The Chinese are starting to make high quality cheap phones

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http://www.gearbest.com/cell-phones/pp_147582.html

It has even higher specs than the One Plus One without the stupid invite system and a cheaper price. With the coupon "P7000" it costs $195 US! The company is from one of their ex managers.

Specs:
- 5.5" 1080p screen
- 64 bit octacore MT6752 processor @ 1.7ghz
- 3GB RAM, 16GB ROM
- Android 5.0 (FINALLY starting to see some phones shipping with lollipop!)
- Touch fingerprint sensor (we'll have to see how well this works, but it looks promising)
- 3450 mAh removable battery
- Reported Sony IMX 214 image sensor, f/2.0 lens (though we've been burned with Chinese companies claiming Sony sensors before, fingers crossed this actually does turn out to be true since they're hyping it pretty heavily... It would be hard to claim that they "accidentally" put it in the marketing info based on how prominent it's featured)
- Size: 15.5 x 7.67 x 0.93 cm, 160g
- Magnalium bezel, which is an aluminum/magnesium alloy that I'd never heard of before, but looks pretty I guess?
- Available colours: black, gold, white
- Frequency support: GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz WCDMA 850/900/1900/2100MHz FDD-LTE 800/1800/2100/2600MHz (this means Rogers/Bell/Telus 3G/HSPA, and Bell/Rogers LTE on 2600 - no Mobilicty or Wind)
- According to the promo video... A ton of different ROM options? Not sure where they're getting that from, and I believe they promised multiple ROM support for the P3000s as well which has never materialized, so take that with a grain of salt. On the plus side, the stock Elephone Android ROM has been pretty solid for me in the past
- Gravity Sensor, Proximity Sensor, Light Sensor, Wifi, GPS, FM radio, Multi-touch
- TF card support
- Dual sim, as with most of these Chinese phones

It has more RAM, it has a 1080p screen, the same screen size, and most of all a big removable battery. I think a removable battery should be mandatory for every phone. Samsung has really betrayed its users by removing this feature from the Galaxy S6.

Seriously, you have a fully functional phone with three times as much RAM as the iPhone 6 Plus for so little money. A Plus costs more than 4 times as much!
 
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You can get very good performance/price ratio with chineses phones, but overall quality is not yet as good as high end phones from other vendors... it is probably just a matter of time before they'll take over though.
 
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Yes there are some good ones out there ... and they are already causing Samsung considerable trouble - because they are adopting the same strategy of low-price, low (or no) profits.

That strategy only lasts for so long in an independent company - Samsung got billions of subsidies from the Korean gov't, and the Chinese companies get billions from their government.

It makes things hard to compare.
 
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Wow this is a great phone with a STUNNING camera! All for only $195??

Apple can really piss off with offerings like this.
 
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Unboxing and first impressions... looks really, really good for the money. I'm never buying a phone made for the Western market ever again.
 
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(Zloth looks at his flip phone) You know, maybe it's starting to be time...

Nah. I'm sure the phones will be even better if I can hold out another year!
 
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I'll probably be going for a Chinese phone, but I'm waiting for a better Ubuntu phone model. If you're concerned about privacy, Android is a essentially a dedicated snooping machine.
 
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Wow this is a great phone with a STUNNING camera! All for only $195??

Apple can really piss off with offerings like this.

Thing to ask yourself is ... how is it that when Samsung and Apple phones contain ~$250 of components, not including overhead, sales & marketing, warranty costs and so on ... that these guys can sell phones for $195 (even last years tech - which make no mistake, it IS older tech) AND make money?

Answer is simple: they can't.

This is called 'dumping'. Similar to what South Korea did to grab the memory and later share of overall semiconductor market, the government of China is spending MANY billions of $ propping up these companies so that they gain market share over 'foreign' competition.
 
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Thing to ask yourself is … how is it that when Samsung and Apple phones contain ~$250 of components, not including overhead, sales & marketing, warranty costs and so on … that these guys can sell phones for $195 (even last years tech - which make no mistake, it IS older tech) AND make money?

Answer is simple: they can't.

This is called 'dumping'. Similar to what South Korea did to grab the memory and later share of overall semiconductor market, the government of China is spending MANY billions of $ propping up these companies so that they gain market share over 'foreign' competition.

Well, while you have a point, a lot of Chinese companies also use even worse factories and working conditions than their counterpart from other countries do, and have much lower costs for staff as well, which is part of the reason how they can sell such a cheap phones, actually a lot of these companies are privately owned and making a profit without government support.

Also the prices apple takes are sick their stuff is so overpriced it is ridicules. I once got a apple product from work for free and the initial adapter I had broke, a new one in Sweden costs $20, I bought it in china for $0.1 and it worked better than the original one , in other words they have a gross margin of 99.5% or some such for this product… still don't understand that people buy their stuff.
 
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People buy what's cheaper.
Sorry, but it's the benefit of capitalism and global market. Why would anyone buy the expensive thing if there is a cheaper counterpart out there?
In the long run, sure, we're doomed. Because of cheap work force that is nothing else but modern slavery and once our countries economy dies, we'll all become slaves.

You don't like it, I don't like it, but that's how modern capitalism works. Something has to change there. Global minimal wages and banned overtime work should be a nice start. Sadly, you can't tell that to chinese.
 
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I'm fine with cheap Chinese phones. They only need to last 2 years as thats my upgrade cycle. I have a Nexus 5 right now and I'm getting close to being ready for a new one. I am going to wait and see what the next Nexus phone(s) will be like first tho.
 
Well, while you have a point, a lot of Chinese companies also use even worse factories and working conditions than their counterpart from other countries do, and have much lower costs for staff as well, which is part of the reason how they can sell such a cheap phones, actually a lot of these companies are privately owned and making a profit without government support.

Also the prices apple takes are sick their stuff is so overpriced it is ridicules. I once got a apple product from work for free and the initial adapter I had broke, a new one in Sweden costs $20, I bought it in china for $0.1 and it worked better than the original one , in other words they have a gross margin of 99.5% or some such for this product… still don't understand that people buy their stuff.

On the China thing - let me ask a question ... is Samsung a private company? I'll answer it - YES. BUT ... in the late 80s when Korea was trying to grab high profile semiconductor market from Japan (which had subsidized companies massively in the 70s), they got boat-loads of cash from the Korean government so that they could 'dump' memory modules into the US. And it worked ... because people are cheap and would rather pay less and have thousands of peopel lose their jobs. Because that IS what happened.

And WHY do you have such 'anti-Apple' blinders on? Samsung and HTC have products that cost the same to build, and at least here in the US cost the same to buy ...

The reality is only ONE company is making significant profits - Apple. They own >85% of smartphone profits regularly for the last several years. Samsung was up to ~15%, but since the Chinese companies are eating them alive from the bottom and Apple has been dominating the top end of the market, Samsung sales and profits are hurting.

The real question is 'how can a company afford to sell below cost'. There are three possible answers:
- They are beinng financed from elsewhere.
- They are using slave labor / conterfeit parts to drive down costs (Yes I am saying that many of these companies blatantly steal designs from other companies)
- Some combination of these.

Personally my choice is to support companies like Apple and Samsung and HTC who have some level of accountability and transparency. I know that the ethics of manufacturing in many areas (my company has many sites throughout Asia to supply these device makers with glass) are not good, but some (as noted) are much worse than others.

We all have to make our own choices, I try to exercise my values with my wallet.
 
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The lifespan of an average cell phone is so low that it doesn't really matter much where I buy my phone. So I'm having difficult time giving much respect to these western cellphone manufacturers. I quess if you like new tech and don't mind switching phones every year or less, this doesn't matter, but imo it is worrying that phones have become almost disposable. A new kind of e-waste problem…
 
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On the China thing - let me ask a question … is Samsung a private company? I'll answer it - YES. BUT … in the late 80s when Korea was trying to grab high profile semiconductor market from Japan (which had subsidized companies massively in the 70s), they got boat-loads of cash from the Korean government so that they could 'dump' memory modules into the US. And it worked … because people are cheap and would rather pay less and have thousands of peopel lose their jobs. Because that IS what happened.

And WHY do you have such 'anti-Apple' blinders on? Samsung and HTC have products that cost the same to build, and at least here in the US cost the same to buy …

The reality is only ONE company is making significant profits - Apple. They own >85% of smartphone profits regularly for the last several years. Samsung was up to ~15%, but since the Chinese companies are eating them alive from the bottom and Apple has been dominating the top end of the market, Samsung sales and profits are hurting.

The real question is 'how can a company afford to sell below cost'. There are three possible answers:
- They are beinng financed from elsewhere.
- They are using slave labor / conterfeit parts to drive down costs (Yes I am saying that many of these companies blatantly steal designs from other companies)
- Some combination of these.

Personally my choice is to support companies like Apple and Samsung and HTC who have some level of accountability and transparency. I know that the ethics of manufacturing in many areas (my company has many sites throughout Asia to supply these device makers with glass) are not good, but some (as noted) are much worse than others.

We all have to make our own choices, I try to exercise my values with my wallet.

I have given you a concrete example of why I dislike Apple, any other company who'd have such a margin on such a product would be unacceptable. The products costs a less than a few cents to produce and they sell it for $20 in Sweden, how is that ok ?

The privately owned Chinese companies use android and in this field every phone is more or less a copy of another one, yes they have very low R&D costs, yes they have very low assembly cost and labour cost, Chinese government try to favour Chinese companies just like US do favour US companies.

However it is not price dumping, the Chinese government are not giving these companies money to flood the market with cheap phones, the production costs for these phones are very low and the Chinese companies can sell them very close to that price unlike Apple who takes a huge premium for everything they do.

I don't buy your "I want to care for the workers" stuff either. While the Chinese companies may or may not have even worse conditions than Samsung and Apple, they also have pretty horrible conditions. If you want to try and make a difference you can try something like fairphone: http://www.fairphone.com/
 
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I have given you a concrete example of why I dislike Apple, any other company who'd have such a margin on such a product would be unacceptable. The products costs a less than a few cents to produce and they sell it for $20 in Sweden, how is that ok ?

My kids would be with you on that one! The Lightning charge cables are *the worst*! We've bought both Apple cables and third-party cables since getting my wife and both kids iPhone 5 when they came out. The Apple ones last longer ... but it is ~6 months vs. ~1-2 months in the hands of a teenager.

But again I have to call you on a singular anti-Apple bias that makes no sense. Samsung's products cost the same to make, their accessories have the same MSRP and on and on. Same for HTC, ASUS, HP and all of my other devices. I am not saying that Apple is *not* a profit-centric company, but so are all companies ... and when you think that they are doing the research for many other companies indirectly, that they carrry OS as well as hardware design unlike pretty much anyone else ... it is amazing how they totally dominate the profitability without really charging more at the top end of the market.

In terms of the price to cost - it is really not any different if you wanted to buy the USB 3 cable for the Samsung Galaxy S4 ... the big difference is that whereas for *everything* else we have a drawer full of generic USB cables, for our Apple stuff we depend on Apple cables ...
 
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Apple has always had the same strategy: offer inferior specs, but convince consumers to buy their devices anyway with marketing to make them look "mystical" and "trendy" by copying old designs dating from the sixties and seventies from Braun.

Prices have simply become ridiculous. Here, with the lowered dollar, you have to pay almost $1000 for an Iphone 6 Plus! It's simply outrageous!

This phone and other Chinese models can be offered for cheaper and allow the companies behind them to make a legitimate small profit for two reasons: first, the specs are middle to high range rather than high range. Second: they spend almost nothing on marketing, contrarily to the likes of Apple, Samsung or HTC, for which this costs a fortune every year. It's the same thing for the new Asus Zenphone.

Here is the thing: you can buy four of these phones for one Iphone of the same size. If txa replaces the iPhone for everyone in his family, every two years, it's going to totally cost a fortune! At this point it costs so much money that it's a plain horrible deal.

And if you want you're not forced to use Google services, you can install Cyanogen without any of the Google apps and only the Amazon app store. Also Apple says they don't track you both they do it anyway. The whole "spotlight" thing they enabled by default was blatantly dishonest.
 
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I wouldn't trust Cyanogen if I were you. And the major problem of Android's design is its extremely weak permissions system to prevent apps from abusing your data. None of the forks really address that. When Cyanogen was run by the community, it tried to implement the strong permissions framework called PDroid. Google made threats to stop them. The whole platform is designed to allow for user data to be exploited.
 
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