Chinese smartphones revolution

Posted by Paralityk on August 28, 2012 02:25 pm 18

So far a Chinese smartphone meant a hardware two or three generations behind
Now with the release of MT6577 you can buy a true brand new dual core for under 300$
with stock Jelly Bean, suck it up big brothers.

WITH STOCK JELLY BEAN

The Chip

The MT6577 is an SoC with an ARMv7 Cortex-A9 dual-core CPU clocked at up to 1,2Ghz and a PowerVR SGX531 Ultra GPU clocked higher than those found in other SoCs.

It's capable of driving 720p display, 720p output, 1080p encode & decode @30FPS (yes, FullHD video playback and recording)
It supports up to 4GB of RAM (is sold with 512MB or 1GB)
And it has an optional HSPA modem (every phone with MT6577, sold to date, has this modem :) )
Worth noting most if not all of the SoC is produced at 40nm so no worries about battery life.

Technically (and practically - Antutu, Quadrant, Games etc) it's on par with TI OMAP 4460 found in Galaxy Nexus

Though most of us don't care, most of these MT6577 based phones are DualSIM (one sim GSM, second 3G - GSM/WCDMA)

Price? Few bucks!

The Devices

So what phones have this sweet chip that costs few bucks?
Most impressive looking, specs and hardware wise, are:

Zopo ZP900

A SGS3 with Note's size display
Display: qHD 960x540@5.3 inch ~200DPI
RAM: 1GB
From August 13 it's sold with Android 4.1!

http://www.gizmochina.com/2012/08/24/zopo-zp900-leader-review/

http://www.gizmochina.com/2012/08/06/zopo-zp900-merged-samsung-galaxy-s-iii-note-together/

Price: <300 USD, I've seen it for 2

UMEOX ARC

Not produced yet but we should see it sold in september.

Display: qHD 960x540@5.3 inch ~200DPI
RAM: 1GB

http://www.gizchina.com/2012/08/23/umeox-arc-prototype-is-absolutely-stunning/

These are the two devices I'm waiting for to be available easily at some local reseller, if you look for MT6577 at ebay/google you'll find many more devices though watch out, most of them have only 512MB of RAM, subpar, less than 16m colors screens, ultra low DPI (below 160) with clearly visible pixels, questionable hardware design, small batteries, are much fatter than on photos (12-14mm) have very small batteries etc

I will buy such device till the end of september no matter what.
Currently it would be the Zopo ZP900 but if this UMEOX makes it in time I'll definitely choose it over Zopo.

I'd love to see The Verge staff review one of the MT6577 based smartphones compare them with similarly priced US phones and contract-less priced high end smartphones. What about you, does this information change anything for you? Would you consider buying such device?