Alibaba’s upcoming Aliyun smartphone, which will be e-commerce and cloud-oriented, is one step closer to reality with its first physical sighting (pictured above).
The dual-core phone will be based on a Chinese-designed handset we’ve seen before – a Tian Hua W700 – but which will lose its OEM branding when it launches under the Aliyun name, reportedly at the end of this month.
Just four days ago we got a sneak preview of what looks to be the Aliyun mobile OS, replete with Alibaba-developed apps such as Aliyun Notes, Ali Mail and a dedicated app store.
It’s still not clear if Aliyun is a heavily themed version of Android, or a totally reworked and closed-source variant of Google’s mobile OS. If it’s the latter, then it raises the difficulty of all of Android’s games – such as the phenomenally successful Zombies vs Aliens, and Angry Birds – not being able to run on it.
The most curious alteration on the Aliyun phone – compared to its standard Android brethren – is that the search button has been replaced with the dedicated cloud button (using the Chinese character for ‘cloud’), as shown in the middle portion of the above image.
[Image source: Techweb]
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