Why is EVERYONE Buying this $200 Phone?? - UMIDIGI S2
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,602 words · ~8 min read
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the Samsung Galaxy S 9 plus only has 375
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US dollars worth of materials in it but it launched at a retail price of
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840 what and the iPhone 10 while
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actually a little cheaper to assemble at three hundred and seventy dollars
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retails to start at about a thousand
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what if you could buy a phone for much
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closer to its actual cost well it turns
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out you can welcome back to another installment of why the five pertinent
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friendly content are you guys buying this where today we've got one of the
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top-selling phones on Chinese e-tailer gearbest the
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213 dollar you me digi s to not to be
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confused with the Samsung Galaxy s2 also
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today is this exciting opportunity to learn about madrenas coffee madrenas
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everyone's convenience actually just the convenience of their customers check
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them out and use offer code Linus to save 40% today
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the unis did G or me did G yeah let's go
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with them s to has hundreds of reviews awarding it four point seven eight out
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of five stars on average and you can order one of these puppies for just two
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hundred and twenty nap okay actually it depends what warehouse you order it from
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because gearbest is super weird but let's call it two hundred and thirteen
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dollars now based on the language of the
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bulk of the reviews the s2 has been a bigger hit in Russia Poland and Italy
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than it has in the fancy-ass US and day
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but that doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get ridiculed by your flagship
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fondling friends because the s2 doesn't look like a budget phone it has a six
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inch edge to edge display in the chic 18
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by 9 aspect ratio and anodized aluminum chassis with a USB type-c port and it's
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got a dual lens for your camera right above the rear fingerprint reader and
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the internals aren't terrible either unlike some value smartphones it's got
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64 gigs of storage and it's expandable
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via microSD in the dual SIM slot it has
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the same amount of RAM as the Google pixel - and it has nearly double the
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rated battery capacity of the iPhone 10 50 100 milliamp hours so in practice
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getting it to two days is a pretty easy feat now compare that to what budget
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phones were like just a few years ago the Samsung Galaxy s5 and the motorola
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moto e both launched in 2014 with a
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similar price differential to what we're looking at here except that the Moto e
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was 50% thicker than the galaxy s5 had
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half the RAM and didn't have a front camera at all
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so how then have companies like Umi digi
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which was only founded in 2012 managed
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to close the gap so much well there are
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three main reasons first the small
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brands avoid some of the expenses that eventually ricky'll down into the price
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of premier brand phones so they use off-the-shelf components instead of
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researching and developing their own cutting-edge tech they focus on online
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and guerilla style marketing instead of
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doing things like spending fifteen million dollars on a single Superbowl
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commercial they rely on established ecommerce platforms like gearbest and
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Amazon instead of trying to build out their own stores and they benefit from
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what's called the economies of agglomeration
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what that means is that since everything
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is made in and around Shenzhen China they have easy access to manufacturing
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talent and inexpensive labor without having to invest much in their own
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logistics the second way that Chinese companies keep the price down is by
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flat-out paying less for their components and now I'm not even
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necessarily talking about using older inferior technology I'm talking about
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using the exact same parts that could be
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in your Samsung or your Apple phone but
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for less money so how do they get a deal like that the answer is binning a big
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brand with a reputation to uphold will by the suppliers best parts they're a
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parts batches of thousands of units where maybe only 1% of them are likely
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to fail that manufacturer's quality checks but as for value brands like this
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one they'll buy batches with significantly higher failure rates and
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much lower price tags to match strategy number three for keeping the
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cost down is to just not make any profit on the device now Umi digi doesn't do
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this but Xiaomi famously sells their
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phones with zero profit margin in exchange for market share and brand
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recognition paying the bills ostensibly by selling accessories like head phones
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power banks luggage and really the
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slippers okay so does all of this mean then that soon
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there will be no reason whatsoever to
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buy a flagship from Google Apple or Samsung the answer is No
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no it doesn't because budget phones still have a lot of cut corners the s2
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screen for example looks like it was just glued on to the front of a phone
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instead of being seamlessly integrated into the camp furred edges though in
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fairness once you put it into the included sandstone case that particular
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flaw melts away with that said there's no hiding the
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resolution the s2 has about the same
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number of pixels as the iPhone 6 from 2014 but they're spread over a larger
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area giving it about half the pixel density of the leading phones its size
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and this is noticeable when you're reading text and in particular in the
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way that Netflix seems to handle streaming content to this phone it looks
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noticeably worse than even other value devices and
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then there's the camera while it isn't a
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complete potato patch the dual lens
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business is basically a complete marketing gimmick
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because the bokeh mode doesn't do I mean
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it just doesn't work like at all it just kind of makes everything but the center
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of the frame blurry it's it's just stupid like look at this it's just it's
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just it's like rubbing Vaseline on every part of the lens that isn't the very
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center here nobody takes pictures like that I mean never mind not having a I
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assisted you know bokeh background removal there's no there's no I even
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there's no consideration of depth at all it's a total joke and then finally
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there's the support or lack thereof I
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was having issues with my pixel to excel and Google quickly effortlessly dealt
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with the RMA for me even offering advanced replacement I
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would be floored to hear a similar story
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about umi digi and as for software this
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thing is running Android marshmallow which launched in 2015 and it will
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probably run marshmallow forever but might not seem like a huge deal on the
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surface but Android didn't even have a built-in slight utility at that point
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and it's got Google now on tap instead
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of the assistant which you can't get unless you do this one weird trick that
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phone manufacturers hate so is it time
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for you to stop spending your life savings every time you need a new phone
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the you me two gs two is a mere stock if
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a little dated Android experience with almost no bloat and it's not even that
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slow so if you don't care much about the camera and some people don't I say it's
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time for us to take a long hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves do I really
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need the latest and greatest need is a strong word but the speakers
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are awful fast charging is a super nice thing to have and that oh man that
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Netflix experience I don't remember the last time I saw a
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movie look this bad and I like Marvel movies
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after the first box replacement cartridges are sent to you for just a
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few bucks in them so check it out at dollarshaveclub.com slash Lynas we're
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gonna have that linked below so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked
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you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like
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button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video
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description also link down there as our merch store which has cool shirts like
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the one I'm wearing and our community forum which you should totally join