[Update] What’s Missing From Your China Phone?

[GizBot]

What’s Missing From Your China Phone?

Recently I did a post about the pitfalls of buying a China phone, but what are they missing feature wise? We’ve seen China brands really blossom over the last 2 years. Many phones are coming with OTG, and some with NFC as well. The one thing they’re still missing that many of the Big Boys […]


http://www.gizbeat.com/3078/whats-missin...ina-phone/

[Bazabaza]

its basically in my view the roms. They seem to be put together with the minimum effort. So although you might have a really good phone its let down by a poor badly put together ROM. I think that the phone manufacturers need to change their thinking. It is beginning to happen I think but It looks to me about their priority is to try to fool people rather than putting together a package that shows the phone of to its best, They seem to concentrate on trying to fool Antutu and other bench marking apps. For example where is Android 4.4? If you are going to produce a ROM have one with more customisation features, ie actually put some options into the stock launcher for example.

[GizBeat]

its basically in my view the roms. They seem to be put together with the minimum effort. So although you might have a really good phone its let down by a poor badly put together ROM. I think that the phone manufacturers need to change their thinking. It is beginning to happen I think but It looks to me about their priority is to try to fool people rather than putting together a package that shows the phone of to its best, They seem to concentrate on trying to fool Antutu and other bench marking apps. For example where is Android 4.4? If you are going to produce a ROM have one with more customisation features, ie actually put some options into the stock launcher for example.

A great post Bazabaza....

If I may touch on a couple of your points.

For example where is Android 4.4?

Android 4.3 hasn't even been officially released for many of the Big Boy models (Samsung etc...), let alone 4.4. I feel we're quite lucky to even have 4.2.1 / 4.2.2.

If you are going to produce a ROM have one with more customisation features, ie actually put some options into the stock launcher for example.

I really like my firmwares as 'untouched' as possible. I don't want any system apps other than gapps. I don't want any funky launchers or anything else. Just give me a clean, as bug-free as possible stock ROM and I'll customize it myself with the launcher I choose and with GravityBox.

They seem to concentrate on trying to fool Antutu

While this is common with some of the 'lesser' China brands and clones, it's very rare with popular China brands. This problem can be avoided by buying well known brands/models from reputable sellers.

. I think that the phone manufacturers need to change their thinking.

Of this there is no doubt. Most of these brands wouldn't last 10 minutes in a Western country. Part of the reason they get away with it though - is because they can. There's no accountability, and even less so from purchasers outside of China.

The other side of this, is part of the reason these phones are 1/3rd the price of popular Big Boy models. If China brands and shops had top notch sales/marketing/service/customer support/quality control etc... You can be sure we wouldn't be getting them nearly as cheap as they come now. That type of customer support costs huge dough. To do it it properly would cost more than designing and manufacturing the phone.

Just my thoughts on the matter. I'm sure there are counterpoints and additions to this to be made, and would love to hear them.

[Bazabaza]

its basically in my view the roms. They seem to be put together with the minimum effort. So although you might have a really good phone its let down by a poor badly put together ROM. I think that the phone manufacturers need to change their thinking. It is beginning to happen I think but It looks to me about their priority is to try to fool people rather than putting together a package that shows the phone of to its best, They seem to concentrate on trying to fool Antutu and other bench marking apps. For example where is Android 4.4? If you are going to produce a ROM have one with more customisation features, ie actually put some options into the stock launcher for example.

A great post Bazabaza....

If I may touch on a couple of your points.

For example where is Android 4.4?

Android 4.3 hasn't even been officially released for many of the Big Boy models (Samsung etc...), let alone 4.4. I feel we're quite lucky to even have 4.2.1 / 4.2.2.

If you are going to produce a ROM have one with more customisation features, ie actually put some options into the stock launcher for example.

I really like my firmwares as 'untouched' as possible. I don't want any system apps other than gapps. I don't want any funky launchers or anything else. Just give me a clean, as bug-free as possible stock ROM and I'll customize it myself with the launcher I choose and with GravityBox.

They seem to concentrate on trying to fool Antutu

While this is common with some of the 'lesser' China brands and clones, it's very rare with popular China brands. This problem can be avoided by buying well known brands/models from reputable sellers.

. I think that the phone manufacturers need to change their thinking.

Of this there is no doubt. Most of these brands wouldn't last 10 minutes in a Western country. Part of the reason they get away with it though - is because they can. There's no accountability, and even less so from purchasers outside of China.

The other side of this, is part of the reason these phones are 1/3rd the price of popular Big Boy models. If China brands and shops had top notch sales/marketing/service/customer support/quality control etc... You can be sure we wouldn't be getting them nearly as cheap as they come now. That type of customer support costs huge dough. To do it it properly would cost more than designing and manufacturing the phone.

Just my thoughts on the matter. I'm sure there are counterpoints and additions to this to be made, and would love to hear them.

I can see the logic of your points. But I too like to keep my phone vanilla, but it would be nice to have choice. Its something other manufacturers don't really do either and I think a bit of customisation would go a long way in a very competitive market.

[spanner44]

I think the biggest problem at the moment is there are so many clones of clones of clones, if you know what I mean, and it wouldn't be so bad if they were all the same, but from what I can gather, from what I read, the specs can differ slightly from one to another, which makes the whole thing very confusing to buyers.

[drnorton]

Hi...

I like to see a phone like THL 100s. Thats a nice design. Not clones like iphone and galaxy s5 and so on.
Important for me is a good stock rom like kitkat 4.4 and it must have a 6592 or 6595 CPU with 2 GHz.
2 GB RAM, 32 GB ROM, good GPS and between 5" and 5,5 " OGS Full HD Display.
very Important is NFC, OTG and MHL. Gorilla Glas 3

MT 6592 with 2 Ghz
Batterie min. 2500 mAh (no build in)
3D Display (naked eye screen) will be nice.
3D cam rear 10 MP is enough. Front Cam not important.

Good phones I think are:
THL 100s with MHL and 2 GHz will the perfect one.
Xiaocai edge if it come...
3D69 with naked eye screen if it come and also 3D CAM and MHL

;-)

[ares25]

My first post on the forum. Glad to have found this community. The key problems according to my opinion are (in order of significance):

- Incosistent build quality control (one phone differs from the other, even same model)

- Beta ROMS, with limited functionality and a lot of chinese bloatware. It took me 4 days, 10 hours each day to cook my own ROM for my Jiayu G3N and set it up the way i wanted.

- Too many clones making it difficult for communities and developers to follow (CWM recoveries, custom ROMS, tweaks etc.)

- Not even the basic accessories (silicone cases, screen protectors, BATTERIES the most important) because of the huge variety of clones.

It's not all about CPU or GPU, or Super Multi Dimensional Photonic hypergalactic multi-million core processing power. We are talking about phones. A smartphone needs to be responsive on every user's action, needs good battery life and most of all needs to be stable and customizable! Stability and customization are still being neglected to the point of making those "super" smartphones look like dumbphones.

[aboriginalz]

IMHO the only thing missing from my Chinese phone is hardware quality and consistency - bought same model from same manufacturer and the hardware performance varies.

So what's missing from my phone:

- Screen: response is slow

- Wi-Fi: Signal extremely weak, connections problems

- Photo/Video: poor quality - megapixels are NOT the major factor for image/video quality: CMOS chip size & quality, lens quality and image processing algorithms are responsible for poor quality.

- Screen ratio is not standard (most websites do not display correctly, either stretched or shrunk)

I should mention that I'm actually satisfied with screen size (5") and the screen quality is not actually bad (for the phone's price range)

[NexusTrix]

Not sure what model you have. The screen response and general response I've had from China are responsive as any Samsung or iPhone.

Screen ratio has been perfect on any website I've viewed, even with China model from several year back.

Wifi varies..but mostly has been as strong or stronger than expensive Samsung.

Photo quality fine. Depend on what compare it to. Maybe not equal to top Samsung and iPhone pic.

Are you buying cheap clones?

[linr76]

i agree on some of the points made here.
mostly the problem is and will be that you have unfinished firmware, which in most cases will never be fixed.
the flood of clones and clones of clones is a pain, and those phones should be avoided at all cost.
the underlying problem though is not any of the chinese smartphone companies, its Mediatek themselves.
as long as Mediatek does not release the Source code for their SoC's you should actually avoid phones with their chips if you want a big developer community with many custom roms and such.

lets face it, for most people the deciding factor here is the price,
there are pretty good chinese phones to be had for under 200USD.
200USD doesnt get you much with the big boys, unless you are fortunate and your carrier subsidizes the phone (very common in parts of Europe)
But if you search for an unlocked phone from the big brand companies with the features of the better chinese phones you'll probably will find out that you will end up north of 400USD for the "same".
the only exception is Google Nexus (fairly cheap for good hardware, bleeding edge Android support)
one other factor is Dual Sim support.
while there are Dual Sim phones available from the big companies, most of them are not available in US/EU and ordering a chinese/korean model can be problematic at best (no language support, no Google apps in some cases) and not to mention very pricey.