Little known phone manufacturer Tiancheng Technology have posted photos of their Heimi (black rice) phone which will launch in March next year. Not only will the low-cost phone battle the Xiaomi Hongmi in the stores we might also see a trademark battle in the courts.
Earlier this month Xiaomi’s Lei Jun took to Weibo after a celebratity joked he planned to launch a Heimi smartphone named after his son. Lei Jun told the celeb that his company, Xiaomi, already owned the Heimi name but were open to ideas. This caused a big of a stir online with some netizens striking out at Xiaomi for taking thins to seriously. Well there is another twist to the story.
Days after the Weibo postings a small phone manufacturer called Tiancheng Technology Co Ltd claimed that in fact they owned the Heimi name and registered it back in 2010. Not only this but their first phone to bear the name will go on sale in March 2014.
Photos of the phone show a design similar to the Green Orange Nx and soon to be launched Newman K18, and like those phones will use an 8-core MT6592 processor but at a Xiaomi Hongmi price tag!
So will Tiancheng Tech take Xiaomi to court? Will the black rice beat the red rice? Or will the Heimi phone be forgotten about by the time March rolls around?
ugly
absolutely not. All these 8-core phones produce nothing but heat, and eats a lot of power, and performs a disaster on single issue actions (poor single core performance)
So you already own one? Good for you, you must be from the future.
Seriouslt though, don’t judge something before you’ve even seen it in action. That’s the sign ofa narrow minded person.
Was asked by a colleague to take a look at a Hongmi phone she bought online. It looked cheap and I told her that the buttons looked like they won’t last long. Sure enough after a couple of days she came back for help as the buttons were unresponsive. Told her to ask for a replacement as the buttons need to be replaced. She asked me if I know of a Chinese phone which is similar in price and “quality”. I told her I got nothing to recommend. Bought a Xiaomi before, the M1S and was able to use it for about a year before it started to freeze. Repair shop couldn’t fix it and now I’m using a trusty Note 2. No problems mi amigos!
I call BS. I’ve used a Hongmi quite recently, and although it’s a budget model, it simply whacks the new Samsung phones aside in terms ofbuild of build quality. She either got a faulty unit or she was just really, really rough with the phone. Someone who can break a Hongmi in a couple of days will break any Samsung in a matter of minutes.
yeah boo to samsung