Chinese Brand Smartphones

Random bootleg Chinese smartphones aren't endorsed by Google (they don't really need to be, I guess, for China..), so they usually don't even come with GApps installed. Meaning, no GMail app, Maps, but most importantly, no Google Market. I guess depending on the phone there will be a hacker community behind them and you can get root access and install them there, but.. I'll rather have official suported phone.

 

It depends on the product really. Most of them are really good but others are just really bad but I have an Android phone from a lesser known Chinese brand. It cost me about $100 or so and it was a good phone. Very durable and very responsive, the only problem is that it suffers from the lack of RAM of most of them time if I'm running apps that take up a lot of memory it would run slow.

 

My dad owns a Chinese smartphone brand. He bought it maybe three years ago. It's working until now. Sadly, the battery gave up a few months after it was bought. I think that he replaced the battery more than a dozen times now. They are getting better and better and that is promising. It's just that the focus of these companies is profit. They produce so many units, but they are not really that checked for quality.

 

Even if the specs are good (they usually are for the price), specs aren't everything. These manufacturers usually skimp on the build quality, and the specs that aren't listed (battery capacity is one).

I bought a Tablet from a chinese manufacturer before, and the battery only lasted for 2 hours. Then, after 3 months, it failed completely.

I think you're better off buying an OEM phone or tablet, because you can get support when it breaks.

 

I know Huawei is a good, quality brand, I just don't know about the other brands. I think that as long as it's an expensive and branded item, you can't go wrong with it. After all, you get what you pay for. I read a lot of negative reviews about those cheap and knock off tablets, so the price of the item is always a good indicator of it's quality or lack thereof.

 

I'll second Huawei. I've been using a Huawei product for four years now and it's working quite well. But for the other models, they might come cheaper but don't last long. Someone I know bought a cheap Chinese smart phone. He was proud of it, said all the other phone manufacturers were swindlers. A year later, the phone started having some issues. It would go off without warning. He sold it to someone else who a month later came demanding for his cash because the phone had just died . . . in less than 1 and half years [it was dead]. That's how long most Chinese phones live.

 

Oh! Yes, I forgot about Huawei. My Chinese friend told me that they are good manufacturers. He said that, if the Chinese people use it, it's usually good. I've also heard good things about Xiaomi.

 

There are a few stores in the local mall that started selling Chinese brand smartphones. They're insanely cheap and some come with a 5 year warranty! Up until now the only reason I refused buying such phones is because it could only be done online - and that meant that I had no proper way to access my warranty in case something happened. A friend of mine bought one early this year and had no issues until know. I'm considering a purchase myself.

 

Most Chinese-made smartphones skimp in one or two major areas for their devices, and this usually includes battery life and build quality. You can find some great devices, but you never know how long that battery is going to last or which piece of the phone will break and fall off first. It's a risk you take, although there are some great savings involved if you find a decent device.

 

I have never used any Chinese smartphones and I sort of just realized because for some reason, I've always thought Samsung was a Chinese brand when they're really a South Korea brand. However, my mom recently left Blackberry after a terminally defective phone was giving her nothing but problems. Almost my entire whole family have Samsung phones, so she wanted to be different and looked towards upgrading to a Huawei phone.

When she got the new Huawei Ascend Mate 2 phone and I got to fiddle with it, I was vastly impressed with its look and its functionality. It is a quality phone reflective of Huawei as a brand. As big as it is comparable to the Galaxy Note, my mom loves it. I wasn't even aware that Huawei were making smartphones. I mean the last time I knew they were making normal, ordinary mobile phones with no "smart" technology. I definitely recommend their phones now, especially the Huawei Ascend Mate 2.

 

Eh. I don't want to be scaremongering or seem like a conspirationist, but I'm not sure if I'd trust Huawei. They have been proven to be planting spyware into their hardware in the past, and they got banned for it in UK before, iirc. They only got caught putting it into their routers, but still, that's a blow I won't trust a company after. Not to mention most of their models are actually priced very similarly to better phones anyway, 5-10 bucks more will get you a "better" phone most of the time..

 

I suggest you look into Lenovo. I own one, the Lenovo a850, and it's working really well. It's cheap compared to other big brands out there but performance-wise, I have had no issues with it at all. Lenovo is more popular for PCs and laptops, but their smartphones are proving their worth in the market.

 

I am sorry to say this but I would not recommend any Chinese brand phone unless you can guarantee that it follows ISO manufacturing standards. Why? Because the Chinese market is more focused on speed, affordability and quantity. That's a fact. Their QC procedures aren't as fastidious or as rigorous as Japanese manufacturers'. I can guarantee that Toshiba, Nikon and Canon are really great brands. If they have smartphone equivalents, they'd be some of the best phones in the world. I used to have a China phone and it only lasted for 2 years. It was supposed to be a dual sim type but the messages kept overlapping and the lag was so bad it just made me so frustrated. I was glad when I finally had reason to get rid of it. So please, please think with discernment before you buy a Chinese brand. Need I mention the high radiation content too? But I suppose you've already figured it out.

 

I don't know but i really don't trust Chinese smartphones. I feel like they break easily and doesn't guarantee product quality. I don't know about you but I've heard horror stories about Chinese products in general, not just smartphones. So really, I'd rather go for quality than affordability otherwise you'll regret it.

 

Chinese smartphone are really cool and shockingly very cheap. I do not understand why they are so cheap and yet pretty good. I think most of them come with better performance than the ones we see usually. I would love to own one someday.