All good until I saw Gearbest...ugh

There's more than a grain truth in what you say but these days there are many authoratitive reviewers on the net providing buyers with the info to make informed buying decisions. Essential when considering a device from a lesser known chinese brand. In my view the advance of insanely cheap, competent Chinese phones will be relentless. Just a matter of time before the Chinese improve their distribution channels and customer support, then watch them go. Heat for the deal BTW.

There are Chinese companies you can trust that offer fantastic value for money.

From my experience:

Trust - Xiaomi, Meizu, Huawei, ZTE, Oneplus, Lenovo
Avoid: Umi, Elephone, Vernee, Homtom, Cubot, Bluboo.

Some people have had good experiences with some of those brands I'd avoid, but there's far too many horror stories to ignore across various internet forums.

I got a umi Rome a few months back and had nothing but lies from the company they said it had a 10 point multi touch display when it only had 2 and a AMOLED screen buy it was clearly LCD. There was also few other discrepancy also. It has issues after a few months on terms of the screen not turning on when you hit the power button but the phone was on. No updates I had to manually install updates even tho it said it did ota updates. The issue with the screen was resolved after i did a update but a whole new set of issues came in the form of the compass not working and when you switch if the phone it wouldn't turn off and freeze. You had to take the battery out and it would goes through a restart would take ages due to android optimisation thing kicked in every time I had to do a restart like this.

Code Euto4gp to get this price. This code, and others, from email here http://www.gearbest.com/mail/2016/GT0505.html

Unboxing & First Look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkJudVGuU2s
Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OT86neHCqM

Dont hold your breath waiting for delivery, mine has taken four days to acknowledge receipt of my order and seven days later its still racining about in China on its way to Belgium ! Great piece of kit i hear though.

All good until I saw Gearbest...ugh

Looks a nice phone :smiley:

gear-not-best.

I've got a Chinese phone myself, but not for 1 second would I believe specs these these cheap brands list. every time they announce their next model they claim it's got this n that, then 4+ months later when it's actually available it gets tested and found not to have a Sony camera, a huge battery etc etc. for 90 quid this will probably be half decent, just don't expect too much. big players like xaomi and oppo you can believe, but not umi, don't be surprised if it takes poor pics or overheats or sensors play up. and of course the warranty worn these sellers is near worthless so accept you're talking a gamble, my elephone has lasted nearly 6 months, the screen touch is failing now so I have to get a new phone but it only cost me 70 quid so not bad.

My o/h & I have both had the Umi eMAX for 11 months now and love it. Umi produces a great phone for the money

add the code and its 85 quid not bad

good deal supposedly decent phone a friend of mine purchased one recently and reckons its good. It did take three weeks to come though and the camera is not great (according to reviews) and its quite heavy but a 4000mah battery!!

Got the UMI Iron, had a few niggles when I first got it but overlooked them as the phone overall is great.

Camera is shocking UNLESS you get 3rd party app and be very still when taking shots then it works great.

There used to be a little pop between tracks but the sound is so much better than my old MOTO G.Think this may have been solved with latest ROM as haven't noticed it for a while.

I would be all over this if I needed to replace my UMI Iron :wink:

Quidco are offering 6% cashback for new gearbest customers and 3% for existing.

I had an umi zero. The thing looks nice, had a beautiful screen, decent camera and performance was good.

Unfortunately it was crippled by its battery. It would always switch off at 40% and you only got about 1 hour of screen time. After a month that became half an hour. It was impossible to use it because of that.

All owners seemed to have the same problem. Umi lied about the battery capacity and they had used a battery that was proven to be dangerous and crap.

I wouldn't trust them again. I stick to xiaomi and meizu now. Both are respected brands and I've had no issues.

These 5.5" phablets seem mighty popular in China.

Anyone know if you can do the sd card trick gluing it to a sim on this.Like the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3.

I tried Chinese phones last year and never again. Chances are that the final product will go through several delays before turning out to be even worse than the English used on those promotional images.

"Criterion curve of the nature promotes miraculous curve and hand feel" - what does that even mean?

I got a umi Rome a few months back and had nothing but lies from the company they said it had a 10 point multi touch display when it only had 2 and a AMOLED screen buy it was clearly LCD. There was also few other discrepancy also. It has issues after a few months on terms of the screen not turning on when you hit the power button but the phone was on. No updates I had to manually install updates even tho it said it did ota updates. The issue with the screen was resolved after i did a update but a whole new set of issues came in the form of the compass not working and when you switch if the phone it wouldn't turn off and freeze. You had to take the battery out and it would goes through a restart would take ages due to android optimisation thing kicked in every time I had to do a restart like this.

I agree, I have a Wileyfox swift but its going back after multiple crashes. Shame as it's a great phone for the £. If you come across any please let me know, gutted the Moto G 3rd isn't dual sim as I loved my 2nd gen.

I have one of these (managed to get it for 89 quid a while back with an ebay voucher). It works really well with basically vanilla marshmallow. The camera is pretty good in decent light, but has red banding in low light, there is an update to fix the problem, but my update wont install (it won't reboot into recovery mode). I'm hoping another OTA update with fix the problem, or I'll try to update it manually, but it is a quick phone that has worked well for me. The battery life is great, I usually have 30% left after a day of quite a lot of use.

what's the likelyhood of this being nabbed for customs charges ? (sent with snailmail)

The battery on my UMI Rome has numerous faults including unresponsive touchscreen and the battery life is pathetic, the firmware updates have not solved the problems with the phone but caused new ones. Also UMI are known for lying about the specs of their phones. Buyer beware.

I actually wrote to some companies in those regions once, asking them if they wanted to me to edit the English for them. Didn't get a single response.

Got a iPhone 6s Plus and 6s. Need another DeviceWould this be good to go with or if anyone else has or ur has just purchased. Thanks.

cheers - did they declare the correct value on yours ? ( I think if they put something silly like £20 its asking to be screened)

Bought one of these from gearbest last month. Do not choose DHL shipping, you'll get stung for £21 (Vat + DHL charges which they don't tell you about)

As for the phone it's self. I would avoid it. Camera is not up to spec, blurry photos etc. The phone I received wouldn't read a sim card and the OS crashed repeatedly.

Customer service is a bit of a nightmare, all they want to do it offer you a small refund to keep the item. Eventually had to send it back, currently awaiting it being delivery.

All in all lost about £50 from postage/fees. I'd avoid this phone, really disappointing as I was impressed with the UMI Iron (despite the camera issues on this as well).

Bought this phone from aliexpress, fantastic phone for the price!

I wanted to try one of these but a guy from work bought one and has nothing but issues. And the support is non existent. They replied with go to a repair shop and have them take a look and we go half on the repair. He just binned it in the end. These Chinese phones seem to have everything on paper but they have been put together poorly and using poor components judging by the issues people are having. I suppose there is a reason they are a sixth of the price of the leading brands

I've tried a similar spec Oukitel U10 and found it too big and heavy to carry around every day. The slide in sim card tray is difficult for some cards to be read, especially when using a nano sim (coming from an iPhone) in an adapter, and the loss of a sim card slot when using a SD card will be a deal breaker for some. Battery life is so-so - about 5 hours screen on time with a 2850mAh battery, so expect around 7 hours with the bigger 4000mAh battery. The 2.5D curved glass means screen protectors won't protect the edges and not sure if this is the cause, but the edges were prone to ghost touches. It's a competent performer; ok rather than great.

Vernee ? have they even launched yet

Pay a little extra and buy the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro (~ £115.00)
- £6.00 Quidco
Best piece of tech I've bought in years...

No they never put the real value just a nominal amount say $25 it never gets looked at (Touch Wood)

I might have posted this in the past , but I met a couple who both worked in a factory repairing mobile phones under warrantee or insurance that had gone wrong . Every manufacturer had faulty phones and they had a bin for each they were put in awaiting for repair. Except for the iPhone 5,s which had their own bin as so many of them went wrong!

If you want to pay £500 to £700 for phone like an iPhone that only cost £5 in parts to make in China , that could equally develop a fault, that is up to you.
Alternatively you could buy a better spec phone also from China for around £115.

ON HUK you get them same old negative comments . Delivery is slow ... really it is coming from China ! Allow a month and you will usually receive it in less time and be pleased.
Unless it is a preorder before release which the clue is in the title.

If you choose the slow boat to China option , then the chances are you will not get hit with customs , so again this is a nonsense negative comment by those who perpetually post it.
Then you get people who post about the parts of the phone. Well if you read the advert, they will often tell you , who they use.
I would recommend the ulefone power it is a fantastic bit of kit , the 6000 mah battery is made by Sony for example.

As with many of these the camera is often a complaint, I'm wondering do any of these for the Chinese market phones have a decent camera?

Just go with Xiaomi - better brand and better phone.

Just my personal experience of course! But UMI have a bit of history with telling lies on the specs of their phone and the customer service is non-existent. Shame too, because on paper it looks like you get a whole lot of tech for your money.

​it came up as £85 for me too but at checkout via PayPal it changed to £96 :-(

Honestly they probably didn't completely understand your email and it didn't get forwarded to the relevant department/person. These are not big companies like xaiomi and English just isn't spoken by 99.9% of Chinese people in China.

quidco tracks at £5.40.

Where from?

Couple of sellers on Ali Express
$167.00 (~ £115.00)
Link
I used Dreami ($162.00) but the price has gone up now
Box factory sealed in cellophane as requested
Free shipping - no customs - order placed to delivery - twelve days

I detest GearBest with a passion!.. Worst aftersales customer service EVER!..

The ‘Good’

1080P 5.5″ display
3GB RAM
8-Core CPU
Finger print sensor
Front facing flash
Sony IMX328 Camera
Dual Band WiFi
4000mAh Battery
Android 6 (Marshmallow)

The Bad

Heavy (190g)
Not the new Helio CPU range
Average GPU

http://www.review-hub.co.uk/umi-touch-review-phone/

​I've had 2 elephones now and had no trouble with either, could be just lucky or could I speculate that some of the lesser known Chinese brands are getting better as time goes on! just because no one knows them doesn't mean they aren't very good.

I remember one company was Lian Li, and I bet they had hardly any English speakers. I guess it was a CASE of ask them and try. Here all weekend.

I'm ready to move on from my Elephone P8000 now which has been really good. Starting to slow down a bit though. Any recommendations? The Redmi Note 3 maybe?

I see what you did there.

There are countless numbers of services across Asia that can do that for them. Some English teachers in China even offer contract localisation services on the side. These phone manufacturers just don't want to pay them though.

​Ditto for me. Been thru a few Chinese phones over past 3 yrs, and for me the umi emax ticks the most boxes. Still love it after 9mths :-)

​Disagree, have been pleased with both elephone & umi makes

Then you have had more luck than me. Last summer we got an Elephone P7000 and a P8000. The P8000 had a non fully functional notification LED and the headphone socket on it died after 5 weeks. Being Chinese crap, they used a completely non-standard headphone jack so the whole phone had to be shipped back to China for repair which took nearly 2 months.

The P7000 was infected with malware and adware that was secretly embedded into an official update. Unfortunately the only way to remove the infection was to basically downgrade it through a JTAG style technique that could have easily bricked the phone in the wrong hands. Plus I was overseas when it happened so I had to make do with an adware infected phone until I got back to the UK.

Seriously, these Chinese phones are junk. I cannot advise anybody strongly enough to avoid them. I learned that lesson the hard way but hopefully others won't have to.

That's the problem with Chinese e-tailers and manufacturers, still a long way to go with customer support, quality control and warranties.

I've had my eye on the Teclast X3 Pro which has just came out (tablet) but the negatives are what put me off pressing Buy.

​try a xiaomi

​I went from a 5 inch to a 5.7 and never looked back.

​Get a xiaomi redmi note 3 pro mate

That over my current lg g3?

Thanks but no.

The problem with Chinese manufacturers and retailers is that they just outright lie. It's not that they get things wrong by accident. They actively go out of their way to deceive people.

Their entire business model is based upon quick short-term profit and that their location excuses them from providing any kind of reliability, honesty or a decent service since most foreigners buy their products cheap and therefore won't bother to complain if something goes wrong.

Had my p7000 since launch, I was the first person on HDUK to receive their phone after launch and I'm still using and quite happy with it.
Only gripe for me is the camera and the red tinge you sometimes get depending on light conditions.
I really like the dual SIM + sd card arrangement and the 2 day + battery life, screen quality and brightness is fantastic.
The adware issue was with the standard browser, it was something that elephone a added by accident, and could be worked around by installing chrome, and it was quickly removed in the next update.

The p7000 won't be upgraded to android 6.0 - but can't say that bothers me, android updates are no longer game changers, gone are the days where an android update could transform a phones performance.

For $149 what do you expect?

I keep looking for something to replace the p7000, but as yet nothing has ticked all the boxes. I'd like something with a slightly better camera. Had elephone installed the 21 mp camera to the p9000 as planned I'd have tried that, maybe see how the M3 looks, just waiting for a firm launch date with final specs.

​Well, maybe I have been lucky but there's plenty others like me. A work colleague of mine appeared to have an infected elephone p7000 & I prefer the side loading of sims that umi offers eg on the emax. Makes it slim & great long lasting battery of nearly 4000mAh

Dear trueno2k，
This is Gearbest Store Rep. Alice
We sincerely sorry to hear that
Could you please PM me the details about your unpleasant purchasing experience on our site？
We will do our best to help you.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Best regards,
Alice

Regarding Gearbest, only bought one item, from their EU warehouse, the Onda 919 tablet.

No issues so far, not had it long however but it is a superb windows 10 tablet, even better at the price i paid.

But like i said, from their EU warehouse for peace of mind.

Good phone for the money but don't expect an Apple or a Samsung product.

i know mate that company are **** I bought a flash drive 64gb and it never worked customer support total white

ordered Sunday 8/05/2016 from gearbest paid for expedited shipping. phone cost £96. expedited shipping cost £10. dhl cost £20. told delivery Monday 16/05. so far it has cost me £126. Please learn from my costly mistake.

Can only go by previous comments about Gearbest/Banggood and their ilk, but it's recommended to choose the slowest option when trying not to incur charges.

The adware issue was not with the standard browser. The adware issue was with the firmware update itself. They backdoor installed a service that would then cause ads to pop up on the phone at random, regardless of what apps were running at the time. Using Chrome or third party browsing/email apps made no difference. It was cleverly developed so that no antivirus or antimalware application could detect it and the only way to get rid of it was to get rid of that firmware revision completely.

​I got this phone and the camera is poor, even in very good light you end up with blurred pics and never sharp. maybe a software fix at some point but who know. & the finger print scanner can be a pain some times.
The phone is great for everything else apart from strava which for some reason refuses to work on mine and it gets very warm when playing games. (only play starwars commander).
Battery is very good tethered for over 6 hours and still had 50% battery left.

That wasn't my experience, yes it was an OTA update that caused the issue, but I only had the problem with pop ups when using the standard browser. And as I mentioned earlier, the following OTA sorted the issue completely. My P7000 has been very stable since the last update which was some months ago.

GearBest????? Look at extract from my ticket for a phone which stopped working after 4 month:

Gearbest Customer Support At 05/06/2016 10:36:06 CST

Dear Ilkin,

Thank you for your reply.
I have checked the package, we have not received it.
You have sent the item on March 29, your delivery will expire on May 29.
On that date if we haven’t received the package we will consider it lost and resolve it for you.

Thank you for you ongoing patience.
Best Regards
Duni
Gearbest Customer Service
http://www.gearbest.com/

They offered $30 dollars not to send it for repair back to China for a phone I bought for $200.

For me personally GearBest is NEVER EVER for any items costing more than $10.00.

Sorry cold for me.

I didn't trust them enough to install any more of their updates after that one. I just downgraded the phone to the previous 'clean' build and then got rid of the phone entirely.

yep good points i have this phone fro ma previous hukd deal, and had an emax from another hukd deal a while ago, both have been great, and great value, but the risks are lower with the brands you mentioned

I have a thl pro 6 and over 18 months old and just starting to play up...my son has Sony Z5 and suggested i get Sony M5 but i dont want to spend loadsa money on a phone. does anyone have any idea how good camera is pleeeease :smile:

Bought the newly launched Ulefone Vienna 5.5" for £120 + 23 for duty as it was delivered by DHL from gearbest and it took less than 2 weeks to arrive. It has the same camera as this and takes very good photos. I've dropped it once already and everything is fine with it.

i agree, mine was delivered by DHL (it didn't cost anything extra) but DHL wanted a duty of £23, it took less than 2 weeks to arrive. I'm betting if was send by China Post or any other regular post and delivered by Royal Mail at the UK end there wouldn't be any duty to pay.

All those saying about Chinese phones - bear in mind most phones are made in china ! in terms of the UMI TOUCH, i have one. the camera is great, the screen is very clear and easy to use. The battery lasts 2 days with a lot of use - it replaces my old nexus 4 and doing the same task that only lasted one day. Its very quick to use works with everything and comes with a near enough stock android experience. Everyone who has seen it (including apple users and Samsung users) have commented how well built it feels and looks. Not a single quibble about this handset - I love mine.

I'm very happy with mine too.

​I had a Zero. Awful thing. I agree looked great, the rest way awful. No OTA updates, bugs, terrible battery, rotten camera, awful sound from 3.5mm Jack.

Dear johnnymitchell,
This is Gearbest Store Rep.Alice
We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience
Could you please PM me your order number for checking ?
We will do our best to help you.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Best regards,
Alice

is their a 5 inch version??

I have emailed you sent pictures and my address you sent the package to was 3/1 5 manse street Renfrew pa48qh check your system if you still have one as that's where it was sent to and I can't see how the unit passed QC as it wouldn't even slide up to insert into Iohone it would cost more for package to send back to China and this is where us Brits go wrong as there is no guarantee at all

love mine

Don't use this gear site non exsisting customer service they never get back to you look too spec but be careful as one guys says buy from a bigger company you can rely on

I recently bought a Ulefone Vienna £120 and it is great, no problems after 2 months.

Don't use this gear site non exsisting customer service they never get back to you look too spec but be careful as one guys says buy from a bigger company you can rely on

got one for my wife's dad a month ago its a fab phone for the price. camera is not the best but for 90 quid you can't complain