Less well known brands

Del_Astra

Has anyone any experience of what I shall term the lesser well known brands of smartphones, typically sold on market places such as Amazon and Ebay, for example Star?

I don't have any model or brand in mind, just trying to gauge feeling and any feedback from someone that might have tried them.

The way I see it, the main downside is support, should something go wrong with the device it could well prove harder to repair. Just looking at some of the specs and they seem very good for the price (excellent if you are prepared to source from outside the UK). Other than support of the device any other downside? I would intend to use with an Orange and/or Ovivo sim. I haven't taken the plunge and transferred my main number to Ovivo yet, mainly because I'm still in contract.

I assume customs might add a charge if ordering from China? Of course I could get the same device from a ebay seller, which might give me more come back should anything go wrong, although if I can cut out the middleman, its always going to be cheaper.

I'm not against trying out brands, I recall purchasing my first PC back in 96, a Packard Bell, at the time pretty much unheard known in the UK. I've also been well aware of Hauwei long before their handset were taken up by the UK networks. BT for example used Hauwei dongles for years, all be it with their own customed software apps, but they used the kit. I still use an old Huawei PCMCIA card in an old laptop, minus the BT software now.

Is it a case of you pay your money and take your chance?

DUTR

The cost of some handsets nowadays, you may as well get a branded one. It doesn't have to be an S4, xperia Z , iphone 5 or HTC One to be pretty admirable in use.

Herongull

Nice android smartphones can be had for less than £50 these days from mobile phone companies.

They are sold as subsidised PAYG phones and some do come with bloatware, but they are often easy to unlock, root and upgrade to a custom rom (operating system).

They are usually brilliant value for money and very reliable, so why bother with iffy phones that you don't know anything about?

Del_Astra

Thanks for the replies, I do see where your coming from, I assume if you take a PAYG, you need to factor in any additional costs to get it unlocked, generally a fiver on ebay granted.

Was just looking at the prices of phones and came across the "unbranded" options as it were, the things you find on a wet sunday get you thinking.... at least it was only phones.

Guys_Dad

The version of Android is important. Also, it is important the apps that you get as standard on these overseas imports.

Herongull

Del_Astra wrote: »

Thanks for the replies, I do see where your coming from, I assume if you take a PAYG, you need to factor in any additional costs to get it unlocked, generally a fiver on ebay granted.

Was just looking at the prices of phones and came across the "unbranded" options as it were, the things you find on a wet sunday get you thinking.... at least it was only phones.

It is often possible to unlock a PAYG phone yourself, thereby saving the fiver. Put the make a model into google with "unlock" and "forum" and this often takes you to a developers forum where they have instructions for unlocking (and also rooting) that phone.

Del_Astra

Thanks Herongull, would do that, probably before purchasing, its worth knowing what is and isn't possible.

JJ_Egan

Minimum Android version would be ICS or Jelly Bean .
Gingerbread and those that came before it would be a no .

jje

ZhugeEX

I've owned 3 dual sim android phones imported from China in the past 3 years and they've all been fine and worked perfectly. Obviously there are risks and i know guy who imported one phone that broke after one week, but his new one has been fine for the past few months.

Tbh i only recommend these unbranded phones to people if they need a dual sim capable phone like i do and if they know about android. E.g how to root an android phone. Otherwise you can still get a good phone from a reliable brand and uk customer service for near enough the same price. Because it might be too risky for people who don't know anything about how android works or if they can't fix small faults themselves e.g on my phone i had to replace the gps.confg file with one with UK satellites so the GPS would work in the UK. If you have no idea what i said then don't buy an unbranded phone.

but one thing will always remain the same, China can do it cheaper and so you can buy phones with similar specs to phones like the Xperia Z for around ~£300 less than the Z. For example the UMI X2 which is due to launch next month has the same specs as the Z (obviously lower quality parts and not a 4G capable phone) but with dual sim capabilities and will cost around ~£180-£200 to import including shipping and tax. Or you can get cheaper ~£100-£120 phones with similar specs to say the Galaxy S3 or something like that as well.

If all goes well it should be my next phone by the summer.

At the moment i have a phone similar to the Galaxy S3 specs (but with a dual core processor) and it's just as good as the S3 and i've had no problems with it at all. Obviously compared to the actual S3 the S3 wins in all tests, but it's hard to notice the difference in real life usage.