We’ve seen some odd marketing strategies, but this latest email from UMi has got to be one of the strangest. In an attempt to tell fans how strong the Zero 2 will be, UMi admit the original UMi Zero was easy to break.
It’s not uncommon for a phone maker to make a mistake. Usually the mistake is either fixed and then the company quickly moves on, or they ignore it and quickly move on. What’s isn’t common though is to bring up past mistakes when promoting new products.
For example you don’t hear of VW promoting how environmentally friendly their cars are by saying something along the lines of “Buy our new VW because the one you own now is terrible for the environment”.
That’s kind of what we have here today. UMi have sent out emails to the media with the title “UMi Zero 2 bezel to be the most durable you have seen in the market” then attached images of a broken UMi Zero chassis with phrases like;
The bezel of UMi Zero was far from durable
To be honest we hadn’t heard of people complaining about the durability of the original UMi Zero’s frame, but it is good to know that there was in fact an issue and UMi aren’t afraid to hide it.
Anyway, what UMi want is for us to concentrate on the Zero 2 and they have added a few details about it. They say that the Zero 2 will posses the strongest bezel ever to be seen in the smartphone market, and that we might see the handset running Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
The Zero 2 is also said to come with a dual screen design, and also a rear leather panel (meaning there could be two versions of the phone released), not launch date or pricing have been announced at this time, but you can keep an eye on the UMi Facebook page for more info.
The fact is: the first umi zero was appealing on paper, but all the owners I’ve heard told it was terrible in many areas. So this marketing strategy is not that weird: umi wants to tell to every owner and to everyone who knows about the first model’s issue something like “yeah, sorry, we’re aware we messed up with the umi zero, but it won’t appen again with zero 2!”.
And, personally, i appreciate when a company doesn’t try to hide behind a finger denying every known problem, and admit what’s wrong instead… So umi went for the “be fair” marketing strategy… Overall, not a bad one, if they really impress with the new model (otherwise, they’re screwed in terms of credibility)
A chinese phone isn’t a real option now that proper flagships are becoming outdated and easy to purchase in the second hand market.
This crap will stay on the same version of Android forever while know brands will update their phones to keep them in good shape through the years.
So please stay away from Chinese phones for good, the market is getting full of wannabes and sales are becoming stagnant.
Good to see Doogee, Zopo and co. becoming dead sooner than later, the screens of my defective ZP980, and of my bending DG550 will cry loud when the funeral is celebrated.
Cough cough
The problem here is that this prone seems to take forever to launch … there’s not even a sign that it will launch soon.
Also what worries me with companies like UMI and other smaller ones is software updates. While for Xiaomi I can count on to at least do a next Android version porting this isn’t really the case with these companies, you can just be stuck at the Android version it launched with and that’s that.