Recently I did a piece on up & coming China brands in general, as well as taken a look at THL’s official website. Now it’s Doogee’s turn.
Doogee is a new player in the China brand market. They came to notoriety with their DG2014, a slim smart phone in direct competition size and price wise to the iNew V3. It was too little too late, as despite issues with the iNew V3’s charging system, the V3 had already taken a rocket shot to the top of popular China brand phones. They say timing is everything, and it’s quite possible that had Doogee came with the DG2014 prior to iNew V3’s release, the DG2014 could have become very popular.
it’s exactly the same design as the V3
Doogee hasn’t let this stop them though. They have planned a new flagship phone — the Doogee Dagger DG550, which looks suspiciously familiar to the V3. In fact, other than half an inch LCD size difference, it’s exactly the same design as the V3, right down to the Evil Eye. The cloning of the V3 is unlikely to stop people interested in purchasing a China brand phone from going with Doogee. However, timing will be critical and whoever comes first with their new 5.5″ model, will likely come away with significantly more sales.
Doogee’s website is quite nice, when comparing it to some other websites that market towards the West. I like that they have all of their latest and upcoming models on the products page. As well every phone listed has a specs sheet. Whether the specs are correct or not is another issue, but it’s great to not see blanks as with THL’s website. They also list certificates of conformity and standards compliance. This shows someone is at least partially awake over at Doogee. 
Names such as Latte, Dagger, Pixels and Valencia
The names of the different models is decidedly modern and a gigantic step up from the likes of ‘Monkey King 2’ and ‘Iron Man’. Names such as Latte, Dagger, Pixels and Valencia show that someone in marketing is up to speed. It would be a smart move to change the font that lists the phone titles though. Often China uses a font that looks like it came straight out of a 1920’s teletype machine. To have cool names such as these in this font is criminal and Doogee would do well to go with a more modern looking font here.
Recently we had several users bricked trying to use the DG300 downloads from Doogee’s official site
There is a download Doogee ROM section. A very nice change as opposed to most China brands which normally have effectively non-existent downloads sections. One caveat here is that even though the downloads are listed, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are correct. Recently we had several users bricked trying to use the DG300 downloads from Doogee’s official site. They had to get the correct firmware from other users to be brought back to life.
Their blog is another story. It’s nice that they have it at all, but the English is par for the China brand course — that is to say terrible. Recently Doogee took a giant leap and sponsored Spanish football team Villarreal. This shows Doogee has serious dough backing their brand and they are making a big push to get in, and stay in the game for such an expensive move.
Despite a couple of easily fixable missteps, Doogee has made some decent effort with their website and marketing towards the West.
It begs the question though, how could such a costly effort be made, yet completely ignore the terrible English in their blog posts. We have an answer to that, but to remain as diplomatic and politically correct as possible, we’ll end with this — Despite a couple of easily fixable missteps, Doogee has made some decent effort with their website and marketing towards the West.
A couple of easily correctable changes — proper English on their website, correct Doogee ROM downloads and a font change for the phone’s titles would do wonders for their face. If we could get quad or pentaband WCDMA (850/900/1700/1900/2100) in all of their phones it would be huge, but don’t count on this last bit until MT6595 comes around.
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