ReDDs3D

Hi, I'm living in china at the moment and was thinking about getting a new phone. But by default, phones here are somewhat more expensive then they are in the US so I'm not sure yet whether I wanna dish out ~$700 just to get an S3...

Chinese brands are obviously much cheaper here and I have heard that brands like Huawei are really nice. But to be honest, I just don't trust them :T....

I was looking at the Xiaomi phones which are rapidly gaining popularity, and well, just the specs and the price of the phones got me extremely interested in them :P. On paper they seem to be extremely powerful, and here I can get the Xiaomi M1S for 1500¥ (~$240) or the new Mi-2 for 2000¥ ($320). I'm extremly tempted to get one, but alas, the only reviews and such I can find are in chinese (which I obviously do not understand :S).

So I ask you, citizens of Android-forums , if any of you have had experience in owning or even handling a xiaomi phone. How are they, pros & cons, should I get one?? Which one then?

Thank you!

mikedt

I think I'd rather trust a Huawei to be more solid, robust and reliable than whatever this Xiaomi(Who?) phone is. Are Xiaomi even a manufacturer? - because on their website, there's t-shirts, baseball caps, soft toys and all sorts of things. More than likely they're only a distributor NOT a manufacturer for whatever cheap products they can sell...
x website.JPG
...where's the tech support page?

BTW I'm in China as well and I bought a Lenovo, because I wanted a phone I could trust not to be flaky and not to go faulty within a few weeks. Very happy with it. I certainly didn't want to pay the stiff premium for another Samsung, because the Lenovo was replacing a broken Samsung.

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Last edited by mikedt; October 7th, 2012 at 12:04 AM.

ReDDs3D

Oh really? 住在中国吗？ :P
Well this is convenient then haha. I was talking about the http://www.xiaomi.com/index.php

Xiaomi M1s or the Xiaomi M2, they're really popular phones in china :O
I was thinking of getting one off taobao, or tmall.

But out of curiousity, what lenovo phone did you buy?

mikedt

是

Fake Apple iPhones are popular in China as well.

I'm pretty sure that Xiaomi is only a distributor/wholesaler/retailer, of whatever products they can get hold of. Because of the prevalence of toys, apparel, fancy goods and other non-tech products on their site.

Are they reliable, what's the quality like? Can you get them replaced or repaired if they crap out on you? They seem like a very good spec for the money though.

Lenovo P700i, bought from the main flagship China Mobile showroom here. It's not particularly high specced, better than the Galaxy S it replaced though. But it felt really solid and robust, and has a really great battery life. And it's dual-SIM, so that saves me having to carry two phones around when I travel.

Last edited by mikedt; October 7th, 2012 at 08:33 AM.