søndag den 22. april 2012

China Phones and a few things you might want to know

Here in the Philippines, there are many places where you can buy a "Knock off copy" of an Nokia or other brand of phone, and they are nice looking and cheap - if you bargain the price down - but be carefull!

Many of these phones are advertised as with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, some even with Android OS - but in real life, often the Wi-Fi is fake and the Bluetooth is only for headset(not working with filetransfer), Android is usually also fake and in real life a clone that does not have "Android market" installed, so it will be extremely dificult to install other software than the few applications that the model comes with pre-installed.

And for God sake, never drop your phone, often then screen is of such poor quality that it will go loose and not many here can repair it! Usually there are no parts for china phones.

If you have taken this into mind and still is set on buying one, then ask to get a demostration of the phone and look in the menu for JAVA. If you find JAVA in the menu, then there is a chance that the phone can get new games and a few applications - I said a chance, its not a certain fact, since the JAVA  might also be fake!

Also go to the build-in filemanager and check the phone memory if its only a few kilobytes(KB or just K), then forget it - the phone is a fake that cannot get new programs or games!

If its a so called "Android" phone, then look in the menu for "Android market" and try to browse and download/install and application - there are alot of free ones there. If it works then you have a cheap Android phone, but most often it will fail.

There phones that are made in China, but has better quality. Some mentioned are: MyPhone(assembled in Philippines), Cherry mobile, DTC and so on.

A few links:


http://dtcmobile.com.ph/  

http://cherrymobile.ph/

http://myphone.com.ph/index.php


These phones are nice, but again check if you can install JAVA games/applications or if the Android version  is at least 2.3 and that the phone support Adobe Flash Player 10 or above. Flash Player allows you to watch videos on youtube and other streaming sites.

Android

  • ARMv7 processor with vector FPU, minimum 550MHz, OpenGL ES 2.0, H.264 and AAC HW decoders
  • Android™ 2.2, 2.3, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, and 4.0
  • 256MB of RAM 
  • Android web browser
Here is a link to Adobe Flash Player system requirements:

http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/tech-specs.html

Even if the phone has an processor(also called CPU) higher than 550Mhz, it has to be at least an ARMv7, and suggests on the net states that it should be 800Mhz and above, or videos might work but be "choppy".

Update: MyPhone is taking looooong time to answer the emails I have sent from the form on their own website, and the emails I have sent directly to the MyPhone customer service

So I'm not so sure they can be recommended. The phones are pretty good, but I can't say the same for the customer service. I hope they will fix that very soon, because what use is 1 year warranty if you can't get hold of the customer service to get help!!!!

Update: CS got back to me and suggested an FirmWare update, unfortunately/very strange the version they had were older than the one on the phone! Seriously????

Also they didn't bother to answer the rest of my list of questions:


Opera mini, Is there anyway to get the pre-installed Opera mini upgraded to the newer 6.5 version? As of now the pre-installed has too many bugs and no JAVA support.


Is there a way to remove the pre-installed games/apps? They take up precious memory.


On WLAN connection, the pre-installed Youtube application opens Mediaplayer when a video is chosen, but Mediaplayer does not buffer, comes with a "failed to buffer" message, and thereby rendering the youtube application useless. Any fix for this?


If using the pre-installed Opera mini to open a video, it closes with "insufficient memory" message. Any fix for this?


When looking through all settings and options on the phone I came by a strange thing: In JAVA settings the Heap size is 0(zero) that is not correct it should be something like the following values: 1 - 512 KB 2 - 768 KB 3 - 1024 KB 4 - 2048 KB (default) 5 - 4096 KB 6 - No limit Number 6 is unlimited(Heap size only limited to preinstalled memory). this could be the reason the Youtube app. and other apps crash with the "Isufficient memory" error. Do you have a fix for this? .


What is the CPU in this model and what kind og GPU does it have?


A couple of times the phone had trouble reading SMART Talk n' text Sim, didn't matter which Sim slot. This is not allways and the sim works fine in other phone, so I'm thinking maybe a SW glitch - any fix for this? .


How can this phone be software upgraded like other brands can?


What is the OS of this phone?


Is there a limitation on the size(kb/MB) of Java applications or games that can be installed?



These are pretty serious questions, that CS choose to ignore - they probably don't know!

So I stay on my opinion regarding recommendation.

With kind regards

JBJ