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andy (Offline)
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Prepaid Prophet
 
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Default 14-04-2014, 17:17

I've had a Haier W718 for a few days.

This is pretty modest cost - mostly £65 on eBay UK (several sellers are abroad), or from about $90 direct from China. Looking now there aren't as many on eBay as a few weeks ago ...

It has 900 & 2100 MHz 3g, and IP67 dust and water protection. 500 MB & 4 GB memories. Android 4.2.2 on this one as supplied, i.e. with Google Play included etc (not on all of them)

I came to it after spotting the Lenovo S750 with IP67 but it doesn't have 900 MHz 3g, which it looks like European countries are shifting towards.

I haven't used it much yet, but it seems reasonable, with a proviso.

My home is a bit patchy for coverage on some networks. The 3g signal indication at 2100 MHz isn't as strong as say the Nokia 6120, more like the old 7600 was (all phones with Three SIMs), so it might lose 2100 signal a bit early in weaker areas. Maybe it's a cheap antenna issue like inquisitor mentioned above. The 2g signal indication looks better, so I'd guess 900 MHz 3g would be ok as well.

And maybe it won't be such an issue elsewhere compared to UK networks who do seem a bit mean on coverage. And of course most network SIMs have 2g and 3g, unlike a 3 UK SIM for which they've been reducing the 2g roaming.

I'm intending to do something like a local SIM for data abroad, with a UK one in the other. It's a bit of a luxury to some extent, as I could just take 2 Nokias, E51 and X6, and a 3g router, but Symbian has been dropped for most new applications nowadays, and I've never had the comprehensive version of Mobilevoip stable on the X6

Last edited by andy; 14-04-2014 at 20:46..
   
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