Smartphone from Railways: another cut of budget funds

The Russian business for the production of mobile devices lies in the deep ... hole. It is impossible to look at everything that the Russian sector of this market produces without tears and thinking that someone has once again squandered money or poured them into absolutely unpromising projects. We either buy cheap Chinese phones and tablets, adapting supposedly to certain “Russian standards”, or simply saw cut into the production of “Russian development, which has no analogues in the world market” (because even the Chinese will not produce such rubbish) budget. It's funny, but in one of such cases the “Russian Railways” appeared, last week with fanfare and dancing they presented their own smart phone, which supposedly would simplify various working processes for the company's employees: workflow, cargo accounting and the like. The smartphone will not enter the mass market, but this is far from the main one (although this is rather a plus) from its shortcomings.

The supplier of the device is a Russian company integrator R-Style, working with many government agencies. For the Russian Railways project, R-Style found, as is usually the case in such cases, the next Chinese “nouneym” manufacturer and, slightly modifying, was able to fit the phone to the requirements of the customer. The device itself is called FRMD101A.

The device is equipped with a resistive 4.5-inch screen with a resolution of 960 x 540 pixels and is based on a dual-core ARM processor with a frequency of 1 GHz. The device has 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of permanent memory and is running the Android 4.x operating system. As a trifle here, there is also a slot for a memory card, a GLONASS chip and a color one (yes, this is indicated on the R-Style website) a 5.0 megapixel camera, a 5000 mAh battery with an additional 600 mAh battery, and an IP54 protection level, and software package that will be needed for Russian Railways employees: contact smart card reader, 1d / 2d barcode scanner, and so on.

The manufacturer with all modesty indicates on its website that this is the “best-in-class price-functionality ratio”. At the exhibition “InfoTrans 2013”, where this device was shown on the stand, representatives even at some point declared that their phone was much cheaper than the iPhone, forgetting to specify in which Universe. The exact cost of the RZD phone was never given, although in such cases RZD was obliged to provide information about tenders held and the cost of purchasing the necessary equipment for assembly, but she herself did not do that. Nevertheless, such information appeared on the Web soon, and we have no desire to doubt the veracity of this data. It would be great if Russian Railways, as a result, was able to refute the cost of each working terminal (this is the positioning of the device), but according to published document scans, the price of a Russian Railways phone is 47,000 rubles. We go to the Apple.com site in the store section and see that the top of the range brand-new, stylish, beautiful and functionality not inferior to the iPhone 5s is offered for 39,990 rubles.

According to the latest data, the first batch of 600 RJ telephones with a total value of 28,200,000 (twenty-eight million two hundred thousand) rubles has been manufactured. For a batch of 330 pieces worth a little more than 15 million rubles have already been paid. The same batch of iPhone 5s would cost less. But even this is not important. One important remark should be made here, the cost of professional working terminals is really very high - from a thousand dollars and up. But we are talking about high-quality technology, and not a “nouneym” device, which, moreover, is completely unpromising.

Take at least the same iP54 protection standard, which is presented by the manufacturer of something beyond the scope. And if to speak in fact, then this standard of protection has almost any modern smartphone (and even a regular cell phone), currently on the market. Manufacturers simply do not pass the necessary certifications, not seeing the point. Just because this protection standard is actually able to protect the device from rain, splashes and small drops, but not in a puddle. In order to have the right to boast about the security of his device, the manufacturer at least had to ensure its protection with the iP67 standard, and better with IP68.

If we talk about the technical stuffing of this device - we have a typical Chinese junk, having a cost of about 150-170 dollars apiece, without taking into account additional functions, such as a smart card reader, bar codes and a capacious battery, which, in fact, is also designed to work (please notice a professional working tool, rather than a regular smartphone) from 8 hours, with a capacity of 5000 mAh. Journalists have already calculated that the cost of replacing this battery is about $ 25, the cost of these scanners is about $ 45-50. Even after winding up the price, we will get a device of no more than 350-400 dollars in China, subject to the order of a batch of 500 pieces (minimum quantity). It is possible that the cost of creating specialized software for employees of Russian Railways was incorporated into the cost of terminals, in which case the price for them can be any, but this is hard to believe.

It's a shame it becomes even the fact that this is not a “device development from scratch”, but a simple adaptation of the device to your needs. The device will certainly become obsolete with time, and the money spent on upgrading (they are probably also included in the price) will not be able to be returned in any way in the future. There is only one way out - to buy these bricks endlessly, and then again invest your money in foreign developments to create "your" new terminal.

As usual with us it happens: we wanted the best, but it turned out as always. For those needs and tasks that RZD has, any (absolutely any) Android-smartphone with additional scanners will do. With such costs, the money would be enough even for wireless.

In China, a lot of companies involved in the release of professional terminals, but their cost is only about 400-450 dollars. In our case, the device cost almost a half thousand dollars. If there was a desire, it was possible to create the same device in our own market, which would really be ours, not Chinese development. Even with a small volume of purchases of such devices, the whole idea would be cost-effective, which would create in the future a steeper and even unique device in its class. But for this you need to be able and want to do it. And we have the best while can and want to cut.

The article is based on materials https://hi-news.ru/phone/smartfon-ot-rzhd-ocherednoj-raspil-byudzhetnyx-sredstv.html.