I have this techlust for Android gadgets frequently, and I blame the Chinese market for its cheapness – both its price and build. This has caused me to buy a 7″ tablet which wasn’t actually very usable but a kinda fun hacking exercise for a few months. Then I bought a larger 10″ tablet which is still quite servicable and an adequate HTPC replacement (but not really a great living room computer).

Since that purchase, I have been lurking on some Chinese sites looking at phones. Apparently phablets (large phones that are almost 7″ tablet size – think Galaxy Notes) are quite popular in Asia, so Asian manufacturers make lots of them. There are a lot of Samsung clones (S3 or Notes) that look pretty similar (from online screenshots at least) and are sub $200 delivered. Wouldn’t it be nice to have one?

Then there are the “high industrial design quality” phones that have been designed and sold to the Chinese market. If you follow tech blogs, you may recognize some of the manufacturers like Xiaomi or Meizu. I was actually seriously thinking of buying the Jiayu G3 because it’s a 4.5″ Android 4.0 phone for ~$200! Although you must be aware that the Chinese phones are not pentaband and won’t work with the WIND frequency range, so my justification would be that I would use this phone as my “American” phone when I’m in the States.

Strangely but luckily, all this techlust for Android devices disappated after I received my Nexus4. I guess I just wanted good hardware at a good price, and the Chinese way was the easy way to do it (although you don’t always get good stuff).

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: cellphones, chinese, techlust