[OFFTOPIC] China Phone Discussion - UPDATED 30/10/2013

[Guest blaster99999]

I'm slowly getting used to the v5 , the larger more crisp screen makes internet browsing more user friendly but its tricky to do one handed texting and im bit worried about dropping it as its slippy phone , my biggest disappointment is when in a call speaker is tinny and vibrates, installed nds emu last nights and runs well, anyone else got a v5 and noticed poor speaker

Edited June 8, 2013 by blaster99999

[Guest blaster99999]

I bought from Merimobiles but went for the free delivery. Knowing my luck I'd pay for express and it'd take longer.

less chance of paying duty with China post so I've read, from order to delivery mine took 12 days with free delivery and I paid for root option , if you plan to use GPS have a look further up the thread you will need to follow guide to get your first GPS lock

[Guest Rico_89]

im bit worried about dropping it as its slippy phone ,...

Just s few ideas that might help with grip.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3D-CARBON-FIBRE-TEXTURED-VINYL-SHEET-STICKER-AIR-FREE-BUBBLE-CAR-WRAP-PHONE/230955199790?_trksid=p5197.m1992&_trkparms=aid%3D111000%26algo%3DREC.CURRENT%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D14%26meid%3D8227541597307400519%26pid%3D100015%26prg%3D1006%26rk%3D1%26sd%3D230955199790%26

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Drysuit-Neoprene-Tape-1-Metre-/330934861023?pt=UK_SportingGoods_Boxing_RL&hash=item4d0d413cdf

[Guest bryfly]

less chance of paying duty with China post so I've read, from order to delivery mine took 12 days with free delivery

Looks like Blaster 99999 was lucky with his delivery time, I ordered 2 phones with merimobiles on 17th may for airmail delivery.one hasn't tracked at all, one has tracked and is somewhere on the planet, so 21 days and no sign of anything, so frustrating!!!!

[Guest arranhs]

I'm trying to make such a hard decision. Do i:

Go with a vowney v5

Disadvagtages: worried screen is too big, smallish battery for a large screen phone, no gorilla glass (which I feel is very important with big screen phones plus I put my phones through the wars - somehow I managed to scratch my g300!)

Go with the g4

Disadvantages: expensive, none others everything else is awesome and I don't mind waiting.

Go with the iocean x7

Disadvantages: worried 1gb ram not enough for a five inch fhd screen, battery bit small for five inch fhd screen, five inch screen too big, no gorilla glass

What do you guys think?

Edit: looking over that again there is basically no advantage of the x7 over the v5 but the v5 is quite a bit cheaper. Still stuck between the v5 and the g4 though.

Edited June 8, 2013 by arranhs

[Guest bryfly]

Looks like Blaster 99999 was lucky with his delivery time, I ordered 2 phones with merimobiles on 17th may for airmail delivery.one hasn't tracked at all, one has tracked and is somewhere on the planet, so 21 days and no sign of anything, so frustrating!!!!

So fed up waiting, g300 has gone now, thinking of going to get one of these,"Huawei Ascend Y300 hits UK for £60", need something to keep me occupied while I wait..... lol.........

[Guest dakok]

Go with a vowney v5

Disadvagtages: .....no gorilla glass

Gorilla only makes the screen more brittle - which is a bigger problem then surface hardness (which can be solved with quality protector)

My g300 has no scratches after 7 months use and no one can tell there`s protector on :)

[Guest blaster99999]

So fed up waiting, g300 has gone now, thinking of going to get one of these,"Huawei Ascend Y300 hits UK for £60", need something to keep me occupied while I wait..... lol.........

got a y300 delivered yesterday for daughter , got it for the upgrade price of £59.95 got to say its a bargain , lot faster than the g300, huawei UI on the y300 is not to my liking but it does have 4.1 on and is unlocked , is dual core and dual camera , go for it you can't lose , you will get your money back if you sell when your new phone comes

[Guest blaster99999]

Looks like Blaster 99999 was lucky with his delivery time, I ordered 2 phones with merimobiles on 17th may for airmail delivery.one hasn't tracked at all, one has tracked and is somewhere on the planet, so 21 days and no sign of anything, so frustrating!!!!

I got 2 phones from pandawill as well the hero v6888 both for sons, they took just over weeks to arrive, but it is luck of the draw can be anything from 10 days to about 30 days.

[Guest shuete]

Just s few ideas that might help with grip.

http://www.ebay.co.u...d=230955199790

http://www.ebay.co.u...=item4d0d413cdf

interesting

[Guest blaster99999]

interesting

looked at this, would be very hard to craft this covering to match the cut outs of the rear cover and the corners and the tapered back , cut out for the camera and the rear speaker and also the power button and volume button , if it could be done to a high standard would look amazing

[Guest tillaz]

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[Guest moorish]

hmm, i just had a look at the second firmware.info you sent me and created a new scatter file, then diffed the two and they are different,

so it looks like a little bit of info was missed in the first one you sent.

i think this is why you got the error

"BROM ERROR S_DA_NAND_FLASH_NOT_FOUND 3012"

so what you / others should do is:

remove the VCOM drivers (if) you installed, reboot your PC

now follow the guide (on the other page) but first delete the "MT6589_Android_scatter.txt" which is inside the MTK6589 folder

and replace it with this one >>>

then start the guide.

http://www.modaco.co...80#entry2131675

I had a suspicion something might have gone wrong, so thats why i sent the second firmware.info file.

Ok, tried with the new file, and it worked straight away!

uploading now...will send link when done. I would suggest another recovery image should be obtained from elswhere to ensure they are same.

[Guest tillaz]

cool, yours should be fine :)

[Guest kaizoku_san]

I was happy this morning to see the message " Arrival at inward office of exchange" when i tracked it on http://www.track-trace.com/post and thought I'd only have to wait for a few more days. Just got home to find RM tried to deliver it this morning at 11am!!! Now I have to wait till monday (although the delivery note says "wait 72 hrs"??).

So my order took 11 days to reach me from China. That's very good delivery time in my books, and I just chose normal delivery, not DHL or any other ones. But then I've bought a ZTE V970 which was released some time ago, compared to V5 or the G4 which were just released now, so your deliveries might take longer.

Weirdly, tracking my order at http://www.trackingkit.com/ says the same as above but has a google map location pointing to a location near Dumfries?!?

[Guest shuete]

looked at this, would be very hard to craft this covering to match the cut outs of the rear cover and the corners and the tapered back , cut out for the camera and the rear speaker and also the power button and volume button , if it could be done to a high standard would look amazing

Yes it could be great, i ordered from aliexpress a case for

Huawei Ascend G710 A199

because i read somewhere it could be a fit, but i haven't received the good yet,

but when it arrives i will post a picture

[Guest Wacky.ddw]

I have my MI2S for 2 days now i am really loving it!

A friend bought a HDC butterly (x920) but when i google it says that its a star i am really confused.

Wich recovery does he have to flash? Anyone knows this?

@Tillaz: do you know miui is out for your nexus?

[Guest shuete]

I was happy this morning to see the message " Arrival at inward office of exchange" when i tracked it on http://www.track-trace.com/post and thought I'd only have to wait for a few more days. Just got home to find RM tried to deliver it this morning at 11am!!! Now I have to wait till monday (although the delivery note says "wait 72 hrs"??).

So my order took 11 days to reach me from China. That's very good delivery time in my books, and I just chose normal delivery, not DHL or any other ones. But then I've bought a ZTE V970 which was released some time ago, compared to V5 or the G4 which were just released now, so your deliveries might take longer.

Weirdly, tracking my order at http://www.trackingkit.com/ says the same as above but has a google map location pointing to a location near Dumfries?!?

wow nice i had the same experience only took 7 days to arrive - but mine was not free shipping i paid for singapore post

Edited June 8, 2013 by shuete

[Guest tillaz]

I had a suspicion something might have gone wrong, so thats why i sent the second firmware.info file.

Ok, tried with the new file, and it worked straight away!

uploading now...will send link when done. I would suggest another recovery image should be obtained from elswhere to ensure they are same.

can you send me the build.prop from that stock vowney ROM you have ?

or on the phone you can use a file manager app and go to

/system

and open build.prop with a text editor and take a screenshot (press volume down & power button at the same time)

make sure "ro.product.device=" is visible before taking the screenshot.

and the same for /system/etc/vold.fstab

[Guest JetKun]

Careful with buying phones like the Vowney V5- there's a phone that looks exactly the same, right down to the packaging- steer clear http://www.antelife.com/firefly-v5-android-4-2-quad-core-3g-smart-phone-with-mtk6589-1-2ghz-5-0-inch-hd-ips-screen-wcdma-dual-sim-1gb-ram-4gb-rom-black.html

[Guest tillaz]

i have built TWRP for the vowney v5, only problem is its 6.31mb and the recovery partition on the device is only 6mb...

there is a guide on how to increase the partition to 7mb but is quite lengthy, however i will post the link for it if people want to go that way.

so for an easier option without having to re-flash the whole phone or anything complicated i built CWM (in english) as this is only 6mb and will fit.

[Guest dakok]

I`d add - these are first series of MTK6589 devices. Don`t hurry buying.

I am digging last few days on chinese phone websites, looking for user reviews.

Funny thing is that you don`t have much reviews for latest UMI, ZOPO quads,

Even chinese folks don`t rush buying latest models...

[Guest Colossae3.23]

looked at this, would be very hard to craft this covering to match the cut outs of the rear cover and the corners and the tapered back , cut out for the camera and the rear speaker and also the power button and volume button , if it could be done to a high standard would look amazing

I put a carbon fibre wrap on my G300 last year. If you want more detail and see some photos you can do a search for a post I made on here (use Google search it's far better than the forum one) Do you guys have a product called Liquid Sandpaper over here? We had it in the States. It's deglosser, I've used it to revarnish handrails, etc. Something like that "might" work on the back of the V5, seeing that it back cover wraps around the sides of the phone.

[Guest tillaz]

I`d add - these are first series of MTK6589 devices. Don`t hurry buying.

only problem with this is the longer you wait the closer you get to the next gen of the MTK chipset, which is probably every 12 month

MTK6598 ???

[Guest shuete]

Careful with buying phones like the Vowney V5- there's a phone that looks exactly the same, right down to the packaging- steer clear http://www.antelife....-rom-black.html

It looks so much like V5..but has a bigger battery and different specs but battery may be a good thing if we can buy