Ruslan Kogan, founder of Australian-based consumer electronics company Kogan Technologies, posted a blog entry yesterday informing the public that the Agora mobile phone will be delayed indefinitely due to “potential future interoperability issues”. In other words, it’s been cancelled.

The Agora was being built as two different models, the Agora and Agora Pro at AU$299 and AU$399 respectively, and was to be the first mobile phone to hit the Australian market that featured Google’s open-source Android platform. It was planned for release on January 29, 2009. Now it appears that Australians will need to wait longer to get their eager hands on an Android phone. Many customers who had pre-ordered the phone will now be receiving a full refund.

Both models of the Agora featured 2.5 inch 240 x 320 pixel resolution displays, and according to Kogan, the “interoperability issues” include the screen size and resolution not being able to handle the applications that developers will create in the future.  The Agora is being redesigned, likely with a larger screen at a higher resolution similar to the T-Mobile G1 by HTC which has a 320 x 480 pixel display at 3.2 inches.

Whilst it’s always a good idea to pull a product that has severe limitations or will not work as originally intended, the resolution limitation seems like a rather large oversight that should probably have been picked up in earlier development of the Agora before all the hype was generated. Despite the disappointment though, the hype has definitely worked in Kogan’s favour in regard to brand awareness. Plus, it’s always nice to hear a company being honest when informing the public of recent happenings.

There are other Android mobile phones currently in developement by HTC, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Lenovo, as well as a few other companies. Let’s just hope they’ll have an Australian release that doesn’t take too long.