How do cheap clone smartphones compare to the real thing?

[SirDigby]

Hey techies,
I've been looking into smartphones recently because I intend on getting one in July. If I'm honest I don't want to spend £450 on the Galaxy S4 or the HTC One, and I'd still rather not the Galaxy S3. Looking around on Amazon there are a number of these flagship clones produced by Star or TTsims for about £150 that on paper look pretty decent, and a pretty good substitute to the real deal despite a few pieces of irremovable Chinese software (apparently these can be removed by rooting, but I have no idea what that is or how), the majority of them boast quad-core A7's or A9's with a MK6589 graphical processor, and varying between qHD and fHD AMOLED screens.

But how DO they compare to the real thing, if I'm honest I don't need the best thing in the world, but I'd prefer at least 720p with a quad-core, so if none of these actually are that good I may just settle for the Galaxy S3 Mini.

If anybody has any experience or knowledge on these matters, please share

 

[Jad Chaar]

I never really go for clones. Go for something cheaper from a big name brand. There are plenty of smartphones here in the US that are cheap ($50USD-$100), some even free.

 

[St1ckM4n]

Just need to make sure the CPU and GPU family is the same as the big-shots. Qualcomm Snapdragon, etc. There's some cheap phones that boast quad-core, but they are cheap CPU's that are like comparing Intel Atom to Intel core i5.

Otherwise, build quality usually will suffer, along with general quality of parts.

 

[SirDigby]

Well say something like this? 1280*720, MTK6589, with a 1.2GHz Quad-Core Cortex A7?
There's a market opening for developers that are starting to establish high end phones for minimum profit like Blu, but I doubt this?

 

[tipstir]

Clones versions you have to know what you paying for and most of the time those have low end hardware or the panel is not up to what you have today.

S3 I had it one day and returned it for Motorola Razzr Max. S4 not impress. Samsung electronics and software behind these devices are not so hot. HTC brands and all the others are rather the same in electronics. If you buy from the source you would think it would be cheaper. If you want something that has good quality and works you going have to shop around. Here in the USA we have that option and other countries you might be limited.

Quad core smart phone are no better than dual core, not going to see a huge difference. The newer phones have better 4G integrated SoC chip-sets suppose to be faster downloads and uploads.

You really shouldn't have to pay no more than $199 to $299 on a real good smartphone. Try to find someone with corp account to save 50% on the smartphone purchase.

Good luck!

 

[SirDigby]

I live in England, so as long as I can get things shipped to me, then I'm all good, do you happen to know of any phones like that you mentioned?

 

[St1ckM4n]

Well say something like this? 1280*720, MTK6589, with a 1.2GHz Quad-Core Cortex A7?
There's a market opening for developers that are starting to establish high end phones for minimum profit like Blu, but I doubt this?

Looks good. Another thing to watch out for is a microSD slot (since it's only 8GB) and make sure that the network bands are 'complete'. Some cheap radios in mobiles don't include whole spectrum.

 

[Razer]

Since I have many experience and information about these matter, my advice: just don't buy it, my friend.. I'll go with JC713's advice, just look another mainstream smartphone from well-known brand

 

[teribithia]

If you want to save money, the clone is a choice, but most clone are [FONT=arial]rubbish, especially the iphone clone. They just look good, when using you just want to drop it . [/FONT]

 

[Black March]

In my experience, cheap, or even midrange smart phones. Are generally complete and utter ****.

I think this might be largely because producing a cheap smartphone costs almost as much as producing a top end one. So the whole smartphone quality curve becomes extremely top centered. Almost exponential. Aka cheap phones are very bad, midrange phones just a little better, expensive ones really great.

So the best cheap alternative IMO is often the more out of date high end ones. Like Galaxy S2 or similar