For all the budget tablet / smartphone fans out there: BudgetAndroidForum.com

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a little side project that I’d like to introduce to the BLF community. I’ve been using and enjoying Android smartphones for several years now. But I’ve never been very interested in tablets, which always seemed to me like a limited, locked-down, overpriced alternative to a “real” laptop computer. But being a budget-oriented enthusiast at heart, I’ve recently been researching a lot into the fascinating and bewildering world of Android tablets coming out of China. My opinion of the limited usefulness of tablets hasn’t changed. But the incredibly low prices and improving quality of many Chinese tablets now makes them a good option for budget-minded enthusiasts who have some experience with buying from China. As is the case with Chinese flashlights, Chinese tablets are a real crapshoot. There’s not a ton of information out there on the Internet about Chinese tablets, some forums are extremely hostile toward anything that comes out of China, and in general the information is incomplete and scattered all over the place. For these reasons, I’d like to introduce:

http://budgetandroidforum.com

It’s a brand new forum for current and potential buyers of inexpensive Android devices coming out of China, such as tablets, smartphones, and TV set-top boxes. I am borrowing a few popular features from BLF, such as the “Seller Ratings” and “Commercial Sellers’ Spot” sections. Just like here, it encourages open discussion of the Chinese alternatives without openly rejecting a product just because it comes out of China. Links are encouraged, as long as they’re not for spamming or shilling purposes. The forum software is brand-new and extremely innovative. Since it’s brand new, there are currently no users. So I’d be glad if you guys could help me change that. :wink: I hope to see any BLF users who happen to also be interested in budget computing devices over at BudgetAndroidForum.com to warm things up. It should be a nice complement to BLF for those who carry a budget flashlight in one jacket pocket, and a Chinese tablet in the other. 8)

Thanks for reading! Have fun.

“Unfortunately, your browser is too old to work on this site. Please upgrade your browser.”

One of the things I like about BLF is that I can view it on any of my PCs, old browser or not. Oh well, maybe later.

KuoH

Nice, maybe it'll pick up enough steam to attract all those xda members who are vainly looking for a way to root or ROM their chinandroid devices.

Yep, that’s one of the advantages of the BLF forum engine, and a disadvantage of the one I used at the the new Android site. In the case of the new Android site, it adapts to support the screen size of mobile devices, which is pretty important given the fact that many users there will probably be on a mobile device.

Out of curiosity can I ask what browser you tried it with?

I was poking around on various computer security sites last week and came across an article that mentioned that something like 90% of the cheapo no-name droids (phones and tablets) from China came with some form of malware pre-loaded on them. Great time saver… no need to spend time getting yourself infected. On some devices the infection was down as far as the bootloader code so it could never be removed.

Plus they have now found malware in E-cigs, USB chargers, and even USB cables from China. Also clothing irons with wi-fi cards installed in them that spread malware.

Is this the one you’re talking about?

Looks like it was a specific model, and the 97% figure is the percentage of mobile malware that was targeted at Android.

At any rate, it would definitely be a good idea to run a traffic sniffer on the LAN and also run a virus scanner on these (and any other) Android devices.

No, the article that I was looking at talked about several models of phones and tablets that were pre-infected in some way. The gist was the lower the price, the larger the chance of problems. I don’t know what site I was on at the time. I had clicked down through a nest of about 20 links when my browser crashed because of too many open windows.

It was IE8. I tend to segregate different types of activity to different browsers and run some in sandboxes to reduces the chances of infection. Unknown sites usually end up in my sandboxed IE window first. Newer versions of IE don’t always work well with the sandbox or some of the plugins I have installed, which is why it’s still at IE8, not to mention I still have XP machines which can only go up to IE8.

KuoH

Hmm, interesting. Thanks for letting me know. That might be a bug, from what I’ve read there should be basic compatibility of the forum engine with IE8. Hmm, sorry I was wrong. It barely works with IE9 as a minimum. IE10+ or something non-IE is preferred.

Interesting website, thanks for sharing.

People might prefer the name BudgetAndroidForum over CHINAndroidForum because I think we have a slightly negative stigma about Chinese products, despite the fact that every phone and tablet is made there.

I’ll do a review of the OnePlus One there. I hope it’s considered as a Chinese Android phone, haha.

Sweet, thanks very much Ryan! I’d love to see a review of your OnePlus One.

Also, I took your suggestion and bought BudgetAndroidForum.com, should start working soon.

I tried to create an account on CHINAndroidforum.com...

but was unable to do so. :_(

I don't know if it matters, but I was using Google Chrome.


EDIT: I figured it out. No spaces are allowed in a username. ;)

Hey, that’s amazing! Nice to see the redirect. :slight_smile:

Glad you made it!

:wink: It’s just a duplicate domain at this point. I’ll probably set up a redirect at some point tomorrow, not sure which will become the default domain yet.

Any chance we can have the site placed on the “Related Sites” list?

I’ll have to ask the administrator about that… :wink: :bigsmile: I’d be glad to do so, but I don’t want to be obnoxious about promoting my own site either.

If we're not happy about anything you do we'll mark it as spam anyway so all's good. Advertise away.

:wink:

Looks like you are using Discourse. I am using it on Discourse.Powercartel.com. I don’t have any compatibility problems, because no one has tried to sign up yet :slight_smile: