joked this Thursday when he learned of the future offer, while recommending, emphatically: “That no one who has something to hide should buy one of these phones”.
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