Had a wee play with a sibling’s smartphone on the weekend as well as helping her fix an old iPhone 3g for our nephew and am now suffering handset envy.
I used to use the iPhone’s 2g/3g/3gs/and 4g and while I enjoyed them they were never as wonderful an item until they were jailbroken and customized. Her smartphone – while still stock, was a lot more fun to play with rekindled the inner smartphone geek in me - a combination of a new Operating system as well as not so much of an imposed ecosystem that I associate with Apple products.
I cannot justify buying an expensive smartphone outright and as I have a (text and phone only) workphone, I have no need of a second contract which snuffs out the idea of getting onto a plan and paying less upfront to get the handset.
I began wondering what cheaper options might be available to me via trademe and the second hand route and quickly squashed those due to the anxiety of inheriting and or purchasing a poorly cared for device… And I don’t want to entertain a lower specced device - So I headed off to dhgate to have a squizz.
Initially looking directly at clones I looked at the various branded and unbranded solutions. It all began to feel tawdry.
When I compared the specs of what I saw against specs on what I would like to buy, if I had the money to burn – I saw that directly looking to a clone was indeed a poor solution as I would never have exactly what I wanted by taking this approach.
Then I figured – What would my experience be if I stopped looking for a clone and just looked for a phone that had approximately the specifications I liked in my siblings?
So in I plugged the specs based on my wish list and found what is obviously a clone but seems to conform to what I want – Which is a handset that I can flash ROMS onto – That will only ever be used on WIFI (No data plan for me) That I can faff around with when I get bored and that I could most likely put my work SIM into to use at some stage in the future - that has the specifications that I am looking at (+/- 5%) and this seems to check all things off in one hit.
So, below are the specs. It is pretty obvious what this handset is meaning to be, But I figured that I would try and keep the description as agnostic as possible and not mention what it is pretending to be to try to remove too much attention on the distasteful parts of this process.
I figure that for ~$250 it will be worth a play and actually may be good value. I am sure that the build quality will not be exactly the highest – But I am sure it will be at least tolerable.
There are screen shots of the Antutu benchmarked results with the antutu overall score being 28222 and there are also screenshots that describe the CPU as being a Quad core ARMv7(VFPv3, Neon)
I am aware that there is a high possibility of the antutu results being fabricated. But the overall impression is that the scores plus the assertion that the device is already rooted means that I can accomplish the ROM flashing.
From what I can see it looks to be a reasonably good purchase relative to the price and having purchased from dhgate before I know if the goods arrive completely different to what is advertised I can send them back and cancel the payment as is their model. So at that stage I would only be out whatever the return postage is.
I suspect that I have already made my mind up to purchase this. But before I do – Are there any reasons (showstopper level) that I haven't thought of that will prevent me from getting what I want as described in this post?
Basic need – Makes a phone call
Secondary need – Can mod it – Surf that internet thing from WIFI spots – DLNA the TV etc.
Your help/Opinions/Rants are welcomed.
General: 2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network HSDPA 850 / 2100
SIM Support: micro sim card
Display Type: HD Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size: 1080 x 1920 pixels, 5 inches
Memory Card: slot microSD, up to 32 GB
Internal:2G RAM+4G ROM
Data: GPRS: Class 12 (4+1/3+2/2+3/1+4 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
EDGE: Class 12
Speed: HSDPA, 21 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps
WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n,
DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi hotspot
Bluetooth: v4.0 with A2DP, EDR
USB: microUSB v2.0 , USB On-the-go
Camera: Primary: 12.5 MP
Video: 1080p@30fps,
Secondary: 2 MP
OS: Android OS, v4.2.2
CPU: Quad-core 1.7 GHz CPU, 4 cores
Accelerometer
Battery: Standard battery, Li-Ion 2600 mAh
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