Many people have heard that China is the world’s mass producer of brand name cell phones including such names as Sharp, Apple, and RIM. At the same time, China is also making non brand name cell phones that are available not only in the Chinese market, but increasingly worldwide from many online sellers Chinese electronics. So are you able to tell the differences between a Chinese made phone that is produced for famous brands and those that are made as off brand phones?
1. The Phone's Design
Branded phones will often have many researches and testers whose job is to design the look and feel of a phone. They spend uncounted man hours making tests on differing looks and designs in an effort in an attempt to produce a phone with a good look and does not exceed the pricing that the phone is set to be marketed at.
Off brand phones made in China rarely will do this. They most commonly will obtain a pre-existing phone case molding and then use their own electronics and components inside. These moldings are often based on internationally famous brands such as Sharp or Apple, and unfortunately this tendency makes a big proportion of the Chinese manufactured phones look like lookalikes (in fact, that often is exactly what they have in mind when they bought the mold). Why this is so, besides trying to piggyback on a famous brands good looks, is that it is much cheaper to buy a molding for a phone than it is to be like the big boys and invest in the research process (not to mention finding reliable partners to mass produce your mold).
2. The Phone's Chipset
Branded phones use a wide variety of internal chipsets for the cell phones that they make. Often these chips that are used are done so on the basis of cost vs performance. High speed chipsets are incredibly useful when a phone needs to run some of the newer apps and functions, so are a most when it comes to the latest smartphones. Phones marketed to a lower end base can use chipsets that have a processing rate that is much slower, which reduces the price of the phone.
The Chinese made no name phones are almost without a doubt going to have a MTK chip within. The MTK chips from MediaTek Inc have two generations currently used in most of the phones.
Being an older design, the MTK6625 is the first generation of the MTK series (often used now for cheaper phones), and not only giving a phone normal functions like calling and messaging, also lets the phone have touchscreen capabilities, WAP internet browsing, and basic media features (video camera, MP3/4 player, ect).
The MTK6235 is the higher end chip that has a larger MHz processing speed allowing larger screen sizes, cameras with higher resolutions, EDGE connection speed, and internet connection via Wifi.
MediaTek Inc's chips are much less desirable with chipsets from famous name brands if looked at from potential power and speed, however, they are good choices for Chinese producers seeing as they can recreate many last generation phone's features and will cost much less to get (and readily available on the market).
3. The Phone's Internal Operating System (OS)
Name brand phones many times will make an OS that that is unique for their phone, such as the Blackberry OS or OS X iPhone. When a company wants to save a little money they get rights to use another companies OS (such as Windows Mobile) and either leave them alone or tweak them to make it unique.
Chinese non name phones have the same OS most of the time, aka the nucleus OS. For Chinese phone makers, this is a inexpensive yet good choice as this operating system is known for being very easy to program for, having very little demands for processing power (necessary given that the phones are using the MTK chipset), having no problems with supply since it is very common, and for all this, still giving the potential for a great looking interface. Each of these factors really do add up in saving costs while the phone is being developed.
4. The Phone's User Interface (UI)
Branded phones provide a user interface that has been custom made and built based from their OS. They do this so the phone can have a personalized look that separates them from other cell phones.
Off brand phones from Chinese manufacturers are also able to make a wide variety of differing UIs even if they are only using the nucleus OS. However, they often use their creative license not to create new interfaces to separate themselves from competitors, but to make the UI look and act like one from a famous phone. Often this is done either to complement the phone's molding (which was also taken from a brand phone) or simply as a shortcut to make a slick looking interface that is already proven to be popular. A very commonly used user interface often seen on non brand phones will be based off the iPhone icon driven interface.
All around, all of these non name brand phones actually do have the ability to create just as varied and interesting phones (both in design and in system) as their better known name brand phones, but seeing as they mostly can't compare with the big boys in terms of available money they will take shortcuts. A good piece of advice to follow is you take care of any supplier that you have from China. It is very easy for them to offer "Real" cell phones at surprisingly (almost unbelievably) cheap prices, and the phone might even look just like a actual model, but it is possible they are not. Please do remember this when you lay down money for "branded" phones from Chinese suppliers.
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