Not every phone that comes from China is cheap

Off late, we are seeing some mindblowing releases from Chinese brands. It all started with soon-to-be-Chinese brand, Motorola Mobility and the latest one is the Xiaomi Mi 3 that is going to cost 13,999/- and has enough firepower to make Samsung make frantic 108 calls from their HQ. There are many who want to purchase these phones from Gionee, Xiaomi but the only thing that is stopping them is this tag line that is etched into our branins “Chinese products are cheap, will not last long and are not serviceable”. Not every product is cheap and there are brands in China that are better than Korean brands in many ways. Cheap in the title is not related to price, it is related to quality of the product.

Bloatdroid

With Android, Google gave the world a level playing field and Samsung was the first to make the most out of it. Before Android, Samsung was actually considered as a maker of cheap phones for those who couldn’t afford a Nokia or Sony Ericsson or Motorola (not talking about budget phones). Look where they are now! Unfortunately, Samsung took the win for granted and we have a situation similar to the Chinese flooding the market. Difference is that in 2000s, the phones were made by various unknown brands and were all copy of hit designs from a global brand. While today, these are from one brand (Samsung), based on one super hit model (Galaxy S3). Ever since Galaxy S3 came out (in 2012), Samsung has been releasing a new phone every month that looks like a GS3 and today, there are too many of them. On gsmarena.com, I have used following phone search filter:

OS: Android; Brand: Samsung; Year: 2012 and later; Display size: 2.9”-5.6”; bar form factor;

The search listed 92 phones. One single brand, one operating system, three years time. 92 models that look more or less like Galaxy S3. That is how stale and redundant Samsung turned Galaxy lineup into. People did not care about this and everyone followed Samsung. Nokia Lumia phones are based on Nokia N9 design. Sony is yet to make significant changes to their flagship Zx series (all are based on Xperia Z design), HTC is using HTC One design everywhere and before that it was HTC Desire’s design, Apple is yet to change the design after iPhone 4 that came 3 years ago. The so called ‘top tier’ brands stopped giving a damn about design innovation and on top of that, started messing with Android (take Nokia/Apple of this list now) to such an extent that what we get these days for antique design phones that slow down Android OS to such an extend that even a phone from the year 2011/2012 with a custom ROM runs better than a flagship phones of 2014 that cost north of 40,000/- INR

Not the Chinese

Using the same phone finder on gsmarena, I have searched for phones from Oppo, Xiaomi, Meizu, Gionee without any other filter and guess what! There are only 51 of them (say 10-20 phone that are not listed on gsmarena) and still, compare this to phones that are coming from Samsung in last two and half years time.

None of these brands are using one design, multiple models across years approach. Take a look at phones like Oppo Find 7, Oppo N1,  Gionee S5.5, Meizu MX3, Xiaomi Mi3. These are great looking phones that are powerful as well and they come at dirt cheap price.

During the mid 2000s, the Indian market was flooded by phones from China and few south east Asian countries. These features phones were part of pre-Android era, competing with Nokia, Sony, Motorola etc. Irony is that, irrespective of the phones brand and model, all these low costs phones came with a tagline, ‘Chinese phones’. It was not just the phones. This applies to non-electronic markets too. We see tonnes of Chinese goods that are significantly cheaper. I was in same impression that if it is made by a Chinese brand, it is cheap. I would suggest you to check the following websites, take a look at the models and then head to Samsung, LG, Sony, Nokia sites and take a look at the models.

Oppo : http://global.oppo.com/

Xiaomi: http://www.mi.com/en

Gionee : http://global.gionee.com/eng/products/

Huawei : http://www.huaweidevice.co.in/smartphone

OnePlus : http://oneplus.net

The rise of brands in China

About a year ago, my friend purchased Gionee Elife E3 (that was the model name I think) for a dirt cheap price and the first thing I said is ‘Why did you buy this el-cheapo phone when you could’ve got a branded phone for 2-3k more’. Yes, I blindly believed that Gionee was not a brand without even checking. He then explained what Gionee is and asked me to try the phone for few minutes. I was pleasantly surprised when I first tried the phone. It was fast, build quality was excellent and had refreshingly good look. That was when I started following these few brands and few flagships from brands like Huawei, Lenovo. Though I see few redundant models from these brands, when they launch a new flagship, it wont be the same old design from outgoing model.

Such a Low Price?

Apple iPhone 5S costs atleast Rs.45,000/- in India. Do you know that Apple spends around $215 to manufacture each unit. That is roughly around 13,000/- INR. Galaxy S5 costs less than $250 to manufacture and the phone costs more than Rs.35,000 here in India. Lets leave out Apple here as they design the OS on their own, do lot of R&D on material and build while Samsung does not have to worry about operating system (yet, they add bloatware that creates severe lag and waste money on unwanted work. Samsung, also splurges cash on advertising and PR, they have to cover the losses incurred by dozens of models that fail to sell. In short, when you pay for a Galaxy S5, you are paying for a high end phone, you are paying to cover the losses from low and mid range phones and you are paying for all those TV commericals.

Brands like Xiaomi, Oppo, Gionee release far less models, does not splurge cash across the globe for PR and advertising (to the scale of Samsung), they does not blindly release millions of units into the market. As a result, they have much lower targets and can go easy on the price. Also, their customization of Android is far easier to manage and is more subtle than Samsung’s.

Not every low cost Chinese phone is VFM

Not every phone from these brands and other brands like ZTE, Lenovo, Huawei are great VFM phones. Remember these things when you are planning to buy one:

• Service centers in your locality
• Reviews from experts across the globe
• are there any known issues?
• Stay below 20k price tag. lower the price tag is for a ‘well built and well specced model’, better it is to take a chance.
• Ignore the brand releasing models with very low shelf life. Too many phones means less changes of bug fixes and less chance of OS udpates
• OS updates for existing and past models.
•  Do NOT try to be early adopter. You are not doing beta testing here. Wait for others to buy, watch and decide

Nothing stays at the top forever

Nokia’s 2110, 3210 and 3110 brought us into the world of affordable phones way back in 1998 when Motorola ruled the industry. Motorola was clouded with false sense of security back then and ended up chasing Nokia. Samsung caught Nokia and HTC napping and delivered a punch with Galaxy i7500 and i5700 Android phones (both were sub 18k smartphones and fared far better than phones that were nearly double the price). Nokia was too lazy to respond and see where they are today. Samsung is in a similarly dangerous position. Their sales have started declining, they are getting bombarded by better and cheaper phones from brands like Motorola, Gionee, Lenovo, Micromax etc and still their response is very similar to how Nokia and Motorola responded. Fortunately, Samsung is far more diversified  than Motorola and Nokia were at their peak and if they act fast, they will survive but will never regain the stranglehold that they are losing now.