Thanks for the article Chris. Xiaomi have grown a lot recently and are the fourth largest smartphone brand in China behind Samsung, Lenovo and Apple. In fact Xiaomi were bigger than Apple last quarter.

Xiaomi have seen sales grow from 7.2m in Y1 to 18.7m in Y2 and now they are targeting over 40m sales for 2014. They have already shipped 11m in the first quarter alone and so should easily reach and exceed their sales target with ease.


Yup, THL are a good manufacturer. And I have to agree, The phones may not look premium but they're not that cheap that they break on the slightest impact. I've dropped my Chinese dual SIM phone plenty of times with no smashed screen and little to no marks/scratches on the cover/sides.

OnePlus One is being announced tomorrow.

Everyone excited?
It's being marketed as the "2014 flagship killer". The company has a "Never Settle" mentality meaning they want to bring the best to you.

OnePlus is a start up company that has been spun out of Oppo. OnePlus are hoping to make the best spec/best service smartphone of the year and release it to over 16 countries worldwide. The UK being one. Boasting Galaxy S5 specs the phone is due to be announced tomorrow at a price of under £290 which includes a 2 year UK warranty. Something we don't normally see from Chinese manufacturers.

Learn more: http://www.stuff.tv/oneplus-one-smar...ge-leaked/news

Just don't expect too much LTE support in the UK on some networks. They skimped on the radio chip and haven't included 800MHz (which makes the "never settle" slogan a little laughable).

I'd rather stick with an "established" China maker like Oppo if I was going to buy from that end of the market...

Yup, I have an article about this going out tomorrow.

I'll post the link here.

Serious firepower for £290 despite the drawback mentioned above .

Even cheaper now.

5.5" LCD display with 1080x1920 resolution
Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 8974AC @ 2.5GHz
3GB LPDDR3 Memory + 16GB Memory
13mp Sony rear camera + 5mp front camera
Dual stereo speakers
2G/3G/4G/Wi-Fi
3100mAh battery
Android 4.4 with Cyanogenmod 11s

£229 (16GB)
£269 (64GB)

This is without a doubt better value than the Nexus 5.

The only issue will be supply. Their invitations system isn't great and I think they're going to do what every manufacturer does in China which is release the phone in small batches at first then wait for the price of the phone to match build cost/create a profit and only then release in higher quantities.

For example, the only way to buy a OnePlus One at the moment is to smash your phone, send them a picture, and if you win you get a OnePlus One for $1.
So yeh.... that's their invite system.

Rather a bizarre method to get one to say the least

Had my Jiayu G4 advanced for 6? months and all good.

The only probs are my own fault. If buying again I would put in plugs for the headphones socket and usb too, as both have had corrosion (never charged it from the mains) and the headphones are now 'iffy'.

Best speed is now 28 meg down a few miles away, so bring on the roll out

I would suggest a small caveat on the price as HMRC are starting to crack down on HK and China post.

You might need to pay 20% + handling charge on top of those prices.

Probably worth budgeting for it and then hoping you do mange to evade the tax (if you are so inclined).

But it's not shipped from China.
It's shipped from Europe.

That's one of the good things about OnePlus One going global. They give a UK 2 year warranty and provide shipping from within the EU. In fact I think they have a warehouse in the UK itself.

HTC, OnePlus, Huawei, ZTE, Oppo etc... all sell their products in the UK with UK warranties despite being based in China. It's only local Chinese brands who only ship in China itself that will not have a UK warranty and will have import fees.

In other news. Xiaomi are solidifying the fact that they are looking to go international.
As Xiaomi is quite hard to say they have rebranded their international website to "Mi". It's pronounced like "Me". So Xiaomi's international site is now known as http://www.Mi.com

It's a good move from Xiaomi as they look to expand out of China this year into Malaysia, Philippines, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Russia, Turkey, Brazil and Mexico. Xiaomi already sell their products in Hong Kong and Taiwan as well so this means that Xiaomi products will be officially available in a total of 13 countries worldwide. Anyone else will have to resort to importing right now but I don't think it'll be too long until Xiaomi look into Europe.

Xiaomi don't just sell phones, they sell their own TV, set top boxes, routers and powerbanks. On April 8th Xiaomi held a flash sale and shipped 1.6 million devices on the day (which included over 600,000 Redmi, 600,000 Redmi Note, and 400,000 Mi3 units.). They also sold a total of over 170,000 Mi Rabbits (Xiaomi's official mascot) which shows that people are also buying into the brand as well.

Xiaomi had already shipped over 11 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2014 an they've seen over 1.6m shipped in just one day during quarter 2. This year will be huge for Xiaomi who are targeting a very lofty 60 million smartphone shipments this year.

well, I spoke too soon. Got up today, and my phone has NO signal on either sim. Tried swapping them, tried a reboot, and even restored to factory settings, but ZERO signal on any sim. Sounds like this phone is now for the bin. Time to buy a proper phone I think

bit more invest into my N3, it seems with the back cover on, I get no signals. as soon as take off the cover, I get signal!

Did you find a fix Bobby?
Tbh those phones are clones. And when you say to buy a proper phone it doesn't mean you can't buy from a reputable Chinese manufacturer.

Speaking of which, Xiaomi is no officially the 6th largest smartphone manufacturer just behind LG.
An amazing feat for a company who ships 97% of their products in China. It's unbelievable that a manufacturer can only ship in one country yet be on their way into the top 5 smartphone manufacturers worldwide. HTC unfortunately are no longer in the top 10 manufacturers worldwide.

I've screwed up my Jiayu G4 advanced abit as I am hashy with phones and work in boats alot.

Astounded that the new octocore version is under £120, going back for another it looks like

Gotta love the strengthening pound.

Any word on Chinese 4G phones yet?

Check this thread on spyware installed on these phones

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showt...php?p=73259122