DusL

My first explanation of this topic back in the good January '08 days:

Many people are waiting for the Meizu M8 to be released. With the most recent disappointments the moral for this phone is surely to drop to some extent. So, for now, let us look for phone alternatives that can perform (almost) as good as the M8 should do.

I know it's difficult finding a alternative as contract-less smartphones are usually waaay more expensive, but let's just try how close we can get.

Over many months, this topic discussed a lot of devices. A few examples of more serieus alternatives below:

Alternatives:

- iPhone2G/iPhone3G/iPod Touch/iPod Touch 2nd gen -

Of course, it's inevitable to have Apple in this list. With m8 first-gen still pending, the second generation iPhone has become mainstream after it's "shortages"-release. Positives are the presence of 3G, GPS, (and a huge jailbreak community). Negatives are the closed OS without jailbreaking and relatively high price. The idea of purchasing an iTouch is to have all the fingertip-fun without paying as much for it (keep a seperate phone).

- HTC Touch/HTC Touch Diamond/HTC Touch HD -

The great world of HTC. While there are HTC smartphones like the HTC Touch that are very affordable and even cheaper than the pending-m8, they do run the sami-hated-WinMo. They all have a nice GUI shell of top of it though. The diamond is a very nice vga-resolution phone which is very popular next to the iPhone. The HD is yet-to-come and has a near-epic resolution of 480x800 which is even higher than that of the m8.

E-TEN Glofiish M800
Good specs, the brand itself is said to cause problems (bad build-quality)
E-ten Glofiish m810 and v900
Both are more or less newer versions of the M800

Samsung i900
Samsung F700
Samsung Instinct

Motorola ROKR e8

LG Prada
LG Viewty

Sophia Nani
Neonode n2
Iriver phone
Boxu T32
SHARP SH-921
XDA Flame


Future Alternatives:

SE Xperia
(More) Android phones

Do feel free to add your own suggestion here if it isn't mentioned yet.

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DimaMP4

iPhone/iPod Touch.

Err0r

HTC Touch / dopod S1
LG Prada

iclone

neonode n2 Neonode - Neonode

DimaMP4

Neonode n2 looks hot.

venezia

Hot but also fat and with a not so high definition screen
Perhaps their next phone will be really great!!
When did they release the N2?

Err0r

Maybe the Newman / Newsmy M9 or M10? :P

DusL

LCD

• 2,0” (176x220 pixels) color display. 65K colors

That's unfortunatly not so high. For the sake of browsing, watching video and matching the M8 the res of the screen should at least be VGA - 640x480

It however does look great, completely agreed

iclone

neonode is old *g* dont know.. they released the n2 2-4 years ago.. the n1 was all the same story like minione's ... but after it didnt came out for over 1,5 years i didnt look any further for it.. some month ago i saw that they allready made the 2nd one.. but its nothings for todays high tech

midsommer

Well - even if no details are known so far, at least a working prototype from a good brand: I-river

we will see, what it can do... and it will be officially sold in the western world

iriver 3-inch touchscreen "GSM phone" headed for the States - Engadget

Suriv

IRiver

YouTube Video

YouTube Video

TFT LCD WQVGA de 260 colores
3" (480 x 272)
4Gb.
GPS .
TV (DMB?)
cámara de 2MPx
Wifi
navigation.

Operating System: Linux.

DimaMP4

Looks cool, but the GUI is totally copied from iPhone and looks a lot worse.

DusL

The screen looks really strange, with the thicker edge on the left side of the screen in comparison with the right side. Specs look fine, screen res is acceptable i guess (almost same as iPhone), but it's a shame the GUI looks just very cloned.

if it's cheap I could see myself considering it :P

__________________
Owns a 16gig iTouch and 16 gig iPhone3G, everybody must hate me right now :D

nice2know_u

i believe this isn't the final version of the phone, just a prototype. if you watch the second video you can see that the GUI isn't finished also. iriver's ceo said that it will be cheaper than the iphone

Skinny101

Well if they're making practicaly a complete copy of the iPhone you'd expect it to be cheaper

sere83

Sopia Nani, released in japan a while back, very serious device:

Sophia Nani: Officially, Windows CE 6.0

samarik

LG Viewty Anyone?
I understand it dosent have everything but damn is it a nice phone!!
:::: Viewty by LG Mobile ::::
LG Viewty (KU990) - TrustedReviews

chengdude

And that's why we wait and wait and wait....and wait :P

For those living in China, no phone comes close to the features of the M8 for the price Meizu has promised. Meizu still has a big window of opportunity (at least at home) simply because those prices are so reasonable.

Frankly, the more I consider it, I wonder just how Meizu is going to pull off a 16GB phone for less than 3000 RMB.

Err0r

^ One sad thing is that Chinese people never buy Chinese phones because of their extremely low quality, high price and crappy firmware. This might not be the case with Meizu, but most Chinese already have that as a preconceived notion due to their previous experiences.

And it's true. I remember buying a phone from Capitel (company no longer exisits) for 3000 RMB in 2003. The phone played loud and poor quality sounds (and cartoon airplane animations) on startup and shutdown, camera flash was just a toy, there was no way of transferring the low quality pictures you took to a computer and the user interface was ugly and colorful too. Back home everyone was using the super-cool Sony Ericsson T610 which was cheaper than my Capitel! After realizing how I just wasted $400 USD on some crap, I told myself to never buy a Chinese phone again. But this might change now.

__________________
Changes are happening.

chengdude

It's true that Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung/Anycall, and Motorola are the brands people aspire to, but there's still an enormous market and plenty of Chinese brands to fill all the gaps. The trouble is there are so many brands and their products so undistinguished that no Chinese company seems to be able to rise above mediocrity, establish a really positive brand image, and grab a bigger market share. What's left, then, is exporting to developing markets, which companies like Ningbo Bird do very well. I personally think Lenovo and BBK are capable of producing a phone that stands apart, but beyond them, I struggle to come up with any others.