A couple of months ago I wrote an article asking the question "Why don't we buy Chinese Android Devices?" Well, since then I have had the opportunity to own a couple of android devices from China and I feel like my previous post needs updating and some points rectifying.
When I first came across the devices from China I was blinded by the prices of them. You could bag yourself a variety of sizes and CPU's starting from £60 ish. The phones I bought were priced between £160 and £200 and are not deemed from the particularly cheap end. Before I ever received a device I was under the illusion, which was all of my doing, that I would be buying some sort of cheap wanna be phone.
I was both wrong and pleasantly surprised. The first one was the goophone i9, its a big 5.7 inch quad-core, HD screened beast! Overall the quality is pretty good, I found it as well built as most of my previously owned devices. This then lead me to want to try another, I quickly sold the goophone and went on the hunt for a replacement.
When you start to research the phones a few companies start to stand out as being a bit more premium, companies like Zopo, Xiaomi(MIUI phones), UMI, Lenovo plus a few more. They're a slightly higher price, but that comes with benefits. From my experience this manifests in good manufacturer support and community support. Also the quality of the phone is better, the glass screen is usually gorilla glass, cases have a better finish, all the things that you would associate with a phone you bought from your local shop. These devices are not cheap and tacky as you might expect, someone ( +Corbin Doak ) once described them to me as not cheap devices, but just inexpensive devices. Which might not seem like much difference, but in my recent experience has proven to be true.
All this leads me to the point I want to make. Why do we limit the devices we buy to ones offered to us by western companies. We are all familiar with Samsung, HTC and Motorola, but now companies like Oppo, Zopo and especially Huawei are braking into the more mainstream.
I kinda class myself as a bit of an Android pusher and now I'm branching out into pushing these devices into peoples faces, not literally of course. I'm just letting them know of a wider Android world. It's definitely not all plain sailing though, there are certain challenges along the way. Problems I encountered range from having my IMEI blocked by certain networks, SD card not being accepted and other minor things. All these kind of problems are usually resolved pretty quickly by community support. I enjoy the tampering side of things so I'm not really put off by them.
There is one thing I want to explain and that is paying duty on the purchase. When I purchase a device, say £200, the duty the UK government wants is 20% on top of my £200. So you always have to add that onto the prices you may come across
I find myself 2 devices in and am not about to stop anytime soon, I am already looking forward to receiving my next device, and of course a full review of it!
Don't forget you can read my latest reviews on the goophone and Zopo by clicking on the bar to the right------------------------------------>
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