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Q: Buying a new phone in China
My old iPhone 5 died on me this week, and I need a new phone. Unfortunately, I know nothing about cell phone technology, so need some help deciding what phone would be the most useful for me.
It has to have a decent camera.
It has to have enough room for music.
It has to be able to run Skype, QQ, Wechat... and also do audio/video chat on them
It has to be able to run a decent VPN.
It has to have an easy to access App store.
A decent translator/ENGLISH gps would be useful too.
And I don't want to spend more than 3500 RMB on it, if possible.
9 years 31 weeks ago in Web & Technology - China
All of the review sites that I could find here are either fully Chinese or paid "reviews."
did you hear iphone 6 is coming to China next week 
i wonder how many down votes am i going to get?
iWolf:
Not a great recommendation...iphone 5 lasted, what, one year before it died? Does 6 stand for 6 months?
iWolf:
And there you have it Hunny....an exponential diminishing return starting from i3 years to i6 months
hunny797:
on first thought I strongly disagreed with you...
but considering the bending features of iphone6 and hair plucking problems plus the ios 8 bugs.....
you are right i think
HTC One (M8) !!! My wife just got it (3000 kuai), amazing...just the boom speakers on the damn thing, its as loud as a laptop! 
If you buy a Samsung, make sure it has more than the Samsung market for apps. The Chinese Samsung market is terrible. My friend bought a Samsung phone and it only has that, can't find jack for apps on it. You can get wechat and such but anything beyond that really is pure Chinese crap.
tomcatflyer:
You are not restricted at all in where you get your apps from. I bought a Chinese Samsung and the first thing I did was to delete all Chinese software and loaded up Amazon app store. If I can't find what I want on there I just search on the internet and download from there to my laptop. Connect the Samsung to laptop via USB and copy the app to the phone, simple. In reality there is no restriction.
I would stay away from Samsung. They have a terrible battery life. When I went to buy a new battery from the official Samsung place, they admitted the batteries were crap and were not designed to be running apps.
HTC are pretty good. My gf just bought one herself, and I was using an old model for quite a while. If you want a Chinese brand, Meizu are bringing out a new model next month, if you can wait.
my usual recommendation of Xiaomi Mi4 has now changed to Meizu MX4. Reason, it supports the types of 4G/LTE that is in use in Europe (and probably also US) rather than many Chinese phones that are specific to Chinese networks and will only be 2G outside of China
ScotsAlan:
I just bought an MI3.
It's a pretty powerful device for the money (1500 RMB).
Only problem is the amount of work it will take to get the apps I want on it .
HTC one (m8) Stupid name, but by far the best phone I've ever had. Trounces the iPhone in just about every department, except coolness. I've had mine about 6 months and cant fault it.
Do not buy a phone in China.
Order it from this guy in Singapore. I ordered twice from him.
http://www.ebay.com.hk/sch/tropical_mobile/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&...
Hi, not sure what actually happened to your iphone 5, however I know that many have a power on/off issue. The problem is to do with push button [metal bubble button] inside, they often break and just need replacing. You can buy the kit from the internet for £3.60 [UK] I am sure they are available here in China. You just need a steady hand, good eye sight or magnifying glass. It can be fixed in 15-20 minutes, as an most problems with if this phone.
Spiderboenz:
Good suggestion, but the problem is that the battery is shot. Or the charging port. All i know is that it will no longer charge.
