The Shallots Metal has been officially released in China. 2 models are available both offering decent hardware, and the budget model even getting a Redmi Note 2 killing price tag.
Shallots are that well-known outside of China, but in the great country they have a cult following and are one of the first Chinese brands to focus on the smartphone market. Generally the company releases a few phones each year culminating in a flagship launch, but this year we have witnessed something different.
Today, 2 Shallots phones were released, not with the same ‘Metal’name, but both with differing price tags and specifications.
Shallots Metal 5.5-inch
The entry-level Shallots Metal is a 5.5-inch phone that boasts a metal body and 1920 x 1080 display but costs only 799 Yuan ($124). For that price Shallots are clearly hoping to snatch up a few Redmi Note 3 customers, and from specs alone the phone has the goods.
Details include 3GB RAM, 16GB internal memory, and SD support for a 128GB card. The phone also boats an 8 mega-pixel front camera, and 13 mega-pixel PDAF rear both with F2.0 apertures.
Gizchina News of the week
An octacore chipset runs in the phone but the company didn’t detail which model, and a 3050mAh battery powers the device with the help of Lucid PowerXtend technology which extends battery life via optimisation of the GPU.
Shallots Metal 6-inch
Taking up the position of flagship is a 6-inch model with 2K (2560 x 1440) display. This larger model only costs 1999 Yuan yet packs similar hardware to the LeTV Le Max phone.
Shallots have opted for a Snapdragon 810 chipset, 4GB RAM, 128GB memory card (and space for an SD card), 8 mega-pixel front camera and 16 mega-pixel rear with F2.0 aperture, PDAF, 6p stack lens and 4K video.
Other features include a fingerprint scanner on the rear, 5100mAh battery with quick charging, and the same GPU optimizations as the entry model.
Both phones also runs CONG OS, and Android based cloud OS, and will go on sale through JingDong Mall from the 12th December.
I have to say that these look like some of the more exciting Chinese phones we have seen in a while, and with pricing as low as this they are sure to sell fast.
pretty awesome i say , if the 5.5 inch ver has a sd808 it would be a killer phone
yup, but it could also be a budget MTK octa. Trying to find out what it is now.
It is a Mediatek CPU, but doesnt say what exactly
“eight-core MediaTek”
http://www.smartcong.com/products/qingcongmetal/param.html
mtksj claims MT6753
http://mtksj.com/html/MTKshoujitupian/13002.html
Instead of putting full hd they would did better putting a better soc..
oh its an octa 🙁 , Sd808 is an hexa – it
here are the posibilities
Mtk6753 – It will be a no go
Mtk6795 – If the phone is good it will make an impact in its country
Sd615/616 – Youll find me crying in the closet
With all this Metal phones, I would get Manowar to endorse them 😀
Any chance to get them at shop.gizchina.com anytime soon?
Cool buh, can’t trust mainly specs.
They should have waited for snap 820. Then mayb it would have been an excellent choice
It’s not likely to be available worldwide though is it?
On paper it sounds like a decent phone, but I have a hard time paying that much for a company i have never heard of, especially one named after an onion.
i remember you own an “Apple” laptop, so what’s wrong with onions?
xD nailed it! Fruit power!
I own 6 laptops – An Apple, a knock off Apple, 3 Chromebooks and a Surface Pro 3.
Apple juice is much tastier than onion juice! Apple pie taste better than onion pie. And Applesauce is better than Onion Sauce.
Try and make “soffritto” with an apple… lol
lol well played sir, well played!
but onion soup!
There simply is nothing like eating a raw onion ripped straight from the ground after a long days work…
…but a radioactive rice, transgenically (does this word exists?) mutated to be red, is fine… Doesn’t it?! u.u
EDIT: i mistakenly took “red rice” as the translation of “xiaomi”… My bad! It’s still a cereal though! 😀
I give you an A for effort!
Thanks, next time I’ll do better, i promise! :’)
But to answer your question:
Rice is the staple food of Asia, also one of my favorite foods. Of course I trust an Asian company named after their staple food. 😉
Seems reasonable… Seems like i trust onions because here we use it a lot to cook! 😀
come now , Balco….
give the poor guys a chance 😀
I’ll give them a chance just not with my wallet!
ahaha …
in that case , i should be renounced as a ruthless dictator here …
i have YET to give anyone a chance 😀 !
From my experience, biggest “possible” issue with Chinese phones is that they ship with custom Android OS and no alternative stock ROM or AOSP ROMs. Play service will crash almost every update and you have to do a lot of work to get it work again, if not need to factory reset…
You have very little experience with Chinese phones then or you only used cheap ones. Most of us here own Chinese phones (hence why we come to this site) and have no issues with the play store. I have never had it crash after an update and I have used phones from Xiaomi, THL, Gionee, Meizu, Oppo. iOcean, iNew, Cubot, Meizu, Huawei, Lenovo, Jiayu, Coolpad, Doogee, TCL and ZTE.
They are all cheap though hehe. Sorry to come off unnecessarily negative. I have Xiaomi Mi Pad and it’s been great, as well as Oppo Ulike that I owned long time ago. But my recent experience with IUNI U3 have been…terrible.
So because one brand was terrible they all are?
I thought I was being very specific when I said:” Android OS and no alternative stock ROM or AOSP ROMs.” I also mentioned possibility of an issue not an absolute. I mean it’s very straight forward: Chinese phones with custom OS have different build and is difficult to make google services work on them, and if they are not popular enough to be supported by AOSP porters you have very VERY few options if there are problems.
Oh and this is rather minor but rather relevant. If you try to use IUNI U3 or other similar unpopular-in terms of both Android build and dev community- certain exotic features are difficult to obtain. Enabling CIFS VFS on U3 is possible but quite difficult. You need to build the module yourself and it’s difficult with the lack of documentation on both the hardware and the custom IUNI kernel.
There are several Chinese phones with custom OS that have no issues running Google Services. For all of them there is no need to use an alternative stock ROM or AOSP. IUNI is a side project of Gionee, and they are known to have software issues. Xiaomi and Meizu have no issues with Google Services and they both use a custom OS.
Specs wise its easy to put the best in a smartphone and they did good. Big battery /removable , good camera, big storage, sd card, good screen, and good connectivity , good soc and you’re done …. Pretty easy no ? Easy and all these smartphone selling $700 are missing at least 2 if not 3 of these specs..
That SD810 though… :-I
pretty awesome i say , if the 5.5 inch ver has a sd808 it would be a killer phone
yup, but it could also be a budget MTK octa. Trying to find out what it is now.
It is a Mediatek CPU, but doesnt say what exactly
“eight-core MediaTek”
http://www.smartcong.com/products/qingcongmetal/param.html
mtksj claims MT6753
http://mtksj.com/html/MTKshoujitupian/13002.html
Instead of putting full hd they would did better putting a better soc..
oh its an octa 🙁 , Sd808 is an hexa – it
here are the posibilities
Mtk6753 – It will be a no go
Mtk6795 – If the phone is good it will make an impact in its country
Sd615/616 – Youll find me crying in the closet
With all this Metal phones, I would get Manowar to endorse them 😀
Any chance to get them at shop.gizchina.com anytime soon?
Cool buh, can’t trust mainly specs.
They should have waited for snap 820. Then mayb it would have been an excellent choice
Sometimes the brand name can put you right off a purchase.
really … ?
this looks like a pretty sweet deal !
The wonder of being from a not-english-based country… Every English word looks so cool, despite his meaning: now think to buy something called “onion” in your language… It doesn’t seems so cool now, does it? 😀
(I’m not English myself, so i won’t be bothered by weird names either, except rare cases)
i know the chinese are really bad with brand names (silly , but adorable mistakes imo)
but no , i don’t think every english word is cool , except those which emphasize upon a greater and objective than ordinary words (see , i discriminate b/w words :p , so not so cool after all :D)
by pretty sweet deal , i was talking about the mobile tho , the budget version … say if resellers arent too greedy and dont go above $160 or so … then its a killer price. the official site is in chinese so no idea about the cpu but i hope its a powerful package for the price.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just an italian thing: many uses english word in place for italian ones… They means the exact same thing, but sound cooler… But many do the same thing with latin, french and other languages, so i assume it’s a poser thing! 😀
However, i highly doubt the budget version will have an helio x10, probably a standard mt6753, so nothing new :-/
haha , yeah. most english words sound kinda unique and ‘sexy’ when spoken in italian or spanish accent 😀
yep its a 53′ as shown on coolicool..
Good, old, disappointing 6753… At that price point, it would have been almost impossible something better, though
exactly … so not a bad deal at all.
If it performs well, sure it could still be a nice deal!
Better than the damn sd 615
Yep they are good deals. Regarding the 6″ well I categorise that as a small tablet and when comparing to others this device kicks butt. 8MP front camera is nearly unheard of in tablets. The 16MP I would prefer to be 20MP, but still a great combination with the 8MP front. The SD810 would have to the revised version by now, so there wouldn’t be many reasons not to buy this you’re happy with 6i nches.
…said the man mostly interested in elephone devices… 😛
the first time ever I heard Samsung I was laughing my ass off as weird
and clumsy this name sounded to me… now it’s considered elite and no
one bothers to have it printed on front of their smartphone…I believe Elephone sound idiotic in every country of the world tho!
It’s not likely to be available worldwide though is it?
jingdong mall ?!
do they ship to pakistan ? (i take it on principle they should,since we are besties with china)
but if Shallots want to go global (they already have , a/c to author) then they need to be more emergent on popular resellers !
i would like to know more about the soc on the budget version AND hopefully a collection of ENGLISH renders of the phone…
considering they only have them in mandarin atm -_-
http://www.smartcong.com/products/qingcongmetal/
On paper it sounds like a decent phone, but I have a hard time paying that much for a company i have never heard of, especially one named after an onion.
i remember you own an “Apple” laptop, so what’s wrong with onions?
xD nailed it! Fruit power!
…but a radioactive rice, transgenically (does this word exists?) mutated to be red, is fine… Doesn’t it?! u.u
EDIT: i mistakenly took “red rice” as the translation of “xiaomi”… My bad! It’s still a cereal though! 😀
I give you an A for effort!
I own 6 laptops – An Apple, a knock off Apple, 3 Chromebooks and a Surface Pro 3.
Apple juice is much tastier than onion juice! Apple pie taste better than onion pie. And Applesauce is better than Onion Sauce.
Thanks, next time I’ll do better, i promise! :’)
But to answer your question:
Rice is the staple food of Asia, also one of my favorite foods. Of course I trust an Asian company named after their staple food. 😉
Try and make “soffritto” with an apple… lol
Seems reasonable… Seems like i trust onions because here we use it a lot to cook! 😀
come now , Balco….
give the poor guys a chance 😀
lol well played sir, well played!
I’ll give them a chance just not with my wallet!
ahaha …
in that case , i should be renounced as a ruthless dictator here …
i have YET to give anyone a chance 😀 !
but onion soup!
There simply is nothing like eating a raw onion ripped straight from the ground after a long days work…
From my experience, biggest “possible” issue with Chinese phones is that they ship with custom Android OS and no alternative stock ROM or AOSP ROMs. Play service will crash almost every update and you have to do a lot of work to get it work again, if not need to factory reset…
You have very little experience with Chinese phones then or you only used cheap ones. Most of us here own Chinese phones (hence why we come to this site) and have no issues with the play store. I have never had it crash after an update and I have used phones from Xiaomi, THL, Gionee, Meizu, Oppo. iOcean, iNew, Cubot, Meizu, Huawei, Lenovo, Jiayu, Coolpad, Doogee, TCL and ZTE.
They are all cheap though hehe. Sorry to come off unnecessarily negative. I have Xiaomi Mi Pad and it’s been great, as well as Oppo Ulike that I owned long time ago. But my recent experience with IUNI U3 have been…terrible.
So because one brand was terrible they all are?
I thought I was being very specific when I said:” Android OS and no alternative stock ROM or AOSP ROMs.” I also mentioned possibility of an issue not an absolute. I mean it’s very straight forward: Chinese phones with custom OS have different build and is difficult to make google services work on them, and if they are not popular enough to be supported by AOSP porters you have very VERY few options if there are problems.
Oh and this is rather minor but rather relevant. If you try to use IUNI U3 or other similar unpopular-in terms of both Android build and dev community- certain exotic features are difficult to obtain. Enabling CIFS VFS on U3 is possible but quite difficult. You need to build the module yourself and it’s difficult with the lack of documentation on both the hardware and the custom IUNI kernel.
There are several Chinese phones with custom OS that have no issues running Google Services. For all of them there is no need to use an alternative stock ROM or AOSP. IUNI is a side project of Gionee, and they are known to have software issues. Xiaomi and Meizu have no issues with Google Services and they both use a custom OS.
Specs wise its easy to put the best in a smartphone and they did good. Big battery /removable , good camera, big storage, sd card, good screen, and good connectivity , good soc and you’re done …. Pretty easy no ? Easy and all these smartphone selling $700 are missing at least 2 if not 3 of these specs..
here, take my money!
That SD810 though… :-I
want!!!
Not a bad looking phone. I would like to know though if native android apps can be installed and run on the CONG OS. And whats the user experience like? I tried to search for cong os but couldnt get any reasonable information.
how is the ui?
Sometimes the brand name can put you right off a purchase.
really … ?
this looks like a pretty sweet deal !
…said the man mostly interested in elephone devices… 😛
The wonder of being from a not-english-based country… Every English word looks so cool, despite his meaning: now think to buy something called “onion” in your language… It doesn’t seems so cool now, does it? 😀
(I’m not English myself, so i won’t be bothered by weird names either, except rare cases)
i know the chinese are really bad with brand names (silly , but adorable mistakes imo)
but no , i don’t think every english word is cool , except those which emphasize upon a greater and objective than ordinary words (see , i discriminate b/w words :p , so not so cool after all :D)
by pretty sweet deal , i was talking about the mobile tho , the budget version … say if resellers arent too greedy and dont go above $160 or so … then its a killer price. the official site is in chinese so no idea about the cpu but i hope its a powerful package for the price.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just an italian thing: many uses english word in place for italian ones… They means the exact same thing, but sound cooler… But many do the same thing with latin, french and other languages, so i assume it’s a poser thing! 😀
However, i highly doubt the budget version will have an helio x10, probably a standard mt6753, so nothing new :-/
haha , yeah. most english words sound kinda unique and ‘sexy’ when spoken in italian or spanish accent 😀
yep its a 53′ as shown on coolicool..
Good, old, disappointing 6753… At that price point, it would have been almost impossible something better, though
Yep they are good deals. Regarding the 6″ well I categorise that as a small tablet and when comparing to others this device kicks butt. 8MP front camera is nearly unheard of in tablets. The 16MP I would prefer to be 20MP, but still a great combination with the 8MP front. The SD810 would have to the revised version by now, so there wouldn’t be many reasons not to buy this you’re happy with 6i nches.
exactly … so not a bad deal at all.
If it performs well, sure it could still be a nice deal!
the first time ever I heard Samsung I was laughing my ass off as weird
and clumsy this name sounded to me… now it’s considered elite and no
one bothers to have it printed on front of their smartphone…I believe Elephone sound idiotic in every country of the world tho!
Better than the damn sd 615
Everything looks great… just the Android UI…. I’m sure most of us here want to know how the UI fairs
For me i see it looks a good ui but
jingdong mall ?!
do they ship to pakistan ? (i take it on principle they should,since we are besties with china)
but if Shallots want to go global (they already have , a/c to author) then they need to be more emergent on popular resellers !
i would like to know more about the soc on the budget version AND hopefully a collection of ENGLISH renders of the phone…
considering they only have them in mandarin atm -_-
http://www.smartcong.com/products/qingcongmetal/
here, take my money!
want!!!
Not a bad looking phone. I would like to know though if native android apps can be installed and run on the CONG OS. And whats the user experience like? I tried to search for cong os but couldnt get any reasonable information.
how is the ui?
Everything looks great… just the Android UI…. I’m sure most of us here want to know how the UI fairs
For me i see it looks a good ui but
Nice! looks great http://freetoolzzz.com/shallots-metal/
Not sure though, I got burned so badly from IUNI U3 I don’t want to touch another Chinese phone with non-stock android…
What was wrong with the U3?
I don’t think the problem is inherent to U3 only, I guess it also applies to other chinese phones with custom ROM.
IUNI OS is simply terrible. Bad/partial translations and very limited functionality. Installing Google services and Play store in it is a nightmare. Each update tends to break the Google services and you need to spend quite lot of time just fixing it. Custom roms are also not available… few apps incompatible as well.
I would only recommend U3 if you are happy with non-Google apps.
Try the MIUI rom. It works perfect for the phone.
Not sure though, I got burned so badly from IUNI U3 I don’t want to touch another Chinese phone with non-stock android…
What was wrong with the U3?
I don’t think the problem is inherent to U3 only, I guess it also applies to other chinese phones with custom ROM.
IUNI OS is simply terrible. Bad/partial translations and very limited functionality. Installing Google services and Play store in it is a nightmare. Each update tends to break the Google services and you need to spend quite lot of time just fixing it. Custom roms are also not available… few apps incompatible as well.
I would only recommend U3 if you are happy with non-Google apps.
Try the MIUI rom. It works perfect for the phone.
I Bet this will be rebranded by ‘Yu’ as Yutopia! What do you guys think?
I doubt the Yutopia will be 6 inches.
Damn man! Micromax just did that(canvas 6)….. These guys are godfather of baba ramdev.
Can’t innovative, copy others right away
I Bet this will be rebranded by ‘Yu’ as Yutopia! What do you guys think?
I doubt the Yutopia will be 6 inches.
Damn man! Micromax just did that(canvas 6)….. These guys are godfather of baba ramdev.
Can’t innovative, copy others right away
The first Chinese phone maker to launch a device with OS of your choice would SELL LOADS of it. I’m thinking about, ofc, Android (MIUI, CM, stock, Flyme…) but also Windows 10 and Ubuntu (or others). They’re running out of Unique Selling Propositions, and that could be a really interesting one, without needing to invest on your own CPU design or so.
but its hard to make the green lights to use all those skins
The first Chinese phone maker to launch a device with OS of your choice would SELL LOADS of it. I’m thinking about, ofc, Android (MIUI, CM, stock, Flyme…) but also Windows 10 and Ubuntu (or others). They’re running out of Unique Selling Propositions, and that could be a really interesting one, without needing to invest on your own CPU design or so.
but its hard to make the green lights to use all those skins
Now for sale at geekbuying
Now for sale at geekbuying
Hi frienda
Did anyone knows if this phone has notification led ?
Hi frienda
Did anyone knows if this phone has notification led ?