The most popular Chinese smartphone brands | Articles | Phones

Among mod­ern mobile devices, it is impos­si­ble not to sin­gle out smart­phones. Almost every one of us can­not imag­ine our life with­out these devices. There is noth­ing sur­pris­ing in the fact that the race of man­u­fac­tur­ers in this area of ​​devel­op­ment is accel­er­at­ing every year. Today, Chi­nese brands have already earned pop­u­lar­i­ty and a wide range of admir­ers. If ear­li­er only price was in their favor, today it is both qual­i­ty and inno­va­tion. There­fore, we decid­ed to take a look at the most pop­u­lar brands from Chi­na and tell you a lit­tle about them and what they cre­ate.

Vivo

Vivo is one of the most pop­u­lar brands that has right­ful­ly earned suc­cess both at home and abroad. The com­pa­ny appeared on the mar­ket in 2009, and in 2017 it was not­ed for the Vivo X20 and Vivo X20 Plus mod­els, which became fol­low­ers of the best­seller — the Vivo X9 mod­el.

The cur­rent flag­ship of this com­pa­ny is the Vivo Nex. A smart­phone with a futur­is­tic design that has a thin body, but despite this, it is quite large and heavy. It weighs 199g but has a 6.6‑inch Full HD+ AMOLED dis­play. In terms of char­ac­ter­is­tics, it is close to the Sam­sung Galaxy Note 8. The smart­phone has an almost frame­less design and a front cam­era, which is clev­er­ly hid­den in the upper bor­der of the case. When used, the cam­era pops up and slides back under the frame when you don’t need it. All this hap­pens in less than a sec­ond. The fin­ger­print scan­ner in this smart­phone is built right into the dis­play. Thanks to such design tricks, almost the entire front pan­el is occu­pied by the dis­play. This smart­phone is only avail­able in Chi­na so far, which is prob­a­bly why the com­pa­ny is not talked about much out­side of its native coun­try.

Oppo

Oppo was found­ed in 2004. Already in 2016, Oppo man­aged to win the 4th place in the glob­al rank­ing of smart­phone brands.

This com­pa­ny is espe­cial­ly famous for its focus on fash­ion and mod­ern buy­ers, focus­ing on pow­er­ful smart­phone cam­eras for qual­i­ty pho­tog­ra­phy. There­fore, both the front and the main cam­era on Oppo devices deserve spe­cial atten­tion.

Among the most pop­u­lar mod­els of devices that came out under the Oppo brand, we can high­light the Oppo R11, a best­seller with a bor­der­less dis­play and mod­ern face recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy.

Today, one of the most mod­ern devices, a smart­phone that sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly hits the top ten lists, is Oppo Find X. Gor­geous glass body and pow­er­ful cam­era are the main attrac­tive fea­tures of this smart­phone. Just like the Vivo Nex, the front cam­era on the Oppo Find X pops out from under the screen frame and pro­vides 3D bio­met­ric face scan­ning.

This, of course, is not all the fea­tures that dis­tin­guish this smart­phone. The panoram­ic dis­play has round­ed edges. On the back of the case there is a dual cam­era (16MP + 20MP), the smart­phone sup­ports 2 SIM cards. Func­tions can be list­ed for a very long time. In addi­tion, the design of the device also brings a pleas­ant vari­ety — Oppo Find X is avail­able in Bor­deaux Red and Glac­i­er Blue col­ors. As for the price, in this regard, Oppo is on the same lines as the flag­ships of more well-known com­pa­nies.

Honor

Found­ed in 2013, the Hon­or brand is actu­al­ly a divi­sion of Huawei focused on the bud­get smart­phone seg­ment. The brand has built up a rep­u­ta­tion of its own over the years: rather than pro­mot­ing a prod­uct with pop­u­lar faces or inno­v­a­tive fea­tures, Hon­or focus­es on deliv­er­ing max­i­mum func­tion­al­i­ty and qual­i­ty at the low­est price.

Last year, Hon­or was marked by smart­phones Hon­or V9 and Hon­or V9 Play. And this year, the mod­el of the gam­ing smart­phone Play has already become the most pop­u­lar smart­phone of the com­pa­ny. And for good rea­son, because the device is focused on mobile games and pro­vides what man­u­fac­tur­ers call the gam­ing expe­ri­ence “4D” with real-time recog­ni­tion of game scenes in order to accom­pa­ny the game with vibra­tion at the right moments.

Users espe­cial­ly note the speed of the device, and lovers of bright col­ors espe­cial­ly appre­ci­ate the smart­phone in a pleas­ant lilac case, which real­ly looks very fash­ion­able.

Huawei

Huawei has long gained pop­u­lar­i­ty and even now remains one of the most pop­u­lar smart­phone brands in Chi­na and in the world. Not only did the Huawei Mate 9, released in 2016, and the Huawei Mate 10 that fol­lowed it in 2017, become absolute best­sellers, the com­pa­ny cement­ed its suc­cess with the incred­i­ble Huawei P20 pro. Today, this smart­phone occu­pies the first lines in the rank­ings, fol­low­ing the mar­ket leader Sam­sung Galaxy S9. First of all, it is appre­ci­at­ed for its cam­era func­tions: it allows you to shoot in low light in the city or at events. Some pub­li­ca­tions even called the Huawei P20, devel­oped by Leica, one of the best mobile cam­eras ever.

To com­plete the pos­i­tive pic­ture, the man­u­fac­tur­ers equipped the smart­phone with a durable bat­tery, and of course, due atten­tion was paid to the design of the case. espe­cial­ly impres­sive is the col­or scheme of the smart­phone, inspired by the unique com­bi­na­tion of col­ors dur­ing the North­ern Lights. How­ev­er, the smart­phone also belongs to the cat­e­go­ry of top smart­phones, which is reflect­ed in its price.

Xiaomi

The first smart­phone of this com­pa­ny appeared on the mar­ket in 2011, and even then it became clear that Xiao­mi was seri­ous about it. Despite the fact that ini­tial­ly Xiao­mi and smart­phones under the Mi brand were con­sid­ered copies of the iPhone, since they large­ly repeat­ed the design and func­tion­al­i­ty of Apple devices, today the Chi­nese com­pa­ny has moved away from this for­mat and cre­ates unique devices. With the 2016 Mi Mix, Xiao­mi was one of the first to do away with bezels on smart­phones by expand­ing the dis­play for­mat so that the aspect ratio is larg­er than 16:9. Now it is prac­ti­cal­ly the stan­dard on the mar­ket. Last year, Mi Mix was one of the top devices.

The com­pa­ny nev­er refus­es bright adver­tis­ing cam­paigns and always equips its devices with wide func­tion­al­i­ty.

The Mi Mix 2 and Mi Mix 2S are a pair of very pop­u­lar phablets that come with a strik­ing design and large screen. Mi A2 is a styl­ish and mod­ern Android One smart­phone. Xiao­mi Red­mi Note 5 Pro is an incred­i­bly pow­er­ful smart­phone with high spec­i­fi­ca­tions. And this is not all that this com­pa­ny offers. It must be said that Xiao­mi smart­phones are part of a huge whole ecosys­tem devel­oped by the com­pa­ny, which includes a lot of smart devices. There­fore, their pop­u­lar­i­ty is grow­ing every year.

Meizu

Meizu is a less pop­u­lar com­pa­ny than Xiao­mi and Huawei, which still often appears in the top lists. The thing is that Meizu devices tend not to focus on inno­va­tion, pre­fer­ring proven paths.

Meizu appeared in 2003, after which it slow­ly earned its mar­ket share. Usu­al­ly, Meizu smart­phones take 8–9th place in the rat­ings of Chi­nese devices.

The cur­rent flag­ship of the com­pa­ny is Meizu 16. A pow­er­ful and thin smart­phone with two cam­eras and a frame­less design. The fin­ger­print is scanned direct­ly through the screen, which occu­pies 91.18% of the front hous­ing. Nice design and high per­for­mance speak in favor of this device. How­ev­er, it is sur­passed by rivals Huawei and Xiao­mi. Anoth­er inter­est­ing mod­el from Meizu is the Meizu Pro 7, equipped with an addi­tion­al dis­play on the back of the case. One of the rare occa­sions when Meizu tries to bring some­thing rev­o­lu­tion­ary to the design. The com­pa­ny does not focus on young users, so mid­dle-aged users are con­sid­ered the main buy­ers.

One Plus

If we talk about the com­pa­ny, the appear­ance of which was accom­pa­nied by the great­est hype, then this is One­Plus. The com­pa­ny was found­ed in 2013, and imme­di­ate­ly One­Plus smart­phones proved to be the devices with the most capa­cious bat­tery. While the rest of the devices last­ed only a day or a half, One­Plus could eas­i­ly work for sev­er­al days. After that, the brand’s pop­u­lar­i­ty only grew, which was not harmed by the unique approach to the design and func­tion­al­i­ty of devices. The One­Plus 6 is already a top-of-the-line device that seri­ous­ly com­petes with flag­ships. In Chi­na, it is in the top three, and in the rest of the world, thanks to its afford­able price, One Plus becomes a great alter­na­tive to expen­sive devices.

Ahead in 2018, we are still wait­ing for the release of the new One­Plus 6T, a smart­phone about which there are a lot of rumors. Among the most com­mon expec­ta­tions are an in-dis­play fin­ger­print scan­ner, 6GB and 8GB RAM options, a triple rear cam­era set­up, a 6.4‑inch AMOLED dis­play, and a 3,500mAh bat­tery.

Lenovo

The last com­pa­ny, which we will note today, became famous as a man­u­fac­tur­er of lap­tops. Sure­ly every­one came across Leno­vo devices. How­ev­er, Leno­vo makes a vari­ety of devices, includ­ing smart­phones. More­over, in Chi­na, the flag­ship Leno­vo Z5 ranks 8th in pop­u­lar­i­ty out of 10. What is espe­cial­ly attrac­tive about this com­pa­ny is the pres­ence, if not rev­o­lu­tion­ary, but quite reli­able, high-qual­i­ty and pow­er­ful devices. They have a sim­ple and styl­ish design and pleas­ant tech­ni­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics. Leno­vo Z5, for exam­ple, is a smart­phone with a bezel-less design, a 6.2‑inch dis­play, a notch for an 8MP front cam­era and a 16MP main cam­era. The device looks mod­ern, bright and styl­ish. But this is far from the only pop­u­lar device from Leno­vo, as there are many dif­fer­ent mod­els avail­able on the mar­ket at dif­fer­ent price points. The main dif­fer­ence between the devices is moder­ni­ty.

Of course, we have list­ed far from all Chi­nese com­pa­nies that spe­cial­ize in the pro­duc­tion of smart­phones. How­ev­er, these are the most like­ly to come across to you, because they are con­stant­ly on hear­ing. And it is these com­pa­nies that have earned the incred­i­ble pop­u­lar­i­ty and trust of users around the world. Each of the man­u­fac­tur­ers was marked by some wor­thy device over the past year. We con­tin­ue to close­ly mon­i­tor the suc­cess of Chi­nese com­pa­nies, flag­ships and bud­get mod­els, and, of course, pre­dict nov­el­ties and trends in the mobile device mar­ket.