My Journey to the Chinese Phone Market.... the future is bright!
This article is a summary of my journey through the world of mobile phones and it is why I am going to start this article by sharing a bit of a history lesson through my eyes. I have owned a great many mobile devices and I think my journey will give you the reader reasons why I think the Chinese Mobile phone market has a brilliant future.
The mobile phone has changed so much these past 20 years from the very first Nokia “Brick” phones and their very popular game of snake through to today with the latest, all singing, all dancing Apple, Samsung/ Google power houses.
We practically do everything on our phones today from watching videos on how to bake a cake to video chatting with loved ones on the otherside of the planet. So it should come as no surprise that by 2018 it is expected that over third of the world's population will own a mobile phone.
In the 90’s the tech and computing power was growing but the user adoption wasn’t there this was primarily due to the massive learning curve manufacturers had to make to create a usable experience. I owned a great many phones that boasted viewing cut down WAP sites on a mobile device. However in reality navigating a site with a 9-digit keypad made it too stressful, apps just were not that great plus data speeds were also grim back then.
The phone that got really close to being usable for me was the Sony P900 it was a big heavy device but it was less stressful as the other competitors on the market. It did have a stylus and touchscreen which made things bearable but if there was a computer at hand I would rather use that.
This all changed when Apple released their iphone and the rest as they say was history!
I personally loved Apple phones back in the late 2000’s and I annually queued up religiously for those much hyped midnight launches for the latest iphone model.
After Steve Job’s passed away I really felt disappointed in the new features of the phones that were released annually and the rising cost of the devices I started to ask myself the question about the apple ecosystem.
“How can a company release a phone annually and make me want it so bady when my current phone is perfectly usable?”
“Why does a company stop providing updates for older phones (which are perfectly usable) to push them into buying a newer phone more regularly?”
We all know this is about the money and after many years I just couldn’t justify spending hundreds of pounds every year to get the latest jonny Ives quote “Best iphone you will ever own”.
Being an open source guy (Apple was my guilty pleasure) I did try and love android in the late 2000’s but it was a bit like the wild west. HTC devices were horrendous in terms of battery life I knew android would be the future but not what I wanted in 2009 as the hardware wasn’t great.
A couple years had passed and I think something just snapped when the next "s" version iphone came out. Why was I spending almost over £500 for a phone when for the same amount of money I could by a TV or a laptop or games console?
It was at this time I jumped over to my first Google phone, the Nexus 5 in 2013. Google came in and decided to undercut Apple by releasing a quality product without the hefty designer price tag.
The freedom of the apps on play store gave me more variety, the hardware and battery life much improved from the years earlier. I have found my new utopia. I honestly didn’t mind buying a new phone every year for something faster slimmer and cooler as I wasn’t spending £500+ for a device.
The articles of that time were very negative towards this newer liberating movement.
“Android apps and store are less secure”, “Android devices can get viruses” to “android devices are harder to use” but it was all scare tactics to make people stay on Apple universe.
History has a tendency to repeat itself and Google unfortunately followed in the way of Apple wanting to in increase the prices of their devices…. I mean £900 for a top end pixel phone?! I just recently spent £700 for a Sony Ultra HD TV could I really warrant spending more on a device that I would use to speak to people with and browse the web on?
I did a jump again from Google devices to an Android Sony Xperia which were great value for money but after an accidental drop I found myself with a bill of £150 to replace a damaged screen. Sony phones also started to increase in price. I just was could not warrant paying these prices.
In early 2016 I was googling for cheap Android phones and I came across the Chinese Phone Market and a website called www.Gearbest.com.
The western press is still negative to this new market of phones from articles and postings on forums stating that these are “poorer quality devices that are not able to compete with the western market that’s why you never see them in the west” to “Chinese phones can steal your details” I wasn’t one to be swayed by negative and ignorant press.
I bought my Chinese phone the Ulefone 007 for £40.00 with a coupon thinking that if I don’t get anything back I only lost £40.00.
Nothing came for 3 weeks and to be honest I forgot about it until a package was delivered to my door with a bunch of Chinese writing on the despatch sticker I realised it must be the new phone but didn't have my hopes up.
For £40 this was one of the best devices I have ever owned (maybe due to the price) but I it done everything i needed, web, email, take pictures, youtube and with a bright 720p screen and decent battery for £40 I was jumping for joy. Was it the speediest thing ever that I could play games on… I don’t know and probably not but it didn’t affect me because I don’t play that many games but I could watch youtube, whatsapp and send emails from a device that costs as much as a high quality phone case and screen protector for an iphone 7!
The phone had 1GB of Ram and it wasn’t the fastest kid on the block but for £40 quid I didn’t care. I did start to wonder what could I get if I put some decent money towards this.
I have now bought a number of phones from Gearbest all for a fraction of the cost of an iphone or Google device. I did realise is that last year even though they are a great many Chinese manufacturers that designed and released phones almost on a monthly basis a majority of them tried to emulate many of the western phones on the current market.
However this is now changing and they are now glimpses of new innovations from China with phones like the yotaphone which was a dual screen phone : one high def screen the other an e-ink display for battery saving to the jaw dropping Xaomi Mi Mix a bezel-less phone.
With the innovation and forward enterprise in China more manufacturers are filling in the void of affordable high quality mobile phones and for the past 1 year I have already purchased 6 devices to use and to give to family.
So my advice is “Don’t Believe the hype” and ask yourself why were Chinese phones were shunned only 2 years ago by stores like Carphone Warehouse in the UK but today now they happily stock the one plus and Huawei brands which are now causing the prices of these devices in China to increase in the same fashion as the google devices in the past.
I will be posting reviews on my last 2 devices the Gemini Pro and the Maze Alpha in the next couple of days if people want to read it so please leave a comment if you would like to hear my views of using these devices so far.
If you have bought any phone from the Chinese Market and how did you find them? If you are interested in buying devices from another market please do your research as you could find some amazing bargains for high quality tech.
Peace and Love
Jazz