long term review - Doogee DG300 pt 1

I bought a new phone recently, but with a difference. It came from china, not just manufactured there but shipped direct too, I know what your thinking already an iPone or apple rip off, well strictly speaking it's not a rip off it does get it's looks from the Samsung product range

I bought the Doogee Dg300, also known as the ALPS Voyager DG300, what matters is the hardware to me and for £54.08 including postage (tip - spend a £4 more and get it fulfilled by Amazon's warehouses in the UK if you need it quickly) you get a bit more than the budget handsets sold directly in the UK. I warn you now be prepared to tweak a setting or two to work with your carrier/network (Vodafone, Sainsburys mobile and similar) I'll cover that in the next post for you.

Let's go to the specs for now  - Sorry it's not GSMArena slick this time

Model: DOOGEE VOYAGER DG300
Band: 2G: GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz
         3G: WCDMA 850/2100MHz
Sim Card: Dual SIM Card Dual Standby(one small and one micro SIM card)
Color: Black
Shell Material: Plastic
OS: Android 4.2.2
CPU: MTK6572, Cortex A7 dual core, 1.3GHz
GPU: Mali-400
ROM: 4GB
RAM: 512MB
Display Size: 5.0 Inch
Type: IPS, capacitive touch screen
Resolution: 960 x 540 pixels  Qhd
Screen Color: 260K Colors
Card slot - MicroSD
Cameras: Interpolated resolution of both 2.0MP for the front camera, 5.0MP  for the back camera (Non interpolated resolutions are 1.2mp front and 2mp rear)
WIFI: Yes, 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth: Bluetooth 2.0
Gravity Sensor: Yes
Multi-Touch: Yes, 2 point touch
Standby Time: We'll test that
GPS: supported with A-GPS With EPO
DOOGEE DG300 Mobile Phone Accessories:
1 x 2500mAh Battery
1 x Earphone
1 x USB Cable
1 x Charger
1 x User Manual


Now for those wondering who the frick are Doogee? (translated as “Dao Ge”) I would click here and learn about the brand, and while it's very different to how the Brits express themselves it's not broken English so top marks there.

The phone itself is a nice device on the larger side of things for budget devices but for it's price feels pretty sturdy in the hand for a plastic handset and seems to take well to a drop. (yeah less than a week of ownership and drop it!) it removed the effect from the plastic but does not affect operations.

The dual sim card functionality is useful, if you wanted a work and personal device it would do well.
so far WIFI and mobile internet seems to work well with no problems once configured.

While Android jelly bean is outdated thanks to kitkat and soon coming L/Lollypop there is no official update (CFW scene may help here) I have asked Doogee about this and will add it here if they respond which I'm sure they will.

Right I'll leave it here for now as I want to go more in depth next week
If you have any questions let me know and I'll strive to find out or investigate them.

Paul

P.S. Please do not post links to e-shops selling these devices in the comments. Spam is not permitted here and will be deleted.

The Vodafone 340 - A £12 wonder.

My Nokia C6-00 was in repair for a while, leaving me to use my (really) old faithful. Sony Ericsson while the Gurus tried to fix it.

The Sony Ericsson's microphone popped one day, leaving me phoneless, not a good position to be in at all. So I seeked a replacement, and Adsa Came up trumps with the Vodafone 340 handset.

It's pricing point is in the extreme budget side of the market, £12 with £1 credit on the sim card, so even if used for an emergency device it's ready to go from the first charge.

The 340 is a perfectly slim 2g Device, basic but capable in many ways, and in some ways it outshines many more expensive devices.

Features are:

• VGA Camera (640*480) 
• Opera mini browser (cheaper access to web, although this is an basic OEM variant)
• Bluetooth
• FM Radio (without the need of headphones as antenna, but are included)
• MicroUSB charging port (Does not have a PC Suite)
• Dedicated camera button. Sorry , Bluetooth transfer only.

The device is lightweight and very robust. In terms of battery life, the handset rocks. I charged it up on Friday evening.(24/June) and put it to use at Cybermummy going through between 20-100 tweets from the afternoon, my son hammering it before and after school and still has 2 bars left this morning.  Upon checking it now it has died, Would modern smartphones last that long? Doubtful.....

Camera is basic but works well, *sample images coming soon* Vodafone and Foxlink chose well to add  dedicated camera button, which is very quick to react, even in lower light..

Then comes the downers of being a budget device. No Connectivity, you are left with sharing via MMS, Email or Bluetooth. and no PC Suite is available, on connecting to the PC you get unknown device errors in Windows XP and Vista.. Also Java applications like Snaptu cannot be loaded, this is an immense disappointment, as services like Snaptu gives featured facebook and twitter services for free, the device can cope, if only they could add a Java stack to it. 

Internet is powered by Opera Mini and looks like an older version, it's basic but compressed bandwidth for saving data. 

For £12 in Asda it's a perfect emergency or starter device for anyone.  With a clear enough screen and half decent camera, it's a perfect budget device. I recommend it. 

Paul! 

Gallery: Click For larger images