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Comment by Pimpus | Hacker News Reader

These brands are quite well known in Europe, but not in a good way. When my Matebook stopped charging after two months people called me dumb for buying a Huawei product. Just an anecdote.

I likewise have Xiaoimi products and their Mi Home app for smart home products is awful and a far cry from Apple's polish.

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I guess it depends on country. In Spain I'd say Xiaomi and Huawei have a very good brand image. Especially Xiaomi. They recently opened a store in my city and there were people queueing all night for the opening day.

On the other hand, Apple has its minority but staunch followers, but it's rather common to diss them or see them as brainwashed fools for spending 1K € on a phone.

This is a neutral opinion, I'm in the middle ground with my 500 € HTC.

> These brands are quite well known in Europe, but not in a good way.

They are very popular and desired in many EU countries. Xiaomi / Ninebot dominate the electric scooter business and the phones and home appliances are very popular and desired. I just bought the xiaomi vacuum robot for instance which blows all others out of the water.

Similarly with the Huawei P20 Pro which is one of the most desired phones right now here.

When it comes to high-value products like laptops, always go with a vendor that has in-person support services in your country. By 'high value', I mean things you'd be utterly screwed without. I could lose my phone, but there's nothing critical on it. My laptop on the other hand....

I once had a Toshiba laptop purchased in Singapore. When the motherboard died and I looked for a replacement, the only option was to ship it back to Singapore, which was of course a no-go.

Since then, I've only purchased Apple or Dell laptops, as both of them have fast turnaround times, since they're actually available in my country. Definitely costs a little more, but you can't beat that peace of mind.

My prediction: Eventually the Chinese companies will be known as premium brands.

When I was a kid, I remember my parent's and grandparent's generation talking about the cheap Japanese crap, and they would only buy American. A few decades alter the Japanese stuff was the good stuff, and the American's couldn't compete.

Interestingly, Japan still has some stellar products, but they are falling behind as Americans have in many types of manufacturing. It's a shame to watch countries lose touch with the importance of strong domestic manufacturing; particularly when they have a history of excellence.

I'm not sure if there is a perception in US for Huawei in general, but I'd bet many people know them from the Boot Loop issue the Nexus 6p had. Unfortunately both me and my wife had that phone and we both had to purchase new phones (13, 18 months).

Completely agree. Also, lenovo phones are also well known in Europe, not in a good way. the dual-sim one I had while living in Kiev was dirt cheap, plastic screen, as fast as the samsungs out at that time but about 2mm thicker. that plastic screen was awesome and saved me many replacements.

the problem with the chinese crap, not just phones but TVs, pads, whatever, is they literally dump a bunch of decent hardware in there, and just stop. no QA, no support, nothing you can find online - so in a few months when any little thing breaks, or there's no way to fix an annoying feature, it goes in the trash.

lots of stories, but here's a couple. got a chinese phone so I never have to put a chinese sim into my real phone. pretty popular in china, good specs. root it and put a non-chinese OS? nothing, and I've searched in chinese.

About 4 years ago got a xiaoimi tablet. quad core, 2GB ram, mini-hdmi output, $70 on amazon. first month perfect. then - wifi started turning off after about 5min, only fixed by a reboot. no support, no documentation, nothing on forums - and it was sold for about 3 months and then they started selling some identical crap with a different model#. seriously, I have no problem paying $1-2k for a phone or pad. What I don't want is useless crap that wastes days of time and gets me pissed off so I can't fall asleep, a year later on a Tuesday.

The thing is, the Chinese culture is used to half-working crap, and they think it's normal. They pump shit out of the sewers, boil it, then use the oil floating on top to dilute cooking oil. At most restaurants. Phone has awkward interface, security holes, and 1 security update after release? who cares - your thoughts are on rent in a dirty apartment and food. If you order your steak medium - it's well done, because yes, they don't toss the beef when it goes bad - they serve it to you, everywhere.

Buildings use a bunch more cement and reinforcement than normal countries. Why? Because the construction workers eyeball all measurements and just don't care - if you don't account for error, it'll collapse.

Not knocking on the Chinese race (my wife is Chinese), but I am knocking their culture. Zero attention to detail, zero cares, zero pride in what you do. It works there, because life is shitty and you don't care about a UI bug when you're broke, there's no law, and an oppressive police force that puts you in jail to harvest your organs for the rich.

I would call the Chinese people very "enterprising". The lack of regulations / lack of enforcement of regulations leads to cutting corners for raw profit. But is this kind of deregulation not the wet dream of many American politicians? </snark>

Chinese companies are getting better and better. A desoldering device (Zhongdi) and a 3D-printer (Anycubic) I bought recently are my anecdotal examples. When looking at older Youtube reviews and at my devices, one can clearly see that problematic details very corrected or improved in later versions of the device.

Isn't this the same cylce Japan went through? At first cheap imitation, then better quality, then innovation? Wasn't "Made in Germany" first established as a British measure to warn consumers about a crappy product?

In conclusion: there are many crappy Chinese products, but not all Chinese products are crappy. The better manufactures strive for more stable costumer relationships.

> They pump shit out of the sewers, boil it, then use the oil floating on top to dilute cooking oil. At most restaurants.

Citation needed. My understanding was that there are some crooks producing the sewer oil, but that it's used as an adulterant in cooking oil and the restaurants aren't knowingly cooking in sewer oil.

here you go.

"The business was carried out under the instructions or consent of the restaurant owners for months, the report said."

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2091125/chin...

> Citation needed

This is not Wikipedia.

I fail to see how your alternative way of phrasing differs in any meaningful way from "citation needed"

It's not Wikipedia, but if you are going to judge a whole culture by one news story you had better proove that the problem is widespread

You can certainly request a source if you disagree with the statement but it is not helpful to shout ‘citation needed’ as if this is an encyclopedia and everything you post needs references. You could say ‘I don’t think that is true, do you have references for that?’

It isn't, no. But that comment came as a reply to the sort of extraordinary statement that demands substantiation. Due to Wikipedia's cultural impact, "citation needed" has become a popular way to request exactly that.

It’s not a request. It’s a dismissive demand.

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

‘Citation needed’ teaches nothing but it is certainly very easy to type. It might be reasonable if there is a rule that citations are required like on Wikipedia, but here they are not.

The fact that some behaviors are popular doesn’t make them appropriate. Trolling is also quite popular and so are a lot of inappropriate behaviors.

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