At this point, Doogee has been around long enough to be called a seasoned China brand. We don’t hear nearly as much about them as we used to, but this is mostly due to Doogee concentrating their efforts at the retail level in Europe and the UK. (more…)
Xiaomi has risen to the top in an incredibly short time. Taking huge bites out of Apple and Samsung’s pockets and seemingly continuing to rise at an exponential rate, expanding into most Asian markets at the retail level, as well as Brazil. They have come to be the #3 handset maker in the world, bested only by Samsung and Apple in terms of overall handset sales. (more…)
Ulefone has been around for awhile, but didn’t come to prominence until their release of the very popular Ulefone Be 1. Within a few weeks of its release, the Ulefone Be 1 became very difficult to get and the Ulefone Be Touch 2 was announced. (more…)
When speaking of China brand mobiles, there’s no leaving out Meizu; they’ve been around since the beginning and their name is synonymous with quality to those who know the market. They have offices in Hong Kong, China, and even in Russia. Annually Meizu sells about 18 million handsets. (more…)
Leagoo is a fairly new brand, born in April 2014, but the team behind Leagoo, OTEDA Group Holding Limited, began and have been involved with technology and mobile communications since 2003. (more…)
Since Xiaomi has recently been using a couple of different camera models, some people are wondering how to tell if they have a Sony or Samsung camera in their phone.
In this post I will tell you how to check if your phone’s camera is Sony or Samsung. This should work with any mobile that has Sony or Samsung, but this method was specifically tested with Xiaomi mobiles.
Requirements
What to do
su
dmesg | grep -i imx
It’s that easy. Assuming you have a Sony camera, you will get a return message something like this
imx258 probe succeeded
This would confirm you have the Sony IMX258 camera in your Xiaomi mobile. Likewise, if you had Sony IMX214, it would return “IMX214”.
When speaking of China brand mobiles, there’s no leaving out Meizu; they’ve been around since the beginning and their name is synonymous with quality to those who know the market. They have offices in Hong Kong, China, and even in Russia. Annually Meizu sells about 18 million handsets.
Up for preview is the Meizu Metal. I’m digging the name, let’s see if it’s got the specs to match.
Meizu Metal review specs specifications
Carrying MTK’s flagship SoC– Helio X10, right off the bat we see Meizu Metal isn’t messing around. This is MediaTek’s latest release with only a handful of mobiles currently wielding the beast.
Rounding it off, the battery is a respectable 3140mAh and the Meizu Metal also has worldwide 3G/H/H+ support and 4G support for many parts of the world.
Ulefone has been around long enough now to be considered one of the veteran China brands. They broke ground with the OnePlus One look alike– Ulefone Be Pro, and the iPhone 6 lookalike– Ulefone Be Touch. I liked both of these phones, and at the time they were a good buy.
Deciding to reboot the Ulefone Be Pro, we now have the Ulefone Be Pro 2.
For a good portion of time, quite a few models were including 850/900/1900/2100 WCDMA. Over the last couple of months though, they have dropped off in favor of mostly 900/1900 from Doogee, Elephone and Oukitel.
This is sad to see, but brands such as Xiaomi, Innos, Mlais, Lenovo and Ulefone are still carrying the torch releasing budget priced phones with N/C/S American WCDMA frequencies.
Great also to see a compass included. This should be a default sensor for any phone in the $125+ range, but seems to be missing from some phones costing even far more. While I rarely to never have a use for compasses, they can come in handy when walking in unfamiliar cities.
Not content to sit on the sidelines, Elephone continues to put out innovative mobiles. With the solid P8000 I’m hoping a corner has been turned and that the P8000 wasn’t just an anomaly; their upcoming Vowney, Vowney light and M2 may go some way towards telling the tale. (more…)
Sold retail internationally, Xiaomi is one of the best known China brands. They rose to the top in a very short time period due to a huge bank roll and tons of smarts put towards marketing. Indeed, they are the #3 smartphone maker in the world preceded only by Samsung at #1 and Apple at #2. (more…)
Mlais is one of the better known China brands and have been around for quite awhile. They are especially well known in China to budget phone enthusiasts. (more…)
Cubot generally makes very solid, reliable, well-priced mobiles. They have been around long enough to be considered a veteran brand.
It may sound like I’m going a bit far, but in an industry where brands are here today and gone tomorrow and even the oldest of China brands have existed but a few years, Cubot can be considered seasoned. (more…)