Update 12/10/13 the device is still going strong!
Updated (a few times)
After almost 3 months of waiting, I finally received the phone I ordered from Asia.
It is a Star b92m
OS: Android 4.0.4
CPU: Media Tek MTK6577
Dual Core 1GHz
ROM: 4GB RAM:
1GB Battery: 2000mAh
Li-ion Capacitive touch (5-point) screen
Network frequency: GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz
WCDMA 2100MHz Dual SIM,
Dual standby
Dual cameras (the back one with flash light and auto focus)
Wireless internet
GPS supported
Gravity sensing system
It came with a disapointing hard, pink cover. But pink?! Why the heck pink? Couldn't they make a neutral color?
The phone has pretty good specs apart from the battery. However I was quite disappointed by the quality. OK for less than 190$ I should not expect much, but still feels like a toy and a rather flimsy toy. The back cover is so thin and can get so twisted, that I am afraid it might break. Its much thinner than the back cover of my current ZTE Blade. The pink cover is more rigid and twists less than the phone cover!
Also this particular one showed some problems with the battery. After it was charged to 100% I rebooted it and the battery showed to be at 9%!!! After taking out the battery and rebooting again it was about 80%!
Moreover when leaving the back cover a little open and pushing it to click while the phone was on, resulted in the phone turning off :(
The phone cannot be charged with any other typical USB cable. The USB cable provided with the phone has a bit elongated adapter and it fits ok. All the other cables are not long enough. I ve been told that HTC One uses the same cable, but I dont know. And I have the impression that this cable does not charge other phones. With my ZTE Blade it takes a bit of playing around to find the right spot and then if you move it a bit it stops charging.
The glass screen, does not fit perfectly in the plastic(?) bezel and as a result the sound button is slightly visible from the inside!
Oh and 4.7 inches are a lot bigger than it sounds.
Over all, I am rather disappointed with the phone.
On the other hand, the nice thing about it, is that it comes with a very nice English manual that seems to be an excellent guide for android starters.
On the other hand, rooting it was a breeze, and so was installing a custom rom based on the zopo 900 which fixes the slow GPS sat finding. All the info was found on XDA developers and Gizchina b92m review.
On Ebay there are cheap screen protectors for sale.
And some updates:
Screen protector update. I got from a german seller 4-5 screen protectors for about 1-2 euros.
These were rather bad quality. Extremely thin, and very easy to scratch. The first one I put on and still use, got scratched by the fabric of my pants while it was in the pocket....!
There are quite a few custom roms for the phone
The
Modrom DRX currently on the 2.0.3 version with android 4.1.2 (drx 1.7 includes greek)
The
No cholesterol mod currently on version 1 with android 4.1.2
A list of roms can be
found here, with some russian ones.
I have been using this phone for about 2 months mostly as a secondary interent device rather than a phone.
The charger it came with was a 500mah which took a LOOOONG time to charge the phone. Luckily I had a SONY 800mah charger that does a better job without overheating the battery. I also bouht a cheapo 1000mah which makes the phone very hot while charging and the screen unresponsive. I will try to get a similar from a reputable manufacturer at some point, but havent gotten around to do it yet. SEE BELOW
The battery lasts about 4-5 hours with wifi on and playing simple games. I do not have long experience but this seems rather low. In general with minimal use, checking emails and a bit of chatting. It lasts though the day with reserves for the next day. However I do keep the charger nearby and always charge it overnight.
The wifi signal is good and had no problems with that.
The GPS on the other hand is as crap as it can possibly be. It takes quite a long time to find a fix on satelites with just the gps on, no network assist or anyother gimmickry. And cant give a presice signal. I haven't used it extensively cause I live in a small place lately and do not need it. There has been a solution to this problem which involves cuting the existing antenna and soldering a new one in place from sheet copper. I got the copper but not the will to actually do it yet. Some time later perhaps.
The screen has a quite good resolution. It is bright and the colors nice. But often when the phone is used in landscape to type a message or play a game appear and dissapear on the screen vertical lines. However thats not a big problem since they disappear and do not obstruct the view permanently. I think that is because the MTK 6577 was designed to support a lower resolution of 960x800 rather than the 1280x960 that this phone has.
The button light is rather faint which appeals to me, but there is also no notification light. You get a missed call or a text and you dont hear it, you wont know it unless you actually check the phone. Or use a relevant app to light the screen.
Wifi. I think that the wifi is type N, or at least thats the impression I get from using it without any measuremtns though. It gives me aprox 1mb/sec on a fast internet connection.
Multiple users. This is a new 4.1 android feature not device specific, but it works with this device as well. You can create multiple user accounts eg an administrator for you and a guest account for the rest. Some features will be visible, such as sms (from what they say) but others, such as email accounts and usernames are invisible to the new user account. A guide on how to enable this, can be found
here. (Install terminal emulator, su pm create-user *DESIRED USERNAME*. Done :)
Skype: Skype mostly works. I used various versions I was able to find online on inmy private stash of apps and have been currently running Skype version 3.0.0.6181. This one crashes some times and doesn't sign in again unless I reboot the phone. That however is little nuisance compared to current android version 3.2.0.6673 which refuses to sign in no matter what I tried (except full phone format). From what I hear this is a common problem with skype in general and not tied up to this phone, but thought to share my experience nevertheless.
USB cable-port: This phone has a micro usb port that is deeper than usual requiring a micro usb addapter that is longer than typical. Although initially I thought this was a disadvantage, I came to think that it might be better, since the micro usb adapter on the ZTE Blade I used to have became rather loose in time which means that I cannot move the phone around if I want it to charge. This one so far seems that will not suffer from the same issue even if the adapter wears out a bit.
Charger: I got around to buy a relatively cheap Samsung 1000mah travel charger, which charges the phone in about 3 hours without overheating it.
Charging problems: I do not know why, but the cable charging the b92m seems to be worn out after about 4 months of use. It doesnt seem to make proper contact when pluged in and the phone remains dead. I solved this problem by chopping up a different cable (with the short micro USB connector) to remove some plastic in order for the metal connector to become longer and it worked!
