Buying hardware for Pleco in China- iPhone?

Y

Yang Yan

Member
Hello,

I recently moved to China for work and am learning Chinese. I'm not as technologically literate as some of the other users of this forum, so forgive me for asking basic questions. I wonder if someone could recommend the best hardware(within the £100-£200 price bracket) ?

I've been toying with the idea of buying an iphone for use in China anyway, so if the iphone can support Pleco software the decision would be clinched. I'm rather loathe to carry about a mobile phone and PDA (whose other features I'm unlikely to use, as I prefer paper notebooks and diaries).

Your suggestions and recommendations are very welcome.

Many thanks,

YY
 
L

ldolse

状元
for £200 there are a lot of different Windows Mobile options, there are several recent threads on this same subject that you can go into, I don't want to rehash them.

iPhone is an option if you're willing to to wait for an unknown period of time. Yes, the software is nearly finished, but there's no telling how long it will take after beta to go through Apple's review process or if anything will need to be changed in order to complete the approval.

Knowing my own experience in China and how critical a tool I find Pleco to be when I'm there, I'd just by something based on Windows Mobile if I were in your shoes.
 
C

chimpfarm

Member
Hi YY,

Just so happens I'm also in China looking for a new Windows Mobile based smart phone to replace my current one right now.

I'm currently using an HTC based Blue Angel. Gigantic, unreliable, needs to be hard reset every week. When it works it's godawful slow. Needless to say this has put me off of HTC products. This is a shame though, because as far as I can tell, they are the cheapest WM option.

If you are willing to risk a mainland built phone, the Meizu M8 is an option. An iPhone lookalike with Windows Mobile, it's pretty cool. Runs about 2000Y. I was seriously considering this phone, but I asked some of my more technology literate students what they thought about it. One student said, "hmmm, Meizu, that phone is made in China. You know, many people buy Nokia." Well needless to say that gave me a pause.

So, now I'm leaning towards the Motorola A3100, around 3500Y. "Buy the best and cry once" a good friend of mine likes to say.

Hope you find something that fits your needs and price!

Steve
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
The Meizu M8 won't run Pleco, actually - it uses Windows CE, not Windows Mobile. WM is based on CE, but CE is missing a number of features / APIs from WM, and given the enormous variations between different Windows CE devices it'd be very tough for us to develop a general Windows CE version of Pleco.
 
L

ldolse

状元
You shouldn't give HTC a bad rap based on the Blue Angel, that's an ancient phone, and they've come a long way since then. One thing to note on this point is the gray market HTC phones often have some hacked up non-official Chinese version of the ROM. Make sure that they can put a stock english ROM on for you - they may try to charge you for the 'service' of flashing the ROM, but you shouldn't need to pay though, not when you're buying the phone from them.
 
D

DrStamen

秀才
ldolse said:
You shouldn't give HTC a bad rap based on the Blue Angel, that's an ancient phone, and they've come a long way since then. One thing to note on this point is the gray market HTC phones often have some hacked up non-official Chinese version of the ROM. Make sure that they can put a stock english ROM on for you - they may try to charge you for the 'service' of flashing the ROM, but you shouldn't need to pay though, not when you're buying the phone from them.
Click to expand...

I'd also add, after being sold a shanzhai (fake) HTC S1 this week (despite the seller's assurances that it was genuine), that the only surefire way to check that the phone is an original is to see if you can do a hard reset that will dump you out to the "pre-OS" bootloader screen. You can find out how to do so for whatever particular model at http://forum.xda-developers.com/index.php. If you can not get to the bootloader through the proper method, then it's a fake (to confuse matters, I believe some of the fakes have a fake bootloader, reached by different means). Also, if the seller refuses to reflash the Chinese OS to an English one, it's most likely because the phone is a fake.

There are some very convincing knock-off S1s in the phone markets in China. This thread helped me identify mine as such (although the seller refusing to put flash an English-language ROM should have alerted me)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthr ... light=fake
 
L

ldolse

状元
That's not good - hadn't seen any shanzhai HTC stuff yet. Hope you were able to convince the seller to refund you...
 
D

DrStamen

秀才
Yes, I did get a refund thanks (after not a little effort)...minus the 20 RMB they insisted on charging me for the screen guard they'd put on the thing. A good work out of my angry vocabulary.
 
C

chao-ren

进士
I am also in the market (in Shanghai China), for new hardware to run Pleco 2.0. Its a pity the machine will probably be used ONLY for Pleco! (My real mobile functions are all taken care of on Nokia ) I am one of those who very unfortunately have to use ANOTHER WinMo nowadays only because of Pleco. Would be really nice to have a real alternative to a WinMo machine for Pleco but the iPhone is still a "mirage" at this point, correct?

Samsung and HTC are not cheap at the high end which is the end you need I think to run Pleco well in my opinion, and therefore I think might as well switch to an Apple iPhone the moment Pleco is ready with an iPhone version. I think an iPhone can probably be more creative and offer the user more, more than just a simple purely "business" type machines from HTC Samsung WinMoes.

Since it is only one ap I am interested in running, I probably should buy something like an Samsung Omnia /I908 this time, which is around ￥2000 Rmb for a blackmarket version or shui-huo. But since I also want the all important stylus to be stored on the same body as the machine, not have to carry around with you like you have an extra ball pen, this requirement will then most likely narrow my choice down to an Omnia-Pro (B7610), or Louvre as it is code named. Aside from this feature I will probably get a Chinese interface machine for the first time, instead of the usual English interface since my Chinese has improved a lot since I started many years ago, which in-turn will probably mean browsing Chinese web pages will no longer need a silly Chinese enabler like CE Star, I think the other "must" is a very large screen and a machine that means a lot of cpu power. You never know when the power is going to be useful. I am thinking of getting a really powerful machine because Pleco 2.0 is really "heavy" memory-wise in my current archaic DELL especially if you throw in all the dictionaries even though I am planning not to run any other important applications at the same moment.

Finally, the only problem is that the Omnia-Pro hasn't really come to China yet - expected around the first season of 2010. When it does, I probably post a small review here for anyone else interested to see how Pleco runs...
 
C

chao-ren

进士
Thanks for reply Mike. I wish you and your Pleco team the best of luck. It would be truly tremendous if you can get approval from Apple to move Pleco on to the iPhone platform. It has been a busy weekend for me, but I managed to get some more information on the iPhone in Shanghai. I am more or less resolved to getting an iPhone as the 'next', and waiting for the new Pleco-iPhone version when that is ready; the flashcards 'section' is not important to me. It just would be nice to have a stable ap like the version 2 on WinMo. I just want to be able to 'drill down' each character and see combinations of the same character at lightening speed. There isn't a dictionary on a hand-held that can do that at this moment. I think getting a complete version on the iPhone platform is strategically(战略上) more important than say, having an 'extension' on to the PC desktop.

I don't want to write an ad for the iPhone here but it really is quite something else when compared to the present WinMo (high-end)offerings from Samsung or HTC. Any machine I buy for Pleco will have to be a "long term" investment, something like 3 years. The iPhone is like Nokia*, it comes with its own pinyin input method, and handwriting recognition input method independent of the menu language.(*Nokia handwriting input method is only limited to some models.) Handwriting input method is important if you don't have any other strokes (笔画) input method although handwriting is slower than strokes method. Mike's demo shows the finger writing method being really fast which is a definite plus. Nokia's touch is really positive and sensitive. I think the iPhone should be just as positive.

Finally the iPhone 3GS 16G is currently retailing in Shanghai at ￥5880 Rmb. In Hong Kong from Apple's iStore, the price is significantly lower or HK$ 5388, which translates to roughly ￥ 4750 Rmb. For an extra HK$500 dollars, you can extend your warranty up to 2 years, so say you opt for that (HK$5388+500 = $5888), the cost of the iPhone would be ￥5182Rmb altogether; which is still lower than the current Shanghai retail price from BestBuy. A Samsung Louvre retail version, would still be roughly this price, and the only way, you can get it cheaper would be to buy a non-retail version or watery product (with no warranty). But why would you do all that if Pleco is available on the iPhone.

I should be getting my iPhone next Chinese New Year of February 2010. Mike I hope you can be ready with a Beta by then. Thanks again. :D
 
G

gato

状元
Finally the iPhone 3GS 16G is currently retailing in Shanghai at ￥5880 Rmb. In Hong Kong from Apple's iStore, the price is significantly lower or HK$ 5388, which translates to roughly ￥ 4750 Rmb. For an extra HK$500 dollars, you can extend your warranty up to 2 years, so say you opt for that (HK$5388+500 = $5888), the cost of the iPhone would be ￥5182Rmb altogether; which is still lower than the current Shanghai retail price from BestBuy.
Click to expand...
If you are going to use China Unicome's WCDMA 3G service, then a cheaper iPhone 2 or 3G might be sufficient for use in China, no?
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
chao-ren - we've already released five beta versions, actually, we just had to keep the beta-test closed since Apple limits the number of iPhones we can distribute it on. But there's a very strong chance we'll have considerably more than a beta version out by 春节 time.
 
M

Mao Zhou

秀才
If you're in Beijing you can get great deals at the ershou shouji Second Hand phone markets. Last week I saw the HTC Diamond running about 1700RMB and a fake HTC Diamond for about 800 (stay away). You should know ahead of time what you want to buy and what a real one looks like. One key test Ive found is to look for a real htc battery inside versus a cheap replacement battery. Like anything else. If you know someone who has a relationship with a seller you'll usually save time and money with them buying real second hand phones. While I love my HTC HD, bought second hand, my Blue angel still works!

MaoZhou
 
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