www.chinaphonearena.com

Mine just arrived today (from buyincoins, two months after initial order), and I've been playing with it for a while. It's fairly capable, and for the price I ordered at ($110), it's a good deal.

The interface:
It's interface is a mishmash of kanjii, english, and iOS, slapped in a Jelly Bean blender. Some apps are impossible to use for english-only users (me), while others are, well, odd.

The build:
This phone wasn't designed for single-hand use. If you complained that the NES controllers were too small, you'll like this one. For me, who has average sized hands, it's slightly too big for single-hand use, and just perfect for two-hand typing.

It's lightweight, plastic-y, and cheap-feeling. That's because it is cheap (foofighter, you nitwit, you!). The included silicon case makes it feel better, but even that doesn't make up for the feel.

Let's play Temple Run!
Yes. You read that right. It comes with Temple Run. Okay, not the Temple Run, but a Disneyfied-Oz take on Temple Run. Surprisingly, I was able to play it with one hand fairly comfortably. I wound up using both for precision. It was very responsive, very fun.

Can it play Crysis?
No. I'm not sure that it can play N.O.V.A either- I haven't been able to use Google Play. I wouldn't pin much hope on it, either. It is, after all, an MTK6589.

A word on rooting:
I wasn't able to get it rooted by any method I've tried. Period. SRS, SuperOneClick, Fararoot, Bin4ry- none worked for me. Could be my Windows 8 laptop. In my hunt, I was directed to this forum by this article @ Gizbeat.

One post down, two to go.

Nova should be very playable if it's truly MTK6589.

The reason those rooting methods didn't work is because they're for older versions of Android.

$110 is an astonishing price for MTK6589. Looking forward to some pictures from it's phone. What about LCD? IPS? Sound quality of loudspeaker? Call quality?

Thanks for posting your review here.

The screen is a whopper- 4.7", and it's really, really bright- even turned down to the minimum. At a 854 x 480 pixels resolution - I didn't notice it during use - it's fairly decent for watching YouTube on (once I get GAPPS installed).

Battery-wise, it's 1800mah battery isn't made for gaming sessions.

I'm not trained speaker-wise, but while I was playing Temple Run, it sounded pretty good. I usually play with a pair of headphones, but I didn't with this one. Of course, I wouldn't go out and play a Sousa March (Here's one from Musopen), but it should do.

I'm waiting to hook it up, but I'll grab my brother, my old phone, and play tele-can-phones using Serval later today.

Oh, and a few other words. The 3G is china-specific, it has no GPS, and- I'll let this guy speak:

thunderlord Wrote:Got myself one yesterday. It has MTK6589TD chipset, 1 Gb of RAM, no GPS and 3G = TD-SCDMA (Chinese standart). Cameras are interpolated, so maybe 2-3 real megapixels, no real autofocus, flash led is not very bright. It has bluetooth and Wi-fi. But 854×480 looks pretty good for 4.7 inches display and 14164 antutu marks are also great. Overall: Good phone for 100$

On taobao, it's about ten bucks cheaper after factoring in shipping. If you'd prefer ordering from somebody more accountable, it's still at $110 @ buyincoins.

Looks like a decent cheap buy for someone who doesn't need 3G or GPS.

What about viewing angles of the LCD? Do the colors wash out when viewed from top,bottom,sides?

I assume 4-band GSM since it works in Canada.