That is a shame! I have always had really good service from them when I have needed to raise a ticket. Immediate refunds for non delivered items etc. I think you can expect Chinese instructions though, if you are ordering a Chinese device, from China...

Gearbest do provide a warranty and I have quite clearly stated the LTE situation in the opening line of the deal. You are a very dull, odd little man.

​+1

Personally wouldn't recommend buying tech items from Gearbest from my experience - paid extra for 7-10 days delivery which took 29 days, device came with Chinese instructions, mains plug not suitable for UK mains, and no warranty. Their customer services didn't want to know. Never again

Is this subject to import taxes? And if it is, around how much is it?

Personally wouldn't recommend buying tech items from Gearbest from my experience - paid extra for 7-10 days delivery which took 29 days, device came with Chinese instructions, mains plug not suitable for UK mains, and no warranty. Their customer services didn't want to know. Never again

​+1

Great price, and never had a problem with Gearbest. Nice find.

I got a Redmi Note 3 from them last May on the free delivery. No taxes, came in 4 days by courier and was tracked once it entered Europe. Never had problems with them in lots of purchases over the last 2 years. There have been faulty items but GB refunded or re-sent all apart from the phone which developed a camera fault after about 6 months. They do have a warranty. I think its 40 days return then up to 1 year where you pay return costs, which for the phone was expensive (£64 when I checked for tracked) but they did offer me $40 refund which was about enough to get it repaired over here, though its not a difficult fix with the help of YouTube and some simple tools. You do need to watch what ROM they use as it wasn't the official one on mine and it invalidates the warranty to replace with the official one and there are no updates, which is a pain.

Price now showing as £131.47

If you buy this you will need to flash it. You should do it from any seller but gearbest are of the worst, ship them with buggy malware ridden roms that will never get an update. The official global rom is out now anyway so flash that instead.

​If the MIUI version number, 8.0.5.0.0 is correct, they are both fake rooms, as the version number should have 4 digits, not 5. Also, it appears to be a Chinese Rom.

I have never had any issue with updating a device to the ROM of my choice, so no matter what come there is always a solution. These are the trade offs for the price. The MX2 Pro from Banggood had horrible amounts of ad supported apps that were not able to be removed but once I was able to locate a copy of the standard (Chinese in that case) ROM I was away. Once you have done that then your options are pretty much limitless...

I did state it is a fake/vendor ROM. I don't understand what you are trying to say?

​It's never been a problem for me, to be fair. I'd heard it was more difficult now, with locked bootloaders, to go from a china to global Rom, which is why I opted for a device with a global Rom installed. Having said that, I've seen tutorials, and it doesn't seem too difficult. And, like you say, there's always a way.

On reddit gearbest is recommended against and is slated due to their roms.



Other than no updates and the possibility of all your data been stolen, what could possibly go wrong.

​I was agreeing with you. Was that wrong?

I was talking about a different device, read further up... It's the other fella you're having a row with....

​*sigh*

I've ordered a Redmi 4 Pro, Mi4C, a couple of Mi Bands and other bits and bobs from GearBest and never had a problem -- all arrived within 2-4 weeks after ordering and none were slapped with duty or customs charges.

Both phones had fake ROMs on them so the first thing I did was to flash the Global ROMs and then the better ROMs from xiaomi.eu. The process for the Redmi4 was a bit trickier as it hasn't been available for long but I got there in the end and it only needs doing once.

Excellent phone, can't fault it for the price. Screen is nice, CPU is zippy and the battery lasts ages.

having bought two phones one being xiaomi and other lenovo, from Banggood I can confirm that both came with unremovable Trojan.
never bought a phone from Gearbest though.

Gold version for £115(ish depending on currency conversion) here...
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/xiaomi-redmi-4-pro-5-0-gold-115-geekbuying-2600070?p=29856924

Prefer the Meizu

bought one from Ali express. top notch phone, unbelievable value. this is the pro / prime version I believe

Bought a few phones now from gearbeast. No problems at all. No import tax and generally very good service and quick replies to messages

This is about the same price as the redmi note 3 global edition, with 3/32gb.
I can't see any hardware advantage in battery, camera, processor etc. The note 3 came shrink-wrapped with an international ROM and no flashing required, just automatic OTA updates. It also has all the UK 4g bands. I completely love my redmi note 3, so maybe I am overlooking something?
My next phone will want to have 128gb storage, a fantastic camera and all for under £200, but I will be happy for some time with this one until the current top of the line specs trickle down

Smaller display too. The battery life should be great!

Been waiting for a deal on this phone, but in Gray/black :-(
The discount code doesn't seem to work on that colour option.

Try the meizu M5 note. I posted a deal on it a week or so ago. Got it the other day and it is amazing.

It's on AliExpress :smiley:

Is this a good upgrade from smart ultra 6?mine works fine but just not as fast anymore. I think the processor is the same?

​aye better processor, more ram, more storage.

if / when a global ROM is available will be an awesome phone

​Just checked yeah better processor. 615 to 625. Hmm. Does this phone has the black screen issue like mi5? I really want a white version.

Global Rom came out last week.


Do you mean the horrible black border around the screen on white models? Xiaomi just silently fixed it on the Redmi 4, I'm not sure about the Redmi 4 Pro/Prime which this is and it may take a bit for stock to filter though.
http://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_trims_the_bezels_on_redmi_4-blog-22817.php

No B20, no warranty.

I'd say that unless your budget can't stretch to it, the P2 from Three is a better device - more bands, better spec in some respects and a meaningful warranty. There's also no chance of being hit for tax, where this is still a gamble - even if people say they haven't been unlucky.

8.0.5.0.0 is some weird modified version of the China developer ROM I think. Definitely not an official version, and definitely not a good one to have as alot of things don't sync properly as well as it containing alot of adware and other crap, even possibly malware.

As for this deal, without confirmation that it comes with a clean Global International ROM, I'd give it a COLD based on the 99% of people who won't want to mess about with flashing ROMs. I hate buying phones from GB and BG for this reason - I'd rather buy from a trusted seller on AliExpress because at least you know what it is that you're getting.

I didn't know it was a dev Rom, but could see it was Chinese. ​I've only bought one device from Gearbest, which was sealed and installed with global Rom. It came from the EU warehouse though. Device I have now came from Geekbuying, which again has the global Rom, and all the numbers check out, so it's all good. I'd gladly order from aliexpress, but I don't use credit cards and they don't take PayPal.

Sometimes it's worth paying a bit more to not end up with rubbish like this phone

​Not a fan, then?

I was a bit OTT with that comment but I'm really not a fan of these import phones these days to be honest - too much risk, given the great phones you can buy on the UK market for £200 or less. Obviously it's not me buying them and I imagine for some people they make a good 'project' to play with but for the most part these devices are littered with flaws, complication and risk - be it spyware, paying for import tax or having a warranty that isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Have you got some examples to share?

I don't have anything specific as there are hundreds of these phones posted every week and they all effectively meld into one but as a regular reader of this site and follower of various enthusiasts on Twitter who like play with these imports they seem to regularly hit stumbling blocks, which is understandable as theses can't have a solid software team behind them for this sort of price. It's impossible.

They're surely great tinkering devices - and the most common comment I hear is 'it's a lot of phone for the money' or 'good specs for the money' which is hard to deny. The problem is that there is an awful lot to be said for software versus specs, and personally I wouldn't recommend these to family or friends as I wouldn't want to be their on-call technician as I feel they are more likely to hit bugs and hardware defects with these devices than those from a UK supplier.

If you think my lack of specific examples ruins my argument and therefore makes me wrong then fair enough, I just can't help having accumulated certain opinions based on what I have read, and the accumulated opinion I've gained about cheap Chinese imports is that they are a risk.

It's probably unfair to call them rubbish - there's just a big chasm between the needs of the two markets I think, and where a 'global' ROM is released it seems they're often be a bit half-hearted and buggy.

I will say that Xiaomi are probably a safer bet than some of the other manufacturers listed on here though as they are huge in China and have manufactured other solid devices for the western market. My main concern with these devices would be warranty though - if something arrives from china with a dead pixel what do you do? How honourable are these sites when it comes to warranty?

I can see your problem, to be fair. I've never had a problem with any device, but if it arrived dead? I don't know to be honest, but there would be a way.

They will honour a warranty, the issue is they don't cover the cost of tracked shipping back to China, that is why people say there is effectively no warranty. It's a risk/reward trade off and this deal for me is an acceptable risk for the potential reward.

In the market for a new phone as my S4 is on it's last legs, which is best place to buy one from so i basically don't have to fiddle about with "flashing this and that". How do these phones compare against my old S4, will there be a vast improvement? Thanks in advance.

Which phone providers can you go with for this phone?

i spoke to CS via chat and they cant confirm LTE bands. Someone just copy pasted handset specs from other version. Please check gsmarena and google you bin

lazy link

My bad. But was really interested in Note 4 SD version

So I received this phone last week and was a little concerned about the unofficial ROM version 8.0.5.0.0 (MBECNGC). I would have liked to have installed an official MYUI version but after much googling and several brick reported devices I thought it safer to stay with the unofficial one. so far I have found it relatively bug free. How are others finding it??

​Not a fan then? I don't think using this ROM is any different to using any other third party ROM..