How to choose a phone, focusing not on a brand, but on technical data

Considering purchasing a smartphone from a Chinese brand, most Ukrainians fear low quality. Like, it will work for a couple of weeks and break or disappoint with poor performance. On the other hand, the price of smartphones from China is lower than the products of Korean and Taiwanese manufacturers. Besides, it is said that there is strife between China and China. So can you trust Chinese gadgets?

"SECRETS" OF MANUFACTURERS

Let's start with how gadgets (smartphones and tablets) are developed. At the heart of any of them is a chip produced on the basis of a specific processor architecture. The two most common are x86 and ARM. Since a feature of chips on the x86 architecture is high power consumption, they are mainly used in desktops and laptops or in tablets with an additional battery. For the production of smartphones, which require a long battery life, chips with ARM architecture are used. ARM Limited currently allows everyone to use their invention for a modest fee - 0.067 cents from each device produced. Therefore, such chips are used by IT giants like Samsung, NVIDIA, Qualcomm (and so on), and numerous Chinese factories with names that are difficult to pronounce for a European.

Chips of the ARM architecture, in addition to one or more computing cores, include a number of accompanying components - from a RAM controller, a graphics accelerator, a video decoder, an audio codec, to wireless communication modules. That is, they are an excellent basis for the production of smartphones. The name of modern processors for them is Cortex. They have a large number of modifications, for example, A5, A7, A8, A15 and so on (see table).

And although smartphone manufacturers often bring their own know-how into chips (and then release them under their own name) and select the filling (from RAM to the camera), all smartphones still remain similar to each other. And given that most of them have Android OS installed, we can confidently say that a non-techie consumer will not feel much difference when buying a "Chinese" than if they bought a model from a more popular Korean or Taiwanese brand. Let's note a nuance: there is a factory "China" (the most popular of the manufacturers are in the review), and there is handicraft (usually fakes of famous brands are produced). It is better not to take such gadgets.

ALGORITHM OF SELECTION

Step 1. Find out the processor model

At the heart of any smartphone is an ARM chip. Instead of evaluating a brand, look at which processor was used in a smartphone and select several models for comparison with the same from the range on the market (they will be similar at different prices). If you plan to shoot and watch HD video, you need a 4-core smartphone. If you limit yourself to surfing the Internet and playing games, two cores are enough.

Step 2. Compare screens

The second item of expenses in the cost of a smartphone is the screen. We recommend a model with a resolution of at least 960x540 pixels, made using IPS technology. Screen size is a matter of personal preference.

Step 3. Compare cameras

The manufacturer can install a more or less high-quality camera on the same crystal (the price depends on this). The minimum for a modern smartphone is 5-8 megapixels for the main camera and 0.3 megapixels for the front camera.

Step 4. Check build quality

The final assembly of the smartphone is done manually. Good manufacturers have it checked by the quality control department, while cheap ones cannot afford to maintain it. The smartphone should not bend or creak when pressed.

Step 5. Find out the battery capacity

The more powerful the processor, the more capacious the battery should be. The minimum specifications for a flagship (4-core) are 2500 mAh, but for an average smartphone for 12-hour operation without recharging, 1750 mAh will be enough.

HUAWEI

The company is one of the world and technological leaders in the production of electronics, networking equipment and gadgets. The gadgets are based on crystals Qualcomm, MediaTek and HiSilicon. The quality of smartphones (more than 15 models at a price of 1.5 thousand UAH) is high, but the price bites too. So, the flagship Huawei Ascend P7 costs about 7 thousand UAH ( ), and the middle one is Ascend Y530-U00- 2 thousand UAH( ) .

LENOVO

Another Chinese company recommended in terms of price-quality ratio. The gadgets are based on Qualcomm and MediaTek chips. The assortment includes a dozen models at a price of 1 thousand UAH. The flagship S860 costs 4.8 thousand UAH (), and the average price of a smartphone (for example, A536) is 2-2.2 thousand UAH. There is a risk of purchasing a defective model, but the manufacturer changes them under warranty without question.

XIAOMI

The chip supplier for this manufacturer is also Qualcomm and MediaTek, respectively, the level of smartphones is quite high. The disadvantage is the small assortment on the market (only 8 models). Flagship price - Xiaomi Mi3 64GB- 6.3 thousand UAH (). The average price of a smartphone from this manufacturer (Red Rice 1s and Redmi Note HM-2W models) is 2.8-3.5 thousand UAH.

Considering purchasing a smartphone from a Chinese brand, most Ukrainians fear low quality. Like, it will work for a couple of weeks and break or disappoint with poor performance. On the other hand, the price of smartphones from China is lower than the products of Korean and Taiwanese manufacturers. Besides, it is said that there is strife between China and China. So can you trust Chinese gadgets?

"SECRETS" OF MANUFACTURERS

Let's start with how gadgets (smartphones and tablets) are developed. At the heart of any of them is a chip produced on the basis of a specific processor architecture. The two most common are x86 and ARM. Since a feature of chips on the x86 architecture is high power consumption, they are mainly used in desktops and laptops or in tablets with an additional battery. For the production of smartphones, which require a long battery life, chips with ARM architecture are used. ARM Limited currently allows everyone to use their invention for a modest fee - 0.067 cents from each device produced. Therefore, such chips are used by IT giants like Samsung, NVIDIA, Qualcomm (and so on), and numerous Chinese factories with names that are difficult to pronounce for a European.

Chips of the ARM architecture, in addition to one or more computing cores, include a number of related components - from a RAM controller, a graphics accelerator, a video decoder, an audio codec, to wireless modules. That is, they are an excellent basis for the production of smartphones. The name of modern processors for them is Cortex. They have a large number of modifications, for example, A5, A7, A8, A15 and so on (see table).

And although smartphone manufacturers often bring their own know-how into chips (and then release them under their own name) and select the filling (from RAM to the camera), all smartphones still remain similar to each other. And given that most of them have Android OS installed, we can confidently say that a non-techie consumer will not feel much difference when buying a "Chinese" than if they bought a model from a more popular Korean or Taiwanese brand. Let's note a nuance: there is a factory "China" (the most popular of the manufacturers are in the review), and there is handicraft (usually fakes of famous brands are produced). It is better not to take such gadgets.

ALGORITHM OF SELECTION

Step 1. Find out the processor model

At the heart of any smartphone is an ARM chip. Instead of evaluating a brand, look at which processor was used in a smartphone and select several models for comparison with the same from the range on the market (they will be similar at different prices). If you plan to shoot and watch HD video, you need a 4-core smartphone. If you limit yourself to surfing the Internet and playing games, two cores are enough.

Step 2. Compare screens

The second item of expenses in the cost of a smartphone is the screen. We recommend a model with a resolution of at least 960x540 pixels, made using IPS technology. Screen size is a matter of personal preference.

Step 3. Compare cameras

The manufacturer can install a more or less high-quality camera on the same crystal (the price depends on this). The minimum for a modern smartphone is 5–8 megapixels for the main camera and 0.3 megapixels for the front camera.

Step 4. Check build quality

The final assembly of the smartphone is done manually. Good manufacturers have it checked by the quality control department, while cheap ones cannot afford to maintain it. The smartphone should not bend or creak when pressed.

Step 5. Find out the battery capacity

The more powerful the processor, the more capacious the battery should be. The minimum specifications for a flagship (4-core) are 2500 mAh, but for an average smartphone, 1750 mAh will be enough for 12-hour operation without recharging.

Click on the image to enlarge

• Interesting

HUAWEI

The company is one of the world and technological leaders in the production of electronics, networking equipment and gadgets. The gadgets are based on crystals Qualcomm, MediaTek and HiSilicon. The quality of smartphones (more than 15 models at a price of 1.5 thousand UAH) is high, but the price bites too. So, the flagship Huawei Ascend P7 costs about 7 thousand UAH, and the average - Ascend Y530-U00 - 2 thousand UAH.

LENOVO

Another Chinese company recommended in terms of price-quality ratio. The gadgets are based on Qualcomm and MediaTek chips. The assortment includes a dozen models
at a price of 1 thousand UAH. The flagship S860 costs 4.8 thousand UAH, and the average price of a smartphone (for example, A536) is 2-2.2 thousand UAH. There is a risk of purchasing a defective model, but the manufacturer changes them under warranty without question.

XIAOMI

The chip supplier for this manufacturer is also Qualcomm and MediaTek, respectively, the level of smartphones is quite high. The disadvantage is the small assortment on the market (only 8 models). The flagship price - Mi3 64GB - 6.3 thousand UAH. The average price of a smartphone from this manufacturer (Red Rice 1s and Redmi Note HM-2W models) is 2.8-3.5 thousand UAH.

ZTE

By itself, this manufacturer is considered good (based on Qualcomm and NVIDIA chips), but only a few budget models are officially sold in Ukraine - from V881 for UAH 800 to V970 for UAH 1.3 thousand with clearly outdated technical characteristics and poor quality screens ... And the models ordered in China have problems with localization (poor translation) and firmware for our market.

KARBONN

Another popular Chinese-Indian smartphone manufacturer based on MediaTek chips. The most expensive model Titanium X White costs only UAH 3.2 thousand, and the average Lion - UAH 1.2 thousand. The quality (according to reviews) is average, but in Ukraine a guarantee is maintained and there is a network of service centers. In the lineup, there are a dozen models, the choice of which can be called "option for the economical."

• Advice

Should you buy Chinese phones and tablets? Today this question is asked by many, and many have asked it a long time ago, even several years ago. One of the second "many" is the author of these lines, who used Chinese gadgets and has a good idea of ​​the Chinese market as a whole. In today's big article, we will talk about the best budget and most popular brands of the Middle Kingdom, about the possibilities of modern Android tablets and smartphones from China, as well as about where you can and should buy these gadgets. Go!

Major market players

The main ones can be considered those companies that are not only firmly entrenched in China, but have become serious contenders for the title of top global manufacturers. Now they can compete with the market leaders - Sony, LG, HTC, Samsung and Apple. I will not say anything about Nokia for now, because the Finns are not doing well, allowing even the current Chinese brands to grab larger chunks of the electronics market than Nokia.

So, over the past few years, Huawei and ZTE, popular in their homeland, "got out of the crowd" and now occupy the fourth and fifth lines in the ranking of the best smartphone manufacturers, overtaking HTC, Sony, Nokia and BlackBerry. Nice, right? Lenovo, a well-known laptop maker, is also actively gaining ground, thanks in part to the company's new flagship K900.

In addition to these three, Xiaomi, Oppo and Meizu are among the most popular. All of these manufacturers equip their devices with the best hardware from top manufacturers. So, the latest flagships of the companies run on Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro and Snapdragon 600 processors. It only uses its own chips, which, by the way, show decent results in benchmarks and serious performance in games. In addition, all these devices use high-quality IPS matrices with HD or Full HD resolution. In addition, each manufacturer has its own stylish design, as well as a branded shell.

The price for these devices corresponds to the class, but it is significantly lower than the cost of the flagships Samsung and HTC.

As for tablets, there are no serious leaders who could stand out in the world market. Of the Top 5 smartphone manufacturers in China, only Huawei makes its own tablets, and ZTE showed several devices at Mobile World Congress, but they are not yet popular.

Top tablet manufacturers include Cube, Ainol, and Onda. These manufacturers use Rockchip, Allwinner and Actions Semiconductor processors in their devices, which show good performance. It is enough for basic tasks and even for many demanding games. Gaming will be especially comfortable if your tablet is equipped with chips from Rockchip and Allwinner.

Growing popularity of manufacturers:

These include BBK, Zopo, Vivo and THL. These manufacturers are actively winning the love of users outside their homeland thanks to high-quality and efficient smartphones with low cost. Judge for yourself, $ 200-250 for a smartphone with a 4-core processor and a high-quality HD or even Full HD IPS matrix is ​​cool!

Thanks to these brands, a new serious player has appeared on the processor market - MediaTek. For several years now, Chinese manufacturers have been actively using MTK chips in their smartphones. The bestsellers are the 2-core MT6577 and the 4-core MT6589. The second, by the way, is now used in modern Chinese smartphones and was continued in the form of an overclocked version of MT6589T (Turbo).

As I already said, smartphones JiaYu, BBK, Zopo and THL are equipped with high-quality IPS HD and Full HD matrices, as well as a fairly large amount of RAM of 1 or 2 GB.

The pluses of Chinese devices can also be attributed to the presence of Dual SIM (support for two SIM-cards), which is an undoubted advantage over competitors.

Chinese copies:

This niche is slowly dying out. More and more Chinese brands are hiring normal designers who do an excellent job and create a corporate design for devices. Yes, elements of an integrated design can slip from popular first-tier devices, but a similar situation occurs with devices of top-level companies.

Yes, nobody canceled the copies, but they also became very high quality, especially their hardware component. But, I would advise buying the smartphones I described above.

Where to buy Chinese devices?

You have several options - either you buy directly from China, while saving an extra $ 40-50, or you buy from your home country. To be honest, I have never used the first method, and in general I have not bought anything from abroad at auctions like Ebay.

Fortunately, our country is now full of shops where you can buy Chinese gadgets, and with a guarantee.

Another option is to buy from local auctions. The price for them is also lower than in stores, and the choice there is simply huge.

I will not dwell on each of the smartphones in detail, so I will give a list of the flagships of the best Chinese companies.

• Oppo Find 5
• Meizu MX2
• ZTE Grand S
• Huawei Ascend P6
• JiaYu G4 Turbo
• Zopo ZP980

Conclusion

Chinese smartphones and tablets have reached a completely new level - now they are not just some cheap fakes, now they are high-quality and powerful devices that can cope with the tasks set. The choice among them is simply huge and you will definitely like something. It's up to you to decide, of course, but I believe that everything is already obvious - Chinese devices at least have the right to life, although they are already used by millions of people around the world, and this result speaks for itself.

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There is an opinion that Chinese smartphones or phones should not be bought. Is it really? I have my own opinion on this matter.

Once upon a time, Chinese inventions were mainly associated with garbage, and the indigenous people of Central America could come up with something that the people of Central Europe could not even imagine.

Galaxy Note with TV antenna instead of stylus, iPhone with three SIM card slots. These examples can be continued, but enough that there are brands like Xiaomi, ZTE, Huawei, Meizu, LeTV, UMI, Oppo and many others.

If you're new to the topic, you might be really skeptical about these brands, but the aforementioned companies are no longer synonymous - cheap Chinese knockoff.

Many have already noticed that Chinese companies have started to really care about their products.

Increasingly, we have to deal with a situation in which a "Chinese smartphone" is better made than that of a popular manufacturer.

Why is this happening? Xiaomi, ZTE, Huawei or the other manufacturers mentioned are in fact still fighting for their image.

Yes, these are less recognizable companies than Sony, Samsung, Apple and so on, but we do not pay a lot of money for a logo and a not well thought out product, although of course there are exceptions.

That is why I decided to collect some reasons why it is worth buying Chinese smartphones.

Maybe sometimes it's worth staying away from the mainstream manufacturers and see what the Chinese have to offer?

Chinese smartphone - great looks

Although the Chinese still love to "look" at competitors, we are increasingly dealing with devices of their own design.

It must be said here that Asian manufacturers are not losing their ideas. Chinese smartphones are more and more interesting in design and you can really get the impression that you are holding something twice ... expensive.

There are really many examples, from OnePlus X to Huawei P8.

Chinese Smartphone - Lower Price

Since I have already raised the issue of the price above, it is worth mentioning it again. At the beginning, I mentioned the value of the brand we pay for, etc.

This means the final price of the product, which is much cheaper than the competitors, with the same functionality.

The first example - the laudable Xiaomi Mi4c costs half the price of the Nexus 5X, offering a similar specification.

Chinese smartphone - Dual sim

Yes, this is probably the biggest advantage of Chinese smartphones. My last three phones have had a dual slot and I'll tell you honestly - I can't imagine a smartphone with a single SIM.

The fact is that the second slot in my case belongs to the Internet, but this does not change the fact that it is difficult for me to find an operator with calls and the Internet that suit me.

As you might have guessed, almost every device from China has a Dual SIM.

However, I would like to point out that the product you are looking for must offer national frequencies, otherwise the smartphone you buy may fall into the darkness of the telecommunications industry.

Chinese smartphone - innovation

If for the foreseeable future you hear in the media about information theft in the mobile market, then an iris scanner will come in handy.

Only your latest iPhone and Galaxy won't be the first. One of the precursors of this innovation is ... UMI. Have you heard of UMI Iron and Iron Pro? This is just an example, but expect more and more.

Try something new

Today more and more people are turning to young companies. More often than not, I see even flattering comments from my readers.

Recently, I noticed the growing popularity of Meizu and some other devices in the countries of the AWG, which is very encouraging.

Maybe it's time for you to stop torturing your "Korean" ... and finally try something new?

Of course, this text is my subjective opinion about Chinese smartphones. However, if you prefer to stay with branded manufacturers, it's up to you. Good luck.

Before answering this question, you need to clarify what "Chinese smartphones" are, because it is no secret to anyone that even high-quality smartphones from Apple are produced in the same China. But in our article we will not be talking about eminent companies that have already achieved universal recognition and trust. We will talk about those brands that still confuse us with their suspiciously low prices.

Nowadays, not everyone can afford expensive smartphones from Apple, Sony and Samsung, so more and more often we give preference to promising newcomers from the Middle Kingdom. But is it worth saving on a smartphone and taking a conscious risk when purchasing equipment from little-known manufacturers? To answer this question, let's figure out what kind of "Chinese" are and how they differ from other smartphones?

What kind of "Chinese" are there?

Many people associate the word "Chinese" with something dubious, poorly assembled and cheap, and there is some truth in this, but Chinese products are different. If you buy a smartphone assembled at a good factory, you get a quality product that will last you more than one year, but if you buy a copy of an iPhone made in the basement with an antenna and a bitten pineapple instead of an apple, then you can be sure that you will soon regret your purchase.

Today's popular smartphones from Huawei have come a long way from dark horses to devices associated with quality and innovation. The same story with smartphones Lenovo, ZTE, Meizu and Xiaomi: they were able to prove that Chinese companies are able to surprise with their quality and originality. But the main advantage of these devices is still their low price, which provides them with a huge advantage in the international market.

However, the success of these companies is the exception rather than the rule. there are a huge number of other Chinese smartphone manufacturers trying to break into the market at the expense of low prices, without paying due attention to the quality of their products. Therefore, by purchasing smartphones of unknown brands, you run the risk of wasting money.

What is the difference between cheap Chinese smartphones?

If earlier it was possible to distinguish a "Chinese" smartphone by cheap body materials and handicraft assembly, today such shortcomings are rare. Novice manufacturers are trying to keep up with big brands, so they use high-quality materials for the cases, among which you can find the now popular metal and glass. The appearance of such smartphones is beyond doubt, but what's going on inside these devices is a mystery. A beautiful case can hide cheap components and poor-quality assembly. This problem is especially common in "gray" smartphones that are sold without licenses and certificates.

In addition, lately, smartphone manufacturers have been trying to surprise us with a large number of cores in a processor, gigabytes of RAM and other technical characteristics. But do we really need these vaunted gigabytes and megahertz? They are, of course, needed, but good optimization is more important. For example, the iPhone 6 has 1GB of RAM and a dual-core processor, but its performance, thanks to good optimization, significantly outperforms other devices with similar characteristics. A poorly optimized Chinese smartphone can have at least a ten-core processor, but at the same time it constantly slows down and freezes. In addition, it is not profitable for developers to release games and applications only for powerful devices, therefore, in order to reach the maximum audience, even the most demanding games are developed for smartphones with average characteristics.

Chinese smartphones are different, so it is difficult to give an unambiguous answer to the main question of the article. But if you want to buy an inexpensive and high-quality smartphone, then pay attention to devices from Meizu and Xiaomi... They have already earned a good reputation for themselves, but have not yet dramatically increased the prices of their smartphones.