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Star V1277, looking for cheap android phone.

mikes1992

Lurker
Jul 28, 2012
8
0
Hey i've recently been after getting an android phone and I want to be able to plug a HDMI into it, use wifi, use usb hosting and play games on a snes emulator.

I have animaonline snes emulator on my google account and it is well optimised.

I was looking at the Star V1277 which seems like a good buy at
 
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Just know that you get what you pay for. There is a reason this phone is cheap, likely at the expense of the screen. With such an obscure device, you will also be at the mercy of the manufacturer for software updates, which will likely never come. I would never recommend something like this. Either get an older mainstream device from HTC, Samsung, LG, or even ZTE, or save up and get the current flagships.
 
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I have one of these phones and can recommend it (for the money)

Its pretty good for a chinese phone similar quality to a zte, here is a quick summary of what I have found:

Pros:
Speed plenty fast enough with the latest dual core Mediatek chipset
Runs Video chat/skype/gtalk no problem
Screen is bright and clear if a little too bright for night use on minimum setting
Runs a clean version of Android ics
Dual sim integration is works well,as do wifi,bt,
Battery life is good enough I normally get 24+ hours if I use it as a phone although it takes a big hit using smartphone functions- on a recent trip I managed to get 2hrs 10min of HD video and then 90Mins Kindle reading before the battery went dead from a full charge- of course it comes with a 2nd battery so I could swap that straight in.
5mp Camera is fast with autofocus.

Cons:
Mic was very quiet- I had to strip the phone(4 screws) and found the moulded rubber sound channel to the mic was missing a hole (not cleared after moulding)where the to allow the sound to travel through. After poking a new hole through it the muffled mic was no more :).

Battery has no fast charge so takes about 4hrs to charge which is a pain, so I bought a universal charger to charge the 2nd battery

Photos Have a lot of noise in them I dont know if this is the jpg compression I havn't investigated further it takes reasonable snaps with good colour balance

Sensors : no compass or 3axis gyro so AR apps dont work

Support- typical Chinese mobile dont expect much -
I would expect you will need to tinker with it china-iphone.ru is fairly active though
if you need to reflash the rom if you get one with a chinese language you will need to use SP flashtools on a PC

Bundled headphones terrible went straight in the bin dont know why they bother

Oh not yet tried HDMI - I think there were some issues mentioned on the russian forum.
 
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I just purchased this phone, and so far am extremely happy. The brand is actually iStar/uleFone - although the phone is unbranded Star phones are made by a different company.

Superb screen quality, and I like the 4.3" size a lot more than my last 4" phone.

Long battery life. I have the latest version of DX-Battery Saver installed, and it underclocks the phone when it is locked. After the initial charge, I still had 70% battery left after 36 hours and light use.

Battery charging is slow, as has been posted here, but I'm not complaining due to the very long battery life.

You can get this phone with two different cameras. Usually it has a 5MP camera, which supports 8MP with software interpolation. However I purchased mine with an 8MP Sony camera which gives excellent photo and video quality. Search for IMX105 @ YouTube and you will find a few videos posted by vovoid77. The YouTube videos don't look that good, but he has included links to download the original videos, and the quality is very high.

The 8MP version of the MTK6575 model (iStar V12) is readily available. However the newly released 8MP V1277 is very hard to find. I purchased mine directly from Gotron, who make the iStar/uleFone phones, as neither malleshop, or any of the suppliers on Aliexpress selling the V1277 were able to get hold a the 8MP model. This is suprising considering all the phones come from the one factory.

The MTK6577 processer is really fast. For example my past MTK6573 phone would slow down at times, e.g. when scrolling through Facebook friends. However the MTK6577 handles this with ease. Also I've had no slow downs with ICS. My phone came with an ICS 4.0.4 ROM.

The Play Store was preinstalled and works fine. So far, I've experienced no bugs or issues with the included ROM. However, new ROMS are released quite reguarly by Bird (who make the ROMS for a lot of Chinese phones).

All in all this is an excellent phone. The build quality is very good, and the buttons on the front of the phone are capacitive so respond to the lightest touch.
 
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Got my v1277, took about 8 days to arrive from China. After using it for a few weeks now, I am very impressed with it. The two reviews above were very accurate, wonderful display, fast, everything works well on it except the installed browser. I had to install chrome which seems to work better. Charging is indeed slow and the camera is ok but not great. Android updates may be a problem, but I dont really care. I was running the pulse for two years on A2.1!!!!. Well worth the money.
 
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Charging is indeed slow and the camera is ok but not great.

The model with the 8MP Sony camera takes excellent photos.

I've got the TPU case for mine - it is usually included with the phone, but somehow it didn't come with it so I had to buy it sperately. I like how the case sticks out above the camera lens, so that it doesn't get scratched when you sit the phone down.

I'm still really happy with mine. The 512mb of RAM is a fairly big limitiation, but I've got a process killer widget which I use from time to time, which helps keep the phone running fast.

The phone can last for a few days without charging with minimum use.
 
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Hi, I'm new here (actually, I'm also new to Android).

I was going to buy this phone, but, since I've not found an official website, I'm not sure about some details...
- Does the phone support HSDPA?
- Does it support FullHD displays/TVs (using the HDMI connector)?
- does it support USB OTG? (Can I connect an USB keyboard/mouse/pendrive/HDD/etc to the phone?)
It seems that some Android phones don't support OTG...

Thanks to everyone in advance for any info.
 
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The model with the 8MP Sony camera takes excellent photos.

I've got the TPU case for mine - it is usually included with the phone, but somehow it didn't come with it so I had to buy it sperately. I like how the case sticks out above the camera lens, so that it doesn't get scratched when you sit the phone down.

I'm still really happy with mine. The 512mb of RAM is a fairly big limitiation, but I've got a process killer widget which I use from time to time, which helps keep the phone running fast.

The phone can last for a few days without charging with minimum use.
Sadly, I got the 5MP model, so my pics are not great.I have also noticed that the 512mb memory is a bit limiting, mainly because of the apps staying active even when not in use. I have a taskmanager killing apps regularly, this really does free up memory!

I have also found a tiny scratch or what may appear as a scratch on the screen! its a few mm long and can only be seen on a white screen (when texting). Still for the price, it cant be beaten at the moment.
 
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I've received this phone a few weeks ago ,named as 'BIRD V1277' on Google-play . I've been extremely happy with it's performance.

Though I've become aware that I can't get most of my Apps to install on the SD card or even to write their Data to it.It's not a SD card problem as I can place films on their via the PC and the phones Camera/Video records onto the SD .

Anyone know what this is about? as I can't use some of my past favorite apps that need space to write data -I.E- Record audio Apps etc,as I've run out of space on the phones storage.Crazy!, as I've Got 30+GB spare on my SD card that I'm unable to use for most of my apps.

Is this a phone specific problem or something new with ICS?
 
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Hi, does anybody here see this bug in their V1277?

Star V12/V1277 uleFone QVGA AMOLED / MTK6577 Display tearing issue - YouTube

it shows in mine, and it's the only thing that bothers me so far.

These are my os/build specs:

Baseband version
MAUI.11AMD.W12.22.SP.V7, 2012/08/20
16:40

Kernel version
3.0.13
test@test-virtual-machine #1
SMP PREEMPT Thu Nov 8 17:22:31 CST
2012

Build number
1009T_121108_OV5647_ICSV1.3_V08_COM
_EN

I'm asking around on many forums to find out if it happens on almost every V1277 around or on devices produced from a certain period on. Furthermore, since it seems to be a driver issue, if it's bound to just a particular build version...
 
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