[Editorial] Our Phones Do Not Represent Our Net Worth

So we ditched our Samsungs, Lenovos, LGs, Nokias, and iPhones for a week.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using local branded smartphones. They’re more affordable and they offer unbelievable value for money.

A few weeks ago we decided to do a short experiment. We ditched our international flagship smartphones — the iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S4 Active, and the Sony Xperia Z Ultra. In lieu of these devices we armed ourselves with the different local flagship smartphones (used them alternatively just transferring back-up via Google) which included the MyPhone Iceberg, the Starmobile Knight, the Cherry Mobile Omega HD 2.0, and the Cloudfone Thrill 450Q. These devices were all priced in the Php8,000-12,000 range which means their almost a third of the SRP of the global brands.

After a week here’s the summary of our findings:

What we missed

LTE
Really good camera

What we didn’t miss

Everything else

Almost everything we usually did with our previous handsets we could do with the local brands. Be it social networking, gaming, reading, watching movies, listening to music, and taking photos. For gaming all of our usual fixes, which included Minion Rush, Zombie Wood, and Dead Trigger, could be played with no problem on the the local phones. Our favorite gaming device turned out to be a toss up between the MyPhone Iceberg and the Cherry Mobile Omega HD 2.0.

Basic and core functions like telephony were all smooth and flawless. Call reception and quality were also great! In short the internals of local brands have leveled up tremendously to a point where they can almost match whatever the high-end Androids of international brands can offer. Sure in the Antutu Benchmark they’re at 20,000 and the locals are at 13,000 but here’s a really good question we want to throw to you guys:

What difference does the 7,000 really make?

Until we see relevant apps that will take advantage of all that processing power the answer is… none.

We will concede though that when it comes to optics the international smartphones, most noticeably the iPhone 5 and the Lenovo K900, are still very much ahead of local alternatives. The Starmobile Knight though is really competitive when it comes to picture quality.

If there’s one thing REALLY missing with local brands it’s LTE connectivity. Smart has successfully hooked us on the ridiculous speeds of LTE. It’s like a drug that we just can’t stop using, hahaha! However there are workarounds to not having LTE. There’s always WiFi at home, at the office, or in a lot of business establishments already. When the day comes though that local brands manage to get LTE connectivity and maybe level up the quality of their optics (maybe a few more notches up from the SM Knight) and KEEP THEIR PRICES LOW, they will dominate on a completely different level.

To summarize…

Folks, there is nothing wrong with using local brands — if you research well and keep the warranty card. Always wait for techies, bloggers, and others to try them out first to make sure what you will buy will have the lasting power that you deserve. There’s no shame in pulling out a MyPhone, Starmobile, Cloudfone, Cherry Mobile, Arc Mobile, Torque, SK Mobile, etc. handset out when you’re with friends all using international brands. Heck you should even feel good because you saved money (and money is hard to come by).

Note that we’re not trying to paint international brands in a bad way. We just want to debunk and break the mentality of a lot of people we’ve come across that feel that using local brands is a sign of being “cheap”. To that we say this: