Xiaomi – China’s Android Phone With Great Hardware And Design. How great is it when the 2 most powerful phone on earth, Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy S2 blends together? Here comes the Chinese made, Xiaomi Phone which is authentic, powerful and beautifully design, not just another Chinese cheap skate clone.

The Xiaomi features the MIUI OS which is a modified version of Android sports a iOS-liked UI and the MIUI OS is actually a very famous custom ROM already available on the Android.

The hardware is strong and even more powerful than the Samsung Galaxy S2. It sports a 1.5GHz dual-core chip and powered by a powerful Adreno 220 graphic processor which works well with the phone’s 1GB RAM and 4GB ROM.

Xiaomi Phones has a great battery capicity which has an enormous 1930mAh cell instead of the normal 1400mAh (iPhone) or 1500mAh (Samsung Galaxy). Standard features on the phone are the GPS, 8 megapixel camera with f2.4 lens, 3 touch sensitive button below the screen, huge 4-inch 480 x 854 capacitive touch screen LCD. The weight is heavier than the iPhone 4 for a bit. According to the launch keynote, accessories like case, spare batteries will be available.

Best part of all the price is at only RMB1999 (933MYR / 313USD) which is just half the price of the current top smartphone. How awesome is that? It will be available for pre-order on August 29th (in China of course) and will be release somewhere around October.

Check out the official site for more about the Xiaomi Android Phone, of course it’s in Chinese and Google Translate will help.

The blocked Twitter, Facebook and other social networking site, then the Chinese themselves release clones of these site. One of which is Renren (formerlly Xiaonei) which is a Facebook-clone using the old Facebook theme.

The latest finding is Komoo, a Twitter-clone. It just look exactly the same as the Twitter interface that was two years back when it first launched.

Since I got nothing to do and I was so free, I went to sign up for an account at there, but for sure that I wouldn’t use it because Twitter is still the best for me.

You can follow me at Twitter @nicholaschan.

Here’s another Chinese gadget that my dad bought from Shenzhen recently. This is actually a clip-able pinhole video camera which what the Chinese called it the MP9 or Chewing Gum. According to the seller, this is use for people to record talking during meetings or lectures. However, to me, it’s more like a spy cam.

The camera is hidden in the tiny little whole at the back. With a push of a button, it will start recording the video and save in AVI format. It’s not easy to use though, pretty hard to understand the LED which either mean Pause, Standy or Recording. But after going through the manual for several times, I know how it works already.

I’ll say this is just a toy, it’s not something useful. The bad part of this thing is bad sound recording quality and the AVI recorded video cannot be edited in Windows Movie Maker. It’s selling like around 150RMB with 2GB built in memory and expandable with microSD card.

My dad went to Shenzhen lately and bought home some Chinese made gadget. One of which he bought is this MP5 portable media player. It’s brandless or in fact the brand and model name is MP5. Very funny.

It looks pretty with a large 2.7 screen but not a touch screen., the screen is quite plastic which I feel that it will be cracked easily. Though the colour on the screen is pretty and the interface too. The buttons are all located on the side and is not difficult to navigate around the menu.

It has a 2GB memory which plays mp3, wma, avi, jpg, txt files for eBook and even Real Media format files (rmvb). There’s also FM radio and a voice recorder feature. It’s a cheap media player which cost around US$30 but there’s some cons about this are, cheap built quality, slow interface and sound quality is not as nice as the iPod.

I think many of you guys have already knew about the iPhone 3G in Malaysia. The official telco for iPhone is Maxis. Maxis is promoting the iPhone 3G everywhere right now, you can see ads in the TV, radio, newspaper, billboards and roadshows.

It’s good to have iPhone officially launched in Malaysia so that we can no worry of warranty and service by Apple if we got a faulty iPhone. However, buying the iPhone 3G with the plan provided by Maxis is very expensive.

That’s an iPod touch, not an iPhone. I have sucky China iPhone at home. =)

The plan is quite expensive if comparing to iPhone plan in UK and United States. The cheapest iPhone in the plan is priced at FOC for 8GB and RM260 for 16GB but you need to have a monthly commitment fee of up to RM374 for 24 months contract.

Check the iPhone 3G plan here.

After going through all the plans, I think I would rather buy an unlock iPhone 3G for around RM2000 without contract for a 8GB unit. My monthly phone bill is always below RM100 and I have no way to pay a monthly commitment of RM100. Make phone calls or not, you still have to pay RM100 for every month for the 12/24 months contract.

If you would want to buy a iPhone 3G now, I suggest you to wait as the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference that will happening in June will probably announces a next generation iPhone 3G with video camera and perhaps a better camera. Let’s hope for a improved feature next gen iPhone. =)

My dad went to China recently and he did not get scam from the Chinese phone dealer. He knew it’s fake and he bought back for me to try out the phone to see whether is it a good fake phone or not. After playing for 30 minutes, I got fed up and kept it back into the box and not to touch it any more. It sucks.

The phone is cheap, both the built quality and the price. It’s not very cheap but is cheaper than the real iPhone for like more than 50% (this is definitely). Dad bought it for 600RMB in Shenzhen.The phone size look the same, the box look the same, but when hands on, it’s heavier and the screen is very plastiky feeling. Another obvious difference is the smaller screen.

The fake iPhone got no 3.5mm headphone jack, it’s removed from the cover. I thought Chinese phone has a good camera but it’s just VGA quality and very sucky.

One thing very cool is that the phone come with an extra rechargable battery and the capacity is 5800mAh and it’s a big number. You can’t change iPhone battery in the real one but in this you can. Besides that, you can load 2 SIM card into a phone, so you can have two line operating at the same time. This is an common Chinese phone’s feature.

What I hate the most is the crappy and sucky software of this Chinese iPhone. It’s just a clone of real iPhone OS but their cloning work is bad, the font is ugly and the icon too is ugly.

It’s not easy to navigate around the phone, it lags and the SMS feature sucks the most. There’s a very very tiny qwerty which most probably needs a stylus but it doesn’t provide a stylus. The GPRS Internet setting is hard to configure too.

They loaded a lot of games into it but none of them works. It’s just cosmetic icons in the phone.

Overall, this thing is a bad copy and I hate it a lot. Now I hate copy, it’s better to buy a typical Chinese TV/Dual Sim/Loud Speaker phone more than a clone iPhone which doesn’t really work. What a bullsh*t. Sorry for the rudeness as I just hate it.