Chinese Android Phones 2 - Read First Post!

Allyall

Mine just arrived ten minutes ago (Redmi Note 2).
Ten days from order to delivery, a few slow days Chronopost - DPD - Me.

Just unboxed it and see MIUI 6 is on it, going to look around and see if it's worth updating to 7, and mess around with it a bit.

Digital Solitude

It's not worth updating to 7. A change to Lewa or AOSP is probably better.

I put MiUi on and then took it off my Xiaomi fecking tablet within an hour.

It's brutal.

Iseedeadpixels

MIUI 7 is the reason I didnt the new Xiaomi, been reading its gobbling up the battery on the phone.

RossieMan

They're no other decent roms avaialbel for RM N2 yet. Just waiting on one and I'm off miui for good.

Allyall

Quite a few malware and trojans preinstalled.. :mad:

LOADS of crap running in the background. Uninstalling it as I find it.
Think the worst one so far was Search.

It was a monitoring trojan. Pretty sure there are a few more.

savemejebus

Allyall wrote: »

Quite a few malware and trojans preinstalled.. :mad:

LOADS of crap running in the background. Uninstalling it as I find it.
Think the worst one so far was Search.

It was a monitoring trojan. Pretty sure there are a few more.

From stock or did the seller flash play services etc in advance?

Allyall

savemejebus wrote: »

From stock or did the seller flash play services etc in advance?

I'm guessing it's the seller, as there seems to be an awful lot of junk if it's stock.

EDIT - Sorry, I "reset to Factory settings" as soon as I got it, so I'm guessing it's stock.. :mad:

'Search' was the main one. But that seems to be stock, as it's only possible to disable it, not uninstall. At least not until I root it and use Root uninstaller.

Also three cleaners:
CleanMaster
DU Speed
Cleaner.

Some of the apps on it
Baidu
Qunar Travel
QQ
Today's Headline
Weibo
WPS Office
Reader

A load of Chinese apps

A few "Mi" apps - removed them anyway, they were in Chinese.

coldfire1x

Another impressive specs:

4gb model:
http://www.elephone.cc/elephone-vowney.html

3gb model:
http://www.elephone.cc/elephone-vowney-3gb.html

savemejebus

Allyall wrote: »

I'm guessing it's the seller, as there seems to be an awful lot of junk if it's stock.

EDIT - Sorry, I "reset to Factory settings" as soon as I got it, so I'm guessing it's stock.. :mad:

Did you reset from recovery menu or from in miui? Had the seller flashed gapps for you?

Allyall

savemejebus wrote: »

Did you reset from recovery menu or from in miui? Had the seller flashed gapps for you?

Nope. Looks like the seller did nothing. Just forwarded it to me.
Seems to be okay now that I've removed most and disabled the rest.

I understand bloatware. They make money from it, and it can be uninstalled.
They may also make some cash from some that can't be removed.

But the spyware is worrying. The phone itself seems great, as mentioned before battery seems to be depleting pretty quickly, but I can't really tell yet.

I won't feel fully comfortable with this phone until I've fully wiped it and installed another (more secure) rom is on it.
But that also applies to samsung/HTC etc..

But you'll never get me near another ZTE (Vodafone version can be an exception, but not for me).

johnybean

Got the Mlais M7 the other day so said I would pop up a quick review.
I bought from EU.DX as I didnt see it in stock in the Gearbest EU warehouse. I paid about €180 altogether for the phone but I can see that its a good bit less from Gearbest and would probably arrive quicker than it did from DX (Took over 2 weeks)
On to the phone itself
Pros:
1. The phone looks great. I had a Lenovo K3 note (only had it a month and dropped it hence the change) and while the note was a great phone for the money, it was pretty boring aesthetically.
2. Phone is snappy in operation., Its an octocore with 3GB of RAM so performance is excellent.
3. Comes with stick android 5.0 onboard, no bloatware and everything is running smooth
4. Dual sim with 4G and seperate expansion slot for SD card (What is the story with the new tend of having shared slots so you can have dual sim OR 1 sim and 1 SD card? Pain in the hole!)
5. Build quality is spot on
6. Haven't used the camera much but it seems fine. Same as most phones in this category, grand for day to day snapping but will struggle in low light situations.
Cons:
1. Battery is only 2600mAh. This is one of the biggest drawbacks of the phone but before there is a flood of "that size battery is useless in a phone in this day and age" responses, I am always beside a charging point and will be getting a power bank for emergencies so it doesn't bother me that much. Have a couple of charge cycles done at this stage so may see some improvements in the coming days but the best I got yet was approx 3 hrs screen on time.
2. Screen is "only" 720P. I say "only" because it is actually a cracking screen and the fact that it is 720P spares the battery a good bit.
3. The fingerprint scanner is something of a gimmick I think as 1. it is on the back (I think placing it on the home button on the front is the only logical place to put one) and 2. it only works for me about 1 in 3 times so I have disabled it for now.
4. The onboard storage is split into 2 partitions (approx 5GB and 8 GB respectively. Remaining 3 GB seems to have vanished on the boat over!), I am not too bothered about this as I have an SD card but some may be put off
5. There doesn't seem to be a massive community for the phone so ROMs may be hard enough to get. Again, I am not that bothered as the phone is working perfectly as is so if it aint broke and all that jazz.
Summary:
The review is pretty brief but I have only had the phone for a few days, I will come back and update if there are any major changes. I know that there are quite a few drawbacks but I was happy enough to live with them and take a chance on the phone and I have to say that I am glad that I did. Sure, the K3 note is a better all around but it was a bit "meh". This phone performs well and looks good and that is good enough for me. I will stick a couple of review videos below for those that are interested.

baingal nancer

[I got mail from gearbest last nite saying order from yesterday shipped, and status in royal mail now is 'ON ITS WAY TODUBLIN - FOR ONWARD DELIVERY']


phone is out with an post this morning,was'nt expecting it to be that quick only ordered Wednesday

horse7

STILL no sign of package from gearbest europe. 17 track shows in transit on my tablet,but for same item on my pc its not found. ireland express is still a mystery.

GBX

In recent weeks I've ordered a few bits from GBest and not had any issues. All delivered with An Post.
Hopefully they turn up.

jacksie66

This post has been deleted.

Iseedeadpixels

jacksie66 wrote: »

Was thinking of picking this up. Battery looks insane, http://www.gearbest.com/cell-phones/pp_239102.html

Go for it, I went for the Bluboo x550 because of the battery, they have the sames processor and reviews have been good.

baingal nancer

Is it recommended to factory reset any of these phones before use?

baingal nancer

So got the redmi 2 pro today, looks pretty good so far, just couple of questions for the experts here,

how do know I if I have the correct ROM as in Chinese or global like I've seen some posts about, or does it really matter

horse7

17 track shows its in Heathrow since 24th.

Harika

baingal nancer wrote: »

So got the redmi 2 pro today, looks pretty good so far, just couple of questions for the experts here,

how do know I if I have the correct ROM as in Chinese or global like I've seen some posts about, or does it really matter

Which version do you have? Settings -> about phone

pajor

I'm getting the indecision rage.

baingal nancer

Harika wrote: »

Which version do you have? Settings -> about phone

Miui 66.55 CD stable

GristlyEnd

baingal nancer wrote: »

Miui 66.55 CD stable

That's not an official ROM. I had the same on mine when I got it but I changed it to the Chinese developer ROM as I had issues with malware on the original flashed ROM.

baingal nancer

DarrenG wrote: »

That's not an official ROM. I had the same on mine when I got it but I changed it to the Chinese developer ROM as I had issues with malware on the original flashed ROM.

How would I go about doing that and is it easy to do?

savemejebus

Got a Redmi Note 2 to give as as a gift for someone not too techie and so am trying to make it as stock Androidy as possible.

Nova and Google now are great for the look and feel but does anyone have suggestions for reducing the appearance of the odd Chinese message from Miui?

Also Malwarebytes keeps crashing out on it after between 30 secs and 2 mins of scanning, has this been happening to anyone else? Stock rom and Before it crashed it found Cleanmaster as malware tho...

Harika

This seems to be the official one: http://en.miui.com/download-261.html#371

Allyall

savemejebus wrote: »

Before it crashed it found Cleanmaster as malware tho...

Try F-Secure Mobile Security with Safe Browser.
The CleanMaster on it is Malware, It is a custom build "International" version .
I'm pretty sure the stock browser is malware too. I'm keeping it on for a bit and monitoring what's what. Then I'll wipe it and try another rom.

I might just Root it and use Root Uninstaller to remove some stuff.

savemejebus

Allyall wrote: »

Try F-Secure Mobile Security with Safe Browser.
The CleanMaster on it is Malware, It is a custom build "International" version .
I'm pretty sure the stock browser is malware too. I'm keeping it on for a bit and monitoring what's what. Then I'll wipe it and try another rom.

I might just Root it and use Root Uninstaller to remove some stuff.

Thanks will try the F-Secure...I'm amazed that xiaomi are shipping the phones with that crap onboard though as I think about the Lenovo shenanigans a few months ago I shouldn't be.

baingal nancer

How do I know if the cleanmaster on my phone is malware?

Curb Your Enthusiasm

this looks great.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ubik1/ubik-uno-solid-performance-smartphone-at-unbeatabl