New smartphones from smaller brands arrive everyday in China, while larger domestic brands such as Xiaomi, Meizu and Oppo release new phones every 6 months or so. With all the competition from domestic manufacturers you would think demand for the iPhone 5 would be minimal.

According to China Unicom this isn’t the case, and the mobile operator is claiming more than 100,000 iPhone 5′s were ordered during the first day of pre-sales. China Mobile announced an additional 5,000 pre-orders, despite not being an official Apple partner. What makes this pre-order more surprising is the fact the iPhone 5 has been available on the grey market since launch, but has failed to sell well due competition from domestic and international Android phone launches.

The iPhone 5 will go on sale on the 14th of December, just 2 days after the Oppo Find 5 launch event and around the same time the Meizu MX2 enters the market.

[ Source ]

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High-end specs usually come at a high-end price, but it looks like you can circumvent that problem by going with a less recognized brand. Case in point is the newly announced Xiaomi Phone 2, an Android Jelly Bean smartphone boasting a 4.3-inch 720p IPS display and Snapdragon S4 Pro quad core processor. The thing is that it sells for just $310 outright. That’s about half the price as a Galaxy S III or new iPhone.

Even though Xiaomi may not be a household name, the Xiaomi Phone 2 comes packed with some respectable names inside. As mentioned, the processor is courtesy of Qualcomm. And you know that IPS display? It’s a Sharp panel. You also get an impressive 2GB of RAM to go along with the fairly standard 16GB of storage capacity. The rear camera is a bright and wide 27mm F/2.0 8MP shooter, whereas the front-facing camera is a 28mm 2MP unit.

Android Jelly Bean has been overlaid with Xiaomi’s MIUI ROM, which adds such features as enhanced security, phone finder, a Chinese voice assistant (Siri’s Android-flavored Chinese cousin?), 5GB of cloud storage and interactive themes. It looks like one of these themes, based on the images provided, is “inspired” by Angry Birds.

The Xiaomi Phone 2 is set to launch with China Unicom and China Telecom in October for an outright price of about $310, though they’ll likely offer subsidized pricing on contract too. The interesting thing is that while this won’t be made officially available in North America, the Xiaomi Phone 2 does support WCDMA 850/1900/2100, so it should work with AT&T if you unlock it. If you’re willing to go through the import process and chance it with an unrecognized Chinese brand, this phone looks like it’s quite the beast for a pretty amazing price.

[Source]

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Yup, they’re blocking Cydia. The land of knockoffs and pirated software is making it more difficult for you to get access to the forbidden fruit of Cydia’s unauthorized applications. If you try to download the Cydia package via the China Unicom 3G network you’ll get errors like “Host Unreachable” or “Refreshing Data.”

Thankfully, there’s a very easy fix and it’s quite the obvious one: Use Wi-Fi. China Unicom might block your cellular access, but they can’t block your Interwebz. That’s up to the Chinese government to do, you see.

[via MicGadget]

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It’s almost ironic, really, when a product is manufactured in your backyard, but you can’t officially buy it before the rest of the world. At long last, the iPhone 4 will be sold in the world’s most populous country starting next month. That’s right. The iPhone is coming to China.

This has been a very long wait for people wanting to stick to legitimate channels, but China Unicom will indeed be launching the Apple iPhone 4 in September. The delay, it seems, is that getting a smartphone with Wi-Fi in China is troublesome. The iPhone seems to have overcome this obstacle.

China Unicom has the exclusive right to distribute the iPhone in China and it just so happens to have 315 million subscribers. That’s a lot of iCustomers who may want to get their hands on a real iDevice to work with their chosen iNetwork. The scary thing is that China Unicom is actually second to China Mobile in terms of number of customers.

Shortly after the iPhone 4 hits Chinese shelves, they’ll also be getting their hands on the Apple iPad. No firm dates have been announced, but it’s possible that the Chinese launch will coincide with the release of the rumored 7-inch iPad mini.

Report: China Unicom To Sell iPhone 4 Starting Next Month, iPad Soon [TechCrunch]

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