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Comment by makmanalp | Hacker News Reader

I'm also between a cheap android and this. Anyone know of any few-year-old phones that'll run 4.1? $200-250 is around what I'm hoping to pay.

EDIT: Thanks for the suggestions guys, I'm a tad sketched out by the no-name chinese copies. They look good, but you have to wonder whether they go through decent QA processes and have to comply with the same safety laws as phones sold in the US.

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The "no-name Chinese copies" are in many cases really good. I have a Star B92m, which is roughly a Galaxy S III copy. It is slower, and slightly different port layout (which is annoying, as otherwise it is perfect dimensions to fit all cases etc.). Apart from that the only problem is that the GPS antenna is way too short, so if GPS matters to you you pretty much need to open the phone and mod it. Other than that it's an excellent phone.

The B92m is last years model, and I bought it for about $240 at the time. This year you can get quad core full hd (1920x1080) phones for the same price.

Basically it is down to reading reviews in advance to ensure the features you care about works as they should.

Safety is really not a concern when it comes to the phone itself - if you're worried, throw away the charger and pick up any USB charger you trust more.

Overall keep in mind that most of these "copies" are only copies or imitations of better known brands on the surface - if you open them up what you tend to see is boards that are closely following the same reference boards for either MTK (Taiwanese fab-less manufacturer; one of the worlds largest semiconductor companies), Rockchip or AllWinner (Cinese mainland) CPUs.

You can pick up devices from dozens of different manufacturers and find boards that are close to (or totally) identical in most of the ones using the same SOCs. In the case of AllWinner at least, chances are the devices are designed by close partners of AllWinner - I'm assuming the same is the case for MTK and Rockchip.

The upside of this is that it's not like some random little outfit have actually designed most of the internals of most of these phones - they're largely well tested designs from well established large engineering companies. Most of them are also very simple, relying on MTK, AllWinner or Rockchip SOCs that embed most of the functionality in a single package, so the boards often just break out ports and have minor supporting circuitry which is presumably a big reason why they're so popular with this market segment.

Wow, some of these phones are not just copies but pretty awesome on their own. Eg:

http://www.xiaomi.com/en/mi3

Do these come with stock android, and are they updatable? Or, can you install some other distro on it (eg. cyanogenmod)?

Earlier this year I've purchased Geeksphone Peak, which was just sitting on my desk doing nothing special... Few weeks ago a friend of mine sent me a tutorial on how to install Android on Peak, I did it and it works stable and great since then :) To be honest, in some situations it works better then my Galaxy S3 with stock ROM (probably my storage on s3 got slower over time, since I own it for more than 1 year)

http://blowakening.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/convierte-tu-gee...

(I used google translate, it translates great)

I bought a ZTE v970 for 130 euro on pandawill. It's fast, good size and runs the latest android. You'll find loads more Chinese phones if you research well :)

You should look at the HTC First. It is discontinued, but runs 4.1, has good specs, and is available on eBay for $150-$200.

T989 - Either an international variant, or a T-Mobile one that has been unlocked. 4.1 is readily available, and I think he used ones are ~200.

Or you could find a Nexus 4 used. I bet some of those are in your price range. Neither has LTE, though, not sure if that is a requirement for you.

Nexus 4 is only $249 for the 16G version Surely some are on craigslist or google may still be selling them directly Good phone to make custom Roms for or for building AOSP

$249 was Google's closeout price and inventory disappeared. A new Nexus 4 seems to go for $360+. eBay has used ones in various conditions and they seem to be $260+.

Maybe when the Nexus 5 ships, the resellers will lower their prices. Or just sell in countries with inflated retail prices.

I'm a big fan of FFOS, but get a cheap Android. Firefox isn't there yet (zero app selection, really), but it's well on the way.

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