Has anyone bought some good cellphone from China?

I was thinking of buying few SIM capable cellphone.

But I really dont know, first of all I can have problems with customs (because of some laws in Croatia regarding telecommnications and radio-waves, or any kind of waves :D ), and secondly, cell phone is device little more complicated than flashlight :), so this is really buying a cat in a bag.

Also I had one somewhat bad experience with China phones- when I was in India I bought one dual SIM, didnt talk on it much so I didnt notice anything, I gave it to a friend later, and he than had a very bad sound (people couldnt hear him well, including me :D ).

SO I was wondering has anybody bought some decetnt cellphone from China. Im looking something in 50-70$ price range, several SIMs is a must (at least three, optimim 3, can be 4), I think taking touch screen is a hazard because it can easily break and its bullshit on the sun, outside, keyboard would be nice because I hate to type SMSs and with keyboard it would be somewhat easier, I think. Bluetooth and at least GPRS (those cheap ones only have GPRS) would also be nice, and PC suite would also be nice (for that crappy phone -well not so much crappy - from India I have even found some PC suite software on the Internet :) , and it had bluetooth )

you need to do some research on them first. first of all, you want to know what band your carrier operates on. dx lists what bands the phone will handle

sorry i gotta go, but ill post more info later if no one else does

dx has a sh!t ton of phones...

Just off the top of my head you will have problems with Telstra's 850meg band but 2100 should be OK.

I would be more concerned with their SAR rating, if they have any, and also with material quality - construction and toxicity (especially of the plastic when heated).

I don't think the Chinese have a big concern for health issues.

The only one I've bought wasn't all that impressive - the batteries (Claimed about 2000mAh capacity but probably about a quarter of that) lasted four months - now have fun trying to find a replacement.

It was the least useful phone I've ever had - sending texts with it involved using a magnifying glass and a tiny stylus.

Worked OK on 900 and 1800MHz - don't they use 900MHz in Croatia?

Do not buy this one.

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/kingmax-8-8-2-2-touch-screen-dual-sim-dual-network-dualband-gsm-cell-phone-900-1800mhz-18749

From my lost gamble, I'd say that you are right. The features sound good, but from the single example of the one I bought (And broke one of the two SIM carriers merely inserting the SIM on Day one) I'd avoid them all.....

It was a good phone in concept. The execution was disgracefully bad. The Chinese music that came with it sounded Indian to me - and awful.

And Mrs. Jadranka from customs office and HAKOM (croatian agency for post and electronic communications)

Sounds like Ms. Jadranka is the same as our inspector #12; "they don't say Hanes, unless I say they say Hanes".

Bingo !

Chinese cellphones are.. umm.. well, it might be possible to get a good one, but you'd have to do more research. If you look on DX (and other places) you'll see 2 main types of phones, the 'java' phones, and the android ones.

The java ("java-enabled" usually appears on the packaging) phones are all more-or-less the same crap that Don got, as they're all the same electronics stuffed into different, usually knockoff, cases. Features are multiple sims, TV, and almost all have crap reception and no battery life. Fortunately, if you can figure out the model you can get a decent quality knockoff nokia or samsung battery to make up for it.

Have you considered the secondhand market? I don't know about croatia, but sometimes there are some good deals to be had on used phones.

You could always try a dual-sim adapter? That would let you switch almost painlessly between networks.

(it's not the same as a full-on dual sim phone, as both numbers won't be active simultaneously)

http://1024k.de/dualsim/dual-sim-adapter.html

www.dealextreme.com/p/magicsim-2008-new-dual-sim-card-20th-generation-16948