Here is a link to what they call Yangtse River Phones. Cheap copies of major brands.
I’ve had one of these simple non smart phones that was cheap and lasted for a couple years. It was gray market and did not come with a guarantee.
This company has come up in the world. This is now a legal product with a warranty. I know of one person who has one and he likes it, but I have not seen it yet.
I want… 1. A phone 2. A media player to enjoy wifi radio 3. Something that would run Skype well 4… The most important requirement… I work in a dirty high risk enviroment (kids) where I need a phone cheap enough to replace.
I do not know about these specific models, but I have seen a lot of the OEM tablets that people try to sell on the gray market and they usually all have some of the following bugs:
the screen is not as bright (cheaper display)
touch functions unstable
prompts have spelling errors (cancle instead of cancel) or are just wrong
the OS is unstable (‘borrowed’ software)
thermal issues (low end parts, easy to fail)
short battery life (low end battery)
dropped calls
speaker and mic issues
basically they are made with less care from shittier components. if you don’t mind frequent bits of aggro, it might be a good buy, but even the top phones have performance issues, these things will have plenty.
the reason there is no returns is because they are passed on from dealer to dealer. The normal habit is for a volume buyer to get a few extra units for free to replace the units that fail immediately. not a good sign, I’d avoid it, but if saving money is paramount, then you will get what you pay for. These people are also notorious for selling something that doesn’t exist in the pictures they show you.
They have been pushing some of these even on the TV shopping channels. Even I was wondering if they would be cost-effective, as they are really cheap -top I think is 7K on TV- and they have a sort of “guarantee” -money back, repair, the works through the TV shopping channel. That they are Patito brand and how functional they’ll be, that’s another story.
I understand the need to buy a cheaper phone if you work in a high risk environment, especially since most of the best models run up to 20K. However, in favor of spending a bit more, I already had a sad experience with Tatung phones, really nice, but bad quality parts and no repairs/spare parts. My Samsung is a cheapo and I wouldn’t buy another cheapo ever with the battery/screen/software issues this one has yet when I lost it temporarily it was a disaster, when you learn to depend on a smartphone it becomes a vice -as you say, Skype and music and even maps you learn to depend on. So, this is a difficult choice.
For what it’s worth… I got my hands on one of those phones for a few minutes. It’s really not like the the other Yangtse phones. … It feels sturdy in the hand. Plays streaming video from 3G better than my small laptop (EEPC). That’s all I cans say now. The shopping Channel has it for about the same price so I’m tempted to get one, unless someone could suggest a decent phone/service contract plan that gets me a decent phone.