Firefly V50S ready to crash the quad-core 1080 party


Another contender in the ever intensifying quad-core, 1080 Chinese phone battle is arriving very soon, but at 1499 Yuan ($243) for the basic 1GB model is there room in the market for such a ‘pricey’ phone!

It is now official! Chinese phone manufacturers are spoiling us with their low prices and high specifications. Sure, their time to market date and ‘pie in the sky’ promises do equal things out, but we still feel we are being spoilt!

Gizchina News of the week


If just a few months ago we had seen the Firefly V50S with 5-inch 1080 display, 1GB RAM, 16GB ROM, quad-core MT6589 CPU and Android 4.2.1 at 1499 Yuan ($243) we would have been amazed, but with the UMi X2 launching soon, the Neo N003 on the horizon and the iOcean X7 already on the market, the V50S is starting to look a little on the costly side.

There is also the issue that the Firefly has just an 8 mega-pixel rear camera, while the majority of current Chinese phones are sporting 13 mega-pixel sensors.

Is the Firefly V50S still a good buy, or is it to costly in comparison to others? Let us know in the comments below!

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15 Comments

  1. XrainX
    May 20, 2013

    Almost any 5″ 1080p or 720p chinese smartphone is good to buy if we can find them on international sales like Aliexpress for about $170 which is the correct price for a non-branded chinese smartphone in 2013. Everything over $200 is too much for most potential buyers.

    So if GizChina is announcing a smartphone which is $243 but on worldwide sales will be $300 then is not interesting.

    • Borko
      May 20, 2013

      +1 Exactly !

      • Lola
        May 20, 2013

        +
        🙂

  2. Looks a bit on the pricey side for the specs. Difference between 1280×720 and 1920×1080 screens isn’t really significant for screens below 5” in terms of quality. As a matter of fact, I find that with these cheaper SoCs the lower resolution ones are better because of the lower battery drain and better performance overall (way less pixels to fill).

    Also, the number of MP in camera sensors is usually misleading and sometimes not that important. It’s not rare to see 8MP cameras to take better shots than 13MP ones, not only due to sensor / lens quality but also better software.

    We don’t really have all the data needed to compare all those phones. Software / firmware support, build, signal and call quality are also important. Let’s not forget these are phones after all, I don’t think anyone wants a phone that performs poorly on the phone functions.

    Let’s see what 2013 brings us 😉

    • May 20, 2013

      vocé é brasileiro?

      • XrainX
        May 20, 2013

        Pele, Ronaldo, Copacababa, Rio

      • Não.

        What difference would it make anyway? I think we should keep it in English here.

  3. Freeje
    May 20, 2013

    They do have an upcoming phone with a 13MP cam and a 6.45 inch screen.

  4. May 20, 2013

    Design a new phone? No we will just rip samsungs design like a 100 others did give it the same Cpu and specs as all the other ripoffs I sure it will sell a lot 😛

    Haha no seriously i dont understand why they dont come up with something new

    • XrainX
      May 20, 2013

      Man, please! Do you think that any rectangle with round corners is a Samsung clone? Or an iPhone clone if the home button is like a square?

      What if we will say that every monitor is a Dell clone or every TV is a Sony clone just because the form factor is a rectangle?

      To not be a Samsung clone is very simple: don’t put the rectangle with round corners button as a home button.

      Let’s make the smartphones circles or rhombus just to not be a Samsung clone.

  5. FXiGoR
    May 20, 2013

    They have just released The beast : firefly s8 (octa core)

  6. Remco
    May 20, 2013

    Looks too much on the galaxy S4 if you ask me.

    • Lola
      May 21, 2013

      only on the outside though

  7. June 23, 2013

    I’ve checked the official specs on the phone at the manufacturer’s official site:
    http://www.91firefly.com/ber1.php

    Per the official specs, the Firefly V50 has the following features:
    GSM / EDGE GSM 850MHz / 1,800 MHz/900MHz/1, 900MHz, WCDMA 850MHz / 1,900 MHz / 2,100 MHz
    HSPA + 42Mbps

    The price is listed as 1499 Chinese Yuan, which as of the date of this post, making it just under $250 USD. Even allowing for mark-up by third party vendors (which is inevitable when trying to acquire these phones here in the US), I can still find sellers offering it at a base price of under $260 (shipping extra).

    A phone of comparable specs made by one of the “big” makers with presence here (i.e., Samsung, Motorola, et al) would easily be double this price. USED Galaxy Notes are selling for around $300 USD!

    Those of you outside of the US markets may be fortunate enough to have so much excellent selection that you can turn your noses up at this one. However, being here, we don’t have quite so many options.