Things made in China often carry a bad rep: after all, being affordable is often given as their first and foremost virtue. You can’t deny that being competitive in terms of price is what Chinese companies are great at, but recently they have picked up the pace when it comes to innovation. Just look at the chart of the world’s biggest phone makers: 7 out of the top 10 are from China. This is no coincidence: the Chinese market has grown hugely, but it is also international buyers that appreciate the work done by Chinese Android phone makers.
These are the best Chinese Android phones
With rising stars like Xiaomi and Meizu working along with the heavyweights from Lenovo and Huawei, there is quite a lot of exciting new Chinese phones that you should know about.
We bring you just that: these are the best Chinese Android phones in various price tiers: from the premium, top-tier phones to the affordable ones. Take a look.
Best value for the money
Meizu M1 Metal
Price: $220 (¥1,100)
The Meizu M1 Metal is an affordable metal (duh!) phone and it features an exquisite design, MediaTek’s most powerful Helio X10 system chip, a fast fingerprint scanner and a large battery: the 5.5-inch Meizu Blue Charm Metal.
The Meizu Blue Charm Metal also acts as the launch pad for Meizu’s new version of its Flyme custom Android skin. It has graduated to version 5.0, and comes with some profound changes. The Helio X10 is certainly the star of the show: It’s a fast chip, featuring eight Cortex A53 cores running at up to 2.0GHz, and humming along with 2GB of LPDDR3 RAM.
Meizu Blue Charm Color versions
Meizu Blue Charm Color versions
LeTV Le 1s
Price: $252 (¥1,600)
LeTV is a new entrant to the fierce phone market: the Chinese media streaming provider has come up with a series of phone and the LeTV 1s is it’s more alluring offering to date.
The Le One impresses with its great value for the money and extremely sleek performance. The Le 1S has a respectable spec sheet as well: it is powered by Mediatek’s current flagship processor, the 2.2GHz Helio X octa-core CPU, it has 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM and 32GB of storage on board.
LeTV Le 1s images
LeTV Le 1s images
Xiaomi Mi 4C
Price: $236 (¥1,500)
At a full retail price of just $250, the Xiaomi Mi 4C is half the price of the LG G4 yet features the same powerful Snapdragon 808 system chip. With the extremely smooth and feature-rich MIUI custom Android skin and a solid camera, the handset checks all the essentials when it comes to the user experience.
It’s also one of a few Snapdragon 808 phones with a reasonable, 5-inch size of the display that is friendly to pockets. It’s a 5″ 1080 x 1920-pixel screen, while the battery of this 5 incher is one of the largest in this form factor: a whopping 3080mAh unit.
Xiaomi Mi 4C
Xiaomi Mi 4C
Xiaomi Redmi Note 2
Price: $142 (¥900)
The 5.5-inch Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 phablet sent shockwaves through the affordable phone ranks: after all, it’s a $125 phone with MediaTek’s top-end Helio X10 system chip inside, the same chip found in the $700 HTC One M9 Plus.
It’s not just the processor that catches the eye in the Redmi Note 2, though. It’s also got a 13-megapixel camera with ultra fast phase detection auto-focus, a feature previously reserved for flagship devices only. In fact, Xiaomi claims that its affordable phablet is able to lock focus within 0.1 seconds, while the current crop of flagships averages around 0.3 seconds.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 2
Xiaomi Redmi Note 2
Lenovo K3 Note
Price: $142 (¥900)
The Lenovo K3 Note sports a 5.5-inch display with a sharp resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels (401 ppi), has an octa-core MediaTek MT6752 coupled with 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, a 13MP/5MP camera combo, and a healthy 3,000 mAh battery (with wireless charging?). The back of the 0.3 inches-thick (7.6 mm) phone is made out of yellow polycarbonate and houses a peculiar, round Lenovo logotype in the middle. Also found on the rear are a loudspeaker and we can even see a dual LED flash under the recessed camera sensor.
Lenovo K3 Note
Lenovo K3 Note
Premium phones
Xiaomi Mi Note
Price: $283 (¥1,800)
The Mi Note is the best phone of one of the fastest growing phone companies in the world – Xiaomi.
Once known for making Apple knock-offs, Xiaomi’s flagship phone is an original design that not only looks great, but seems to be the inspiration for others (that’s only a theory, but just look at how similar to it the new Galaxy Note looks!). The Mi Note is an exceptional value for the money: it has that sharp visual style, but also a very-well polished MIUI skin with tons of features and a very smooth performance, it has a great camera, and very good battery life. The big issue with it is that it’s not officially available in the United States – you can import it for a slight premium, though, to have a phone unlike any others.
Xiaomi Mi Note
Xiaomi Mi Note
Meizu MX5
Price: $300 (¥1,900)
Meizu, a company with a relatively long history, is the one that has made one of the most appealing Chinese phones of the year: the Meizu MX5. The MX5 is a device with a sturdy all-aluminum frame that exudes a premium feel, it features a very typical for Meizu design and the clean and good-looking Flyme user interface (now running on top of Android 5 Lollipop). The Meizu MX5 is a great value for the money: it’s a 5.5-inch phone with a (not so great) AMOLED screen, and it’s powered by the MediaTek Helio X10 system chip – an octa-core Cortex A53 affair clocked at up to 2.2GHz, and with 3GB of RAM. The phone features a 20-megapixel main camera and a snappy fingerprint scanner as well. While we do have some gripes about this phone, it remains an extremely solid choice for price conscious buyers: try finding another all-metal phone at this price point and with this great overall performance and camera prowess!
Meizu MX5
ZUK Z1
Price: $283 (¥1,800)
Lenovo spin-off ZUK has made a splash with the launch of the ZUK Z1, a stylish Android phone with a machined aluminum body with pleasingly curved sides and a whopping 64GB of internal storage in the base model. The ZUK Z1 is powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor (not the newest chipset around, we know), while sporting a 5.5-inch display with 1080 x 1920 pixels. Furthermore, the handset will feature LTE, fingerprint scanner, a 13 MP rear camera, 8 MP front-facing camera, 3 GB of RAM, USB Type-C port and a large, 4100 mAh battery.
ZUK Z1
Lenovo Vibe P1
Price: $346 (¥2,200)
Claiming the battery champ crown, the Lenovo Vibe P1 comes rocking a massive, 5000mAh battery cell in a stylish aluminum body and an alluring price.
It is a phablet class of a handset with a 5.5-inch display with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels and runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 system chip with 2GB of RAM, and sports 32GB of internal storage which should be sufficient for most users.
Lenovo Vibe P1
Lenovo Vibe P1
Huawei Honor 7
Price: $315 (¥2,000)
The Huawei Honor 7 is one of the first Chinese phones in this price tier to support a fingerprint scanner conveniently located on the back of the device, where your finger naturally rests. It sports a stylish aluminum alloy exterior that is just a bit on the chubby side.
The Honor 7 features a 5.2″ display with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels, runs on the company’s own 64-bit HiSilicon Kirin 935 chipset, clocked at 2.2 GHz maximums for a quartet of Cortex-A53 cores, and 1.5 GHz for the other A53 set of four, arranged in a big.LITTLE configuration. The base version sports 16GB of storage with the option to expand on that via microSD cards.
Quite impressively, the Honor 7 ships with a 20 MP rear camera that has phase-detection auto-focus for quick lock of focus.
Huawei Honor 7
Huawei Honor 7
Affordable smaller-sized phones
Meizu m2
Price: $95 (¥600)
When compared to its extremely popular affordable phablet sibling, the 5.5-inch Meizu M2 Note, one can see that the Meizu M2 cuts some corners: the 5-inch screen features a 720 x 1280-pixel resolution (vs 1080p on the M2 Note), and the system chip is the less capable MT6735 (vs the MT6753). We would not consider those deal-breakers in any way, though: the display is still sharp with pixel density close to that of, say, the iPhone, while the system chip is on par with the Snapdragon 410 used in devices like the new Moto G (however, the Moto G costs twice as much).
What makes the Meizu M2 stand out, however, is its clean and extremely smoothly-running Flyme UI running on top of Android 5.1 Lollipop on the M2. The skin has smooth animations and impressive performance (it also comes with the Google Play Store pre-installed and Meizu phones can be rooted with a single click, a stock software feature).
Meizu m2
Xiaomi Redmi 2 Pro
Price: $110 (¥700)
Xiaomi’s contender in the ultra affordable phone space is the Redmi 2 Pro. It is a much needed upgrade to the original Redmi 2, as it now arrives with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage to match what rivals from Meizu and Lenovo offer. The Redmi 2 Pro has the MIUI custom skin on its side – a powerful, feature-rich skin that runs impressively smoothly, and it captures great looking images. Plus, it features above-average battery life for nearly two-day longevity.
Xiaomi Redmi 2
Xiaomi Redmi 2
Price: $95 (¥600)
The Lenovo K3, the smaller sibling of the popular K3 Note, comes with the same lemony yellow color option (and a more conservative white). It brings the company’s likable user interface with its mostly smooth performance and overall good camera to the bottom of the affordable phone class. Here, the name Lenovo alone counts, but it’s backed up with a phone that is overall a good performer with no huge compromises.
Lenovo K3
Super phones
Huawei P8
Price: $457 (¥2,900)
The Huawei P8 features an impressive, sleek design in a 5.2-inch form factor that will please a large crowd – the phone is middle-grounds between being too big, or too small. It’s the overall polish of the sleek-running EMUI skin on top of Android 5.0 Lollipop that makes the Huawei P8 experience actually enjoyable and different. The phone runs smoothly (despite not having the most benchmark-crunching processor), it has a 1080p display with good-looking colors and a consistently well-performing camera. The biggest downside is its limited availability – the Huawei P8 is the company’s flagship, yet it’s not sold officially in the United States (you can import it for a slight premium).
Huawei P8 Review
Huawei P8 Review
Meizu Pro 5
Price: $441 (¥2,800)
The Meizu PRO 5 has just gone official, and it’s the company’s most expensive and most advanced handset to date. A large, 5.7-inch phone, the Meizu PRO 5 is a phone destined first and foremost for China. It lives up to the ‘pro’ name with its hardware: it features the Exynos 7420 system chip that powers the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy Note5, one of the best performing chips out there. Meizu has also made a big jump in the quality of its design: many would be quick to notice that the Pro 5 looks a lot like an iPhone, but we would not go as far as to call it a direct clone. The materials used in the Pro 5 are sturdy metal for the body, with cutouts for the antennas, an overall design style that we’ve already seen on the Meizu MX5.
Meizu Pro 5
Meizu Pro 5