Chinese Smartphone Invasion Begins 181
snydeq writes "Tech giants Apple, Google, and Microsoft were no-shows at CES this week in Las Vegas, which worked out just fine for Chinese vendors looking to establish a name for themselves with U.S. consumers. 'Telecom suppliers Huawei and ZTE, in particular, have set their sights on breaking into the U.S. market for smartphones and tablets. ... Whether these Chinese imports can take on the likes of Apple and Samsung remains to be seen, but as Wired quotes Jeff Lotman, the CEO of Global Icons, an agency that helps companies build and license their brands: "The thing that's amazing is these are huge companies, and they have a lot of power, but in the United States nobody has heard of them and they're having trouble gaining traction, but it's not impossible. Samsung was once known for making crappy, low-end phones and cheap TVs. Now they're seen as a top TV and smartphone brand."'"
I've got a Chinese smartphone (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sold under the Apple brand.
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There was an earlier discussion [slashdot.org] about that. Afaict, the answer is "not really", but some of the Japanese and Korean brands may have a bigger proportion of their production done in, respectively, Japan and Korea.
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I have a Nexus One, Nexus Galaxy and Nexus 4 and they were made in Taiwan, S.Korea and S.Korea respectively.
From first-hand experience and information collected around the net -
Samsung makes its flagship phones mostly in South Korea
LG makes its flagship phones in South Korea
HTC makes its phones mostly in Taiwan
I'm sure a lot of Japanese phones (e.g. Sharp) is produced in Japan as well
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I'm guessing almost all of the parts are made in China and they are just assembled in Korea.
And they will not establish a foothold. (Score:4, Insightful)
I have used a LOT of china smartphones. and they all suck badly. really poor Android installs, really REALLY bad hardware. Innovative ideas, I LOVE the dual sim phones, but they either come with batteries that are garbage or the phone it self has QC issues that make it a swing and a miss.
So unless they have a dual core 1.5ghz Android 4.2 phone for $29.00 unlocked... they will not sell many.
Re:And they will not establish a foothold. (Score:4, Insightful)
I've used a lot of American, Japanese and Korean smartphones with really poor Android installs and really bad hardware.
I've also used some really good ones. There are some damn nice phones coming out of China now, quad core and vanilla Android nice.
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vanilla Android
That must be Ice Cream Sandwich. Typical Android phone, ships with an old OS version.
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you have not use any american Smartphones. None exist, There is not one cellphone on this planet you can buy that was made in america.
Re:And they will not establish a foothold. (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, we use ZTE modems (embedded stuff) at work. It's a tossup between the support and the product as to which is actually worse. None of our vendors enjoy selling ZTE products. Our standard policy is to ship the modems from the vendor to ZTE to ensure proper configuration. We've had one batch that was provisioned for a Chinese telecom, so we ended up "roaming" on our carrier and were assigned IP addresses owned by a Chinese company. All of the ZTE documentation for this particular modem is for the latest version of the firmware (which is not backwards compatible with the previous version of the firmware). Well, despite sending all of these things back to ZTE, only a handful of the modems have the current, documented version of the firmware. Despite asking for documentation for the older version of the firmware, ZTE has refused to provide any. Their solution is to recall hundreds of modems, ship them to ZTE and hope for the best. The firmware is not user updatable.
No. Thanks.
I feel for any carrier that things hawking ZTE phones will be a reasonable experience.
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My ISP gave me a ZTE 3G modem. The 3G router I plugged it into would randomly report that the modem was unplugged, sometimes after a couple days; sometimes after five minutes. After trying every firmware release I could with the router I gave up, unlocked a friend's unused modem from another manufacture, and have been fine ever since.
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"So unless they have a dual core 1.5ghz Android 4.2 phone for $29.00 unlocked... they will not sell many."
No, but you have a lot for 129$ still a very good bang for the buck.
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No, but you have a lot for 129$ still a very good bang for the buck.
Compared to 2002, most modern smart phones are great bang-for-buck.
Sigh, can't we just shoot the stupid like Lumpy (Score:2)
Morons like Lumpy just don't get and never will. Samsung made crappy stuff and then they got better. Sony used to make crappy stuff and then they got better AND then they went wallstreet and went crap and all their engineers went to Samsung with a big paycheck and layoff package. And Americans made crappy stuff nobody wanted except cheap grain and meat and then they got better and destroyed British industry.
You start producing crap and cheap clones while learning from doing the assembly of others and then
The big names were a no-show... (Score:4, Informative)
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Well Huawei need a better consumer brand name (Score:2)
Branding does matter, and Huawei is rather odd to American ears.
Other than that it'll be all about what they can offer in terms of price, features, and quality. Quality seems to be a big issue for many Chinese brands. They focus on low price above all else, and drive quality down too far. This could be a particular issue in the smartphone market where carries want to lock people in to 2 year contracts. That means that equipment needs to survive for 2 years, or you'll have angry customers.
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Better to say "they did OK in the US market eventually". Yes, they all had acceptance problems when they first appeared over here, mostly because most people prefer familiar brands to unfamiliar.
In a few years, the Chinese smartphone brands will sort themselves out into "good reputation" and "cheap garbage", and the former will do well, and the latter will quietly rebrand themselves and try again
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Those names roll off the tongue easily enough though. Except for Hyundai, the other brands have pretty obvious pronunciations. Huawei is a strange construction for an English speaker, comprised of four vowel sounds in a three syllable word, with two of them being consecutive.
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US Congress Rules Huawei a security threat [slashdot.org], Vulnerabilities [slashdot.org], may scare off customers. [slashdot.org]
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If you call it Chuck Norris people will just continue to associated their product with cheap, outdated things that no one really wants.
Product availability (Score:2)
"Still, Hisense products are tough to find in the U.S. outside of Walmart, Amazon.com and Costco.com."
Other than Target, that's everybody that matters in electronics and appliances.
OS (Score:2)
More manufacturers wanting to differenciate themselves from the rest means also more diversity on the software front. Thats from where Sailfish, Tizen, Firefox OS, and even Open Web OS phones will come.
The "We have the virtual monopoly so no need to innovate" mentality is about to get a hit (unless they use other tactics counterattack, like claiming that they will attack your privacy (even more than the US government is doing with everything US based), or with patents (after all the Apple fight to ban Sams
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More manufacturers wanting to differenciate themselves from the rest means also more diversity on the software front. Thats from where Sailfish, Tizen, Firefox OS, and even Open Web OS phones will come.
So far it just seems to mean an ever more fragmented Android.
Samsung wasn't the only one... (Score:5, Insightful)
LG used to be known as Gold Star. Gold Star was known as the "junk" brand of Sears, K-Mart, Zayre (oooh, I'm old) and other stores that targeted the low end consumer.
Gold Star had such a bad reputation that they changed their name to LG which stands for Lucky Gold Star.
Those that pooh-pooh the Chinese brands are ignoring all of the history since WWII. We used to laugh at Honda, Toyota, Kawasaki, Sony, NEC, Yamaha, and all the other Japanese brands, and now they high quality and popular (even luxury brands!). The American car and electronics manufacturers were complacent and we nearly completely lost automobile manufacturing entirely *twice* - only to be bailed out with government loans. We lost consumer electronics manufacturing entirely in the US.
Korean brands used to have a ridiculously bad reputation. Now we have Korean brands that people are more than willing to buy, sometimes preferring them over Japanese brands like Sharp. Hyundai used to be viewed as a disposable car (I had an Excel at one point). Now they are good quality transportation, as good as anything Japanese (but maybe not Infiniti or Acura).
And now we have idiots replying to this story saying that the Chinese will never make higher quality goods, as if the Chinese are somehow inherently inferior. This smacks of denial and racism, frankly, the same kind of denial and racism that we used against the Japanese and Koreans, before the Japanese and Koreans kicked our asses in manufacturing.
It feels good to think that you're superior to other people...but this is delusional. This is why Jared Diamond's book angered so many conservatives - he exposed the environmental, food, and natural transportation advantages people in the Middle East and Europe had over other locations on the planet. He detailed how these advantages were the real reason why European civilization became so successful, instead of some inherent quality of "white" people. And you see this every day. You see it in the denial that "those people over there" can't possibly be as good scientists and engineers as we in the US are.
It's a dumb worldview, and eventually self-defeating, because where the manufacturing goes, the science and engineering goes too. We here in the US are not special. Complacency brings down empires - political and economic both. We have been complacent for 60 years, because we thought the post WWII boom would go on forever.
--
BMO
Enjoying arguing with your straw-man? (Score:4, Insightful)
You seem to be arguing with someone that doesn't exist in this thread. I've seen nobody say "China can never make quality hardware." What people are saying is that they will need to make quality hardware, before they'll gain much in the way of US marketshare. Many of us have noticed that goods developed and branded by Chinese companies tend to be cheap at the expense of all quality. That will be a problem in the smartphone market most likely.
I'm quite sure China can produce quality goods, because I own some of them. I've goods that were produced in China, to the spec of a foreign company that are quite high quality. However that does not mean that the goods their domestic companies are choosing to produce are high quality.
Also your whining about complacency and bringing down empires shows a real lack of awareness of the US and the world. For one, you can hardly call the US complacent. Lots of top notch R&D happens in the US, lots of top notch manufacturing. A simple example would be the CPU most likely in your PC: Intel. They have the most advanced fabs in the world, and ruthlessly push the technology curve ahead. And yes, they manufacture in the US dominantly (8 of 11 fabs).
What's more there's nothing to "bring down". The US is a nation, not an empire and guess what? The US doesn't have to be #1 at everything to still be a nice place to live. I've been to a number of countries, all of them by definition not #1 at all the things the US is, and they were all quite nice. Canada, Norway, the UK, all places I would be very happy to live. They don't get to claim many "#1s" but they don't have to. It isn't a situation of "Someone is the best and everyone else sucks."
There is room in the world for a successful China AND US, just as there is room for a successful UK, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, and so on.
Re:Enjoying arguing with your straw-man? (Score:4, Informative)
I've seen nobody say "China can never make quality hardware."
Oh look.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3376583&cid=42562759 [slashdot.org]
Even modded insightful.
--
BMO
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The American car and electronics manufacturers were complacent and we nearly completely lost automobile manufacturing entirely *twice* - only to be bailed out with government loans.
Ford stayed strong throughout the economic recession, did not require any bailout, posted record profits, and produces the best selling car in the world. Two specific automakers were poorly managed and operated, and when the economy tanked, they couldn't survive. Perhaps they should have been allowed to fail so the stronger, better operated companies could have taken over their share. Regardless, the USA did not almost lose the entire automobile industry, as Ford is still a world leader.
We lost consumer electronics manufacturing entirely in the US.
No, we sent it aw
Re:Samsung wasn't the only one... (Score:5, Interesting)
And you are being a Bigot in assuming that the Japanese and Chinese are exactly the same and capable of the same accomplishments because they all look Asian.
No, I am saying that they are exactly the same and capable of the same because they are *human beings*.
Meet your new status, fuckhead.
--
BMO
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No, I am saying that they are exactly the same and capable of the same because they are *human beings*.
You are a deluded fool. Who wins all the worlds major marathons and why? If you think all human beings, or even races, are equal then you ignore the blatantly obvious. Further, human beings exist inside of a society and economy. Those constructs limit what they can and cannot do. I can only presume you do not know the difference between China and Japan, and only see them as blobs of generic people, so it is impossible to have a rational discussion with you on the matter.
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> Ford stayed strong throughout the economic recession, did not require any
> bailout, posted record profits, and produces the best selling car in the world.
Correction. Ford was going down to the same hot place in the same handbasket as GM. Bonds of both companies were downgraded to junk-bond status in early May of 2005 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41573-2005May6.html [washingtonpost.com] Ford had fewer assets than GM, and suffered a near-death experience with a loss of $12.7 billion in 2006. http://news [bbc.co.uk]
Many still consider LG a junk brand (Score:2)
Particularly their software has been half baked for android.
The only reason we don't notice it this round is their Nexus 4 had a Quad Core A15 and 2GB RAM. Nothing can slow IT down...just drain the battery.
Not just since WW2 (Score:2)
This has gone on LONG before. Do you think it is new for imports to replace local production? It has been going on for literally centuries, no for thousands of years.
2000-3000 years ago people already were massive traders with goods from the north of Europe and the middle east ending up in Switzerland.
The US itself was once nothing more then a little upstart colony but with the changing tech (freezing) it changed British farming forever. Same with the prison colony Australia. Nowadays, south american stea
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I can't argue with anything you've said.
I was just writing from the perspective of a resident of the US since WWII and a witness to rampant American Exceptionalism philosophy in my 47 years on this planet.
Of course if you want to look at the larger picture, yes, there is no actual race out there that is special and that success is always contingent on current circumstances (resources, ambition, etc), which is why I mentioned Jared Diamond's book, "Guns, Germs, and Steel," That book is actually an excellent
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Except China has yet to really produce much for Western consumption which isn't generally considered to be 'crap'. Yes they produce some things for other companies, under external control, but nothing "Chinese". So why is that? They've been exporting to the US and the West as a whole for much longer than Japan had to spin up their electronics and car excellence.
I'm not saying it won't happen, I'm just saying it hasn't happened yet, and I'm curious as to why. We've even got companies moving back to stateside
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>I'm not saying it won't happen, I'm just saying it hasn't happened yet, and I'm curious as to why.
China lagged behind both Korea and Japan because of two things:
WWII (the Japanese invaded and such) and the Cultural Revolution. While WWII and the Korean War interfered with both the advancement of Japan and Korea, Japan was rapidly built up after the war and so was Korea after the Korean war. Because they were our buds and we gave them money to do so, because COMMUNISM.
China had to contend with the Cult
Common phenomenon (Score:2)
The thing that's amazing is these are huge companies, and they have a lot of power, but in the United States nobody has heard of them and they're having trouble gaining traction, but it's not impossible
Change "United States" to "China", and you've just described Google's problems when they attempted to expand several years ago. Baidu is still the number one search provider in China. There are plenty more examples of this. It's not easy to predict when a product will find traction in a foreign market.
What? (Score:2)
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Yes that sentence in the summary seemed weird. They may be newish in the ~smartphone~ market but they've been selling 3G/4G USB dongles (ZTE, though often re-branded by the telco selling them) and mobile phone infrastructure (Huawei, towers, relays, routers and the like) for a long time, including in Western countries.
Take a look at any dongles or pocket wifi things you've got floating around. There's a good chance it's actually a ZTE device.
Chinese Firms Face Hurdle Japanese & Koreans D (Score:3)
I would also add that unlike Japan, they face much stiffer competition entering into the US market with a larger number of well established, well funded players who unlike blindsided American firms, much better understand how the electronics-export game works.
Invasion Begins? (Score:2)
Lenovo ThinkPhones, anyone . . . ? (Score:3)
Straight from this week's The Economist, http://www.economist.com/news/business/21569398-how-did-lenovo-become-worlds-biggest-computer-company-guard-shack-global-giant [economist.com]
Lenovo is on a roll. It is number one in five of the seven biggest PC markets, including Japan and Germany. Its mobile division is poised to leapfrog Samsung to grab the top spot in China, the world’s biggest smartphone market. This week it made a splash at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with what PC World called “bullish bravado and a seemingly bottomless trunk” of enticing new products.
To focus on PCs, Mr Yang’s [CEO] predecessor sold Lenovo’s smartphone arm for $100m in 2008. Mr Yang bought it back for twice as much the next year. He believes that PCs and other devices will converge, so knowledge of one area will breed expertise in the other. He may be right. Smartphone sales are red hot in China, and Lenovo is now selling mobiles and tablets in several emerging markets
He also thinks Lenovo has a secret weapon. It has kept a lot of manufacturing in-house (why outsource to Foxconn when you already pay Chinese wages?). Mr Yang believes this in-house expertise gives his firm an edge in product development. But Lenovo must exploit that edge better than it has done so far if it is to compete with a technology powerhouse like Samsung and build a global brand anything like Apple’s.
Has anyone seen one of these Lenovo phone critters yet . . . ?
ZTE Nubia-Z5 (Score:4, Informative)
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I got a cheap modern samsung phone (Score:2)
the phone is so cheap, I can NOT change the ringtone.
I see it used on TV as a "throw away" phone quite often.
Samsung is still making cheap shit that no one wants, they just raised the price on their stuff so you think it's not a cheap piece of shit.
Lack of introspection should be painful (Score:2)
Samsung is still making cheap shit that no one wants
VS
I got a cheap modern samsung phone
No one wants it, he bought it.
surprise (Score:2)
Smartphones, cars, air-conditioners, fridges, ships, armament, you name it. It's inevitable.
A truly disposable phone but the 'activation fee!; (Score:2)
A $5 phone that lasts about 3 months and then I can bring it in get another one. The key problem isn't the phone it's the 'activation fees' they charge. The upside though is that finally Sprint would get a garbage phone as terrible as their service.
Unless US cellphone companies support them... (Score:2)
...on a large scale, don't expect Huawei and ZTE to be influential in the US market.
Right now, the "Big Four" of cellphone companies with US operations (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile USA) are mostly pushing well-known brands of cellphones from the likes of Apple, HTC, LG, Motorola and Samsung. As such, these five cellphone companies have nearly all of the market share (though Nokia is starting to make a comeback with their Windows Phone 8 based Lumia models), and new companies like Huawei and ZTE m
Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
If I could pay $20 for a crappy low-end phone that ran Android that would last 6 months, I'd seriously consider it. At that rate, I'd spend $40/yr. which is under half the price I pay now for a cheap Virgin phone (which I buy outright).
If it was $30 and lasted a year, that'd be even better.
Sure, the prices aren't there yet, but more competition is only going to drive prices down.
Re:Nope (Score:4, Interesting)
This would be great, if only the price of the phone was a significant part of the cost of owning a phone.
Unfortunately, it's almost a rounding error.
Re:Nope (Score:4, Interesting)
Some of us buy our hardware and our plans separately.
If you do differently, well, that's your own problem.
Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
So what?
The bulk of the cost of owning a smart phone is the cellular service.
If your phone costs $50, $250, $450, $650, it's about 5-15% of the total cost of ownership.
In other words, if you're looking more closely at the cost of the phone rather than the functionality of the phone, you're missing the point of owning a smartphone.
Re:Nope (Score:4, Informative)
Not sure about your denominator, there, but you can buy voice and data plans for about $30 a month. This is $720 over 2 years.
It you buy a "top of the line" phone, it will cost you about the same as the service for 2 years (i.e. 50% of ownership cost). If you can get a cheap smartphone, it lowers your costs substantially.
Just about all Android and Apple smart phones have roughly the same functionality.
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You can get a voice/data plan for about $30 a month.
But you're not going to want to use it with a smart phone.
Phablet (Score:2)
"You can get a voice/data plan for about $30 a month. But you're not going to want to use it with a smart phone."
And why not? I've seen "smart" people use their smartphones as a combo dumbphone/tablet, effectively turning them into small "phablets" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phablet). Basically you use the expensive data plan for the dumbphone stuff like old-fashioned text-messaging and voice calls, or for quickly checking your social stats. Then you report to the nearest wi-fi hotspot if you want to wat
Re: Phablet (Score:2)
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I just got a Nexus 4 and signed up for a $30/month plan with T-Mobile. It comes with 100 minutes and a soft cap of 5gb at 4G speeds. I use my phone more as a portable computer than a phone, so the low minutes are fine by me. For long calls, I use Google Voice for free with GrooVeIP.
The two year cost including the phone is $300 + $30*24 = $1020. A high-end phone with 5gb of 4G data on contract with one of the other carriers would be about twice that.
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I plan to: T-Mobile has $30 for 5gb 4G [t-mobile.com]+unlimited txt+100 min. talk and Ting's plans [ting.com] are only for smartphones; both get good reviews.
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But you can't leave your country (that's the size of the average US state) without roaming charges.
Also, US carriers suck. A lot.
But because of that, they're a good stock to own - 5-6% dividends.
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But you can't leave your country (that's the size of the average US state) without roaming charges.
Also, US carriers suck. A lot.
But because of that, they're a good stock to own - 5-6% dividends.
As being one that move between two countries in Europe frequently, I must say that this generally is a non-issue. You simply use a pay-as-you go topup SIM for each country. My primary SIM got a 2GB free data per 15€ topup + 1h free calls/day to others of the same carrier and normal fares to other networks or landlines. The thing is, all European carriers are using the same standardized protocols (GSM and whatever the 3- and 4G standards are called).
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Europe isn't a country (yet).
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Apparently you don't live in the same Europe as I do, then.
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Neither is America nor Asia. All are continents.
While we're being pedantic, America is not a continent.
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The 6 continent model with a combined America is apparently taught in "Spanish-speaking countries and in some parts of Eastern Europe including Greece".
Stating one model is wrong when there are multiple accepted models is simple
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We pay 19.99 here for unlimited calls to fixed and mobiles, fixed lines all over Europe plus USA and Canada, unlimited SMS and MMS, unlimited Internet for the first 3GB and reduced speeds after. As my smartphone has wifi, I can watch video all day long at home and work and not even touch my uncapped data.
Phillip.
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By the way, 15% is not, as you say, a "rounding error".
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The cost of service is part of the cost of owning a phone, but it's not part of the cost of the phone!
If we're talking about new phone manufacturers trying to get into the market, it's the cost of phones that matters for purposes of determining if they're competitive with other makers of phones. Discussing cost-of-service is an irrelevant distraction.
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"If your phone costs $50, $250, $450, $650, it's about 5-15% of the total cost of ownership."
I claim bullshit on that.
My last but one phone, a Samsung Galaxy S, costed me 450 EUR and lasted me in good use about 2 years.
My voice/data plan (500MB/month, enough for my light usage) was 25EUR/month, which means 600EUR on those two years.
So, 450 versus 600, hardly neglegible cost.
Now I own a Chinese smarphone that costed me 120EUR and doesn't look it's going to have a shorter live than my older Samsung (and, as I
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Seen T-Mobile's Monthly 4G plan? $30/month for unlimited data and 100 minutes.
And talking about "total cost of ownership" is silly. First, a smartphone plan isn't part of legitimate TCO -- I gave my mother my old smartphone, and she doesn't have any plan for it at all -- she uses it around her house with her local wifi. Second, it makes unnecessary and useless assumptions about aligning the phone-buying cycle with the
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Can you go all across Europe, ie to Spain & Slovenia, without incurring roaming charges?
Then it's not the same as the US.
1GB/month - better not watch Netflix on the road, or get a few emails with large attachments. Also, that's not what I want for a smartphone plan. What's the point of having a smartphone?
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I'd say the answer is no. At least not regularly enough that I'd base my choice of phone plan on this.
The point of having a smartphone is mostly to show off to other people as far as I can tell. That and email.
Why would I watch Netflix on the road in Europe?
It's not even available here.
Besides, I have a nice big screen at home.
I'll use that for movies instead of a tiny phone display.
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Can you go all across Europe, ie to Spain & Slovenia, without incurring roaming charges? Then it's not the same as the US. 1GB/month - better not watch Netflix on the road, or get a few emails with large attachments. Also, that's not what I want for a smartphone plan. What's the point of having a smartphone?
Well I can't speak for everyone else but I mainly live in my country, sure if I went a lot abroad that might be an issue but my foreign access costs is a rounding error to my vacation costs. I care about the broadband I can get in my daily life, going on vacation is a good time to unwind from that always connected stress too. And if I did it because of work then I'd insist they pay, not me. Oh and the EU has brought the charges down to moderately unreasonable, you're not fleeced quite as bad as you used to
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In my business I live on on my phone. In Europe it's not so bad but outside the roaming charges are exorbitant. I spent $100 on one relatively short phone call when last in Ukraine. Fortunately most places have free wifi in nearly every bar and restaurant. If somebody calls just hit reject and dial them straight back for free on Viber (or whatever voip you use). If you see you have a large attachment just wait until you get until the hotel until you download it.
I should point out that Spain and Slovenia are
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And I should point out that, last time I checked on the map, Ukraine was still in Europe. When did it move away?
and i should point out its not an EU member covered by EU roaming regulations on pricing
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Most people don't move out of state more than once a year, even in the USA. If the USA telcos were to offer cheaper subscriptions that would only work in your home state, I'm fairly certain over 80 percent of phone users would get one of those plans.
If you do have to go abroad, often people buy a local SIM with a prepayed package on it for E10 or something. You can often get 1G or more on your holiday destination for that sort of money, often with hundreds of minutes of local calls as well. Spending anywher
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Can you go all across Europe, ie to Spain & Slovenia, without incurring roaming charges? Then it's not the same as the US.
1GB/month - better not watch Netflix on the road, or get a few emails with large attachments. Also, that's not what I want for a smartphone plan. What's the point of having a smartphone?
Thr USA = 1 nation ,5000 texts,unlimited data for 30 gbp
Europe =many nations
what part of that do you not get???
btw you get can unlimited data with 200 minutes and 5000 texts from 3 for £12.90 GBP as my gf does, i get 2000 minutes
So, what you're really saying is... (Score:2)
...that for you, the cost of a smartphone is a very small portion of the overall cost of service because you want far more data per month than many people do. From what I've seen here and elsewhere, you are an outlier. That's fine. There are data plans for you.
For the rest of us, there are far cheaper plans that provide us with what we need, so the cost of a smartphone becomes a significant fraction of the overall cost of service. That's why cheap Android phones are taking off in almost every market whe
Hardware and plans, separate? (Score:2)
Some of us buy our hardware and our plans separately.
If you do differently, well, that's your own problem.
The economic feasibility of that suggestion varies greatly depending on your particular geography, sir.
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Re:I own a ZTE v875 (Score:5, Informative)
I own a ZTE v875, which I got for around 80 euros as a carrier exclusive (TMN Smart A7). The phone is really really good for the value, in fact, I would get it again if something happens to it. It has everything what you would expect from a good Android phone. The GPS is even better, I often get more precision from the location services than my friends with higher end phones. The qwerty keyboard is awesome and the main reason why I bought this phone. There is a minor problem though, you need to use a plastic plug in the headphones jack, otherwise sand and dust comes in and stays between the touchscreen and the LCD - annoying. Other than that, the phone is very serviceable, I already opened it a couple of times to clean the sand / dust. In fact, I even managed to accidentally cut 5 of the LCD flex cable vias while trying to unplug it. Fortunately I have steady hands and a good soldering iron :)
Other than that, I'm stuck with gingerbread. The internal storage is quite small, however I have root access which allows me to move apps around to circumvent the small internal (permanent) memory. The battery autonomy is ok, with 3G on at all times I always have more than 1 day of battery.... if I dont abuse google maps.
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Particles of dust inside the LCD and opening it up periodically is an experience most people do not want to endure, alongside an outdated OS and fragile connections. You got what you paid for, which is fine for you but not many others who want a phone that 'just works.'
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Hey, don't get me wrong, the phone just works (TM).
Particles of dust inside the LCD and opening it up periodically is an experience most people do not want to endure
I said I opened it a couple of times... which means.. around two times, not often as you make it sound. The first time was just to inspect the SoC, the second to remove the dust.
and fragile connections
Did you ever seen an LCD flex cable? Yes it is fragile, not just this particular one - specially if you try to pull it using a string (bad idea). So yeah, I broke it and it was my fault. I just wrote the little incident to make people laugh, not to make the phone look bad.
alongside an outdated OS
Yes, the O
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I completely failed to mention I own the referred phone for more than 1 year!
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The Alcatel Venture costs $40, and will probably last for a year. If nothing else, you can buy it some place that'll give you a 3-year extended warranty for $15 more....
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If I could root and unlock the device's bootloader, and there is some type of custom ROM ecosystem for the device, so much the better. In the past, I'd use Titanium Backup to save stuff to the SD card [1]. Worst case, I need to install the app on the new device via Google Play, then copy its data from the TB stash. If I were moving between the same model of devices, then nandroid becomes useful. As a secondary backup, Titanium Backup and another app made by the same people can sync data to Dropbox, so i
6 months? (Score:2)
Why do you assume that it would just last 6 months? They last a good deal longer.
20-30$ a month is small money in a wester country,but in developing countries, its a lot more.
Let me tell you the India story.
A few years back, when the telecom boom happened, you needed to buy your own phone. Even today very few carriers offer bundles
So you could either spend 150$ approx to buy a nokia feature phone(entry level), or some 300$ to get a more advanced feature phone, and about 600$ to buy a newish smartphone.
Or yo
Re:Nope (Score:4, Interesting)
They're cheap enough.
I have a Star N8000 (AU$130) which I've had for about a year now (Galaxy Note clone), and a JiaYu G3 (AU$230) just bought.
The Star runs Android 4.03 nicely, has been very robust (in a standard supplied cover) and performs well. I bought it for it's dual SIM capability which makes staying connected while travelling much easier and cheaper, but it's become my main phone because it's so versatile (even includes an analogue TV tuner).
The G3 is new, but so far it feels nicely made. It's very fast, has a brilliant display, two SIMs and runs Jelly Bean. I bought it to test, but my GF saw it when it arrived, so I haven't been able to do much testing... It's easily the slickest phone I have (limited) access to.
I have no doubt that the Galaxy SIII and iPhone are well made, but in Australia they're triple the price of my phones and less versatile.
Re:Nope (Score:5, Funny)
I'll get my coat..
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"No one wants crappy, low-end phones that will break within 2 hours."
Certainly not.
On the other hand, I wanted an smartphone capable of managing two SIM cards, 4" screen (I don't want bigger), with Android and a big fat battery. No way finding something like that from any of the "big brands".
I'm a consumer and I vote with my wallet. Would you think all these capitalist-grown companies knows that?
Well, I ended buying a Chinese Jiayu G2 http://www.pandawill.com/jiayu-g2-smart-phone-40-inch-ips-screen-androi [pandawill.com]
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Nothing wrong with these in terms of endurance. The tablet works AND fits in my jacket pocket, so gets infinitely more use than an iPad (or whatever the Samsung thing is called (Galaxy 10). Neither fit in my pocket ; neither got considered beyond that metric. The phone ... is a phone. What more is there
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I suppose that what you don't know that apple, microsoft, or blackberry installs in your phones would never be malware. I would go to a phone (american, chinese, finnish or from anywhere) that not just runs an open source (so auditable) OS, but also enables you to put in your own version. And so far, the ones willing to go that route are more the chinese than the western ones.
Now, if you concern is about bad real world performance, or bad battery life, well, i would understand, but is just about picking t
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I happen to read International Standard English, so please allow me to translate.
"I ain't never heared o' no Chinese hardly-wear with that there mallard-wear on it. Show me some o' that there Chinese hardly-wear with that there mallard-ware on hit, or git raht off mah pond!"
HTH u dood.
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If you weren't such a chickenshit, you could actually log in and use your account's Awesome Choco-licious Karma Qi Power to downmod me straight to Hell.
Right? Right!
So what's stopping you?