It took hours to get out there, but the trip to the JiaYu Shenzhen factory proved fruitful as we got to play with the JiaYu S1!
We arrived at JiaYu’s factory hours late and just as everyone stopped work and headed to the canteen, but Felix and Wade from JiaYu made us welcome and even let us play with a few of their new phones!
JiaYu S1 Hands on1
The JiaYu S1 is a big step for JiaYu. It is the first phone they will offer with a 5-inch 1080 display and the first model of theirs to run a Snapdragon 600 CPU!
We had some hands on time with the pre-production sample. Although the sample did suffer from a sticky power button, the rest of the package was just perfect.
Gizchina News of the week
The 5-inch display is attached to a stainless steel chassis giving the S1 incredible stiffness. No sensible amount of force will flex this phone, so you need not worry about placing it in your back pocket while sitting down.
JiaYu have packed the S1 with all the must have features including a display by Sharp, front and rear cameras by Sony, a 1.7Ghz S600 CPU, 2GB RAM, 32GB memory, NFC and wireless charging.
Some of you might be disappointed to see that the there is only room for one SIM and you cannot install a SIM, plus 2300mAh battery is non replaceable, however it wouldn’t deter us from buying this phone!
JiaYu S1 hands on video
JiaYu told us that the S1 will be ready for launch in October. We expect this to mean that pre-sales will begin ahead of the October holidays and the phone should begin arriving with customers by the end of the month. And yes, they mean October 2013 🙂
I am more confident in the production month of S1 than G4, mainly because it utilises an older CPU. There should not be any ‘unknown’ parameters in the assembly, apart from the usual licence issues.
It all depends now on the price, they should take into account that the Nexus 4 with 16GB is $249… so a Chinese phone with 32GB should not be more expensive.. shipped.
Although the G4 Advanced is still around $300 shipped, they should really reconsider their pricing.
Wise thoughts. Agreed.
There’s no way a phone with S600 and 1080p screen can be cheaper than a phone with S4 Pro and smaller 720p screen. The best they can do maybe around $320 in china.
I can buy oppo find 5 for $340 here in Vietnam through official distributor and warranty, it’s a proved good phone so only if I can get this one cheaper than that, no.
340 USD for find 5 with 600 snap edition. Are you joking and its not a fake? That’s cheaper than anywhere reliable I have seen in China. Anyway great deal there.
Wait, checked again, it’s S4Pro, not S600, S600 edition only available in China. It’s 6.900.000 VND – 326 USD. A limited sale off through September to celebrate the National Day happened in September 2nd. Unlikely the price will go up again, maybe clearing the way for N1.
And I have no use for better cpu so everything with 2GB or rams for browsing is good enough for me, S4 Pro still a very good deal.
Minideal are preselling the S1 for $269.
It might be a hoax, but it’s close to the Nexus4 flagship.
The one flaw of the Nexus standard is that the battery specs suck and no removable back, hence no micro sd. That’s why the Google phone didn’t totally take over the whole market I think.
A bigger battery (removable) and micro sd feature is worth an extra 50 bucks easy. So its more fair to factor around $300 instead of the $250 for comparison sake. That is if a phone has the removable back and sd.
Victor is right on the pricing aspect. If customers in the US are gonna buy Chinese phone brands, they want it to be cheaper than the brands they are already familiar with and trust. If the Jaiyu S1 was $250-$275 China retail price, it’ll come in about $300-$325 shipped for sale in the US. That puts you fairly competitive with the Nexus phone. (which as much as I want to, I can never buy the Nexus just based on the battery issues)
If it wasn’t for Google phone, the Chinese brands would have a way easier time with their prices. That Nexus is the eternal thorn in their side.
Looks a lot like the Neo N003. But I feel they missed a trick with the launch date, October will probably be too late for a snap 600. Also, as Viktor said, with the G4 advanced costing upwards of 300$, the value proposition expected of a Chinese device will probably be missing on this one.
” And yes, they mean October 2013 😀 ”
Hahaha! Just hope Wade isn’t reading your post 😀
Andi you lucky lemon you. Getting your hands on a phone that’s probably going to take forever to be released. Was there a microSD card slot Andi? And how was the camera?
Camera was great, no SD card slot though
Nooooooooooooooooooo!
No SD card slot?!!! After all the waiting! Gosh!!!
I thought this has been known for a while from andi’s article not too long ago. They’re trying to be Apple or Google, neither of which are as successful as Samsung (thought it sort of work for Xiaomi in China I guess).
No SD Card slot is baaaaaad….
The rom and the phone looks alot like xiaomi, meh, not so great in my opinion unless its 100usd less then the mi2s.
Josef.
Looks more like LG’s UI to me.
If this is reliable and decent built, realistically if it is near the 300-350 USD mark its pretty good. I think xiaomi is killing everyone with their amazing pricing because they have massive industrial backers like cm and kingsoft so they can almost afford to loose money to gain massive market share. Other companies just can’t match them. A snap 600 thing in high end 6589t 2gb ram territory is not bad
No card slot and non removable 2300mAh battery will deter me from buying the phone.
Also, doesn’t it actually looks a lot like Neo N003 in real life?
Nope, it looks nice 🙂
i think S1 is smaller than the neo n003. Dimensions point out 138mm, n003 is more than 150mm
however i didn’t like that it doesn’t have SD extension. Low non-removable battery is always a trouble too, and i rather wait a little more for 8-core mediatek and LTE! here in my country they are starting to use LTE and i think that in 1~2 years a phone that don’t have LTE will be outdated!
Andi have you asked them about open source kernel code ? It would be a big help to the open source community and one of the signs Jiayu is taking itself seriously.
I still have no idea why Chinese companies are so afraid of releasing the source code. It’s not like the source code for the Snapdragon 600 is much of a secret and the Jiayu specific customizations aren’t of any use to other companies that have different hardware.
Yes, I did. In fact it has been something I have been trying to drive in to each company I have visited, but they don’t look like they are going to give…
Thanks for trying anyway. I still don’t get their reasons but I can’t find anything rational.
Come to think of it I think even Xiaomi are not releasing the source code. Still many are releasing it, including TCL so I might just buy a phone from them.
The xda developers forum wont touch it then. They are on their own with the software. And everyone is gonna think there’s spyware or something hidden in the source code too because of their refusal to release it.
It’s the phone of the Jiayu
why the fuck don’t they take the design/materials of the beautiful G5 for their flaggship phone instead.
Also they should ad dual sim/standby, at least 3000mAh (replaceable), Wifi 2.4/5ghz, and stock android (maybe even announce 4.4 as an update) and maybe a version with S800 and Lte,
Just give us once a complete Smartphone – no compromises anymore (e.g. camera front/back is crap …)
I also saw the S2 while I was there 😉
Wow, and I thought that thing was still in it’s planning phase. What did you see Andi, a render or the actual phone?
S2? Okay… Don’t tell us they made u swear an oath not to tell us about that Andi 😀 . Please tell them to make it a complete phone. They should at least add LTE and SD card slot to the mix.
right I forgot to mention the sd card slot, interesting news ….
Just looked up the specs of the S2 on gizchina and here http://www.jiayuofficial.com/jiayu-mobile-phone/jiayu-g5.html….disappointing 🙁
That wasn’t a link to an official JiaYu website or the S2
The battery is my biggest concern,having it smaller than the Find 5 is not good,the Find 5 already struggles to see the second day.Sure it’ll get you to the evening but with Jiayu I have come to expect a second day.
You get 1.5 days on your Find 5?
I wish! About 22hrs use time with light use.
No micro sd slot? Why imitate Apple or Google when the people want this?? Argh! Imitate the good things, not the bad things! It all depends on the price, but unfortunately I’m almost sure that I will not gonna buy S1!
What happened to this one? No news yet. I thought it might come out this month.
Andi, you misunderstood, they actually mean October 2014 LOL 😀
Btw. any new “leaked” info? 🙂