Redmi / Hongmi phones

[al1978]

Hi there,

 

Does anyone know if these phones work in the UK with a UK sim card? Thinking of buying one...

[ZhangKaiRong]

There should be no problem with SIM free models. Most mobiles you can buy in China are SIM free, at least none of my friends had problems using their mobiles after going back home.

[al1978]

Cool, that's helpful. Thank you.

[Simon_CH]

I would be very wary about buying a Chinese phone with the intention of using it abroad. Consider that they use a customized Android that blocks the normal app stores and many applications. You'd have to install a custom ROM which is often unavailable specificially for your model to use normal things like Google maps or any Google services for that matter. 

 

Even a Samsung smartphone I bought in China was next to unusable abroad, it wouldn't even connect to the 3g services in Europe with a foreign SIM installed. 

If you want to buy a Chinese brand buy it abroad with different operating system installed. 

[ZhangKaiRong]

Samsung models and Xiaomi models are not the same. I don't know specifically how Hongmi differs from the Xiaomi Mi2, however the latter one works perfectly abroad with the stock Android/MIU interface, you can use Google Play, Google Maps, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube apps. Samsung phones bought in China are crappy in terms of usage, I agree, ZTE and Lenovo also have problems, but the Huawei and Xiaomi phones I have seen before worked perfectly abroad.