Absolutely insane price for the specs and build quality.
5.5" 2560x1440 IPS Display
Snapdragon 810 @ 2.0GHz
4GB LPDDR4 RAM
64GB eMMC 5.0 Storage
13MP (f2.0, 1.15μm) 4K Rear Camera
4MP (f2.0, 2.0μm) FHD Front Camera
3000mAh Battery
802.11ac Wi-Fi
USB Type-C 2.0 Port
All-Metal Design
Catch? Cpu is hot. snapdragon 810 is jut hot.
i have just got one. not hot at all. i guess the catch with any Chinese phones is the lack of software upgrade
I heard LETV build quality is very good. One of my mate is using this after he broke his G3's screen and he is not even thinking about fixing the screen.
Any issues so far?
if it doesn't get hot then the cpu is throttled like the LG Flex 2 my wife owns, other phones like my HTC M9 and the Sony's all get hot. I honestly would steer clear of a chinadroid phone with this CPU, if you look around even the high end phone manufacturers had issue's with it in their phones.
just personal opinion re the chinadroids but actual experience with the 810 … at this price however it is definitely tempting :)
@scud70: Why do you assume a Chinese phone is automatically worse? LeTV build top notch stuff, arguably better than a lot, if not most other brands from other countries.
@deanylev: i assume getting things fixed is more difficult and software updates that have made my M9 ok to use may be few and far between.
At such low prices with high specs something has to give (aside from the labour practices that make such equipment cheap).. nothing against chinadroid phones.. just the cpu and the support you may/may not get.. if they said it was a 808 for instance id plus it and probably buy one even though i dont need it :).
@scud70: Nothing has to give when it's a massive company with the resources to sell something at near cost (when these launched they weren't even that cheap, remember that). LeTV is China's equivalent of Netflix, and can easily afford to make these, it's brand recognition.
@deanylev: mate i'm just going by my experience with the chipset and a company that i didn't even know existed until this post.. if a deal came up for a htc, or sony or any other brand with this chipset i wouldn't recommend them either. But thanks for the info re LeTV :)
This is true, the Cpu should throttle before getting too hot and keep the phone cool. According to the Anandtech review of the nexus 6P the s810 throttling is very aggressive but the phone still maintains around 39 degrees. For most people uses they don't need the max clock of the s810 chip for very long, so using aggressive throttling won't notice the drop in performance. It only if they do things they require prolong use of the processors that they'll notice the performance drop.
I think the better choice is the cheaper Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 pro
I love it when people pick up some information and think it is true in every case. There are enough phones with 810 that have no thermal problem
Like my Nexus 6P :)
Pretty much. It'll do, but band 28 is not coming on a Chinese market phone soon:
GSM: 850/900/1800/1900MHz; WCDMA: 850/900/1900/2100MHz, FDD LTE: 1800/2100/2600MHz(B1/3/7)
Whats band 28 and where is it used?
It is the 700 MHz band Telstra and Optus are rolling out for their higher speed 4G offerings.
The Infocus M560 I have from https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/244156 would disagree, got it from geekbuying.com
Infocus is a bit different mainly because of its focus on the Taiwan market (which uses 700mhz heavily like Australia). It's owned by foxconn after all.
@clse945111:
Nice one - ASUS have it on the Taiwan Zenfone 3, so that'd be the one to try for if they don't release it in Australia.
NFC?
Negative.
Negative
I just positived your Negative comment
Brought one early model. Geekbuying. Only built in 16g. A lot of this is taken up with preloaded apps including mopo all have cross adds for other apps and are uninstalling. Google play loaded but not full au model. Camera good picture video but there is needed an upgrade.geekbuying sent me a upgrade to remove Chinese message has not yet worked. The are big in India and USA. The Eco model may needed to be rooted and this will get rid of the LeTv video liabary. I am trying to leaning phone rooting to bring into an a English operation and Chinese base operation systems
My only regret is not buying a higher storage model. Pros fast charge full just over hour. Normal use 2 days reading online 6hrs. Video 3 hours.
Which one is better compared with Mi Note Pro ?
They're actually very similar. It comes down to if you prefer MicroUSB vs Type C, and metal unibody vs curved glass/metal frame.
MicroUSB vs Type C, and metal unibody vs curved glass/metal frame.
Which one has which?
The LeTV has USB-C, the Xiaomi has MicroUSB
Yep that's it
i bought the letv max 6.3" version for 292 aud, will be here next week.
Link please.
sold out, lasted about 1.5 days on everbuying, i used several coupons to take it down to that price, still not arrived yet due to them taking 2 weeks to restock, mine was the 64gb ver, the 32gb ver can be had on aliexpress for about 387aud.
is everbuying trustworthy company? I am thinking to get a phone from them too
they seem trustworthy and lots of deals often get posted here but i just found out their post is damn slooooow they use PostNL for freeship, so the parcel gets sent from china to Netherlands, then go from there to Au which takes ageeesss so if you dont mind the long wait otherwise its fine.
Damn that thing is specced out for the price, same as this but a 20MP Rear Camera.
i was very weary of the SD810 issue, until i read that Letv took lots of effort and time to thermal control(not throttle) and also read many users opinion on the heat did i pull the trigger
Let max is same as snapdragon 810 whats the difference between both, just size ?
I do have chinese phone snapdragon 810 and after use it becomes very hot, i am looking for other phone now :(
I just checked to confirm. I bought it from the same seller at the same price but in the end it worked out around $263 with my credit card. Took 2 weeks to ship. Using it since Friday no problems at all.
How on earth is that ugly?
I stopped reading at 'cheap junk chinese smartphones'.
Go away. Your opinion is bullshit. Most of these high-end Chinese brands build better quality phones than major OEMs.
Hmm.. I don't agree that this is ugly either (but looks are subjective), but I'm not sure you could say that these Chinese brand phones have better build quality than the major brands.
My feel is they're all roughly of the same build quality. They are, after all, pretty much all made in China…
Country of assembly has 0 to do with quality. The components are made everywhere, they're just put together in China. Brands like Meizu, Xiaomi, LeEco (LeTV's new name), ZUK, Huawei, OnePlus, and others are all Chinese, and build phones with better designs and components than a lot of other OEMs could dream of.
These phones use top-grade metal alloys, carefully layered PCBs, solid chassis integrity, etc. Again, they're all made in China, but that doesn't make them somehow comparable.
@deanylev: I agree country of assembly doesnt have much to do with quality. But generally those chinese brands cant compete with the majors. Even Jackie Chan said so "If I need to buy a TV, I'll definitely buy a Japanese TV. A Chinese TV might explode."…just google it if you dont believe me…
@homersyd: I don't understand the logic though. If a company builds high quality products, why would being based in China matter? All those companies I've listed have proven that wrong.
@deanylev: to put it simply Chinese made stuff is cheap for a reason. They are generally made to cater for lower budget/price point. Hence shortcuts would need to be taken (materials/design/QA etc).
I ask you this, if you got a choice between a "greatwall" (chinese made car) vs a bmw and all you want is getting from A->B then you probably wouldnt mind going with the great wall since it's 1/3 of the price.
But if the great wall is almost 80% the price of a BMW, would you still choose the great wall?
@deanylev:
It's not so much about logic, but generalization and experience.
Eg. Korean cars are great, probably aren't worse than Japanese cars or even some European ones, but people wouldn't think so, why? They were crap not long ago.
The cycle is never ending, at the moment Chinese made is simply perceived as crap, this will change in maybe 20 years, then maybe Indian made will be considered crap in 2035.
@clse945111: Exactly. Brands can't just be judged by country of origin, I find that totally unreasonable.
This or Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro ?
This is way more specced out, but no fingerprint reader, and way smaller battery.
Yes the spec is better but I heard from the last deal it is not that reliable.
The Snapdragon 810 is quite hot.
You can't judge Snapdragon 810 phones equally. When managed properly, it's a great-performing SoC that stays cool. I've heard it's fine in these.
Anyone knows how it compares to redmi note 3 pro prime?
This is way more specced out, but no fingerprint reader, and way smaller battery.
Thanks for the quick answer, I think the camera on the redmi is slightly better, it would be a better travelling phone i guess.
LeTV
4GB ram (vs 3 in RN3)
1440p screen (vs 1080 in RN3)
USB type C
64GB onboard (vs 32GB in RN3)
Redmi Note 3 Pro (RN3)
4000mAh battery (vs 3000mAh on LeTV)
Sd card slot (none on LeTV)
Lighter (164g vs 177)
Other stuff
From what I understand the Snapdragon 650 and Snapdragon 810 are quite similar in regards to everyday performance, the 810 benchmarks higher on Antutu (89.154 vs 78.252). Some 810 handsets had thermal issues, no idea in regards to this exact phone.
The LeTV is marginally smaller but fatter.
The LeTV has a Sony Exymor camera chip vs a Samsung in the RN3 - I have no idea which is better, someone else might.
Neither have NFC.
Both have an IR blaster.
A quick google suggests the RN3 has more custom roms than the LeTV (matters to me, not to others).
Neither have Band 28 support
Personally I'll wait for the RN3 to drop in price more and get it myself. I want the SD card support, as well as the larger battery. The lower resolution screen should also help with battery life.
The RN3 is slightly cheaper atm http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Xiaomi-Redmi-note3-P…
Yeah me too waiting for a RMNP3 deal, target is 16G below 200 AUD.
BTW, did you notice 32G is cheaper than 16G?!! - http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Original-xiaomi-Redmi-note3-s…
I think the major selling point of the LeTV phone series: The LeTV services would be rendered useless due to ip blocking when used overseas…
it is basically 'Netflix' phone where you watch the stuff free/with priority if u get the phone in regions of China.
Clearly not from lack of trying sony, lg and htc seem to have not been able to manage the heat these cpu outputs. Oneplus gave it a go also.
And no. Thermal throthling dont count as a solution.
So i am interested how a much smaller company manage to tame this cpu that sony, lg and htc could not do for their phones.
If there are phones that manage to tame this cpu one has to admit they are just few and far between.
Another thing i would note is its dual sim. Likely one 3g/4g the other working in 2g. Meaning when 2g network gets shutdown. The send sim port is useless. Now had they made that accept a memory card. Could prove useful when 2g network gets shutdown.
Lol LeEco (LeTV) is not a small company… They have a market cap of $12,000,000,000 (more than LG Electronics) and 5000 employees. Their engineering is absolutely top notch, and they simply overcame the Snapdragon 810's issues, same as Huawei and OnePlus.
Just heard that LeEco has spent $250 million USD to acquire a piece of 48.6-acre land from Yahoo in Santa Clara to develop their R&D operation in the US. Certainly not a small company.
Certainly not. They recently unveiled a functional self-driving car - The amount of R&D that goes into something like that is enormous.
they are the biggest commercial internet TV content provider in China, thanks to their brand of TVs and net content. People get to watch HD crap shows stream with their devices made them popular vs those brand with no such content bundled.
It is like Netflix made a phone that streams their content FREE for 12-24 months etc. They were a great success in their business model, pushing the traditional tv hardware brands to call in the government to level the playing field.
Your comparison is very interesting. According to Wikipedia in 2012 LG had 220K employees and revenue of 196 billion US. LeEco's revenue in 2014 was 1.6 billion. So it is a small company after all.
You're naming LG, which is multiple companies of all sorts. I was just talking about LG Electronics, and their market cap.
$1,600,000,000 in revenue and 5000 employees is hardly a 'small' company, LG is one of the largest companies in the world.
@deanylev:
I would still say LeEco is a comparatively small company, but my main point is that market cap is a rubbish indicator. LG Electronics had revenue of USD 48.8 billion in 2015 and LeEco - under 2 bn.
You seem totally uninformed about this CPU.
What is the rom like? Stock Android?
Not even close, it's runs 'EUI', an (albeit nice) iOS clone.
Only Android 5.0?
Is it possible to flash this rom over what it ships with to get a more stock android experience?
Nope, this ROM is based on the same 'EUI' the phone ships with.
Cyanogenmod 12.1 is available, but that's based on Android 5.1, not 6.0.
Is this phone already comes with recovery that can flash this ROM?
Not sure, but TWRP exist for it.
Oh man I love the aluminium unibody…
Yeah it sure is nice, especially for the price :D
Been needing a new phone to upgrade from my shitty z3, but don't know much about specs - will this be a sufficient upgrade? Outside of spending stacks on a new Samsung Galaxy or the like?
EDIT: Also versus something like an Oppo, how does it stack up?
Since when was the Z3 shitty lol, I love my Z2. Will likely be quite a large downgrade in camera quality and battery life, but performance is obviously better with the SD 810.
No no, MY shitty z3, it's just in a worse for wear situation, been through the wars a bit. Thanks for the heads up :)
Oh, I've seen a fair few beaten up Z3s…they do look quite 'shitty'.
Upon further research, it seems that the camera isn't as bad as I initially thought- check some of the camera reviews on YouTube.
If you can manage with the below-average battery life (or live with a power bank like a Xiaomi slim), I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this over most phones including the Oppo ones, especially at this price point.
You'll lose speaker quality, waterproofing and camera performance, but otherwise this phone would be great.
And which Oppo phone? They make dozens.
Thanks mate! As far as Oppo, had just seen the ones on the JB site - R9, R7, R7 Plus, F1. Don't really know anything about their phones but prices/features seem decent.
They make pretty great phones, but they're fairly expensive, and don't offer much for the price. I'd go for this over any Oppo phone :)
Are you married to the SD810?
If he is, at least he can say his wife is hot.
I don't get it :P
absolute a bargain, i was wondering if there is a need to replace my huawei mate 7.
Is 3000mAh enough for this 2560x1440 high solution display?
How is the battery like? The Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro have 4000mAh.
For a standard user- yes. For a medium-heavy user, probably not. The SD810 paired with a 1440p display isn't a very power efficient combination.
EDIT: The RN3 Pro will be miles ahead of this as far as battery life, only having a 1080p display and a more power-efficient Snapdragon 650.
Thanks in that case I think the RN3 is better, I need one to replace my son Lenovo K3 Note.
Wow @ specs. What's the catch? Band coverage?