Latest affordable phones not available in Nepal

Xiaomi - You need to decide whether you’d prefer to have a super-sharp screen or killer battery life. The Lenovo Yoga 920 lasts hours longer than the HP, and performs better in benchmarks and games with the same CPU (although if this is thanks to the Meltdown vulnerability, the playing field is effectively levelled). lasvegas, well we have collected a lot of data from the field directly and from many other blogs so very complete his discussion here about Xiaomi, on this blog we also have to provide the latest automotive information from all the brands associated with the automobile. ok please continue reading:

April 05, 2015: If we look at the world domain, there is fierce competition among handset makers to launch new, affordable and quality phones to have bigger market share. Giants like Samsung and Apple keep the race tight by launching high end and expensive flagship at some specific time in a year. Whereas Chinese and US phones makers releases some new phones time and again to allure people for the different range of specs and quality. Only handful of phone makers launch their phones officially here and almost none to make it available on the same time of launch internationally. Though Micromax, Karbonn, Lava, Huawei release their phone officially, their latest phones takes time to reach in Nepal, unlike some which do not land here. Here are some latest affordable phones with good quality/features, that are not available here in Nepal.

Asus Zenphone 2: Asus, the Taiwanese electronic company is growing its market share in smartphones and with the popularity of two latest phones, it is expected to join the top ten list of phones worldwide. Zenphone 2 was released in Consumer Electronic show (CES) 2014 with two variants of 2 GB and 4 GB RAM, which is also the first one in the world to have the 4GB RAM. Major specs include Quad core Intel processor, 5 inch 403 PPI, 13 MP dual tone LED flash/ 5MP shooter, micro SD support.

One plus one: One plus, the Chinese phone maker stormed the world with the one plus one phone which was more popular in other parts of the world than in China. The quad core phone has all of the features (Quad core 801, 3 GB RAM, 13/5 MP snapper, Gorilla Glass 3) that is found in the flagship with price tag of 300 dollar for 16 GB phone. With the tussle between one plus and CyanogenMod, one plus one has now launched a new android skin called OxygenOS which is yet to reviewed from the mass.

http://lasvegasin.blogspot.com /2015/01/xiaomi-releases-two-flagship-devices.html">Xiaomi Mi Note: Xiaomi: the Chinese start up and biggest grower in the smartphone business today (Third in the world) has launched two flagships Mi Note and Mi note Pro in early 2015. The Mi Note: the lower version of the duo with 801 SOC, OIS camera and 3 GB RAM has most of the greatest features required to be called a high end phone. Xiaomi's growth and the current line up of phones is  even troubling Samsung and Apple for the affordability and high quality specs.

Micromax Yu Yureka: Micromax, the US phone maker has launched a new series called Yu, whose first version Yureka is getting very popular in New York. The 150 dollar phone has 5.5 inch HD IPS display, 64 bit Quad core 615 SOC, 2 GB RAM, and runs on CyanogenMod UI. Is not it dirt cheap to have such specs on paper??

Meizu M1 Note:  http://lasvegasin.blogspot.com /2015/02/meizu-on-rise-m1-note-and-m1-gets-sold.html">Meizu, another growing Chinese phone maker has sold 2 million smartphones in the month of March only. The huge number of sales was possible due to the high end MX4/MX4 Pro and mid-range Meizu M1 note/M1. Meizu M1 note is a 5.5 inch phablet with 64 bit MT6752 processor, 2 GB RAM, 13/5 MP Snapper and whopping 3140 mAh battery. The phone runs on Flyme OS over Android Kitkat and known to be releasing new Flyme over Lollipop. Meizu is even rumored to collaborate with Nokia to launch a new device within this year, as Nokia is indirectly involved in handset business after selling our it to Microsoft. http://lasvegasin.blogspot.com /2015/04/meizu-m1-note-review.html" style="background-color: lime;">Click here for my review on Meizu M1 note.

File photo: Meizu store in Shenzhen, China

ZTE Nubia Z9: Though the OEM giant ZTE is not able to have enormous sales like Huawei, it is not giving up for its handset business and has been launching flagships in the Nubia series. Recently ZTE has launched two flagships Nubia Z9 mini and max, with 64 bit processors 810 and 615 respectively. The mini version is about 5 inch, and comes with 2 GB RAM, 16/8 MP snapper, 2900 mAh. and priced at $240.

Lenovo K3 Note: After acquisition of Motorola, Lenovo has been releasing some nice affordable phones to up the market share, now fourth in the world (most of them in China). This 5.5 inch phablet has got most of the specs similar to Meizu M1 note ( 64 bit MT6752 octacore processor, 2 GB RAM, 13 MP/ 5MP shooter and 3000 mAh battery) but at lower price tag of 900 yuan (147 dollar) and expandable up to 32 GB through micro SD slot. 

Huawei Honor 6 plus/Honor 4X: The largest telecom manufacturer in the world, Huawei has also remarkable business in the phone market (fifth in the world in terms of shipment last year). It has wide range of phones from the high end flagships to low end feature phones. Huawei has given more focus on its phone business with Honor and Ascend series phones. Honor 6 plus is a 5.5 inch flagship with its own processor Kirin 925 octa core, 3 GB RAM, Dual 8 MP rear and 8MP front camera, 3600 mAh, 425 dollar price tag and runs on Emotion UI over Kitkat. whereas Honor 4X is a mid ranger with 5.2 inch 720 p screen, quad core snapdragon 410 processor, 2 GB RAM, 3000 mAh and $168 price tag. Huawei Honor 6 plus has the greatest camera application/features and hardware known so far in Android phones.

Motorola Moto X, 2nd Gen: Motorola has revamped the 2013 flagship Moto X in screen size, pixel density, processor for Moto X second generation. The 5.2 inch phone runs on quad core Snapdragon 801 with 2 GB RAM, 13/2 MP snapper, 2300 mAh battery and 485 dollar price tag. There are also second generation version of Moto G  and Moto E priced at $180 and $115 price, that do not raise the eyebrows due to specs and features if you compare those with other phones in the race. But the best thing about Motorola phone is that you could get the latest android update as early as possible in its pure form. Now after being swallowed by Lenovo, lets see how the brand value of Motorola will be utilized.

From the above phones, it seems like the mid rangers are approaching very near to the flagships in specs with bigger screen size, quad core to Octa core processor, higher resolution camera with manual controls and at price of around 200 dollar. As such nice affordable phones are not available in our market, we are missing a big business here in Nepal but some people even manage to get the phone here from their friends and relatives, like the way I did for two of my mobiles in recent years.

Meizu on the rise!! M1 note and M1 gets sold out in seconds.

Xiaomi - You need to decide whether you’d prefer to have a super-sharp screen or killer battery life. The Lenovo Yoga 920 lasts hours longer than the HP, and performs better in benchmarks and games with the same CPU (although if this is thanks to the Meltdown vulnerability, the playing field is effectively levelled). lasvegas, well we have collected a lot of data from the field directly and from many other blogs so very complete his discussion here about Xiaomi, on this blog we also have to provide the latest automotive information from all the brands associated with the automobile. ok please continue reading:

Its not Xiaomi now when somebody talks of a phone maker that you have never heard of. 2014 was the year for Xiaomi which just toppled Samsung as the top handset maker in China and it will continue to grow this year too, but another handset maker will join them for similar exponential rise in the no of sales in 2015. I am talking of Meizu, the Chinese handset maker (already in the top ten list) which is creating a big buzz in the tech world with its MX series flagship and the recent phablet M1 Note. Such cheap and powerful devices are getting more popular with flagship features and build quality. The buzz garnered $590 Million investment from e-commerce Giant Alibaba that enables them to get more recognition both locally and internationally. Meizu has gone international way before Xiaomi gets in the light but Xiaomi grew fast to be the tech giant in China, leading to more recognition. As Android is the dominant operating system in this region, Chinese manufacturers are opting to use Android Skin or customized interface like MIUI from Xiaomi, Flyme from Meizu, Emotion from Huawei and many alike. Apart from Android skin Flyme, Meizu is known to use Alibaba's YunOS to power its smartphones. It is also speculated that Meizu will launch a phone with Ubuntu OS in MWC 2015, most probably a all new M1 note. 

Meizu store in Huaqianbei, Shenzhen, China

Meizu M1 Note and M1 phone:

M1 note, the latest offering from Meizu, is a 64 bit MediaTek MT652 Octacore processor powered phablet with 5.5 inch 1080P IGZO display, 13 MP/5MP shooter, and 3140 mAh battery. The dual SIM 2G/LTE device looks similar to iPhone C, with ditto set of colors (green, pink, white, yellow and blue).The phone has 2 GB RAM, dual tone flash feature in camera and FDD LTE (the variant that is supposed to land here in Nepal after licensing from the regulator). As already mentioned, the device supports the latest version of its own Android skin, Flyme 4.2 (based on Kitkat). Marked as an direct competitor to Xiaomi Redmi 2 in affordable and entry level smartphone range, the phone price is 1000 RMB ($160) in china which is a little higher than Redmi2, but with all better hardware and performance. The light phone (145 gm) is made up of plastic and has 16 GB/32 GB memory space with no SD card slot. 

Meizu has even released another version with 5 inch display and Snapdragon 615 processor. Dubbed as M1, the phone has 1 GB RAM/ 8GB Memory space, SD card slot, Single SIM with LTE support and 2500 mAh battery. Most of the other impressive features and looks are similar to M1 Note where M1 phone does not have this dual tone LED flash. The phone is priced at CNY 700 ($112) in China but it will cost more in the stores other than the official one where phone gets sold out in a matter of seconds.

Ever since I heard of M1 note, I thought of owning it, especially the blue colored one. As I have already asked my friend who is going to China for a month, to bring the phablet for me, it will take a month to have it in my hand. If I find the performance of the phablet to be impressive that is on paper now, then I will definitely entice more of my friends and blog readers to be "proud owner of Meizu". A month to wait!!

Xiaomi releases two flagship devices: MiNote and MiNote Pro

Xiaomi - You need to decide whether you’d prefer to have a super-sharp screen or killer battery life. The Lenovo Yoga 920 lasts hours longer than the HP, and performs better in benchmarks and games with the same CPU (although if this is thanks to the Meltdown vulnerability, the playing field is effectively levelled). lasvegas, well we have collected a lot of data from the field directly and from many other blogs so very complete his discussion here about Xiaomi, on this blog we also have to provide the latest automotive information from all the brands associated with the automobile. ok please continue reading:

Jan 15, 2015: Xiaomi has today launched two devices dubbed as the Mi Note and MiNote Pro . In contrary to people's expectation for Mi4s or Mi5, Xiaomi unveiled the two flagships under the series Note, though they already had similar name for its cheap phablet called Redmi Note. In its annual event at Beijing, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun took to the central stage and started revealing the specifications of their devices. At first, Mi Note comes with 5.7 inch curved Gorilla Glass 3 display, with resolution of 1920 X 1080 (386 PPI) and super thin bezel of 3 mm. The screen also has adaptive dynamic contrast feature and blue light reducing mode that makes the device ease with your eye. The phone is powered by Snapdragon 801 processor and 3 GB RAM. It weighs 161 gm and has 6.95 inch thickness. The steel framed phablet sports 13 MP rear shooter with 6 element lens, Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) for low light photos, two tone flash feature and 4 MP front snapper. As shown below, the device is known to be available in two universal colors: Black and White. The back of the phone is curved on both sides to make it better fit in the hands. It seems from the picture that the phone will be having MiUi 6 over Android KitKat (4.4.4) and probably have a new MIUI over Android Lollipop soon. Despite having nice features and looks, the price tag of 2299 Yuan (370 USD) is little expensive as compared to Mi4, but is still far less than iPhone 6 Plus. Xiaomi also released a Mi headphone for 500 yuan and  a set up box named Mi Box mini for 200 yuan. 

As teased earlier for two flagships launch for this event, Xiaomi kept the promise with another epic phone which they call it as the best smartphone in the world: the MiNote Pro. MiNote Pro is the advanced version of Mi Note with Snapdragon 810 64 bit Octacore processor, same 5.7 inch display but with resolution of 2K (2560 X 1440 at 515 PPI), slightly larger Battery of 3,090 mAh and 64 GB memory. The phone is known to have whopping 4GB RAM and supports LTE cat 9, up to 450 Mbps download speed. With the launch of these devices, Xiaomi is no more a cheap smartphone maker as it comes out of his cheap price tag, toMi Note Pro is priced at 3299 yuan ( 533 USD). As people say 4 GB is always better than 3 GB, I am not sure what will the extra GB addition likely to support as I still feel content with my 2GB RAM phone.

MiNote is scheduled to release on Jan 27 whereas Note Pro will only be available in the end of March.

Xiaomi Redmi 2 With 4G LTE Support,64 Qualcomm processor Launched

Xiaomi - You need to decide whether you’d prefer to have a super-sharp screen or killer battery life. The Lenovo Yoga 920 lasts hours longer than the HP, and performs better in benchmarks and games with the same CPU (although if this is thanks to the Meltdown vulnerability, the playing field is effectively levelled). lasvegas, well we have collected a lot of data from the field directly and from many other blogs so very complete his discussion here about Xiaomi, on this blog we also have to provide the latest automotive information from all the brands associated with the automobile. ok please continue reading:

Xiaomi has announced its Redmi 2 smartphone which will replace the Redmi 1S with its price tag of CNY 700 (Rs. 7,123). The phone will launch in China on January 9th. The Redmi 2 is a dual-SIM phone and will support 4G LTE.

The new Redmi 2 from Xiaomi is powered by Qualcomm's latest 64-bit 410 Snapdragon chipset with its quad-cores clocked at 1.2GHz. The CPU is coupled with Adreno 306 and 1GB of RAM. On the memory side the phone has 8GB internal storage which can be upgraded with a 32GB microSD card.






On the outside, the smartphone has 4.7-inch 720p IPS display with a pixel density of 312ppi. The new smartphone has a 8MP camera at the rear and a 2MP front-facing camera. The Redmi 2 also packs a 2,200mAh battery which supports QuickCharge technology.

No official dates for availability have been announced by the company but we believe that since USA is big market for Xiaomi we may see the Redmi 2 on sale sooner than most of the world. In related news, Xiaomi could also announce a new Mi flagship by January 15.

SOURCE:Xiaomi(China)

Xiaomi's third position is short lived.

Xiaomi - You need to decide whether you’d prefer to have a super-sharp screen or killer battery life. The Lenovo Yoga 920 lasts hours longer than the HP, and performs better in benchmarks and games with the same CPU (although if this is thanks to the Meltdown vulnerability, the playing field is effectively levelled). lasvegas, well we have collected a lot of data from the field directly and from many other blogs so very complete his discussion here about Xiaomi, on this blog we also have to provide the latest automotive information from all the brands associated with the automobile. ok please continue reading:

OCT 30, 2014: While the leader of the smartphone industry, Samsung is worried about the decline in its sales for this quarter (despite having comfortable lead with 78 Million sales) and the apple seemed content with the best 39 Million sales for the quarter, Xiaomi- the fast growing company is recorded as the third largest smartphone maker with 18 Million sales in the Q3 2014. Reports from IDC and strategy analytics, has it that the two year Chinese firm surpassed Lenovo, LG and Huawei for that 5.6 percent share of the total 327 Million shipments in the third quarter, which is more than 200 percent increment from the previous Mi phone shipments. IDC further writes the success of Xiaomi lies in the launch of MI4 that was positioned as the high end alternatives to the status quo.

With the way Xiaomi is growing without expanding its business to broader range, the chance of reaching the top second or even the top spot is very probable. Xiaomi products are available mainly to its home China and later released to some countries like New York, Singapore, Hongkong while the demands for other part of the world is not yet quenched. Though we cannot give Xiaomi a huge numbers (required to increase the market share), Nepal equally has high demand for its products. Last week only, we got this good news of http://lasvegasin.blogspot.com /2014/10/xiaomi-to-arrive-nepal-soon.html" style="background-color: yellow;">Xiaomi arriving here, but I doubt if it is the official entrance.
Meanwhile as I was writing this post, I came to the news of the completion of acquisition of Motorola by Lenovo. With this acquisition, the third quarter shipments for Lenovo comes around 25 Million (adding that of Lenovo and Motorola phones), which takes away the third spot from Xiaomi. What a short lived celebration that was.... but no worries I am pretty sure Xiaomi will definitely hit back in the last quarter.

Xiaomi to arrive in Nepal soon

Xiaomi - You need to decide whether you’d prefer to have a super-sharp screen or killer battery life. The Lenovo Yoga 920 lasts hours longer than the HP, and performs better in benchmarks and games with the same CPU (although if this is thanks to the Meltdown vulnerability, the playing field is effectively levelled). lasvegas, well we have collected a lot of data from the field directly and from many other blogs so very complete his discussion here about Xiaomi, on this blog we also have to provide the latest automotive information from all the brands associated with the automobile. ok please continue reading:

Xiaomi- the Chinese handset maker that is currently in the top five of the world, is known to arrive here in Nepal. It is already been more than two years that I started to follow Xiaomi, its product line and even bought some of the devices straight from China (Thanks to all those who had helped me to bring it). Now it is known that it will be completely hassle free to get those devices (phones and accessories) here in Nepal as Mobiland Electronic pvt. ltd claims to have got the authority and even looking for distributors to sell it all over Nepal. It is also known that the devices will be available in the market after 20th of Kartik. According to Subarna Maharjan of Mobiland Electronic Pvt. Ltd, they have already taken approval from NTA (Nepal Telecommunication Authority) to sell the Xiaomi smartphones in Nepal. Till the device becomes available in the market, they have even started taking pre-booking in their website. 

Pic: New Xiaomi store in the making at Hua xiang bei, Shenzhen, China

Xiaomi's current range of Smartphones are: Mi2/2S, Mi3, Mi4, Redmi Note, Redmi1s, Mipad (tablet). Compared to similar devices from other vendors, Xiaomi phones are cheaper with build quality. Its android skin (MIUI) is also very popular with several amazing features. The latest being MIUI 6 is available for Mi2, Mi3 and Mi4 in its developer version, but stable version is not yet out, which is scheduled for the end of this year.

Popular accessories from Xiaomi include the piston earphone/headphone, Mi power bank (Batterry bank: 5200 mAh and 10400 mAh), Mifi router and screen protector/cover. As the price of these devices are not yet fixed, it is hard to tell the business despite the popularity of device and excitement.