What are you? TOP 5 inexpensive Chinese smart phones

For many smartphone buyers, it is not important to have powerful hardware or a bunch of additional features that weigh down the price. The main thing is that it works stably, does not slow down and the battery does not sit down closer to lunch. In this regard, the Doogee X70, which has a 4000 mAh battery (holds up to 3 days in a gentle mode) and a price of less than $ 100, looks like a pretty attractive option.

At first glance, the appearance of the Doogee X70 is the style of a typical "workhorse", which certainly will not catch the design. But with a more thorough review, we see quite a pretty tracing paper of the iPhone X with its thin frames and branded bangs-cutout.

With the boom in frameless design, the 5.5-inch diagonal has become the de facto standard for entry- and mid-level smartphones. Such a "tube" is comfortable to operate and it lies comfortably in your hand. The Doogee X70 has exactly such a 5.5 IPS class display with not the highest resolution of 1132x540. Because of this, the picture on the one hand looks a little grainy (although it does not cause much discomfort), on the other hand, the display saves battery energy.

Modest hardware also plays into the hands of increased battery life. The heart of the system is a 4-core MediaTek MT6580M chip (1.3 GHz frequency), the Mali-400 MP2 chip is responsible for graphics, and the amount of RAM is 2 GB. This performance is enough for comfortable watching videos on YouTube, surfing in social networks and working with mail. But you should not count on demanding games.

In terms of additional functions, we have only a fingerprint scanner and a small set of interesting proprietary Doogee applications. For example, Finger Gesture allows you to change the wallpaper using gestures, Smart Motion is responsible for setting up the answering machine, Wake Gesture — gestures with which the user can unlock the screen.

What can you demand from a smartphone worth about $ 100? Not much, even if it's a well-known discounter like Xiaomi or Meizu. But less famous Chinese manufacturers are ready to offer more for this amount than such strong competitors. For example, the Doogee Y7 is equipped with a fairly performant 8-core processor, a large FullHD+ screen and a dual camera. On the one hand, this is an excellent equipment, on the other hand, it has a number of reservations.

The first concerns the camera. Formally, the smartphone has a dual module, but as is often the case in Chinese state employees of the second echelon, the auxiliary module is not involved in any way, and in portrait mode, a software blur from the centre of the frame works. That is, it is not so much a bokeh effect as a regular vignetting. Although, in general, the quality of the images from the camera is quite at the level. Especially if the lighting does not suffer.

There are nuances on the screen. The device is equipped with a 5.84-inch screen with a resolution of Full HD+ (2280 x 1080 pixels) and a bang cutout on top. Taking into account the price, both the screen resolution and its size look great — it occupies almost the entire front panel, like much more expensive smartphones. But at the same time, the panel sins with colour distortion when the angle of inclination changes. This is a standard disease of inexpensive IPS matrices. Plus, according to subjective feelings, the screen lacks red shades.

Inside the Doogee Y7, an eight-core Spreadtrum SC9863A processor is hidden, which is complemented by 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of built-in storage, which can be increased using a memory card. The performance of this bundle is far from the most powerful, but the system works quite smartly, without obvious brakes and suspensions.

If we add to all of the above a nice design and a fingerprint scanner, and then multiply this by a price tag of $ 100, then we get a really interesting smartphone that can hang out with more famous Chinese counterparts.

Homtom S8 is interesting primarily because, at a price of three kopecks, it practically copies the appearance of the flagship Samsung Galaxy S8 64 GB / 1 SIM with its elongated body and a screen that flows smoothly into the side frames. Even the name Homtom S8 hints at this "kinship". However, instead of metal and glass, here we have an ordinary plastic case (although the build quality is at a high level), and instead of the flagship filling, there is quite a low-cost iron.

The Mediatek MT6750T octa-core entry-level chip, the Mali-T860 MP video accelerator and 4 GB of RAM are responsible for performance. Thanks to the not overloaded and well-optimized shell, the smartphone works quite smartly and without glitches. At the same time, in everyday work, most cores "sleep", which saves battery power.

The Homtom S8 has an IPS screen with a diagonal of 5.7" and a resolution of 1440x720 pixels. The resolution is not the biggest, but the display looks juicy and contrasting. At the same time, it suffers from colour distortion when the screen is tilted — this is a gentleman's set of mid-segment smartphones. In general, the screen is normal, there is enough brightness on a sunny day, the sensor sensitivity is adequate, multitouch works without complaints.

It's definitely not worth waiting for miracles from the camera: the dual camera module makes good daytime photos (although there is too much sharpness), but the weaker the lighting level, the faster the quality drops. There is nothing unusual here, a more or less decent camera phone is several times more expensive.

In terms of battery life, we have a 3400 mAh battery, which is enough to use a smartphone all day. Plus there is fast charging. Of the additional functions, only the fingerprint scanner stands out.

The U18 is an interesting device both in terms of software and hardware, with decent cameras, a powerful battery and a large screen in a relatively compact case.

The Oukitel U18 is equipped with an 8-core MediaTek MTK6750T processor with a clock speed of 1.5 GHz, a Mali-T860 MP2 video chip, 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal memory, which can be expanded using a microSD card. On the one hand, the processor is not the most powerful and in terms of performance slightly lags behind its competitor in the face of Snapdragon 625. On the other hand, its performance is enough for everyday tasks and not too demanding games.

On the front there is a curved 5.85-inch 2.5D IPS display. It has a non-standard resolution of 1512x720, so most applications will be scaled down to a lower one, rather than stretched to display in a 21:9 ratio. This leads to the appearance of black bars on the edges of the display in some games and applications, which does not allow comfortable use of the phone.

Otherwise, the U18 looks like a strong and modern smartphone: there is a USB-C, a surprisingly fast fingerprint scanner, a 4000 mAh battery, high-quality Bluetooth that instantly picks up other devices and does not lose contact with them, a useful System Manager utility for setting up autorun, clearing the cache, etc. Plus it has a good one by standards low-cost smartphones have a dual camera with Sony modules, and the case is encircled by a zinc alloy frame, which gives it rigidity.

Perhaps the main controversial point of the smartphone is its price tag of $ 150. Usually Chinese "nounames" take their toll at a low price and compete with each other in the ultra-low-cost segment, but in the $150 – 200 segment, Oukitel U18 has a lot of strong and much more famous competitors like Xiaomi Redmi 6 32 GB / 3 GB Price from 2 205 up to 2 227 ₴ or Huawei Y6 2019 32 GB / 2 GB .

Designing a new smartphone in Blackview decided not to reinvent the wheel and copied a successful design Samsung Galaxy S8 64 GB / 1 SIM . Moreover, they did it conscientiously — it's easy to confuse smartphones externally, and only the company logo on the back panel "burns the office". If you remove it, it will be very similar — the Chinese have tried and copied not only the front part, but also the glossy back of the flagship from Samsung.

However, instead of tempered glass here we have high-quality, but branded polycarbonate.

In terms of hardware, Blackview S8 is a typical guest from the Middle Kingdom of the Middle level. The motor of the smartphone is an "octa-core" MediaTek MT6750T, supplemented with 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of permanent memory. By default, this performance is enough to manage the operating system, applications and launch not too demanding games. However, the smartphone uses its own launcher, which is inferior in speed to pure Android and occasionally hangs for a couple of seconds.

The sluggishness of the Blackview S8 is also manifested in a long unlock. The fingerprint scanner works almost instantly, but the smartphone itself wakes up in about 1.5 seconds. By the standards of state employees, this is not fatal, but the appearance and price of the Blackview S8 encourages them to demand more from him.

Also, the logic of Blackview is unclear to refuse to open 3.5. If you copied the Galaxy S8, then why remove it? It's in the original. Moreover, USB-C for a low-cost smartphone is never a necessity.

The main hook for smartphone buyers is a pair of dual cameras with Sony modules that serve to create a blur effect. But the blur effect itself looks somewhat strange, it looks more like a banal vignetting, that is, the usual blurring of the background. Most likely, this is a software problem and it will be solved over time. And all this creates a somewhat contradictory impression: we have a pretty appearance, dual cameras and good hardware, but they are balanced in a negative sense by a sluggish shell, strange engineering solutions and camera software.