Eclipse Dual SIM Android 2.2 Smartphone - Opinions

[samqdos]

Hey Everybody.

Well, since there's not much honest & genuine feedback (I mean written by users not sellers) about Eclipse Dual SIM Android 2.2 Smartphone I figured that maybe here some of you (owners) can say what are the pros and cons of this phone. I will share my own experience shortly as well. I do know this phone sells well, because of the price tag and it's dual sim capability. Thanks for participation. Sam.

 

[samqdos]

Well, hopefully you'll get enough information to make up your mind. First, I'd like to start with a little bit of advice for int'l buyers, if you buy something from China (my case ch...sion) and ship it through private companies, you'll pay a lot of taxes on delivery (60$ value come to 20$ in tax), most charges apply fedex then ups then dhl and with ems you might just not pay anything if you're lucky.

First impression and probably decisive one is that the quality of phone calls is a disaster 50% of the time, people on the other side don't hear me or I don't hear them. First call that was made from the car was a disaster, I couldn't hear the person on the other side well (don't know if it wasn't because of the movement). Second seemed ok, on third one I could hear first few words then nothing, 4th was fine, 5th was good until call was dropped. So I don't know if you want to read it further... Phone itself seemed to be nicely made but at closer look for example scroll ball for navigating looks like it's not exactly where it suppose to be, little bit off but it works fine. When I start playing with it a bit I noticed that sometimes back button (on the case) doesn't work, it took me a while to figure out why. It seems like you need to press and hold it for a moment to get back and sometimes use "task killer" (to kill apps running) to be able to go back (don't ask why, some internal crashes I believe). I tired to look at some photos, pinched one and it took me almost a minute to load it then I installed "quickpic" from market and set it as default picture viewer and the time went down to at most 2 sec., on avg. 1 sec. Touchscreen is not perfect, letters on the edge of the screen are hard to press you have to aim to the left of it (or right). Some menu options are in Chinese (5%) don't know what it says. Radio crashes the phone, you have to kill apps or even one time I had to switched off the phone. When I tried to install skype at first I couldn't when finally succeeded I couldn't log in. Kik installation went well but i haven't tested it yet. Opera mini works good. Internet works very good that surprised me unexpectedly. Bluetooth works good too. Playing music sometimes causes back button to stop working you have to kill apps to be able to use it again. Camera, well in those phones is never good, looks like is something basic, below 1 MP, capable of taking photos and videos, starts up on avg. 3-6 sec. Haven't test video playing yet. Speaker is fairly loud and the quality is good. Games e.g. Angry birds work well but seems to run a bit slow. Phone itself comes with a lots of apps not tested all of it yet. Li-ion Battery 2800mAh is probably 1000aAh less (misleading label) lasts with heavy use 3-6h, medium 1 day, standby don't know yet. As for the phone branding itself I believe that Eclipse, H6, Novus are all the same. All of them have almost capacitative screen (much worse than Ithings) and the only difference is in the case design and buttons layout.

Well, I hope it helps a bit I don't have time to test it thoroughly but as you can figure out I will be most likely returning it. I hope you take this review as a warning sign. It's a personal review based on my own experience so interpret it as you wish.

In the end as majority of people I was lured by low price and android installed on it, well and dual sim that I wanted. Bad decision, pay more get something that works.

 

[samqdos]

...quick update on quality of the phone calls. Well it looks like it had something to do with the apps I installed on it. After a hard reset I haven't had a bad phone call yet (let's be optimistic).

What's in the box... I shipped it through UPS (not EMS, what I shoud've done) inside the package was a small carton box with DHL tape all over it (I'm guessing it was ordered from somewhere else), it was unopened (so I assume that it was tested wherever it came from, or not). Inside the dhl box was a black box (with all the stuff), no photo, brand, specification info on it, all it has are 3 small stickers: (1) made in china, (2) CVFD - M180 (this indicates phone model i.e. Novus, (3) QC PASSED 17.

Full battery charge takes approx. 3 hours and you can also charge it over USB cable, plugging it into usb port.

What's in the box:
-- Two 2800mAh batteries (white), Nominal Voltage:3.7V, Charging voltage limit:4.2V, implementation of standards:GB/T 18287-2000
-- 3.5mm earphones with clip (low quality)
-- USB cable that can be connected to...
-- power adapter (100-240V) for charging
-- Pocket size manual (not too specific)

If you can't log into android market you need to do "factory data reset" and sign-in to it on boot-up it will try to log-in through your internet data service if this will fail, it'll try to do it over wifi. Now you can install some apps from the market.

List of apps installed on Eclipse Novus Dual Sim:
3D Music
Advanced Task Killer
Aldiko Ebook
Browser
Calculator
Messenger
Calendar
Camera
Car Home
Clock
Contacts
DeskClock
Ebuddy
Email
ES File Explorer
Facebook
Fancy Widget
FM Radio
Gallery
Gmail
Latitude
Maps
Market
Messaging
Mobile TV
MSN Talk
Music
Navigation
Phone
Places
Robo Defence
Search
Settings
Sound Recorder
Talk
The Weather
ThinkFree Mobile
Twitter
Voice
Voice Dialer
WikiMobile
Wireless Keyboard
YouTube (some videos won't play, probably flash related problems)

Some file testing with out of the box apps only.

Video test:
yes: 3gp, mov, mp4
no: avi, flv, wmv,

Sound test:
yes: mp3, ogg, wav
no:ac3, aiff, flac, wma

Picture test:
yes: bmp, gif, ico, jpg, png
no: psd, pcx

As in linux OS it doesn't really need an extension, will recognize file without it. If e.g. you have file "trailer.mp4" and rename it to "trailer", it'll be played.

Supports Languages:
Bahasa Indonesia
Bahasa Melayu
Deutsch
English
Espanol
Francais
Italiano
Portugues
Tieng Viet
Turkce
Pyccknn
...and some other 3, I'm guessing:
-2 Chinese
-Arabe?

I'm still in a process of figuring it out...

 

[DuiG]

hello i have this phone but my calls are so bad.......it does everything right but calls lol...can u help me puting this right ? ohh and my browser stop working to :::lease thanks

 

[samqdos]

Few more comments, what annoys me is that to save a contact instead of just adding it in after pressing menu button in contacts you have to dial a number, and then save it from a call log. Why? because the menu option will not show up, instead you'll get a keyboard.

I believe that you also won't be able to upgrade it to a newer android OS because it's manually modified to work only with this type of phones and I doubt that we'll be seeing new one any time soon. I'd say in the future they'll start shipping other phones called I don't know Uranus? with specifically compiled new android OS.

The phone itself accept up to 32 GB SD cards. H6 and reg.Eclipse up to 8 GB (if it's true, not pure marketing).

Novus might just be a way of marketing something that's not better, one might dare to say even worse (lower CPU: 416) as NEW and updated with extra charge ($$$). Buy one with CPU: 460 which is not Novus but H6 or reg.Eclipse.

The big question now is, buy it or not? Well, I'd say it depends, if you have some time to figure things out and extra money why not, it will make you appreciate more well made and designed phones. If you have little money and are looking to strike a great deal you might just get disappointed (when something will stop working or not work at all).

There are some cheap but not dual sim phones e.g.: lg optimus or geeksphone.

But if you buy it and then change your mind prepare yourself to pay for return shipping. You have 1 year of warranty.

ps. I still have lots of dropped calls but I recently moved to a new place I need to figure out if that's it.

 

[bangkokcanuck]

After reading the OPs few posts about his Eclipse I started to wonder if he just got a lemon or I got very lucky. I have had mine in everyday use for a few months now and I don't have any issue. Of course I wish the CPU was a touch faster but it becomes a issue for me so rarely I never really think about it.

The dual sim was a must for me and it works flawlessly. I don't have dropped calls and oddly enough only ONE person I ever call to has an issue with me hearing them or them hearing me and ironcially they are using an HTC Hero.

I would say I am a 9/10 pleased with this phone of course the cheap price helps but it took very little tinkering on my part to make things work and there are some things that work differently than other android phones but different does not mean worse... simply different. Some are better for my personal tastes and some are worse.

I didn't have the shipping taxes issue either as I live in Thailand so it took two days to get here and cost me 100 baht (about 3 bucks) for the duty so all in all count me as a very happy customer of the phone.

 

[gochez]

You are right when saying there are no opinions besides from sellers, so this chance to tell our own story is great.

I got mine and I first noticed the low volume of the earphone, I usually press "speaker " to hear better. Is there any application that can help on that and boost the sound?

I can

 

[gochez]

I wanted to ask about the

what is the hole next to the earphone plug?

 

[zjerunk]

The small hole is a jack for a charger with a very small plug like on a BT earpiece. Use either this or USB, both work fine.

Back in March 2011 I bought the Chinavasion Eclipse as my first Android phone based upon features and price. All in all, I have no real complaints about the phone's speed, memory or features. Even the analog TV works fine to catch news in an analog service area.

WRT to the manual, I plan to post one when I get home and can scan & OCR mine. It is printed in microscopic print - You literally need a magnifying glass to read it. It contains detailed info on basic functions of the phone and each of the apps. This information is common to just about any Android phone. IT HAS ABSOLUTELY NO INFORMATION ON TROUBLE SHOOTING OR ANYTHING OF A TECHNICAL NATURE. In other words, it's quite useless.

About a month later I dropped the phone and cracked the screen. Fortunately, Chinavasion sells replacements, but they said it was back ordered, and it would take 3 weeks. It was the same with my phone. It seems that this outfit has no inventory and they are book selling.

When I contacted Chinavasion's "Live Chat Support" to ask who the primary manufacturer was (in order to get tech info, ROM, updates etc), they said they cannot reveal that information! That is akin to a Chevy dealer not telling you they are part of GM, and don't know where to get service manuals! There are so many Chinese vendors of this phone that it suggests the primary manufacturer will sell to just about anyone, therefore the vendors won't reveal the manufacturer because they are afraid of even more competition. When asked how to reset the phone (not in the manual), they said they didn't know, and that I should send it back for repair. This begs the question: "If you don't know how to reset my phone, why would I send it back to China to you to effect a repair you said you don't know how to do!!!???"

I disassembled the phone, soldered the screen (no push in connectors), and reassembled it. It would hang up at the Android splash screen. That's when I asked for the above tech help - useless. I finally figured out by trial and error how to get to the rescue screen, but I don't have backup ROM on a micro-SD card. Has anyone with one of these made backup ROM for restoring the system? I need one. Can you PM me and help, please?

NOW THE REST OF THE STORY.
The REAL PROBLEM with this phone is LACK OF SUPPORT, and this is a function of the vendors. The bottom line is that unscrupulousness is the order of the day with Chinese vendors. They overcharge on shipping, exaggerate features, withhold information on shortcomings, stall on providing tech support or information, or simply lie about anything just to make the sale. Once the sale is made, they stonewall on questions, problems or warranty. When all else fails for them, they resort to the "No spik Engli." I've overheard merchants doing this and afterwards laughing about it with their colleagues in perfect English! The vast majority of information about this phone on the internet is the Chinese merchants themselves salting the water with their hype disguised as customer or third party feedback. In short, there is no respect or honor in this community - only for themselves. Let this be your guide. Before anyone squawks that this racism, it is not. This is a cultural phenomenon, and it's what I've observed for decades. BTW I've left all this in one paragraph so moderators can edit or remove it if it's not sufficiently PC

 

[zjerunk]

Like the rest of the buyers of this Chinavasion phone I was stumped by the absence of a manufacturer. A previous poster had suggested it might be an H6. I decided to visit the HTC site - very nice BTW - and when looking for support by models I saw you could search by image of current and retired phones. Then BINGO, the Magic was a dead ringer for the eclipse with the exception of no TV antenna.

Looking for an update to Android 2.2 ROM, I found that v2.1 had only been made available to Magic fall of 2010. Magic was marketed for Asia, SEA, Australasia, South America, and Europe.

An interesting question is, "Why would HTC market a generic version of one of its own phones and not make any support available?" Perhaps the answer is that it's manufactured in China for the Chinese gov't ph. co. monopoly, where a SIM card phone does not pose a carrier competition problem, then the gov't phone Co does the monopoly/support? Who knows.

Since this phone sells well globally it behooves us to dig for more and better information. If others have anything to add, please do so. Thanks for reading,

 

[zjerunk]

I've found the manufacturer of the Eclipse Android 2.1.

Inside the battery compartment there was a sticker covering one of the numbers so I decided to peel it off.

This phone is a Chanjiang Android 007. Original manufacturer's sticker!

This Eclipse may even be an older version because it has ONE camera while Changjiang 007 has TWO. Also, the Changiang 007 can be had for about $30 US less!
My Eclipse has a resistive screen; I'm unsure about the Changiang. As I understand it, if the one has a capacitive screen, the system ROMs are not the same, and are incompatible.

I'm still looking for a restore ROM for my Chinavasion Eclipse with a resistive screen and one camera. Does anyone have one....please? The vendor is useless!

 

[zjerunk]

I forgot to mention also that Chinavasion censors its feedback on products. Comments which are negative toward their merchandise or service DOES NOT pass their "MODERATOR," in reality a censor. Therefore no honest feedback on either. This is not guess or supposition. I've tried to post feedback on their site three times without success. Try it yourselves and see.

 

[zjerunk]

The Saga Continues:
I asked to "BUY" a copy of the restore ROM for my phone so as to not ship it there and back or simply "PAY" for service. I explained the history of what happened, and this is what I got:

Dear ZZZZZZZ,
Thanks for your email.
Please be noted your phone's warranty has been invalidated since the moment you dropped it:
12 Month Warranty On All Chinavasion Products
I'm afraid we can no longer entertain your request of returning your phone for repair. However, we would like to suggest you please visit an electronics store and consult with a professional to know if it can be fixed locally.
Your understanding is highly appreciated.
Best regards,
Jared
Chinavasion.com Customer Support
==============================

Satisfied?
Please give us your feedback here:
Survey
==================================

Back to me:
Clearly they are not equipped to provide any technical service what so ever under their non-existent warranty, which I did NOT ask to have honored, but offered to pay.
But most importantly, I'm thanked for understanding THEIR position!
Suggesting visiting an electronic store qualifies as tech support to these people....
who then have stunning temerity (gall) who go on then ask if I am satisfied, and...
that I should post feedback to that effect. Apparently if I'm dis-satisfied my feedback is not required!

MY conclusions & ADVICE:
The phone is actually a decent phone for the money, albeit a slightly larger display would be a better choice if you have large hands. Works well with AT&T, T-Mobile, or any GSM carrier. If you plan to use it as a pay-as-you-go phone, then buy the cheapest AT&T Samsung Go Phone ($10) which comes with a SIM card and a charger compatible with the Eclipse/007. That way you get a spare phone & charger PLUS a SIM card for half the cost of an AT&T SIM card alone from a reseller.

**** If you like this model and set of features, then buy it labeled by its manufacturer, Chang Jiang, as Model Android 007. This model currently features TWO cameras, CAPACITIVE touch screen, as well as a decent charger instead of chain of lousy fitting adapters. Google it to find many vendors and varying prices.
**** DO NOT BUY from Chinavasion who took an earlier version with ONE camera and RESISTIVE touch screen, and simply stuck a silvery label over the manufacturer's label and IME numbers to deceive you!

FYI to Canadian buyers: This is a GSM phone. The only major Canadian carrier currently on GSM is Rogers, and their coverage is not very extensive. There are quite a few minor regional carriers. Most of the major Canadian carriers are still using CDMA, and CDMA phones do not use SIM cards, so this phone will have a limited market in Canada.
see List of Canadian mobile phone companies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I hope this is useful to other prospective buyers.

 

[brotches]

I have a Eclipse Dual SIM Android 2.2 Smartphone but I turned it on this morning and it went into factory mode, does anyone know what I should do?

 

[Brutus66]

Hi. This Chinese manufactured phone works well generally while in the UK. However, on taking it to Ireland it automatically barred International outgoing calls rendering it useless for making voice calls back to the UK. When I tried unbarring it via the settings menu, the phone demanded a password which neither I nor the UK supplier have got. On returning to the UK, the barred setting automatically unbarred itself allowing it to be used as a voice phone in the UK again. I assume that this would also happen elsewhere in Europe or the World, so it is useless for roaming! Does anyone know the default password for this phone (If it's Chinese then I'm sunk!) or any other way to solve this problem? I have checked that the SIM card itself is fully unlocked for roaming.

 

[Mouratti]

I have a Star X12 dual sim and at yet look great and works great

 

[marioilking]

You mention having done a hard reset on the phone - how do you do it?

...quick update on quality of the phone calls. Well it looks like it had something to do with the apps I installed on it. After a hard reset I haven't had a bad phone call yet (let's be optimistic).

What's in the box... I shipped it through UPS (not EMS, what I shoud've done) inside the package was a small carton box with DHL tape all over it (I'm guessing it was ordered from somewhere else), it was unopened (so I assume that it was tested wherever it came from, or not). Inside the dhl box was a black box (with all the stuff), no photo, brand, specification info on it, all it has are 3 small stickers: (1) made in china, (2) CVFD - M180 (this indicates phone model i.e. Novus, (3) QC PASSED 17.

Full battery charge takes approx. 3 hours and you can also charge it over USB cable, plugging it into usb port.

What's in the box:
-- Two 2800mAh batteries (white), Nominal Voltage:3.7V, Charging voltage limit:4.2V, implementation of standards:GB/T 18287-2000
-- 3.5mm earphones with clip (low quality)
-- USB cable that can be connected to...
-- power adapter (100-240V) for charging
-- Pocket size manual (not too specific)

If you can't log into android market you need to do "factory data reset" and sign-in to it on boot-up it will try to log-in through your internet data service if this will fail, it'll try to do it over wifi. Now you can install some apps from the market.

List of apps installed on Eclipse Novus Dual Sim:
3D Music
Advanced Task Killer
Aldiko Ebook
Browser
Calculator
Messenger
Calendar
Camera
Car Home
Clock
Contacts
DeskClock
Ebuddy
Email
ES File Explorer
Facebook
Fancy Widget
FM Radio
Gallery
Gmail
Latitude
Maps
Market
Messaging
Mobile TV
MSN Talk
Music
Navigation
Phone
Places
Robo Defence
Search
Settings
Sound Recorder
Talk
The Weather
ThinkFree Mobile
Twitter
Voice
Voice Dialer
WikiMobile
Wireless Keyboard
YouTube (some videos won't play, probably flash related problems)

Some file testing with out of the box apps only.

Video test:
yes: 3gp, mov, mp4
no: avi, flv, wmv,

Sound test:
yes: mp3, ogg, wav
no:ac3, aiff, flac, wma

Picture test:
yes: bmp, gif, ico, jpg, png
no: psd, pcx

As in linux OS it doesn't really need an extension, will recognize file without it. If e.g. you have file "trailer.mp4" and rename it to "trailer", it'll be played.

Supports Languages:
Bahasa Indonesia
Bahasa Melayu
Deutsch
English
Espanol
Francais
Italiano
Portugues
Tieng Viet
Turkce
Pyccknn
...and some other 3, I'm guessing:
-2 Chinese
-Arabe?

I'm still in a process of figuring it out...

 

[tom87]

Ok, so since a week I am also a proud owner of a dual sim Eclipse. On the first spot, it is not bad for the price: acceptable display, fits well in your hand, responds quick enough for the slow CPU inside, dual SIM actually works (that's why I bought it, after all). One could argue that the resistive touch display is worse than a capacitive one - but then I remember my Motorola Milestone which regularly responds to the touch of an ear and start to actually love that resistive display of the Eclipse.

However, after a week you start learning why this device is so cheap. First of all, I confirm, it's just unusable for making phone calls. The incoming sound quality is ok, but most often people at the other end just do not hear you at all or only part of what you are saying. I have no idea why, a possible hint: yelling at your phone helps a little. Unfortunately, using a (high quality) headset does not change anything - so it's not the build-in microphone which is causing the problem. For completeness, I will try out a bluetooth headset too before getting rid of the phone.

Then, it's the first Android phone I'm using where I just cannot find the "Sound settings" and thus cannot even change the ring tone. I feel silly, but then, the small user manual that came with the phone also tells you "sound settings" should just be there. And this is not the only setting that seems to be missing (or is hidden somewhere else than on my other Androids). By the way, the user manual obviously talks about either another version of the phone or even about another phone.

BTW, Skype won't work on this phone. However, this seems to be rather a problem of Skype than of the Eclipse.

Conclusion: Its not only low priced, but unfortunately it is cheap and the incredibly low sound quality prevents it from being used as a phone.

Kind regards,
Tom

 

[maingip]

Hi there,

would apreciae if got how to resolve this problem of calling quality. somene talked about hard reset. Kindly share how you went about it at leas to fix the current problem as we lament on lack of support which is the biggest problem this thread is all about
My question from a business angle is why would an enterprenuer popularize his product and have so many people buy and yet not offer support, even if at a fee?

any solution on hard reset/quality of incoming calls pleaseee?

regards,
Philip

 

[tom87]

So ... I finally tried out a bluetooth headset. That works great, the Eclipse does not interfere with the sound when using BT. Somehow, you can actually make phone calls, then, while being forced to always have your BT headset ready with you is not what I call "mobile".

Philip, I assume, the poster mentioning a "hard reset" actually meant a factory reset. This did not help in my case.

Kind regards,
Tom

 

[gabib77]

Be carefull when you reset these Chinese Dual-SIM phones to factory settings, you might lose your two IMEI's

here is a link: Chinese Clones MTK6516 - XDA-Developers

 

[zjerunk]

Hello Tom87.
Did you by any chance make a back-up of the original ROM of your Eclipse phone for rescue?

 

[syred]

Both the one with resistive screen and the one with capacative they have only 1 back camera, the front is a led, just the shape is changed.

I own the Resistive one, and i got it in a bootloop while trying to aply a theme (forgot to sign framework-res.apk before push it back) i made a signed update.zip to push the right file back through recovery system but i had no luck, do you have the full image of it so i can flash it?

Is there a way with the "Flash tool" for mt6516 to download system.img and then change that file and reflash it back?

 

[tinymartin]

i have the above phone however the touch screen calibration is out. i've managed to do a re calibration a couple of times however over a couple of day it still goes out of calibration. Some time it's so far out that i can't touch the crossi've do a factory reset but still no luck. is there any way to repair this or has anybody got any ideas? Please help

 

[Shebastian]

Hello Syred
Do you still have the ROM? also do you know the buttons that I must push when restarting my phone to enter "recovery mode" or "upload mode"?