Unknown brands of mobile phones

35har1old

MouldyOldDough said:

Amazon has a plethora of unknown Chinese brands of mobile phones

eg) https://amzn.eu/d/hojxnJy and https://amzn.eu/d/3i8e1rP

extremely cheaply - for the specs

I was wondering what they are really like - are they really bargains ?

or is there a downside ?

I mean a (virtually) 7" screen, fast 8 core processor, fast charging 5000mAh battery, a 50Mpixel camera and a huge storage capacity and Android 14 for around £150 - can you go wrong ?

What about security?

J_B

TMSG said:

* Last BV item I bought a few weeks ago was a new 10" tablet, 4GB/128GB/WIFI/dual 4G SIMs for ~£60... works perfectly and is in fact an amazing bargain. YMMV.

I just posed here about an elderly I Pad https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6588244/apps-onto-an-old-i-pad

I had a quick google for your BV tablet, but out of stock on Amazon.

Any other pointers?

teaselMay

J_B said:

TMSG said:

* Last BV item I bought a few weeks ago was a new 10" tablet, 4GB/128GB/WIFI/dual 4G SIMs for ~£60... works perfectly and is in fact an amazing bargain. YMMV.

I just posed here about an elderly I Pad https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6588244/apps-onto-an-old-i-pad

I had a quick google for your BV tablet, but out of stock on Amazon.

Any other pointers?

Not quite as cheap but have a look at Lenovo tablets, mine cost £100 2 years ago, I'm just as happy with it as I was with its ipad predecessor. Plenty of case options for them too - I've got a nice rubber one that makes it chunky and protected

ballyblack

The main thing I would look for is; does it get security updates? If so? for how long??

TMSG

J_B said:

TMSG said:

* Last BV item I bought a few weeks ago was a new 10" tablet, 4GB/128GB/WIFI/dual 4G SIMs for ~£60... works perfectly and is in fact an amazing bargain. YMMV.

I just posed here about an elderly I Pad https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6588244/apps-onto-an-old-i-pad

I had a quick google for your BV tablet, but out of stock on Amazon.

Any other pointers?

 I bought this through their (BV's) own ebay shop, and the price was so low because there was a 20% ebay discount in force. IIRC it was between £75 and 80 originally.

J_B

IvanOpinion said:

When I got my first Huawei phone (Ascend?) many people told me it was cheap Chinese rubbish and would probably only last a few weeks - usually told me I should have bought Samsung, Nokia, Ericcson, Apple etc. I have no idea about their phones but that old Huawei still powers up and runs - I think it ran Gingerbread but was later upgraded to Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean..

We still used one till last year - it had our PAYG sim from a EU country we visit regularly.

Only stopped using it as I acquired a dual sim phone so saves carrying two phones on holiday!

searchlight123

I can never understand friends of mine that spend up to £1k on a phone. I rarely spend over £200 and my latest Motorola G84 5g cost me £180 from Amazon and does everything so well. A day and a half battery from a fairly heavy user, great screen, decent camera and bags of storage (256gb) and 8gb ram. Well recommended and decent software without too much bloatware. What more do people need from a phone?

oldernonethewiser

tonygold said:

I can never understand friends of mine that spend up to £1k on a phone. I rarely spend over £200 and my latest Motorola G84 5g cost me £180 from Amazon and does everything so well. A day and a half battery from a fairly heavy user, great screen, decent camera and bags of storage (256gb) and 8gb ram. Well recommended and decent software without too much bloatware. What more do people need from a phone?

What people need and what people want are not the same

MouldyOldDough

tonygold said:

I can never understand friends of mine that spend up to £1k on a phone. I rarely spend over £200 and my latest Motorola G84 5g cost me £1uj80 from Amazon and does everything so well. A day and a half battery from a fairly heavy user, great screen, decent camera and bags of storage (256gb) and 8gb ram. Well recommended and decent software without too much j. What more do people need from a phone?

I remember the day when a phone was used to phone people and it was connected via piece of wire!! 
The screen was,at best, a 1inch mono panel showing the callers number
Before that I remember the old dial phone 

400ixl

Hardware wise these are pretty reasonable. Software wise Android 14 is already 18 months old, a version behind and these devices are unlikely to see the latest version, or get security updates for long.

Even some models from the likes of Motorola only come with 2 years of updates from their release date, so buy one that was released a year ago and you will only get a year of updates. Others last longer which although costing more make them a better buy.

Software is your biggest consideration today rather than hardware and your appetite for risk of that phone becoming vulnerable, which needs considering depending on what apps you run on it.

You also need to ensure it is not running Android 32 bit or Go versions as more and more apps will not run on it.