Chinese Android

[Takeshi]

Okay, so I got this free phone from China Mobile for some reason. It's a lenovo ideaphone A278t.

This is my first ever smart phone, so lots of things are confusing me. I do not live in China.

Somehow I think that I don't have the actual Google Android market available on it, I have some MM商场 thing instead. My phone came with Weibo on it: cool; I found some QQ app on the MM商场: cool; but the big problem is that I don't have a facebook app. The facebook website looks really ugly/unusable (I literally can't click the box to login) on the browser, and when I tried to install the app from facebook, funny things happened.

What are the ways of making a Chinese Android phone usable? Is it possible to reinstall a western os on it? Or am I overreacting about the problems of the Chinese phone because I don't understand it? Can I install apps from outside of MM商场 ?

On a much more dire note than facebook, which I was never used to having on my phone in the first place, I need to figure out how to type French accents on this phone as I'll need to do that in my everyday life. Any ideas?

[liuzhou]

Location:Guangzhou

I do not live in China.

Perhaps you can trade the phone for a GPS system.

[Takeshi]

Obviously the location was put back when I did live in China and I never changed it because I didn't feel like. I said I didn't live in China mainly to confirm that I don't have firewall problems.

[mikelove]

There are lots of good third-party Android firmwares available - CyanogenMod probably supports the most devices; not all of them officially, but for almost any Chinese device you can think of, somebody has probably made an unofficial CyanogenMod port. Another one to look for is MIUI, which is technically a Chinese Android version too, but a better-designed one with the option to use English.

As for entering French accents, I believe most stock Android keyboards include easy accent mark support (tap-hold on a letter), and there are a ton of third-party keyboards available on Google Play once you've gotten the phone re-flashed.

[Takeshi]

Well, my android keyboard can't. Any good third party keyboard in the Chinese App Store that I can get quickly before I have a mess with flashing the phone?

[liuzhou]

I got this free phone

Nothing is free.

[Takeshi]

Is there any way to say download an app on my computer and put it on the phone? That should be possible right? Google Play won't let me download apps from my computer, which is stupid. I'm thinking reflashing is a bit too complicated a thing to do for now.

[skylee]

I think it is not hard to find the apk file by searching the name of the app and / or the company that produced it. If you find an apk file on the browser of your phone, you can download it to your phone directly. If you use a pc, just download it to your pc and then copy it to your phone.