The Chinese Connection - Review Chinese Cellphones

I AM A bit wary of unknown brands, especially those stamped with the ‘Made in China’ tag. But it has to be accepted that they are hugely popular in India. For Rs 4,000, a Chinese phone can give you a 2.8” touchscreen with stylus, a good looking interface with graphics, a miniSD Card slot, dual SIM option, MP3 and MP4 players, a camera and some great speakers. Real value for money.

After I got to use one such phone during a recent visit to Jaipur, I decided to do a bit of research. All the shops I visited were keen to sell the cheaper option — their reasoning: why spend Rs 20,000 when you can buy the same for Rs 5,000.

CAMERA: Each model I checked had a different camera by a different maker, some even named after apparel brands.

But the fact is that all of them are horrible, with bad digital zooms.

However, they work, though you might not be able to take quality prints.

SCREEN: The 2.8” screen was clear and bright and good enough to display the vivid graphics. A colleague who owned a Chinese phone said his touchscreen had stopped working long back. He did go to get it fixed as the mobile was still on warranty, but the dealer had downed shutters by then. MUSIC: I loaded my Mini-SD card into his one such phone to play my Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan numbers. I must confess the the sound reproduction was quite good, a difficult proposition for most phone speakers.

VIDEO: It failed to recognise most DivX videos on the card — maybe some codecs were missing. I then used my phone to download some MP4 files from YouTube to my SD Card. The phone had no problem recognising or playing these.

USB: Most phones had a USB Port. I tried connecting one, but my PC did not recognise it as a mass storage device. But it will do, as USBs are becoming the de facto charge port option for phones and give frequent travellers like me more freedom.

DUAL SIM: Though only one SIM can stay active at a time, the phones give you the option while restarting to choose which of the two connections goes on standby mode. I was told by some shopkeepers that there were models which allowed incoming and outgoing calls on both cards. I liked this option as it gave me the freedom to use both CDMA and GSM in a single phone.

BATTERY: Both the phones I tried lasted through the day, with about one hour of talktime, which is good. But there are some serious negatives.

• am not sure whether stories of cheap phones exploding are true, but I would still not be sleeping with one of these charging beside my bed.
  
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  The keyboard will take some getting used to, as the keys are laid out awkwardly to accommodate the big screen.
  
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  Though you might not need it regularly, a touchscreen that doesn’t work can be a pain.
  
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  SD Card cannot be inserted without opening the phone.
  
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  The SD cards are usually unbranded and so it is better to change to a branded one for better performance.
  

But, overall, these phones, though called Nike or Mobichin, are good if you would like to have all latest features and still not end up paying a fortune for it.

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The Above article appeared in the Indian Express, on Sunday 26th April 2009