Huawei P8: Chinese mobes have arrived and the West should tremble Networking kit giant Huawei didn’t even make mobile phones four years ago, but its classy new P8 flagship shows what astonishing progress it’s made to come within striking distance of the market leaders. The Shenzen-based, employee-owned company unveiled its P8 at a huge, splashy launch in London’s Old Billingsgate Market. …
No.
Glued in place for your pleasure.
Those of us who's dismissed the Chinese as "good at putting things together and maybe copying things" have never worked in technology and so seen first hand just how many high quality Chinese engineers there are. They're everywhere....and they're the ones that aren't living in the PRC. So its kind of inevitable that they were going to come up with their own devices sooner or later. After all, they're not only smart but they've learned from the best -- all that outsourcing gave them everything they need to know about manufacturing, marketing and distribution.
> Those of us who's dismissed the Chinese as "good at putting things together and maybe copying things"
I remember the same thing used to said about the Japanese.
The eternal cycle
copy cheaply -> copy more efficiently -> out-innovate -> move production somewhere cheaper -> slowly become service based -> (not sure what's next, but I hope I don't live to see it) -> copy cheaply. -> ...
... slowly become service based -> (not sure what's next, but I hope I don't live to see it) -> copy cheaply. -> ..
What comes next is to go down the Tesco, Ryanair or Microsoft route (or Digital, for those over 55 that remember). Get fat and lazy. Start ignoring your customers, treat them as sheep to be fleeced and led to (financial) slaughter. Until one day, there aren't enough suckers left and huge profit turns to loss.
At that point the company is headed for extinction, unless it remains able to remodel itself. (Ryanair seems to have managed that trick. Tesco and Microsoft, the jury's still out. Digital dismembered itself and died horribly.)
Seem to remember some program talking about how the Japanese came over and spent a long time looking at bikes like Triumphs a few years later, Yamaha's and Kawasaki's etc turned up. Must be even easier for the Chinese they already have the infrastructure from making everyone's already..
It's a long-running cycle. David Hume wrote this in 1752, reprinted in Andy Kessler's "How We Got Here", a fun and still-relevant read from 2004:
“There seems to be a happy concurrence of causes in human affairs, which checks the growth of trade and riches, and hinders them from being confined entirely to one people; as might naturally at first be dreaded from the advantages of an established commerce. Where one nation has gotten the start of another in trade, it is very difficult for the latter to regain the ground it has lost; because of the superior industry and skill of the former, and the greater stocks, of which its merchants are possessed, and which enable them to trade on so much smaller profits. But these advantages are compensated, in some measure, by the low price of labour in every nation which has not an extensive commerce, and does not much abound in gold and silver. Manufactures, therefore gradually shift their places, leaving those countries and provinces which they have already enriched, and flying to others, whither they are allured by the cheapness of provisions and labour; till they have enriched these also, and are again banished by the same causes. And, in general, we may observe, that the dearness of every thing, from plenty of money, is a disadvantage, which attends an established commerce, and sets bounds to it in every country, by enabling the poorer states to undersell the richer in all foreign markets.”
I know this is an article about a phone, and not really anything to do with geopolitical history. But, a lot of people think that in recorded human history, china has been the dominant 'power' for the majority of it, in very many ways. I think we europeans / people of european origin / people who mainly comsume trans-atlantic media have a rather western leaning view of history and China doesn't get the credit it deserves So, no real surprise that they are making nice phones really. Yep, it's a tenuous link, I apologise.
The Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 is a very promising looking phone, all for £200. Any plans to do a review on that Andrew ? I'm considering this for my next phone.
Specs:
5.5-inch 1080×1920 display (443ppi)
64 bit Octa-core Snapdragon 615 chip – 1.5GHz quad + 1GHz quad
13MP rear camera
8MP front camera
Android 5.0 Lollipop
Dual front-facing speakers with JBL audio
16GB storage – expandable to 128GB
2GB RAM
2,910mAh battery (13hrs talktime on 3G)
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n
If you want a site with pretty in-depth mobile phone reviews, I'd recommend GSMArena and, in the case of your particular request: this page
*[Hopefully this link to another 'tech' site won't be considered too naughty, given GSMArena is pretty narrowly focussed on just phones & tablets. No affiliation, etc...]*
Since Samsung has seen fit to pre-install Microsoft mobile apps that I detest and that cannot be removed, I will most certainly look closely at new Huawei P8 smartphone as alternative to Samsung S6 for purchase soon.
Samsung and other Mobile behemoths, most from West must realize that viable choices could and should blunt their domination, ofter oppressively and draconian of mobile marketplace, providing at least some level of fair trade options.
Having owned a few Chinese phones there is a slight downside to ownership. Yes, you get a very high quality device for relatively little money - BUT, there is zero support. I've owned a ZTE and a Huawei and there were zero updates for them. Now, you could argue that this isn't all that important to the general public. If the phone works and does everything you want then who cares if you can't get the latest release of Android? Which is true, unless your device is released with a bug (and my Huawei was) or Google releases a Turkey (Android 5.0) in which case you are either stuffed (general public) or reliant on XDA Devs (those of us on here). That's why, after a few years of owning Chinese phones with some hits but a few significant misses, last year I went with the relatively safe Sony Z1 Compact.
No support, also no 3rd party ROMs often. I've got 2 Huawei phones (G300+ and G526). One got a virtually unusable upgrade to ICS (poor partitioning), the other nothing to speak of.
There are no 3rd party ROMs.
On the plus side they do both have SD card slots and removable batteries!
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