Remember JiaYu? They were once one of the most exciting smartphone companies out of China but this year the only real notable release was the JiaYu S3 and the new JiaYu S3+.
At the start of this year JiaYu made a bold move. They ditched metal in favour of plastic on their flagship and built a 5.5-inch FHD phone with powerful Mediatek MT6752 chipset, and when all is said and done it was a good phone. With options for up to 3GB RAM, a FHD display, Coning Gorilla Glass 3 and NFC it had all the spec an early 2015 flagship could want. And then JiaYu went all quiet.
The next time we would hear about the company was when rumours of a restructure surfaced and news that they were working on a new 5.5-inch phone emerged.
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Well here is that ‘new’ phone expect it isn’t new, it’s just the original 3GB RAM version of the JiaYu S3 with a Mediatek MT6753 octacore at its heart and a stock Android 5.1 OS running on it as standard.
You can watch my JiaYu S3+ unboxing and first impressions in the video above. I also plan to review the phone but so far it runs just like the original S3, only with a cleaner stock Android install. You can read my original JiaYu S3 review here.
Thanks to JiaYu.es for sending me this review sample.
Hard to see Jiayu back in the market with this model, it`s uninspired.
Basically they had lots of old S3`s in stock and changed the SoC(probably 6753 and 6752 are pin-to-pin compatible)and added quickly a stock 5.1.1 in there.
Now, at this price point the phone does not have a selling point.
Design is not good-looking to say the least, and no fingerprint scanner, no metal body, nothing new.
The screen is obviously great as all Jiayu phones, and the device is probably well crafted.
I think that the real selling price should have been at around 130-140$ at that price it would have a selling point as it would be cheaper than the Redmi Note 2, 3 and Meizu M2 Note, but at 160$ I doubt anyone will bother.
Still hoping it does well and we get an all new Jiayu device in the near future.
To be fair, i don’t remember the original price, but I’m certain it is closer to 110$ than 140$… Surely the price was lower than s3 advanced! It’s actually resellers’ fault for the high price! And while many companies this year worked along with resellers to offer an official retail price, jiayu wasn’t in the market and haven’t made such type of agreements… So again: all considered, it’s not jiayu’s fault!
Well, we can`t buy at that price, so retailers selling it for 160$ is the price for me and at that price it`s a NO-buy.
I agree, but resellers’ prices is not jiayu’s fault… They stated a price around 120$, if resellers add 40$ of own profit, they’re the one to blame!
No, it is still Jiayu to blame. They can sell the phones directly or cooperate with the resellers to set the right price.
That’s not that simple, otherwise we can blame xiaomi and meizu for the same thing