Fly S288

Technical specifications

I have been using the device for over two weeks; I own both the Fly S288 and the Bird S288. A very good, simple, and above all, solidly built phone, also very thin for its time. English and Russian languages are available. When fully charged, it can last up to a week. It can be charged with a Samsung charger, like the one for the SGH-C300 or SGH-X200. The phone has 3 games - Tetris, Snake, and King's Escape. When outdoors or generally during the day, the screen - like any other monochromatic one - is very readable, and by holding the asterisk key, you can turn off the backlight, which saves even more battery.

Disadvantages: Exiting games is quite unintuitive and unclear; it takes some getting used to. The keyboard is hard to scratch, but if there is any loss of print on a given button, it is a matter of two days of use until it wears off completely.

This is the first model of the Fly brand to be released, alongside the S588 and S688 models, giving the company a solid start - and the phone itself was quite well received, offered among others in the Russian network Svyaznoy (Связной). The phone appeared in Russia under the Fly brand, in Thailand, China, and Japan under the Bird brand, and in Italy under the Amstrad brand. In Japan, it appeared as a device for use while traveling to other countries - Japan did not have GSM. The latter was the only one that had CE certification. There was also an S288 Plus model available mostly only under the Bird brand - it had an imitation color display.

I also came across a photo of a prototype of this device, which featured a different, more familiar key layout (resembling old Nokia phones), a microphone placed under the asterisk instead of at the bottom of the phone, a different charging port with a plug, and a different color of the navigation keys - this one comes from the Giga company, which suggests that it produced this phone for other manufacturers or was involved in producing prototypes for Bird. For now, it is not entirely clear to me whether similar models (S588 and S688), other than Fly and Bird brands, were available in the Amstrad range and whether the S288 appeared under yet other names.