Beidou Returns with Little Pepper M3, Snapdragon quad-core, 13MP, 5.5inch for $170

Beidou, the Chinese phone manufacturer behind the Little Pepper line of phones, which included the cheapest dual core and quad core phones (when they were released) has announced their latest addition to the controversial line of phones.

The Little Pepper M3 is currently on sale in China via Tmall.com for ¥1419.oo (233USD, 169EUR) which is not a bad price for a phone sporting the Snapdragon 400 chipset clocked at 1.2Ghz with the Adreno 305 GPU, 16GB on phone storage, 1GB RAM a 1920x1080 full HD 5.5inch screen and a 13MP back facing camera (also includes a front facing camera of unknown quality). For the curious, its battery size is 2400mAh.

The look of the phone immediately brings to mind the Xiaomi Mi2A and Mi2S, at first glance the design of the three phones are very similar, but the Little Pepper M3's screen is over an entire inch bigger with better resolution and its innards are, at least on paper, on par. The M3's camera is also a significant improvement over the cameras on the Mi2a phone.

However, Beidou had some issues with its previous phones. The original Little Pepper in particular, which was dubbed the "worlds cheapest dual core phone" when it was released, was the focus of numerous consumer complaints for poor performance.

Is Beidou's less than savory reputation worth risking for such a powerful phone at a budget price?