Any concern that your device might include some not-so-ethic Chinese software? Chinese companies have no pressure from consumer organization, let alone government, to push them to protect their user's privacy, so they happily track you as much as they can.

I wouldn't be surprised if the phone included a modded version of some Android components so that your web traffic go through Chinese servers, you know, just to "enhance" your user's experience with better ads.

There was no cracked software on this device at all. And also, there were absolutely NO ads, until I installed a few apps that introduced some AdMob ads. But I knew about them. You know, informed consent and all of that.

Although I did run a packet sniffer on my router to see if there was Chinese server contact, and there was. That was because the GPS config had NTP servers polling from China. I kind of expect that for a device sold to the Chinese, so it didn't exactly set off buzzers in my head.

Once I changed that, no more talkey to China. I guess there could be a few packets of UDP per week that I'd not catch, or cell-only data transmit. But tell me: how's that any worse than say Motorola?

I'm not familiar with Motorola but I used China Telecom's 3G dongle and was amazed by the amount of sneaky tracking they were doing. Frequently, I could see (in Chrome web inspector) that random pages were wrapped in iframes, with extra JavaScript for tracking. The JS was pinging Chinese servers and sending visited pages, clicked links, and who knows what.

Any Chinese software you install will do something similar. You install one software (for instance, a popular messenger like QQ or some online banking software) and get half a dozen processes and services running all the time with admin privileges (which they've asked during installation).

It's a mix of carelessness and greed, and there's no limit to it since consumers here don't have much power to change anything. That's why I'd be careful with a Chinese smart phone.

Hey, care to share your review on the phone..Broke my phone and don't have the budget for a 600$ phone

Sure. It's the profile (except thickness) of a Samsung Mega. The actual viewable screen size is smaller than a mega but larger than the Note 2. You need to see it to understand how exactly big this phone is. It's by far one of the biggest phones I've seen (and used). I paid extra for expedited shipping, and the total was $213, and got it in 6 or 7 days.

It comes with 3 cases: a standard back, a snap-on hardcase for the back, and a back with a cloth-hard flap lid. I use that third one so it protects the screen. If you want 3rd party equipment for this, AliExpress does have _some_ n7889 stuff, but nothing like the OtterBoxes. The phone itself feels sturdy, and not like a bootleg. Also note, there's no samsung logos anywhere (unlike some of the fake iphones that have peel-off stickers of the apple logo).

The first thing I noticed is how buttery smooth everything is. I like that mushroom live wallpaper, and I've never seen a frame drop or lag at all. Don't get me wrong, I'm not much of a gamer, but Angry Birds is also perfect too. Everything just is so fast (faster than my few year old laptop). Do note, that the screen is a BIG battery eater. Then again, it's a big screen.

There is a GPS on the device, however weirdly there is no compass. So the Google skydome does weird behavior. But that's not a big deal to me. Also, the stylus is NOT a S-pen. It's just a capacitive touch end, and the stylus does NOT work on the touch 'Back' and 'Home' buttons. I'm not sure if they do or don't work like that on the Note's, either. However, the screen can take up to 5 inputs (that does surprise me). You can see that with mobileuncle tools and go into engineer mode.

The device DOES have an FM radio, unlike Samsungs. And you can record FM channels (coooool), but you need headphones hooked in. I also notice better antenna and cell strength than my previous iPhone 3GS. And about the Cell: there's 2 sim cards. The first slot supports 3G AT&T frequencies, and the second slot is a 2G. The idea is you can do calls on both, and fast data on the first slot. There's a sim manager in the settings that you can do cool stuff like bind a user to a certain SIM.

It also supports Miracast, or "Wireless Display". Went into a Best Buy and demoed that out. Evidently, the Samsung phones cannot handle miracast when you change orientation. This phone can. Ive never seen this before, and it was DAMN sweet :P Ended up playing Psy's Gentleman (it was a HD video I grabbed and threw on there to see the quality of the screen).

It's running Android 4.2.1 and uses MTK chipset. I don't think it'd be terribly hard to update the rom, as there are 2 3rd party rom mods for this phone. Phone model is Haipai Noble n7889

Do those phones have Google services with them?

If not, and you have root, you're usually just a couple of APKs away.

True, but I do wonder about the future of that. It's a licensed Google product, and I'm sure Google Services would have little trouble detecting unlicensed devices.

I don't think Google would have any reason to prevent the services from running on a random device, would they? Seems like the more endpoints running their applications, the more data they collect and the more ads they can serve.

they do block emulators

That's a special case though, emulators are not real devices that would likely generate bad data for their purposes.

Yes, but just like Microsoft did in the 90s, they'll happily let people "pirate" them to reach a dominant position. Once they have >90% of the market, they can introduce Genuine Advantage.

Sure do. Works with Google Play well. And netflix works flawlessly.

Do you know of any sites that give a good list of phones to buy? The 6" one you linked to is a little large for me, but I'd be interested to see what 4.3" phones they have... but without buying a clunker by mistake.

The Chinese ones are hard to figure out. My own 'trick' was to find a reputable dealer (using an escrow, like AliExpress) and use Youtube to look at the phones. There's usually _someone_ who has uploaded a video of a phone you're interested in.

Also, be extremely careful in buying "clones" that don't care about trademark. Word on the websites I deal with are they are the ones that don't care about quality. The 'mostly clones', that don't mind attaching their own name to the product are usually pretty solid devices.

The guy who I've been buying from is http://www.aliexpress.com/store/108763 , ELE Team. I have a phone from them, as did a buddy here in the office (I work at Indiana University IT). He got the same model just shipped in a few days ago. We both absolutely love the phones. I've also been eyeing the ELE Team's $200 retina Android tablet. Pretty crazy cheap tech.

The other big trick is to check which frequencies the phone uses. If you use a TMobile or subsidary, you're getting 2G because of the whole lack of 1700MHz.. But that's because TMob chose a pretty much oft used GSM frequency.