Cheap Chinese smartphones - are they worth buying?

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I keep getting emails from a website called "a happy deal" offering smartphones for about £100-150 which appear to be perfectly nice generic clones of modern Samsung, Apple etc phones. They look good and specs appear decent but you can't really tell if they're any good until you hold one in your hand and play about with it.

Does anyone have any experience of them and are they worth a punt?
 
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Since my Sony Xperia Tipo has been annoying me with app problems and the screen being too small, I've started looking at a cheap Note rip off called the Flying F7100. I'll be keeping an eye on this thread incase anyone has bought one or tried these phones. Trying to find reviews for some of these phones is very difficult aswell.
 
My boss has one and goes on about it all the time, I'll get the make and where he got it from tomoz and report back
 
Actually, I just went ahead and got one off Ebay. It's the Android S3 i9377 - basically a clone of the Samsung S3. Looks very nice - Android 4.1, 4.7" 720p HD screen, dual core, unlocked for £110. It's a bit of a gamble but it's in the UK and has a 12 month guarantee so what's the worst that could happen? I'll post back here with a review when it arrives. Plenty of unboxing vids of it on Youtube. I don't expect it to be as polished as a product four times the price but if it works as advertised it'll do for me.
 
Member on another forum ordered himself the Oppo Find 5.
Pricey enough, but gotta say, if I was throwing that sort of money around on an iPhone 5 someone was bored with, or a new Android from Sony/HTC, I'd be extremely tempted to do likewise.
Cracking handset by the looks of it.

I suspect we're starting to see some Chinese manufacturers putting high end handset out after studying the likes of the iPhone, Sony/HTC, and it'll not be long before there's a complete raft of them genuinely challenging the establishment on spec and design.
 
Rooster said:
Actually, I just went ahead and got one off Ebay. It's the Android S3 i9377 - basically a clone of the Samsung S3. Looks very nice - Android 4.1, 4.7" 720p HD screen, dual core, unlocked for £110. It's a bit of a gamble but it's in the UK and has a 12 month guarantee so what's the worst that could happen? I'll post back here with a review when it arrives. Plenty of unboxing vids of it on Youtube. I don't expect it to be as polished as a product four times the price but if it works as advertised it'll do for me.
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very interested to see if the screen is anywhere near as good, or just a cheap small viewing angle TN TFT-LCD. Also call quality, reliability

And finally software - can you easily get custom ROMs like cynogenmod on it? I wouldn't trust the chinese ROM that comes with it.


I might even buy one if it really looks as good, but it is probably best not to travel to Switzerland with one
 
I've looked at these on eBay and Amazon and as mentioned the specs look mightily impressive for the money. Only thing that has put me off was the low pixed density of the bigger 4"+ screens.
Be interested to hear what Rooster has to say on the matter.
 
I bought one on a recent business trip to China. It was £50, but I guess it's cheaper from a market stall in Chengdu. It's really badly put together and the software is awful, but it works as a cheap way of making calls out there.

Maybe the £100 models are better?
 
I bought a Star N9770, which is Galaxy Note 2 clone. From Amazon for £117 from a UK company called TT Sims. It's absolutely brilliant, it has Andriod Jelly Bean and works just like the Note from what I can tell. I can't recommend it enough, check the reviews on Amazon.
 
Northstar100 said:
I bought a Star N9770, which is Galaxy Note 2 clone. From Amazon for £117 from a UK company called TT Sims. It's absolutely brilliant, it has Andriod Jelly Bean and works just like the Note from what I can tell. I can't recommend it enough, check the reviews on Amazon.
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That does look nice... 5.08" screen - that's almost a small tablet! Does it "feel" like a quality piece of kit though?
 
Northstar100 said:
I bought a Star N9770, which is Galaxy Note 2 clone. From Amazon for £117 from a UK company called TT Sims. It's absolutely brilliant, it has Andriod Jelly Bean and works just like the Note from what I can tell. I can't recommend it enough, check the reviews on Amazon.
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Amazon said:
Screen Display Size 5.08 Inch Type TFT, capacitive touch screen Resolution 480 x 800 pixels Screen Color 1600K Colors
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I'd rather have something with 3" display with that resolution :thumbsdown:

wifi - b/g - where is "n"?
There is probably a lot more nonsense still
 
Thats what's stopping me getting one of these to be honest, the low resolution.
 
daugirdas said:
I'd rather have something with 3" display with that resolution :thumbsdown:
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Mike-a said:
Thats what's stopping me getting one of these to be honest, the low resolution.
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It's the same resolution as my old Samsung Galaxy S2 which had a 4.3 inch screen, I don't think the extra 0.7" would cause the world to end :thinking:
 
Well, I'm still waiting for mine to arrive, which I'm not too pleased about considering they said 48 hours.
 
Mmm....gona keep an eye on this thread very interesting :-)
 
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mrgubby said:
It's the same resolution as my old Samsung Galaxy S2 which had a 4.3 inch screen, I don't think the extra 0.7" would cause the world to end :thinking:
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and the same resolution of my ancient and smaller HTC desire. Even at that size everything is grainy, at >5" brick it will be pointless, let alone difficult to pocket :cuckoo:. Oh well, longer must be better :thinking:
 
Rooster said:
That does look nice... 5.08" screen - that's almost a small tablet! Does it "feel" like a quality piece of kit though?
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It feels very solid but time will tell what it's like quality wise. All this talk of screen resolution is rubbish if you ask me, yes if photos are zoomed in to very large size the picture quality suffers but for normal viewing side by side with an ipad with retina display I honestly can't tell any difference. The broadband connection is lightning fast and not far off the speed of my PC even when connected to outside wi-fi (The Cloud etc in Wetherspoons). There are well over 150 reviews on Amazon now check them out.
 
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I find this amusing talk about phones from China being any good... Who do you think makes the iPhone? Well look up Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. and you see it has its factory's in China.. products that the company manufactures include the iPad, iPhone, iPod, Kindle, PlayStation 3 and Wii
 
It's not the fact they're from China, more the question of much lower retail prices. Obviously you can't compare a £120 Samsung Note clone to a £520 iphone5 but for £120 are they actually any good? The location of manufacture is neither here nor there.
 
Answer is that you will be getting slightly less than cutting edge internals (last years SOC), a relatively naff camera, and worse build quality. Just make sure it has or you can stick a vanilla android rom or cyanogen on and it's fine.
 
Well, I said I'd post back with my thoughts on this phone - the Android S3 i9377 - so here I am.

I've had it about ten days now and it's pretty awful.

Overall build quality is acceptable for the price but when you hold a Samsung S3 in your hand there's a big difference. The screen is decent indoors but is difficult to read even in overcast light and almost invisisble in sunshine, even on max brightness. It's reasonably responsive, viewing angles are decent.

More importantly, I rarely get a signal. I'm on Orange using an iphone 4 and I thought that had weak reception, this Android is abysmal. I almost never get a signal inside any building, at home, at work or in a shop. Today the phone is saying "mobile network not available" all the time. Looking in the SIM Management options everything looks good but even when I've got a signal bar showing it won't connect to either voice or data services. Last week, when I did get a signal out and about, it was trying to switch on roaming, which presumabaly would have cost me a fortune. I tried GPs and it was all over the place, even after I'd allowed it plenty of time to find its bearings. This ran the freshly-charged battery down very quickly. It reported 15% power and then the phone died a couple of minutes later.

In short, don't touch it, it's a piece of ***.

Errm, anyone want to buy an Android phone?
 
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On a more positive note, a guy at work just got the N9770 (Samsung Note clone) and it seems way better, much better build quality and he's had no problems so far.
 
I bought a Chinese htc clone last year, it too was awful. Often with these phones the Android version is faked and onboard memory can be also. They come with loads of Chinese apps that you can't delete and can almost never be upgraded unless you find a compatible rom from something else and are willing to flash it.
Build quality is poor, these phones are not made in nice clean factories to high standards and in the case of my one the touch screen died. I traced the fault back to a crack in the digitiser screen just where it joined the cable, caused by a tiny bit of grit that had got under the screen. I ended up buying a genuine htc from Panamoz and the difference in use is spectacular.
 
Surely anything Chinese and electrical is bound to either die or die and try to take you with it!
 
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