ECOO E04 PLUS delayed by the factory + best phone choice

[Andromoid]

It took me a while to sit there and sift through all the Chinese phones, all of them MTK based, so see which one would fit my bill. I wanted something large and fast. Back and forth between geekbuying and youtube I went, looking for Antutu scores. I know that Antutu isn't everything, but when some phones score over 40k it correlates to pretty good specs every time. 1.7GHz octacore 64 bit + faster more recent decent GPU = > 40k Antutu.

I was concerned about screen quality, coming from a Galaxy S2, which screen is *awesome* IMO. It's AMOLED, but I'm finding it's mostly IPS and that other LCD type forget what it's called. LTPS something like that. From what I've gathered, the IPS ones are good.

Size wise, it was between 5 inch and 5.5 inch. So, don't laugh, I made a fake phone from lego to see if I could carry it around in my pocket. It seems that the 5.5 inch ones are doable for me, but it can be a bit tight.
Screen resolution I though that 720p should be more than enough, but some come with a 1080p. Hard to gauge what's better. There are pros and cons. Most talk on the internet is more about confirmation bias, where people promote whatever they have so that they feel good about the choice they made.

Memory wise, I thought that 2GB ought to be more than plenty, as I never thought that having 1GB was any problem, but then I'm seeing these 3GB phones now. Ok, future proofing I guess. Perhaps for some more intensive 3D games with more textures, in full HD, hooked up to a big tv through an MHL cable, I figure, ok, let's make that a requirement.

Price was important too. The list becomes rather short at this point.

The ones particularly attractive are the ECOO E04 PLUS, Jiayu S3, iOcean Rock, Elephone P7000.
The ECOO has the best price. It's the least compact of the lot according to the specs, but it has a finger print reader which reportedly is as good as the Samsung's. Screen seems decent from the reviews.

So I placed an order for the ECOO on Geekbuying. It was a pre-sale, supposedly becoming available at the end of March. After a few days I received an email however:
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Dear Customer
Thanks for your supporting ,this is customer service of geekbuying


About the item ECOO E04 PLUS is a pre-sale ,maybe you also see we have updated the arrived time (3-29 th) .
we have consulted with the factories many times ,but they told us they will delay the available time because they decide to improve the machine.
Hence,the available time has been changed .hope you can understand that ,And we also sorry to inform you that .


Would you give some more days ?we promise we will ship it for you once we got it from the factory
Contrarily ,we can remove the item and ship the rest available for you if you bought many items .


How do you think?wait for your prompt reply
Greetings
Carrie
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Well, what I think is that although I understand that factories can be overwhelmed with an overflow of orders, having to supply the entire planet.
But I also think that they're trying to pool more customers together to make a run more cost effective.
What I don't like is their "reason", "because they decide to improve the machine"... What's that all about? "Improve" it? Why? What's wrong with it?
What I didn't say yet is that the ECOO E04 is currently on the market as the non-PLUS version which is identical, except it has just 2GB of memory. The only thing that is supposed to be different is the memory upgrade. I did see a review that claimed that the GPS wasn't working indoors because it wasn't sensitive enough. Perhaps they're trying to address that. What else would they be "improving"? It's not like they'd be throwing in a bonus or anything like that. There wasn't anything wrong with the specs. And if the specs change, they ought to just put out another model. So I think it's about fixing bugs. Perhaps they're including Android 5 as opposed to the customer having to wait for the upgrade (from 4.4.4).

I just checked the email again. I thought that they moved the date out a whole month to the end of April. I misread. It's the end of March still. I thought it was already set for the end of this month (March). So, nothing changed then. I'm writing all this for nothing it seems. I was going to see if other people would like to help home in on the ultimate sweet spot for both 5.5 inch phones and 5.0 inch phones. I think the specs are becoming awesome! It's closer and closer to having a true PC in your pocket. You could hook up a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, use MHL to connect it to a monitor, and poof, you have a full blown desktop PC it seems.

I'm still weary of the GPS issues on the ECOO, if that is an issue anyway. Does anyone know?
What phone would you buy that are within these specs? Would you spend 30 to 50 dollars more for the other phones I've mentioned? Is build quality a concern perhaps? Slightly more tightly built?

In the 5.0 screen size, I'm not yet up to speed, but Lenovo has a pretty snappy one. Antutu 47k from what I remember seeing. But then it becomes about 5.0 vs 5.5, which is better? 5.5 ok? Too large to handle it with one hand? 5.0 disappointing small once you get hooked on 5.5? It's 10% larger diagonally. It becomes a bit wider, but quite a bit taller. Perhaps the idea that it becomes only a little bit wider, might help decide to go with 5.0 instead.
The order can be cancelled, so I'm on the fence now of switching to something else... anyone else in a similar predicament?

~Andro

[Andromoid]

Delayed again to mid April

End of March isn't happening apparently. The new "lead time" has suddenly become April 15th...

Question is, should I continue to wait, or cancel or change to a different phone. I can lose the fingerprint thing. I don't want to lose the screen and memory and the 40+K Antutu score. Anyone?

[Andromoid]

I'm starting to have reservations about the whole "full HD" 1080 resolution for phones. Even on a 5.5" screen I am not convinced it's worth the extra pixels if you can't see them. 720 seems to look just about as sharp as it gets. The only advantage I see is that text can be positioned more precisely, so when small text is being forced on sub-pixel positions, the 720 screen might not look as good. But 720 has the advantage of cost savings, better FPS for 3D action, less memory consumption, and lower power consumption

[Andromoid]

FYI. I now have both the ECOO E04 PLUS and an MLAiS M52. Screen resolution, the difference between 720 and 1080 is not what I expected. I expected 1080 to be smoother. Or rather, 720 to be not as smooth. They're both practically the same, effectively. Probably because of the sub-pixel rendering / anti-aliasing / miracasting whatever. 720 ends up being faster because there are less pixels to handle. Some people think that somehow 1080 is better, or looks better. They're wrong. There are situations where 1080 is better, but it's not with text, or with common objects and features. It's only with very very narrow objects, like the seconds-hand on the clock icon. End of day, no it is not worth spending more money on an 1080 display. It might actually be a better choice to pick a 720 screen. The claims that go around that people find 1080 to be clearer, sharper: nonsense. I'm looking at it side by side. Even using a magnifying glass, the 1080 does not look better than 720. I expected there to be a difference with my nose on the screen, but there just about is absolutely none! No it's not my eye sight. Only when I take photographs of the screens using my high quality camera using macro lens, there are slight differences, but it's so stupid small, you'd never believe it. I can't stress this strongly enough: even on a 5.5 inch display, 1080 is not better than 720 to a degree worth quibbling about. You'd only have it for bragging rights, or confirmation bias if want to feel good about a 1080 you might just have bought.

Antutu scores a little bit higher on the M52, but not by much. It's between the 41 and 43k, depending on its mood. The E04 does between 40 and 41k.

The display on the E04 does look more natural, color wise. The M52 looks too blue. Camera white balance is often off on the M52. The E04 seems tad lighter. It's narrower, but an iensy tiensy bit taller.

The M52 has a tiny bit better touch screen. The E04 is less sensitive which can be annoying. The M52 comes with a protector preinstalled, which is high quality and installed perfectly. The E04 comes with a DIY protection which is awful. It is very difficult to get on straight and to get the bubbles out. It scratches being just in your jeans pockets. It looks awful around the edges of the protector, because it doesn't go on nicely. Definitely will need a better, less soft, harder, protector.

They're both awesome phones. The M52 can be had for like $140 USD and the E04 PLUS for around $190 USD. Those are very good deals for so much phone. If I had to buy two phones again, I might well go with two M52. But the E04 is very nice too, but it costs $50 more. The 3GB vs 2GB is also more for bragging rights, also not worth it at the moment, imo.

ps. QHD on Samsung S6 (is it?) seems just flat out stupid and senseless. 100% nonsense.