Overview of the Chinese clone HTC Eris

    The following reviews can be read on other Chinese phones: HTC Touch Diamond 2 , Sunno A880 .



    Foreword


    I recently wanted to update my ancient phone Motorola RAZR MAXX v6 . The phone itself is very good and everyone was fine with me, but I wanted more, a SMARTPHONE! I looked at HTC Tattoo and HTC Hero for a very long time, but feeding HTC with promises for fresh firmware got a little bit, besides, these phones didn’t seem ideal in some respects to me, so I still couldn’t decide on a purchase. And then I accidentally found out that in addition to all NOKLA and NCKIA, the Chinese had quite good and cheap smartphones on Windows Mobile. Then I sat down to study the assortment of Chinese shops and study bit by bit the reviews about them, and it turned out that not everything is so bad, the phones work, and it seems sometimes very good.

    As I understand it, the main reason why the Chinese have a lot of smartphones is Huawei, which released the K3 mobile platform, which includes all the components for the phone (processor, camera, bluetooth, wifi and everything else). Those. There is a ready-made platform, you just need to assemble the phone and finish the firmware. At the same time, as I understand it, so far all drivers and applications are only for Windows Mobile, therefore, a few representatives of Chinese androids go on other processors, while the level of deception in the specifications is off scale. So, if an Android version is made under K3, then the Chinese will have much more interesting things from phones.

    At the same time, you do not need to compare these phones and others that are dual-SIM, three-television on the MTK platform. Those. different platforms, different phones, different price levels, different features. However, the campaign and the MTK began to make smartphones. Again, we are waiting for the consequences.

    After a couple of weeks of agony of choosing between a bunch of different phones, among which were the already reviewed Sunno A880 and Sunno S880 Pro and some others, I settled on HTC Eris G5 , because I liked him more than anyone else in appearance (although he did not cause enthusiasm in most of my friends, so as I understand it, this is a matter of taste). Actually, good looks, this is the merit of HTC, namely HTC DROID Eris(simplified version of Nexus One for Verizon). The Chinese brazenly copied the appearance, though they forgot to put Android there, and inserted Windows Mobile 6.5.x (but did not forget to add pictures from HTC with android that appear when the device is turned on or off).


    Appearance and equipment


    Unfortunately, when I received the phone, the camera was on vacation, and I couldn’t take a picture of the box and accessories, but now the box has already been removed, so I will insert the photos later.
    I also apologize for the imperfect appearance of the phone, I did not find wipes to wipe. On the other hand, the phone is Chinese, and the photos must be appropriate :)


    Equipment

    So, the phone came in a very nice little box with HTC logos and pictures, the box wasn’t even wrinkled, although it was packed in just one bag with pimples (delivery was via EMS).

    Inside was:
    • the phone itself
    • nice velvet case with HTC logo
    • two 1300mAh batteries
    • folding stylus on a string completely off topic
    • a small charge with an American plug and a USB input
    • adapter to our outlet standard
    • miniUSB-USB cable (miniUSB is some 10-pin, but without problems it changes to normal)
    • very mediocre headset with microphone and button
    • mini-DVD disc with English instructions and a bunch of software for the phone
    • instruction in chinese


    Almost all of this was put back into the box (I charge it from the computer) so that at the moment there is only a phone and a cover in which I carry it


    Appearance

    At the beginning, I already wrote about the fact that the phone is very pretty, black made of plastic "softach". It is assembled quite well, although if squeezed, you can hear creaks, because the back cover, which is attached to the latches, is completely removed under the battery, and it creaks. Also, because of this, there are small gaps in places (can be seen in the photographs, although in reality they are less and not annoying). Also, the power and volume buttons are also on the cover, so without it, turning the phone on / off is problematic.

    The Chinese claim that the phone’s dimensions are 110x55x14mm, the ruler confirms this in principle. It’s convenient to hold the phone in your hand, it doesn’t slip out, all the buttons are at hand.




    On the front there is a fairly bright and juicy screen (just don’t have to look at gradients on it, Windows Mobile doesn’t like them very much, only 65,536 colors). In the sun, almost nothing is visible, but you can set the backlight to the maximum, it will be better.
    At the top left is a window for colored diodes showing the status of the phone. For example, flashing blue - bluetooth, red - GPS, green - WiFi, burning red - charging, purple - calibrating mode.

    under the screen there are 4 touch buttons, 3 of which can be reassigned: Home, back, player and camera launch. In the dark they glow white.
    Two hardkey buttons for sending and disconnecting a call, between which there is a trackball with a button (unlike the Sunno A880, this is just a spinning trackball). On the left, two knobs of volume control, on the right there is nothing.





    Below is a charging socket, as I already wrote, some tricky miniUSB with 10 pins, but now I use a regular cable, the phone works without problems. At the top is the power button and a 3.5mm headset jack. Perhaps this is the only ergonomic miscalculation, because when the headset is inserted, the button is inconvenient to use. I must say separately about the connector, the fact is that I stuck different ears in it, and only with one there were problems that the left ear did not work, if you press and hold, then everything works. At the same time, only with those that worked without problems in other devices. So keep that in mind. I don’t know if this is a marriage of a specific telephone instance, or in all such connectors, but there is a small problem.






    At the back there is a glamorous inscription Windows Mobile and a camera. There is no flash. About the camera below, but I can say that the pictures are very, very terrible. There is also a hole for the speaker in a very original form of the “hole” type.

    What is and how it works



    Telephone

    4 ranges. It works, there were no special glitches. True, the signal level seems to be lower, but it is somehow strange displayed, in the same place there can be from one division to a full scale. What is the reason, I did not find out, but I did not observe problems with SMS and calls. The quality of the speaker, though not a fountain, the sound is not very clear, but because I mainly use a headset, for me it is not particularly important. She's fine.

    GPRS / EDGE

    It works, there is nothing to add. Shows what it sees now (G / E)

    Bluetooth

    No problems were noticed either. Quickly made friends with the headset and gives it a good sound. He also made friends with an external GPS-receiver, created a virtual COM-port and automatically picks it up.

    Wifi

    It seems that the antenna is not very powerful, but I have nowhere to check especially. There are not many WiFi points in the city, and almost all are closed. And I haven’t reached McDonald's yet. At home, everything works without problems. Although it shows only 2 divisions out of 5, even at the router itself.
    By the way, with Windows Mobile, by default, when you go to sleep, WiFi is turned off in order to save battery power, the only drawback of this is that when you wake up until WiFi has time to pick up, programs quickly pick up GPRS and start using it, it's a little annoying. On the other hand, if you actively sit at home on the Internet from your phone, you can turn off GPRS and not think about it (either turn off sleep, or turn off WiFi off).

    GPS

    It seems that the problem is the same as that of other owners ( HTC Touch Diamond 2 , Sunno A880 ) - it almost does not catch satellites. Maybe somehow I’ll get together and disassemble the device, look at the contacts. Now I use the external Holux M-1000C and do not experience any special problems. So for me it’s not critical. AGPS is supported.

    Radio

    The presence of a radio was one of the important features for me, the previous phone was without it, and if you do not throw new music on it, then it becomes sad that everything is heard, the radio is somehow more fun.

    A very nice program is used for radio.
    In our city it’s hard with the radio, in the sense that for almost any radio you have to play with the position of the antenna and body, the phone is no exception, in some places of the city there is continuous noise, in others everything is fine (and I still thought why I The bluetooth headset shuts up, it’s clearly visible on the radio that there is a lot of noise in these places, the radio only works when the headset is connected.

    Gravity sensor

    The phone rotates in any direction, and in absolutely all applications, if you put the corresponding checkmark in the sensor settings. Those. even if you took it upside down, it will turn the application around for you to be comfortable. Well, and as a bonus, turning off the alarm by a coup (though a bad feature, it will be necessary to turn it off, otherwise I will cut down the alarm without waking up).


    Camera

    About her we can say that she is. The photos are just disgusting (although comparable to Motorola's). 2 megapixels, no flash. Something is visible only in good light. By the way, the Sunno A880 has a better camera, 3.2Mpx with autofocus, so if the camera is important for you, then do not look at the Chinese at all, look at another phone.


    Computer connection

    Via USB, like a regular removable disk (only a memory card is visible) or via ActiveSync (although ActiveSync says that it can be done via Bluetooth, but I haven’t tried it). During the connection, charging takes place, WiFi is turned off, the Internet is taken from the computer, Windows happily synchronizes the phone with Outlook (hurray, finally it can be done without shamanism). Actually, there is nothing more to add.

    Vibro

    Yes, it works. As they like to say in the reviews, “the vibration alert is average in strength, you can’t even hear it in your sweatshirt pocket.”

    Sound

    The external speaker is just disgusting. At the same time, 70% of this disgust is made by the back cover, which simply vibrates and spoils the sound. If you remove it, the sound becomes better, but still a little wheeze. For calls come down, you can also listen to the radio, music and something decent is not worth it. But it’s very loud.

    The speaker for the voice is better, but also not ideal, the sound is not very good, but the interlocutor is heard, and there are no special problems. With the microphone, too, everything is in order. When you connect a wired or wireless headset, the sound becomes good.

    Touch screen

    First you need to get used to the force of pressing after which everything becomes convenient and good. I don’t use a stylus, the interface is quite suitable for fingers, but in places it is more convenient to poke a fingernail than with your finger (well, or with a toothpick). Scrolling is normally carried out by dragging, but if the program is not configured for this and starts to highlight, then you really have to aim at the scrollbar.

    Working hours

    It’s very difficult to judge. The fact is that Windows Mobile loves to sleep, disconnecting some modules (but the phone and Bluetooth work). As a result, only ~ 7% of the battery is consumed per night. At the same time, a couple of hours of active WiFi can very well plant the phone. Right now my phone shows 70% of the charge, it took about 16 hours from the last charge, during this time I used the phone as a navigator, listened to podcasts, downloaded fresh via WiFi, made several calls and played. Seems not bad. I think that if used as a phone, 3 days should be enough. (I just can’t find out, I still connect to the computer every day for different purposes, but he manages to charge).

    At the same time, the battery seems to be not very calibrated, there is still some for 100%, and when charging, it can show 100% for a long time (but in the end it reports a successful charge).

    Other

    The phone came to me with IMEI reset to zero, and although this did not interfere with the work, it was somehow messy. So I found out that it can be reflashed to any other quite easily. Perhaps this will be useful information for residents of Ukraine, because as far as I know, they have some problems with gray phones. You can take IMEI from your old Siemens C25 and flash it into this phone.

    Windows mobile


    Having read the horrors about Windows Mobile, about what a terrible and slow system it is, seeing it alive I was pleasantly surprised. Those. This, of course, is a Frankenstein, assembled from different pieces, with an absolutely inconsistent interface, in which nice solutions are combined with terrible ones, and each program has its own interface, the system works, and works quite well. In any case, I did not experience horror, and feints with my ears with editing the registry, replacing files and throwing my own into the Windows folder, are so native :)

    However, I won’t write much about Windows, there are many reviews of the standard interface on the network, there is basically nothing else. The only thing that needs to be done is to put some necessary programs, without which happiness will be incomplete. First things first, replace the standard keyboard (for example, with FingerKeyboard), put Opera (although native IE is not so bad), and the rest to taste (for example: Fring, Touch Response, Task Manager).

    The main surprise in Windows was caused by voice control, which is very powerful, but for some reason it knows how to bind only to the hardkey button (that is, it does not work with the headset), and if the phone is already in hand, then why use a voice?

    And the main joy: the dialer. The ability to quickly select the desired contact by letter and number, led into a wild delight. For those who don’t know, it works like this: you have a Sergey contact, you open the dialer, press 7-3-7-4-3-9 and you immediately have this contact (naturally, if all matches are searched, so , if you wish, you can stop earlier).



    General impressions


    To be honest, I was surprised. I took the phone to play around and look at this miracle of Chinese industry. But it turned out that everything is very good. Well, yes, c GPS is bad, but the radio is more important to me. And the rest of the features for the phone for 6000 are very good. We can only take Samsung Monte for this kind of money, and this is a touch-screen phone without a qwerty-keyboard, on which you need to write SMS in T9. What kind of oddities? And if you take more expensive phones, then there is already more choice, but they have a disadvantage, they are more expensive , while in everyday life, not really and better. Anyway, in my opinion. If you are explaining round the clock who is wrong on the Internet from the phone, then perhaps you’ll really be better off with something like Motorola Milestone.

    But, once again, the phone impressed me, well-assembled, comfortable, ringing and able to surf the Internet.

    Where could I buy


    I bought on fastcardtech . This store is not the cheapest (add another $ 41 for shipping and $ 9 for Paypal), but I liked it because they really try to sell. They answer user questions, post pictures and videos, try to write the most honestly the characteristics. Simply, it seemed to me that the extra few dollars are not worth the fuss with other stores, it is better to pay them. But the phone is in many others: solomobi , allymobile , mobino1 and others. You can search by keywords Hitouch G5, Magic G5, Eris G5 and other combinations. Keep in mind that this phone is manufactured in two factories, i.e. as such it has two models that are actually exactly the same, so look for the one that is cheaper.

    At the same time, if you do not have Paypal, then almost all stores accept bank transfer and Western Union, so count the money (they can also get a discount for such methods), and choose the method convenient for you. I chose PayPal because The fastest and most reliable way. The seller also insured himself and did not forget to make parcels in the PayPal tracking number, in case of clarification of the relationship. But I think they will not be needed.

    Specifications


    Screen: HVGA 320x480
    OS: WM6.5 (English)
    CPU: HiSilicon K3 460MHz (written by Qualcomm)
    RAM / ROM: 128/256 (written 288/256, actually on a clean phone you can see 80Mb of RAM, 30 of them are free, 110Mb is free on drive)
    Wi-Fi, EDGE (GPRS), GPS, Gravity Sensor, Radio
    GSM 850/900/1800/1900
    2Mpx
    microSD camera (8Gb works, 16 did not check)
    3.5mm headphone output.
    miniUSB input


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