White Box Chinese Phone and Tablets- your experince?

I am always impressed by the low price of the phones and tablets made by Chineese White Box manufacturers. These devices mainly sell in China and it,s not possible to see them in mass quantities in other markets/ countries. I usually droll on the dirt cheap phones that I see here.

http://www.gizmochina.com/

ATM I am tempting to buy such a Chinese android phone. Also I might buy such an android tablet too. They are very cheap as well even with retina screens.

roger_m mentioned two sites in another thread.

http://www.aliexpress.com/
http://www.mobile-phones.cn/

Some of the devices here really look nice and they seem to ship to Saudi Arabia as well. I know these devices are not top notch but still I feel for their price they are not a bad deal at all esp when I am not going to do any power hungry tasks on my phone/ tablet. Why pay a premium price when all I have to do is only calling, texting, VOIP, surfing and Office Docs. etc. No heavy duty stuff indeed.

For me, personally, the only annoying thing about these phones is the way they copycat popular brand flagship phones in design n look n feel. I wish they could come with their own Designs and I will be more comfortable with it. Sure they can do it and still succeed. But sadly it seems to be the current market trend there.

I am also a bit excited that if Ubuntu touch gets some success next year, it might be embraced by these manufacturers and it will be fun to have Ubuntu on phones and tablets at such cheap prices.

I want to know if if some body got such devices from China. What is there experience with them?

 

Re: White Box Chineese Phone and Tablets- your experince?

If you're looking for a Chinese phone there are a few things to consider:

The cheaper models only come 512MB of RAM, which is limiting if you want to use your phone for more than basic tasks. It's much better to spend a few dollars more and get one with 1GB of RAM.

Secondly you need to check what 3G (WCDMA) frequencies your local phone carrier uses, and make sure you buy a phone which uses the same frequencies so it will work on your network. It's a good idea to check the specs on multiple sites selling the same phone, as it is quite common for there to mistakes in the listing of the supported frequencies.

High end brand name phones have gorilla glass screens which are hard to scratch. Most Chinese phones don't have gorilla glass screens. Some do - also OGS screen found on some phones are somewhat scratch resistant too. However many of the Chinese phones do have cases or flip covers available for them which can help to protect the phone.

A final point is that camera quality is often not that good on many of these phones, although the camera quality is slowly starting to improve. So, if camera quality is important, try and look for reviews for the phone you want to buy.

 

Re: White Box Chineese Phone and Tablets- your experince?

For tablets, as for phones, it makes sense to get 1GB of RAM. Also, some of the cheapest tablets have very poor screen quality - so check reviews before buying.

slatedroid.com is often a good source of reviews. Usually when looking for information on a particular tablet I just do a Google search for the tablet name and slatedroid.

I'm probably going to a Chuwi V88s soon, an excellent 8" tablet with long battery life, or an Icoo Fatty2 whihch appears to be the same tablet, but with even longer battery life.

Also it's worth noting that most Chinese phones and tablet don't get OTA (over the air) updates - which let enable the device to check for updates to the Android software it is running and update itself. Update may just include fixes to problems on the device, or may update Android to a more recent version. Without OTA updates, you need to manually install updated ROMs, and in doing so everything on the device will get wiped.

 

Re: White Box Chineese Phone and Tablets- your experince?

Thanks a lot, roger. Very informative indeed. So how do you get updated ROMs, from manufacturer or third party developers?
How about the retina screens mentioned there. Are they really nice screens?
Thanks

 

Re: White Box Chineese Phone and Tablets- your experince?

In some cases you can updated ROMs from the manufacturer's website. However, for the cheaper devices often there is no manufacturers website (for some of the cheaper devices, the same device is made by multiple manufacturers), or it is outdated. In which case, need rom is an excellent source of ROMs for Chinese phones.

Also sites like 4PDA and china-iphone.ru are good sources of information and ROMs for phones. You can view them in English via translate.google.com or if you're using Chrome as your browser it will ask you if you want to translate the page you are viewing to English.

SlateDroid should be a good source for tablet ROMs.

 

Re: White Box Chineese Phone and Tablets- your experince?

Thanks. I think when I am going to buy a phone or tablet I need to PM you for guidance about my choice. Lol

BTW can you tel me what are top brands in phones and tablets( so that i will not look into other brands).

 

Re: White Box Chineese Phone and Tablets- your experince?

Have a look at SlateDroid for information on tablets and reviews.

For phones, there are premium Chinese bands such as Oppo, Meizu and Xiaomi, which made excellent phones, but they are not cheap. Some examples of quality brands which are a lot cheaper are Zoppo and ThL.

etotalk is a retailer which usually only sells good quality phones.

 

Re: White Box Chineese Phone and Tablets- your experince?

Good info! Gonna have to dig around myself and see how cheap I can go to get a good tablet

 

I own a Zopo ZP910 since a few months, featuring android 4.1.1.
No problems at all: I mean it's for sure not as good as an HTC One or similar, but it does the job without issues.
Only the screen readability under direct sunlight is not good, but for the rest is ok.
However I may have been lucky because I heard of some people with different problems: what I learnt is that quality is not consistent over devices, you might get one with lots of issues.

 

Just the same as if you buy a brand name phone you will need to buy a phone with an AMOLED, Sharp ASV, or simliar screen for it to be readable under direct sunlight.

Zoppo is a quality brand, not a "no name" brand so you shouldn't have too many problems.

True, but for the price I think it's worth the risk. Anyway I always read up on phones and do research for purchasing. If I buy a $150 phone, and I have problems which are not covered under warranty, I'll just buy another $150 phone to replace it - not a massive amount of money to lose. The quality of the two Chinese phones I've owned so far has been good.

 

I bought 3 Icco tablets which were bought via ebay as christmas presents end of 2012, only 1 is still working (one wont run on battery, no sound output and the other is totally dead).

Not sure if I was unlucky, but along with the dire customer service I had (UK based Chinese seller totally ignoring my complaints), I just don't think these cheap Chinese devices are worth the hassle.

Cheers, Nick

 

Thats what I'm afraid of cheap = unreliable junk.

I'll most likely wait to purchase something like google nexus,etc.

 

White box products are often simply OEM products, ready to accept a big brand label, or simply to be sold to consumers without cables, software, etc. Or they may be generic versions of name brand product.

But they may also be counterfeit knock-offs - illegal, and to be avoided - in principle but also for security reasons; they may contain malware.

 

Re: White Box Chineese Phone and Tablets- your experince?

A lot n lot of info there. Sure I need time to read all this. Can you specify few brand names please just like you did for phones. So many thanks.

 

I used to have one and didnt like it at all. I would go with names such as Oppo, Xiaomi etc.

 

Sounds like very poor quality, not bad luck.

Here's my point of view. I love my laptops and can do everything I need on them. Accordingly, for me a tablet will not replace a laptop, but is something that is nice to play around on. With that in mind, I'd much rather buy a very cheap tablet than much more costly brand name one - as I really can't justify spending that much money. So it's either a cheap tablet or none. But, for laptops I stock to top quality brands such as Lenovo and Compal.

For $130 I can get a tablet with quite decent specs and a good quality screen. If I have problems with it along the way, it's really not a big deal to me, as I've still got my laptops. So if I have to wait a few weeks while I send it back to the supplier in China, or am unable to get it fixed it really doesn't matter to me. If it can't be fixed, in time I'll be another cheap tablet as replacement. With the rate technology is advancing at, the replacement will be faster, run a newer version of Android, and cost the same as old tablet.

A while ago I was thinking of buying a second hand Thinkpad tablet as I really love Lenovo's products, but I really could justify spending $300 on a tablet.

 

Re: White Box Chineese Phone and Tablets- your experince?

Sorry, but I don't know as much as tablet as I do phones, so can't help you too much at the moment. But I will take a look into some brands and see what seem to be the better brands.

 

Re: White Box Chineese Phone and Tablets- your experince?

Thanks a lot.

BTW how about this supplier?

http://www.pandawill.com/

 

Spemall is very good site for chinese product

i didnt use any but so far for google research work i found there ainol cube onda pipo are one of top brands

also Chuwi V88s is one of great exception if you want tablet worth of money as well term of quality look for cube tablets they are much better than chuwi because they have metal buttons

also if you ask me my fav tablet compare to chuwi V88 i go for this one

http://www.spemall.com/Cube-U35GT2-...-Screen-Dual-Camera-Bluetooth-2GB-16GB_g.html

chuwi got one advantage is 5000MAh, 3.7V over 4000 mAh Li-Polymer Battery of cube also no 3g/2g support

or this one is also great

http://www.spemall.com/Cube-U39GT-T...-Screen-Bluetooth-Dual-Camera-2GB-16GB_g.html


rest pretty much same just cube use better plastic and metals according to some people reviews but someone got both can put more light on it

and if you want tablet cheap price and decent

look for ainol crystal 2

best chips are rockchips and allwinner tablets

http://www.spemall.com/

here you can select tablets on chip brand ram......etc

i didnt buy so cannot say or review about this site but one good things about this site you get lot of screenshots and reviews of products and pretty good organised site where you can search according to your requirements (chip, price, ram, brand, screen size....etc)

 

For a lot of cheap phones imported from China (atleast here in India) I dont seem to find any SAR information. Even some cheap phones locally introduced by Samsung and Nokia doesnt have them. Does anyone have any idea of the SAR of these cheap phones?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_absorption_rate

 

Try to find the equivalent model sold in EU or US where SAR is mandatory.

 

Thanks for the very useful info.

 

you are welcome man

also if you see left side site lot of blogs and review of tablets


http://www.spemall.com/blog/

on blog right side bottom you can select by vendor of your interest good usefull reading


http://www.spemall.com/blog/best-tablet-quality-price-cube-u30gt2-from-spemall/

http://www.spemall.com/blog/chose-chuwi-v88-from-spemall-and-forget-about-ipad-mini/

 

http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/tablets/hisense-sero-7-pro.aspx

Good review and cheap as well.

 

Sounds good, and while there are cheaper 7" tablets, Hisense makes high quality TVs so hopefully their tablets will be offer good quality too.