ZUK might not have an official presence at MWC this year, but according to the companies social medial team we won’t have long to wait until we see the next ZUK device.
ZUK have lit the fuse on all their expectant fans by announcing that they plan to release a new device in March. This confirmation matches what we had been told by sources close to the company last week.
The question now remains as to what product the Lenovo backed phone maker is going to launch. Chinese media have been guessing that ZUK might release a slightly updates version of the Z1 named the Z1 Pro. The Z1 Pro might see an update to Snapdragon 820 and improved camera features.
Gizchina News of the week
There is also a chance an all new ZUK Z2 might see a release in March, or perhaps a mid-range model to compete with the likes of the OnePlus X? Whatever the phone might be expect it to launch first in China and then internationally with an official build of Cyanogen.
the smartphone world is so big, can someone tell me how i can get my hands on brand like mobiistar and infinnix??
Mobiistar is a Vietnamese brand, I have never seen them outside of Vietnam. Infinix I have seen a few of their phones on sites in the past but they have always been very expensive (like over $700) and it is not often I see them. Check Aliexpress, I hardly ever recommend them but if anyone will have it, they will.
crap didnt know infinnix are so expensive, ive heard aliexpress is a bit iffy
Yea I don’t use anyone who won’t accept paypal and they don’t. Plus I have had bad experience with a few of their trusted sellers. But several here do use them and have no issues. Maxpower just bought a RN3 Pro from them. I buy cases, batteries, headphones stuff like that from them, anything costing under $100 I don’t mind buying from them.
less risky, thats wise
what are you talking about ?!
the MAX priced phone here is around $220 !
we have Infinix at Pakistan 😀
and im very happy with the pricing of Zero 3 , which has x10 , 3gb ram , FHD and IMX sony 230 with 6p largan lens ! the only thing it lacks is fingerprint but even then its a sweet deal at 21k PKR.
also the Infinix NOTE 2 LTE for 17k PKR with 6753 , FHD and 2gb ram
🙁 another person im jealous of again :(((((((( the zero 3 design is nice too
lol we don’t have other chinese brands … like xiaomi or meizu or oneplus or ulefone or elephone and the likes !
though Zuk Z1 is here officialy as well but for a hefty $350 (35000 PKR) when at present it shouldnt be more than 23k ($220-230) !
Any idea where I could get a Lenovo Vibe x3 shipped to the UK but at India prices? Didn’t you guys get it really, really cheap in comparison to the likes of Gearbests pricing..?
Why don’t you use this:
http://www.indianmailbox.com/
Have the lenovo Vibe X3 forwarded onto you.
its not here in Pakistan yet … but i bet it’ll be priced high
https://www.daraz.pk/infinix-x600-note-2-5.9-4g-lte-16-gb-2-gb-ram-1.3-ghz-octa-core-processor-13-mp-camera-gold-brand-warranty-5423700.html
and note 3 :
https://www.daraz.pk/infinix-zero3/
does this site ship wordlwide? 🙁
lemme check
nope. sorry
🙁
Hmm. Infinix phones are horrible. Elephone is better than this guys.
They removed ‘durable’ from their dictionary.
u sure ? they got a pretty decent feedback around here…
this better BE GOOD !
I want them to make a SD820 5.5″ Flagship with a circular front finger print scanner better placed than the Z1 scanner and available internationally running CyanogenOS with 4GB Ram, 64GB Rom a decent camera with laser/phase AF and OIS, NFC and IR Blaster (Because I’ve never had it…) 3000+ mAh battery obviously…
I wouldn’t care if the battery is non removable or if it didn’t have an SD Card slot (hence the 64gb Rom…)
I think that’d get me to ‘upgrade’ from my OnePlus One
Keeping the battery of z1 (4100mah) and adding at least an hybrid sim/sd slot would be nice too! 😀
Yep yep, I’d be happy with that 😀
Guessing you are not a fan of OnePlus new UI?
No its not really a UI thing for me, it’s a 2 factor thing…
Firstly when OnePlus announced the OP2 without NFC I wasn’t too pleased, then in an interview Carl Pei basically said that NFC is unnecessary I just thought at that point that OnePlus is such a young company and haven’t always been greeted by the public in such warm way and here they are trying to rewrite the rules about what is necessary and what isn’t. Its not just about the NFC, if push comes to shove I could do without it but I just didn’t like his attitude all of a sudden. All of this coupled with the Never Settle crap just wound me up…
2nd factor is that because they’re such a young company what sort of support is there really for their OxygenOS? I know they enjoyed shouting from the roof tops that they had a load of paranoid android developers working on it but I was sceptical from day one as to whether they’d carry on supporting the One properly… Looking on the forum these days it looks very much like the OP2 gets the creme as it were. This is understandable in some respect as the OP2 is truly their device, it launched with Oxygen OS but their One was the ‘game changer’ device that got them to where they are today so they certainly shouldn’t forget that and also what happens to the official support for the OP2 when the successor comes along (if it comes along?)
And so after all this, I’m sure people will look at this and think eh? What’s that got to do with Cyanogen?
Well I personally feel that because they’ve been in the game a lot longer, yes whilst its had its quirks in the past they still have a silly amount of experience and I just feel like they’d support a device for as long as the device was capable of receiving the updates…
I believe that at some point they’ll release Marshamallow for my One for example even though OnePlus themselves probably won’t.
The problem for the One with regards to support is the fact that it runs Cyanogen. All software updates were supposed to come from them and when they partnered with Micromax they dropped support for the One completely.
No they didn’t, maybe in India but even that got over ruled… Cyanogen still released Lollipop 5.1.1 since all that Micromax stuff went down and it has been said somewhere that they’ll do an official Marshmallow for it too!
I know you don’t like the ‘Stock on Steroids’ look that Cyanogen provide and instead you like the MiUi/iOS style… But Cyanogen do have a very good following and their themes are all over the Playstore 😉
Ahh I thought I remember reading Cynagone dropped support for it, good to know they didn’t. I have used Cyanognen and Slimroms before but I just prefer the “bloated” look lol.
I have to honestly ask “why?” though. I mean you can always “bloat” debloated roms, no?
There are phones of mine running cyanogen with only the most basic services installed at first. Then I install xposed and “bloat them to death” :p …
I’m not to say that bloated roms are necessarily “not good”, it’s just that debloated ones gives you more choices (you either leave them debloated, or you “bloat them” as you see fit).
I just prefer MIUI. To me it is the perfect ROM. Stock is too boring for me.
Yeah but my point is that you can customize stock in a way that won’t be boring (themes, plugins, etc). MIUI is well … MIUI, you either love it or you leave it.
Stock can (in principle at least) be for everyone. That’s the source of my bewilderment with your statement.
If I were to customize stock it would end up looking like MIUI. So why bother taking four hours when I already like the look and feel of MIUI?
And if you don’t like the look of stock MIUI there are thousands of themes available for it, you can change the launcher as well and use thousands of themes with launchers.
OK, that makes sense, but in your initial post you spoke about “bloated roms” to which I asked “why?”.
BTW bloated roms, even ones you like, like MIUI have the distinctive disadvantage that they can only run well on good hardware. Cyanogen runs everywhere.
For example I have old Samsung Wave (early 2010!) that runs CM11 passably. MIUI would absolutely obliterate it, that’s one of the reasons that I prefer the modular design of CM+themes+plugins…
Compared to Cyanogen, MIUI is bloated. I get a new phone every 6 months – 1 year so it is not a disadvantage to me. Although my Nexus 7 (2012) is capable of running MIUI.
Yeah I know, but you didn’t specify. LG roms are bloated, Touchwiz *is* bloat, in fact most OEMs’ roms are bloated. Even if you like MIUI you can’t deny that most bloat (especially as expressed by other manufacturers) is bad for the user. That’s where I was getting at…
Nexus 7 would run on a lean rom much smoother. Basically that’s my point here. Not that MIUI would not run on older devices but that there are better alternatives (performance wise).
I didn’t need to specify. If you looked at the comment before mine he said that I prefer the MIUI/iOS look.
As for bloat it really depends on the UI in question. I have a Meizu my wife has a Samsung. Between Samsung and the carrier we got the phone through her S6 came preloaded with over 60 different apps. Most of them she will never use and many can’t be uninstalled by the average consumer. That is bad for the end user. Some of those apps could be malicious or eat away at system resources. Flyme on the other hand came loaded with just the base Meizu apps, many of which the average user would need anyways such as (camera, calculator, calendar, email, browser etc). As a bonus it also comes up with a very robust Security Center. Something like that is good for the end user, it gives them everything they need to get started.
Nexus 7 runs even leaner on Ubuntu, doesn’t mean I want to use it as a daily driver.
Yeah, but you can’t do anything with Ubuntu. AOSP (via xposed) can do everything, even more than what MIUI can…
You just based on Performance. But there is plenty you can do with Ubuntu if you know how to use a terminal.
Oh I thought you meant Ubuntu touch (which is mostly useless).
I know the functionality of Ubuntu proper, I use it to a number of machines, still I fail to see how you’d use a terminal on a 7 incher in any way which would resemble comfort…
I do mean Ubuntu Touch, if you know how to use a terminal you can get Google Play apps working on it. “mostly useless” depends on the end user, it’s actually a great platform for offices especially ones that already use desktop Ubuntu.
OK, that I didn’t know (that android’s virtual machine has been ported over ubuntu”). In that case -yeah- ubuntu touch may be a great choice for aging hardware too, I don’t dispute that (since there is a wealth of apps through android’s virtual machine).
Not every app works correctly but you can get some of them to work. I used an Ubuntu Phone for a few weeks and I was able to get a few apps I needed to work.
That’s interesting though. I’ll probably play with it a bit when I’d find the time. Thanks for the heads up.
I believe it’s only apps that were written for ART not Davlik. Check the Ubuntu forums that’s where I found it.
Z2 with sd820? Too soon.
Mid-ranger with sd616/617? Highly uninteresting
Z1s with a sd650? Maybe that’s more likely
What do you mean by too soon? Every sd820 phone will be launching this week.
Too soon for zuk, not for everyone else! ?
One of the reason they used sd801 was to keep the price down, so there’s no chance in hell they’re getting sd820 now, at full price… At an high price, their honor-like gimmick would be pointless!
I look at them as using the SD801 because the SD810 was so full of problems they wanted something reliable and powerful enough. The SoC is only one part of the price of a phone and it isn’t the most expensive part either. Lenovo is one of the biggest phone makers in the world if they want the latest chip they can get it.
If they wanted to, they could have used sd808, which was reliable enough… But they decided to go for 801 instead (wich is even more reliable than 808, but older anyway). What you said about socs’ cost is right, but there’s no doubt they cut the overall price by going for an older one, and 20$ less for every phone means little to us, but hundreds of thousands of dollars for them! And I think you know well they were willing to invest as little as they can for a spin-off brand they weren’t aware how it could have sell.
So yeah, they can get whatever soc they want, but do they want to? They never had the usual behavior to launch an annual flagship with the latest qualcom soc like (let’s say) xiaomi: will they really do it on their internet spin-off? Or, to be more precise, will they do it while the price is still high, placing it on a phone priced at half the price of their competitors?
I just don’t see it happening, but I would be glad to be disproved!
We don’t know the availability of the SD808. It’s easy to sit here and say they could have use X SoC. If they really wanted to cut costs they would have used 16GB onboard storage instead of 64GB, they would have a used 5inch 1080P or 5.5 inch 720p. Either of those displays would have been a much bigger savings.
The Vibe Z and Vibe Z2 both launched with SD800 and SD801 which at that time were the top Qualcomm SoC’s. Lenovo used the SD810 in the Moto Droid Turbo 2. So they have shown in the past they will use the latest Qualcomm SoC available.
balco stop commenting and get ready for your plane >:[
by the way the new alcatels look beautifiul wonder what their price is lol
Haha sitting at the airport now actually. Flight leaves for London soon, have a day layover there then off to Barcelona!
meow meow? you will be there? ^_^
Will be in Barcelona tonight!
Lenovo has other devices like the K80m that have pretty good hardware and are priced at 200$/€ http://www.gearbest.com/m-goods-sn-165960703.htm So using a SD820 now shouldn’t be impossible.
Sure, although k80m is an odd case (was launched 1 year ago but no one ever heard of it untill the recent price drop).
Plus they’re a big brand, if they want to they can use whatever soc they choose, so it’s not impossible, but it never has been their usual behavior!
what about the 652?
the smartphone world is so big, can someone tell me how i can get my hands on brand like mobiistar and infinnix?? bte the zuk1 pro and zuk2 looks like straight product cannibalism
Mobiistar is a Vietnamese brand, I have never seen them outside of Vietnam. Infinix I have seen a few of their phones on sites in the past but they have always been very expensive (like over $700) and it is not often I see them. Check Aliexpress, I hardly ever recommend them but if anyone will have it, they will.
crap didnt know infinnix are so expensive, ive heard aliexpress is a bit iffy
Yea I don’t use anyone who won’t accept paypal and they don’t. Plus I have had bad experience with a few of their trusted sellers. But several here do use them and have no issues. Maxpower just bought a RN3 Pro from them. I buy cases, batteries, headphones stuff like that from them, anything costing under $100 I don’t mind buying from them.
we have Infinix at Pakistan 😀
and im very happy with the pricing of Zero 3 , which has x10 , 3gb ram , FHD and IMX sony 230 with 6p largan lens ! the only thing it lacks is fingerprint but even then its a sweet deal at 21k PKR.
also the Infinix NOTE 2 LTE for 17k PKR with 6753 , FHD and 2gb ram
what are you talking about ?!
the MAX priced phone here is around $220 !
https://www.daraz.pk/infinix-x600-note-2-5.9-4g-lte-16-gb-2-gb-ram-1.3-ghz-octa-core-processor-13-mp-camera-gold-brand-warranty-5423700.html
and note 3 :
https://www.daraz.pk/infinix-zero3/
🙁 another person im jealous of again :(((((((( the zero 3 design is nice too
less risky, thats wise
does this site ship wordlwide? 🙁
lol we don’t have other chinese brands … like xiaomi or meizu or oneplus or ulefone or elephone and the likes !
though Zuk Z1 is here officialy as well but for a hefty $350 (35000 PKR) when at present it shouldnt be more than 23k ($220-230) !
lemme check
nope. sorry
🙁
Hmm. Infinix phones are horrible. Elephone is better than this guys.
They removed ‘durable’ from their dictionary.
Any idea where I could get a Lenovo Vibe x3 shipped to the UK but at India prices? Didn’t you guys get it really, really cheap in comparison to the likes of Gearbests pricing..?
Why don’t you use this:
http://www.indianmailbox.com/
Have the lenovo Vibe X3 forwarded onto you.
u sure ? they got a pretty decent feedback around here…
its not here in Pakistan yet … but i bet it’ll be priced high
this better BE GOOD !
I want them to make a SD820 5.5″ Flagship with a circular front finger print scanner better placed than the Z1 scanner and available internationally running CyanogenOS with 4GB Ram, 64GB Rom a decent camera with laser/phase AF and OIS, NFC and IR Blaster (Because I’ve never had it…) 3000+ mAh battery obviously…
I wouldn’t care if the battery is non removable or if it didn’t have an SD Card slot (hence the 64gb Rom…)
I think that’d get me to ‘upgrade’ from my OnePlus One
Keeping the battery of z1 (4100mah) and adding at least an hybrid sim/sd slot would be nice too! 😀
Yep yep, I’d be happy with that 😀
Guessing you are not a fan of OnePlus new UI?
No its not really a UI thing for me, it’s a 2 factor thing…
Firstly when OnePlus announced the OP2 without NFC I wasn’t too pleased, then in an interview Carl Pei basically said that NFC is unnecessary I just thought at that point that OnePlus is such a young company and haven’t always been greeted by the public in such warm way and here they are trying to rewrite the rules about what is necessary and what isn’t. Its not just about the NFC, if push comes to shove I could do without it but I just didn’t like his attitude all of a sudden. All of this coupled with the Never Settle crap just wound me up…
2nd factor is that because they’re such a young company what sort of support is there really for their OxygenOS? I know they enjoyed shouting from the roof tops that they had a load of paranoid android developers working on it but I was sceptical from day one as to whether they’d carry on supporting the One properly… Looking on the forum these days it looks very much like the OP2 gets the creme as it were. This is understandable in some respect as the OP2 is truly their device, it launched with Oxygen OS but their One was the ‘game changer’ device that got them to where they are today so they certainly shouldn’t forget that and also what happens to the official support for the OP2 when the successor comes along (if it comes along?)
And so after all this, I’m sure people will look at this and think eh? What’s that got to do with Cyanogen?
Well I personally feel that because they’ve been in the game a lot longer, yes whilst its had its quirks in the past they still have a silly amount of experience and I just feel like they’d support a device for as long as the device was capable of receiving the updates…
I believe that at some point they’ll release Marshamallow for my One for example even though OnePlus themselves probably won’t.
The problem for the One with regards to support is the fact that it runs Cyanogen. All software updates were supposed to come from them and when they partnered with Micromax they dropped support for the One completely.
No they didn’t, maybe in India but even that got over ruled… Cyanogen still released Lollipop 5.1.1 since all that Micromax stuff went down and it has been said somewhere that they’ll do an official Marshmallow for it too!
I know you don’t like the ‘Stock on Steroids’ look that Cyanogen provide and instead you like the MiUi/iOS style… But Cyanogen do have a very good following and their themes are all over the Playstore 😉
Ahh I thought I remember reading Cynagone dropped support for it, good to know they didn’t. I have used Cyanognen and Slimroms before but I just prefer the “bloated” look lol.
I have to honestly ask “why?” though. I mean you can always “bloat” debloated roms, no?
There are phones of mine running cyanogen with only the most basic services installed at first. Then I install xposed and “bloat them to death” :p …
I’m not to say that bloated roms are necessarily “not good”, it’s just that debloated ones gives you more choices (you either leave them debloated, or you “bloat them” as you see fit).
I just prefer MIUI. To me it is the perfect ROM. Stock is too boring for me.
Yeah but my point is that you can customize stock in a way that won’t be boring (themes, plugins, etc). MIUI is well … MIUI, you either love it or you leave it.
Stock can (in principle at least) be for everyone. That’s the source of my bewilderment with your statement.
If I were to customize stock it would end up looking like MIUI. So why bother taking four hours when I already like the look and feel of MIUI?
And if you don’t like the look of stock MIUI there are thousands of themes available for it, you can change the launcher as well and use thousands of themes with launchers.
OK, that makes sense, but in your initial post you spoke about “bloated roms” to which I asked “why?”.
BTW bloated roms, even ones you like, like MIUI have the distinctive disadvantage that they can only run well on good hardware. Cyanogen runs everywhere.
For example I have old Samsung Wave (early 2010!) that runs CM11 passably. MIUI would absolutely obliterate it, that’s one of the reasons that I prefer the modular design of CM+themes+plugins…
Compared to Cyanogen, MIUI is bloated. I get a new phone every 6 months – 1 year so it is not a disadvantage to me. Although my Nexus 7 (2012) is capable of running MIUI.
Yeah I know, but you didn’t specify. LG roms are bloated, Touchwiz *is* bloat, in fact most OEMs’ roms are bloated. Even if you like MIUI you can’t deny that most bloat (especially as expressed by other manufacturers) is bad for the user. That’s where I was getting at…
Nexus 7 would run on a lean rom much smoother. Basically that’s my point here. Not that MIUI would not run on older devices but that there are better alternatives (performance wise).
I didn’t need to specify. If you looked at the comment before mine he said that I prefer the MIUI/iOS look.
As for bloat it really depends on the UI in question. I have a Meizu my wife has a Samsung. Between Samsung and the carrier we got the phone through her S6 came preloaded with over 60 different apps. Most of them she will never use and many can’t be uninstalled by the average consumer. That is bad for the end user. Some of those apps could be malicious or eat away at system resources. Flyme on the other hand came loaded with just the base Meizu apps, many of which the average user would need anyways such as (camera, calculator, calendar, email, browser etc). As a bonus it also comes up with a very robust Security Center. Something like that is good for the end user, it gives them everything they need to get started.
Nexus 7 runs even leaner on Ubuntu, doesn’t mean I want to use it as a daily driver.
Yeah, but you can’t do anything with Ubuntu. AOSP (via xposed) can do everything, even more than what MIUI can…
You just based on Performance. But there is plenty you can do with Ubuntu if you know how to use a terminal.
Oh I thought you meant Ubuntu touch (which is mostly useless).
I know the functionality of Ubuntu proper, I use it to a number of machines, still I fail to see how you’d use a terminal on a 7 incher in any way which would resemble comfort…
I do mean Ubuntu Touch, if you know how to use a terminal you can get Google Play apps working on it. “mostly useless” depends on the end user, it’s actually a great platform for offices especially ones that already use desktop Ubuntu.
OK, that I didn’t know (that android’s virtual machine has been ported over ubuntu”). In that case -yeah- ubuntu touch may be a great choice for aging hardware too, I don’t dispute that (since there is a wealth of apps through android’s virtual machine).
Not every app works correctly but you can get some of them to work. I used an Ubuntu Phone for a few weeks and I was able to get a few apps I needed to work.
That’s interesting though. I’ll probably play with it a bit when I’d find the time. Thanks for the heads up.
I believe it’s only apps that were written for ART not Davlik. Check the Ubuntu forums that’s where I found it.
Z2 with sd820? Too soon.
Mid-ranger with sd616/617? Highly uninteresting
Z1s with a sd650? Maybe that’s more likely
What do you mean by too soon? Every sd820 phone will be launching this week.
Too soon for zuk, not for everyone else! 😁
One of the reason they used sd801 was to keep the price down, so there’s no chance in hell they’re getting sd820 now, at full price… At an high price, their honor-like gimmick would be pointless!
Also, maybe I remember wrong, but i thought lenovo wasn’t one of the brand which usually get the top tier qualcomm chip and launch a flagship along the others (samsung-htc-lg-xiaomi and the like)
I look at them as using the SD801 because the SD810 was so full of problems they wanted something reliable and powerful enough. The SoC is only one part of the price of a phone and it isn’t the most expensive part either. Lenovo is one of the biggest phone makers in the world if they want the latest chip they can get it.
Lenovo has other devices like the K80m that have pretty good hardware and are priced at 200$/€ http://www.gearbest.com/m-goods-sn-165960703.htm So using a SD820 now shouldn’t be impossible.
what about the 652?
Sure, although k80m is an odd case (was launched 1 year ago but no one ever heard of it untill the recent price drop).
Plus they’re a big brand, if they want to they can use whatever soc they choose, so it’s not impossible, but it never has been their usual behavior!
If they wanted to, they could have used sd808, which was reliable enough… But they decided to go for 801 instead (wich is even more reliable than 808, but older anyway). What you said about socs’ cost is right, but there’s no doubt they cut the overall price by going for an older one, and 20$ less for every phone means little to us, but hundreds of thousands of dollars for them! And I think you know well they were willing to invest as little as they can for a spin-off brand they weren’t aware how it could have sell.
So yeah, they can get whatever soc they want, but do they want to? They never had the usual behavior to launch an annual flagship with the latest qualcom soc like (let’s say) xiaomi: will they really do it on their internet spin-off? Or, to be more precise, will they do it while the price is still high, placing it on a phone priced at half the price of their competitors?
I just don’t see it happening, but I would be glad to be disproved!
We don’t know the availability of the SD808. It’s easy to sit here and say they could have use X SoC. If they really wanted to cut costs they would have used 16GB onboard storage instead of 64GB, they would have a used 5inch 1080P or 5.5 inch 720p. Either of those displays would have been a much bigger savings.
The Vibe Z and Vibe Z2 both launched with SD800 and SD801 which at that time were the top Qualcomm SoC’s. Lenovo used the SD810 in the Moto Droid Turbo 2. So they have shown in the past they will use the latest Qualcomm SoC available.
balco stop commenting and get ready for your plane >:[
by the way the new alcatels look beautifiul wonder what their price is lol
Haha sitting at the airport now actually. Flight leaves for London soon, have a day layover there then off to Barcelona!
meow meow? you will be there? ^_^
Will be in Barcelona tonight!
ok, we’re midway through march. where’s the announcement?!
so far its just been a couple options of wood backed Z1’s released in March. that better not be there big announcement we’ve been waiting for…
ok, we’re midway through march. where’s the announcement?!
so far its just been a couple options of wood backed Z1’s released in March. that better not be there big announcement we’ve been waiting for…
Apparently some shop has the Z2 listed http://www.zukmobile.cc/lenovo-zuk-z2-snapdragon-820-lte-android-6-0-phone.html
I wonder how accurate these specs are.
Apparently some shop has the Z2 listed http://www.zukmobile.cc/lenovo-zuk-z2-snapdragon-820-lte-android-6-0-phone.html
I wonder how accurate these specs are.
ab
ab
your website is awesome. you do a great job
Myntra Pakistan