I noticed the popular phones posted on OzBargain are Samsung, Apple and Nothing phone. Why is Xiaomi and Oppo and Vivo rarely posted as a deal? Xiaomi now ranks number 2 in sales globally ahead of Apple.
Is this phone a good deal?
How about this flagship model from Oppo? Surely it will be a bargain when they start clearing them out.
How about any other China phones? If not, what is holding them back on OzBargain? Global sales figures say otherwise.
They come up often enough.
Global sales say very little about Australian sales. Both brands have relatively small footprints in the Australian market.
But yeah, don't let that stop you buying. Most of my family have Oppo phones.
It's not a conspiracy. OzBargain runs on user-generated content and the big brand names have large followings and regular, large discounts.
As long as you dyor to confirm compatibility in Australia I think it’s fine when looking at Chinese brand phones. Being jb Hi-Fi stock im sure they are fine for these ones you linked.
spyware perhaps?
Do JB Hi-Fi stock phones with spyware?
Don't know, but it is possible.
Almost certainly, depending on your definition of spyware
So would Samsung have less spyware than the Chinese brands?
"Do JB Hi-Fi stock phones with spyware?"
You mean a "ware" owned by a private corporation that can access all your personal data, your daily movements, purchases, your complete electronic communication? Yes, JB HiFi stocks such phones.
I'm sure they're very interested in spying on a budget conscious phone buyer. Oh what great secrets they may hold.
its not about secrets, its about monetisation of datapoints. ad modeling of the userbase is the real money maker.
In that case Google would be the biggest offender.
@JIMB0: This might come as a surprise to many people - but the primary reason Google created and pushed Android was to gain both the data required to create targeted ads, and the platform required to deliver targeted ads on mobile devices.
That horse,bolted, lived a full life, and died 2 generations ago. There is zero difference between China or "School Murder Central" owning our arse.America is the king on monetising exploitation.We aint no ally, we are a convenient regional fluffer.
No real deals on the oppo x8 yet, surely will be posted when they are.
If you want to force one, you can get the x8 for 16xx via in hifi business. I promise one vote at least.
Xiaomi now ranks number 2 in sales globally ahead of Apple.
well if you sell your product into a market like china, india and indonesia, you will have a significantly larger market.
just like BYD largest car manufacturer by volume, yet most australians would have never heard of the brand 5 years ago.
just like BYD largest car manufacturer by volume,
Woah, so it's overtaken Toyota?
just like BYD largest car manufacturer by volume
4 million is pretty impressive, but they're still behind Toyota, VW Group, Hyundai and I think GM.
A fair few Poco, Redmi, Xiaomi users got burned with the recent cell coverage shut offs
Because unlike Lenovo/Motorola, Xiaomi are fly by nighters who don't have a proper local operation that tests and certifies phones for use with Australian carriers
So when the Minister of Communications did the Thanos snap 3 months ago, tens of thousands of Xiaomi owners lost network access and discovered their phones were e-waste
So to use your point, if Xiaomi really are #2 globally in sales, why can't they setup a permanent office in Australia with a few engineers to test and certify their phones properly?
Good points. How about Oppo? I have an Oppo phone I bought in 2020 and still use it. It works well and cost $600.
My Oppo from 2020 was under $400, thanks to an OzBargain deal - maybe you should have monitored OzBargain for deals instead of assuming there are none?
I just retired it thanks to moto 50 neo deals.
I got the Oppo Reno 5g for $600 on ozbargain in $220. The RRP was $1440.
@BluebirdV: So you have been buying OzBargain deals for the item you asked "why are there no deals?"
Maybe be you should post some deals, not just a couple of links to jb hifi?
@BluebirdV: It seems like there aren't any good deals on these phones at the moment.
I don't think the lack of deals is some conspiracy or racism.
Afterall, Motorola is owned by Lenovo and has had many deals in the last 2 months.
There's not much brand awareness of Xiaomi here.
"tens of thousands of Xiaomi owners lost network access and discovered their phones were e-waste"
Plus existing Xiaomi owners who lost functionality of their phones are very unlikely to buy another Xiaomi phone.
Xiaomi now ranks number 2 in sales globally ahead of Apple
Whoopee doo. You need to look at price point vs desired features in a particular market (in this case you are looking at the Australian market). Many of the Chinese phones sell very well in cheap and cheerful markets with big populations where Apple's market share would be low due to price/premium features and lack of affordability for those markets.
On a sort of related point, Chinese garlic probably ranks number 1 in sales globally (at least in quantity). But do we post deals here?
Chinese garlic probably ranks number 1 in sales globally (at least in quantity). But do we post deals here?
If the price was right, sure. Though I would expect negs and comments about Chinese food safety.
If the price was right, sure
Have you seen how cheap Chinese garlic is? If it was any cheaper, it'd be free! :)
Post this free garlic!!! :-)
You need to look at price point vs desired features in a particular market
This reminds me of my early rep posts with Chinese stores.
"Dear it is popular in Poland". They literally have no idea about our particular market and assume every other country is the same.
because of the 3G shutdown
it was popular one of my best phone is mi max 3
Are you actually in Australia? It's hard to believe that you are and asking that question.
Just curious to hear the reasons. I already had a bit of an idea.
I love how you didn't actually answer the question about you being in Australia
I'm hoping they release the Xiaomi SU7 Max. Looks great.
Same! Looks like a James Bond car
Where did you get the data to claim 'Xiaomi now ranks number 2 in sales globally ahead of Apple'?
First 4 links when googling 'global phone market share' shows Xiaomi is 3rd, clearly below Apple and Samsung.
3rd is still a great result, but is second loser to 1st place- Apple.
Not sure if this is a conspiracy theory or not, but I think the US doesn't really want Xiaomi and Huawei or other hugely advanced Chinese competitors competing with iPhone or Google pixel phones. This trend might have hit the Australian market as well.
It's pretty funny, my 6-year-old Huawei phone still feels more advanced than my girlfriend's cutting-edge 1-year-old Google phone. Battery is better, feels and looks much more luxurious, and has much higher build quality.
Come to think of it, my iPhones always had horrible battery life after a few years, but this 6-year-old Huawei phone hasn't had any noticeable battery degradation.
What model? Does it have security updates?
Unfortunately no more security updates, so I don't use it as a phone anymore, just as a camera/music device.
Interesting. I had a Huawei back in the day, it was pretty good for the first year then rapidly started to struggle to the point it was unusable at the 2 year mark. Maybe I should try one again in the future.
Xiaomi were one of the first to drop functions like the headphone jack and memory card slot in a bid to mirror Apple's reprogression.
Never really saw them as viable options that defeat the advantages of Android when competitors did. As I never tried them and with how mature all brands are now there's zero reason to change until we see a new paradigm.
What's the big deal about losing the headphone jack when you can buy a bluetooth dongle that gives you a wireless headphone jack, maybe one with an even a better DAC/AMP that suits the unique characteristics of your wired headphones more than whatever happens to be built into your phone.
What's the big deal about losing the headphone jack
Because the only reason they dropped the headphone jack in the first place was to force more people to either a) buy their wireless earbuds and/or b) buy the dongle
all of the reasons above, and the failure rate on them is huge. buy cheap buy twice…
Once upon the time OzBargain is full of Xiaomi products, One of my kids' first phone was a Redmi Note 3 from one of the deals posted here, in early 2016. Many people bought Xiaomi phones from one of those Chinese ecommerce stores (Gearbest, Banggood, etc) or AliExpress because they are so much cheaper. Redmi 13 Pro 12GB/256GB for example are around A$400 there instead of $699 charged by JB Hi-Fi.
Then there was trade wars, and the Xiaomi posts dwindles. Then people got burnt by the 3G shutdown as their latest 5G phone got blocked by the telco. So I suspect that there's just that distrust right now with Xiaomi phones, especially those private imports.
They used to be featured here quite often, around 10 years ago. But that was back when they offered premium features for half the price, features that really made a difference.
Now I think the most people are happy with their phones. Main reason I upgrade now is for security and battery, not features so much.
I got one a few years back, when they were considered the best bang for your buck.
Worked fine, but I absolutely hated their flavour of Android.
Next time around I found the Motorola seemed to be the sweet spot price/performance-wise for me. And they come with a pretty vanilla android which was a plus - so no interest in going back to Xiaomi.
At the lower to mid end of the market, plenty of Motorola deals (and fans) here.
I've been a big Xiaomi fan in the past, but their value proposition is nowhere near as good as it used to be (especially for locally bought models) and their major competition now trounces them in terms of software support (Samsung, Google and Apple all offer 5+ years).
Plenty of Xiaomi users (me included) will also have been stung by the botched 3G shutdown/E000 compliance bricking their otherwise perfectly functioning devices and that's going to leave a bad taste for a long time.
Plus there's a much wider variety of accessories for the big brands.
I'm not willing to take the risk importing a ~$500 handset taking on the risk of a bricked device when I can buy a similarly specced one locally which comes with significantly longer software support, is guaranteed to work on Australian networks and is only marginally more.
It was a different story back when it was a <$300 risk and anything of similar performance locally was twice the price.
I wouldnt use a xiaomi even if it was free.
My Poco F3 is still going great. Updated to android 15, security update once a week - courtesy LineageOS. But it won't work with the Amaysim sim I am stuck with for a few months. That's in the $1 craphone Amaysim sold me. Still works with Telstra and Vodafone.
LineageOS
Ah good old XDA, I used to even flash random stuff from SE-NSE days, remember the ELFs hehe
I have a Redmi Note 4 Snapdragon somewhere, upgraded to Android 14 or so, used to be my router for a while after I got a S10. I always preferred that PixelOS or something like that.
I exclusively purchased their phones for about 10 years. But now a xiaomi flagship is well over 1k on release. I also just don't care anymore like I used to. A $3-400 Motorola does me just fine these days.The missus has a poco x5 5g but we nearly lost it in the 3g shutdown.
I still use their fitness trackers. They still make great good value an high quality tech.
how did your missus "nearly" lose the poco x5 5g in the 3g shutdown? Did the phone brick momentarily, and then became operational again?
Im still using poco x5 but if you have been using xiaomi, you would know that their quality has been declining for several years. My poco x3 just decided not to boot up after a year. Hyper OS is even worse than then old miui. The poco hardware does not translate to smooth experience.
Most importantly not worth taking a gamble with the network compability.
I much prefer Samsung phones but Chinese brand phones are the only ones left with IR-blasters.
Wish Samsung would bring back the IR-blaster, it was incredibly handy.
Because I am not sure if Xiaomi phones even have google play store… if no either you need to get APK, or use the web version for all the popular western apps.
Xiaomi 100% have google play store.
Huawei's the brand you're thinking of where users need to use web versions of western apps (without doing any microG workarounds etc.)
I wouldn't buy an oppo phone after my experience with oppo. color os is too savage on apps running in the background & kills apps that I require to run all the time.
I switched off the optimization of the apps that I want running all the time.
Samsung flagships are cheaper with deals, no point in getting Xiamoi. We used to have Xiaomi before moving here but got Samsung after that.
Another recent reason : https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/873934