Chinese no-name phones

[Durzel]

OnePlus is a Chinese company and their phone, and particularly their packaging, is some of the best I've seen. Very well thought out.

[leglessAlex]

Ray Singh said:

This looks good.

Slimmest smartphone in the world at 5.15mm with 3 year warranty. £249.

That's all well and good, but it's a UK company!

I agree about the post above commenting on the Oneplus One packaging, it's fantastic.

[budfox]

I've got a Kazam Trooper which came from Argos. £48.00 with dual SIM capability and a free warranty to replace a broken screen.

Honestly I can't fault the thing.

[MarkRSi]

Quite tempted by one of these, I knew I could stick cyanogenmod on it I'd definitely take a punt...

http://m.gearbest.com/cell-phones/pp_268417.html?c...

[dtmpower]

Just ordered a Meizu M2 (not the note) to try for a bit to replace my long in the tooth Nokia 640

Only issue I've since found is 4G is not available on O2 due to the bands supported. Will report back soon once it arrives.

[Morningside]

Morningside said:

dudleybloke said:

Iv got a thl 5000 and its brilliant. The twin sim gives you voice, data ect on sim 1 and voice on sim 2.
when i dial it asks me which number to call off and it tells me which sim is receiving an incoming call.

Ah I see, I wondered how the 2 SIM worked. In the end I went for a White S9500 MTK6589 quad core thing. Its supposed to have a 13MP camera () and the specs looked quite good.
I agree with the comments saying whats on the box may (and I bet will) differ from whats inside, but for a 5" phone running android for less than £50 has got to be worth a punt. And if it is a pile of doo doo I will hand it to one of the step grand children.

I cannot believe that these are now banned on eBay due to possible spyware. I rooted it and removed them all

They were a great phone but I dropped it off the shelf and broke the touchscreen. Now trying to find something to exactly replace it.

[MarkRSi]

Morningside said:

I cannot believe that these are now banned on eBay due to possible spyware. I rooted it and removed them all

Well to be fair you can't expect most people to know how to root the thing and remove it all (assuming you can remove all of it).

It's the only thing holding me back, I'd happily pay a bit more for something that just came with a stock version of Cyanogenmod or similar and no crapware.

[anonymous-user]

Funny how things change. 2 years since the thread started. Now you can walk into loads of high street stores & buy a decent smartphone for £100. Ultimately still from China no doubt, but at least you have the support..

[SystemParanoia]

any thoughts on this one ?
http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/10/xiaomi-mi...

spec looks good, but price is high for a no-name @ £485 for the 6gb ram model


For ~£420 (RMB 3499), you get a 2.35GHz Snapdragon 821, 4GB of RAM, 128GB of UFS 2.0 storage, a 16MP camera, and a 4400mAh battery. There's an even higher-end "Mi Mix 18k" version, which ups the specs to 6GB of RAM and 256GB of storage for ~£485 (RMB 3999). The "18K" version also has a ring of 18 karat gold around the camera and fingerprint sensor. Both versions get a "full ceramic" body, which means the back, frame, and side buttons all use the stuff. There is also NFC and a rear fingerprint reader on both versions.

[TotalControl]

I literally just watched a few YouTube vids on this and saw the gsmarena spec sheet.

Then saw that it has no band 20. Effing effing bks as it looks superb in my eyes.

[leglessAlex]

SystemParanoia said:

price is high for a no-name @ £485 for the 6gb ram model

Third largest phone maker in the world, I'm not sure I'd call them a no-name brand.

Xiaomi make good stuff, I'd love to get my hands on one of those phones.

[ZesPak]

SystemParanoia said:

any thoughts on this one ?
http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/10/xiaomi-mi...

spec looks good, but price is high for a no-name @ £485 for the 6gb ram model


For ~£420 (RMB 3499), you get a 2.35GHz Snapdragon 821, 4GB of RAM, 128GB of UFS 2.0 storage, a 16MP camera, and a 4400mAh battery. There's an even higher-end "Mi Mix 18k" version, which ups the specs to 6GB of RAM and 256GB of storage for ~£485 (RMB 3999). The "18K" version also has a ring of 18 karat gold around the camera and fingerprint sensor. Both versions get a "full ceramic" body, which means the back, frame, and side buttons all use the stuff. There is also NFC and a rear fingerprint reader on both versions.

Saw a video the other day. That looks out of this world. Why can't the pixel or the iPhone look like this? Would go a long way to explaining the price tag.

[Balmoral]

My lad just got himself a Xiaomi Mi5, it's very nice phone and half the price of the top branded equivalents. Dual sim is useful too, if you have a works mobile and a personal mobile, combine the two into one handset.

[Bonefish Blues]

Just reviving the thread. Are there any up-and-coming brands worth considering as an ultra cheap phone for a daughter who seems to view mobiles as disposable?

This sort of thing:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09WH74TLS/ref...

[Your Dad]

If you're looking at spending around £100 on an Android phone then Xiaomi are worth looking at. We've got a couple at home and they're well spec'd and supported & updated to current OS levels.

[RoadToad84]

I've been using Ulefone devices for a few years now. The first was the Power 3, a mid-spec large screen phone with a decent battery. Dropped it after 18 months and smashed it, replaced the screen for pennies, and continued to use it for a year or so until it stopped charging.

Replaced with an Armor3W with a huge 10000mAh battery, and a rugged, waterproof body.

Have been using that for 2 years with no real issues. It's been dropped countless times, dunked in rivers, left in a field for 12 hours. Still has a solid 2 day battery life. The vibrate function has been disabled as it would randomly buzz every couple of seconds which was annoying, but otherwise it's superb. No plans to replace it until I have to.

The only downside (and I'm probably more blasé about this than I should be) is that system updates are non-existent. So security is probably an issue.

[S6PNJ]

Your Dad said:

If you're looking at spending around £100 on an Android phone then Xiaomi are worth looking at. We've got a couple at home and they're well spec'd and supported & updated to current OS levels.

I'd also add Realmi to Xiaomi (pretty much the same company anyway I think) - both have UK webshops so you don't have to buy from a strange Chinese website (even though, they are, in reality - a Chinese website)

BUT -and it is a big BUT - I was 'shafted' by Realmi when they didn't honour a deal they had on their website about 1 yr ago. I bought through their offer on their website but then they (pretty much) refused to ship and simply refunded me about 1-2 months after placing the order stating - out of stock - while still advertising them as in stock on their website.

Worth checking our HUKD for Xiaomi offers - https://www.hotukdeals.com/tag/xiaomi

I have a Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 pro, a Redmi 6 before that, my wife has a Redmi 9 as does my dad - everyone happy with their phones.