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!
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!
Can I ask what custom rom you installed for gps fix as I have this issue also.
ReplyDeleteHi John, I only tested the GPS once and it didnt work with Modrom 1.7 or 2.0
ReplyDeleteI havent tested it again since.
Currently I have installed the modrom 2.0.3 which claims to have fixed some gps problems, but haven't tested it yet.
As far as I know the only method to fix the gps is to modify the antenna and that can be found on a french website with photos and details. I have not tried that yet though. I am waiting a bit to see if there is a software fix that someone will come up with, or try the original 4.0.4 rom that the phonr came with at some point.
The problem is that cause I moved to a small village I do not have a need for gps currently and every time I forget to test it.
I will update this blogpost as soon as I have any more information
Hello again John,
ReplyDeleteI got to try again the gps last night and it worked. Not perfectly since it took a great deal of time to lock in the satellites (i do not know how long, cause i put it in my pocket while walking and forgot to look at it until later) but it worked nevertheless.
I was walking and it managed to work with the runstar app and show my position correctly on the map.
So I think that modrom 2.0.3 should work
φιλαρακι το κινητό δηλαδή δεν αξίζει να το πάρουμε??
ReplyDeleteΚαλώς τον Πάνο.
ReplyDeleteΒασικά δεν μπορώ να κρίνω για εσένα, γιατί δεν γνωρίζω τις ανάγκες σου. Αν θέλεις οπωσδήποτε GPS θα έχεις πρόβλημα το οποίο λύνεται (από ότι λένε) με κόψιμο και ράψιμο νέας κεραίας, αλλά δεν το έχω δοκιμάσει ακόμα.(δεν χρειάζομαι GPS τη δεδομένη στιγμή).
Για να σου δώσω να καταλάβεις το χρησιμοποιώ καθημερινά σχεδόν εδώ και μερικές εβδομάδες ως δεύτερο τηλέφωνο (πρώτα έχω το ZTE blade) κατά βάση για σύνδεση στο Ιντερνετ με wifi. επειδή αλλάζω roms τακτικά (κάθε φορά που βγαίνουν νέες) δεν έχω ακυρώσει το blade ακόμα.
Να σου πω πάντως ότι δεν κάνω φανατικά τηλέφωνα αλλά από πλευράς χρήσης ίντερνετ μ'αρέσει πολύ περισσότερο από το Blade.
Aν θες να σου πω κάτι άλλο πιο συγκεκριμένο ρώτα με.
Παρεμπιπτόντως ρίξε αν θες μια ματιά εδώ:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/02/mediatek/all/
η mediatek το CPU της οποίας είναι και στο τηλέφωνο αυτό σκοπεύει να κυριεύσει τον τηλεφωνικό κόσμο, οπότε αν έχεις διάθεση να περιμένεις (λίγο) μήπως να έπαιρνες κανένα τετραπύρινο της ίδιας εταιρίας (MTK6589). Kαι πήρε το αυτί μου στο σχετικό με το B92M xda developers
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1952991&page=83
ότι τα τετραπύρινα της mediatek έχουν αρχίσει και κυκλοφορούν.
από το xda developers το παλικάρι που αναφέρθηκε στο τετραπύρηνο mediatek όταν το ρώτησα μου είπε να κοιτάξω εδώ:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.chinaecarts.com/
και όντως λένε ότι έχουν κινητά με τον MTK6589
Προσοχή, δεν μου είπε ότι το αγόρασε από εδώ και βεβαίως ούτε εγώ έχω ψωνίσει τπτ από εκεί, οπότε η όποια αγορά εμπεριέχει ρίσκο.
μια χαρά σε ευχαριστώ πολύ και εγω για internet και παιχνίδια το θέλω περισσότερο, gps δεν χρησιμοποιω καν οπότε δεν με νιαζει το πρόβλημα αυτο. Το τετραπυρινο δεν ξέρω αν θα το περιμένω γιατί λογικά θα είναι πιο ακριβό και να σου πω ψιλο φοβάμαι να σκάσω 200-300 για κινέζικο.
ReplyDeleteΚαι κάτι αλλο εχω προσέξει πως τα touch κουμπιά του b92m τα λαμπάκια δεν φωτίζουν αρκετά? εχεις δει κατι
τα λαμπάκια στα κουμπιά του b92m όντως δεν φωτίζουν δυνατά (εμένα μου αρέσει αυτό) αλλά έχε υπόψη ότι δεν έχουν ρόλο ενημέρωσης για αναπάντητες και μηνύματα. Αν και δεν το έχω χρησιμοποιήσει διεξοδικά σαν τηλέφωνο ακόμα. Αυτό σημαίνει ότι αν έχεις μια αναπάντητη και δεν το πάρεις πρέφα δεν φωτίζει κάτι για να ενημερωθείς. Εγώ το πήρα λίγο κάτω από 200$ που βγαίναν κοντά στα 140-150 ευρώ.
DeleteΑΑΑ και κάτι ακόμα έχεις να μου προτείνεις κανα αξιόπιστο site γιατί ειναι η πρώτη μου αγορα. Μου εχουν προτείνει αυτο http://www.minideal.net/ αλλα ενα φιλαράκι που ήθελε το ιδιο κινητό του ειπαν απο εκει πως δεν ειναι διαθέσιμο
ReplyDeleteΤο συγκεκριμένο κατάστημα δεν το γνωρίζω.
DeleteΑξιόπιστο χμμμ, θα σου προτείνω να δεις 3 από τα οποία έχω ψωνίσει αρκετές φορές και δεν έχει χαθεί ποτέ τίποτα αλλά αν κάτι δεν πάει καλά δεν θα φταίω εγώ.
ahappydeal.com (από εδώ το πήρα, αλλά έκανε 2,5 μήνες να έρθει σε σημείο που πίστευα ότι δεν θα ερχόταν τελικά και όταν έφτασε είχαν βγει καλύτερα, αλλά μάλλον φταίγανε τα ΕΛΤΑ)
chinavasion.com
dx.com
για το χαπυντιαλ έχε υπόψιν ότι έχω την εντύπωση ότι δημοσιεύουν μόνο τις θετικές κριτικές. κανά δυό μέτριες που έχω γράψει δεν τις σηκώσανε και όταν τους ρώτησα μου έλεγαν ότι δεν έχω γράψει κάτι. (να μην πάτησα το σωστό κουμπί για υποβολή, δεν αποκλείεται μεν, αλλά είναι λίγο απίθανο)
Προσωπικά αν αγόραζα τώρα κινητό θα προσανατολιζόμουν στα τετραπύρηνα αφενός ή σε κάποιο άλλο πιο πρόσφατο μοντέλο με καλύτερα χαρακτηριστικά σε παρόμοια τιμή.
Επίσης δεν θυμάμαι αν το έγραφα παραπάνω, αλλά επειδή ο MTK6577 είχε φτιαχτεί για χαμηλότερη ανάλυση οθόνης, 800x600 νομίζω, συχνά πυκνά όταν το κινητό είναι landscape εμφανίζονται στιγμιαία διάφορα artifacts-χιόνια σε κομμάτι της οθόνης.
Δεν έχω δοκιμάσει όμως παιχνίδια με τρελά γραφικά. Μόνο κάτι angry birds και tichu.
καλή τύχη
Επίσης αυτή την περίοδο είναι το κινέζικο νέο έτος οπότε οι αποστολές από Ασία θα αργούν καμιά εβδομάδα να πραγματοποιηθούν
DeleteΑνακάλυψα ότι το NEWMAN N2 quad core το πουλάνε στο chinavasio που σου έλεγα, με το όνομα Tessera και gorilla glass. Είναι κομμάτι ακριβότερο αλλά νομίζω τα πιάνει τα λεφτά του. Ρίξε και μια ματιά ονλαιν για reviews.
Delete