So, we have been hearing about the slowdown of the Chinese smartphone market. There have been reports about layoffs among startup smartphone manufacturers like OnePlus and now, Dakele announced yesterday that the company has gone bankrupt. The founder of the company, Ding Xiuhong made the announcement via a weibo post yesterday surprising many fans.

In case you remember, Dakele became famous among Chinese clone smartphone lovers as they had made an amazing iPhone 6 clone called as the Dakele 3. But unlike other clone devices, this particular smartphone came with powerful specs, attracting the likes of many. Further, the phone was priced at just $240 in China, which made it a pretty good deal.

Dakele has always focused on affordable smartphones, with marketing helping it find new customers. But with increased competition from both top and low-end players, it became hard for the company to survive. From the founder’s statement, it looks like the financial backing for the company recently dried out, which ultimately led to Dakele’s closure.

Small time smartphone manufacturers are always at risk of closure, especially if they are focused solely in the local market. Chinese smartphone industry is highly saturated at the moment, with even big players like Xiaomi struggling to reach its goals. Last year, Xiaomi aimed to sell more than 80 million smartphones, but ended up selling only about 70 million. This shows that the slowdown is affecting even large players, and in such an environment, it’s really hard for the small time players, whose only source of business is smartphones, to survive.

Apart from the company’s financial problems, there have been reports about many component suppliers filing bankruptcy in China. Component makers are the heart of any smartphone manufacturer, so if they fail to deliver, the company fails to launch its products. Remember how an earthquake in Taiwan which damaged a display supplier’s factory resulted in the scrapping of the upcoming Meizu Pro 5 Mini handset?

The demise of Dakele is a strong indicator of how small time Chinese smartphone makers are struggling in the country. After Dakele, there could be other small smartphone players as well who could file for bankruptcy or may even be taken over in 2016.

We will just have to wait and watch.

The post The Company Behind Dakele 3 “iPhone Clone” Has Gone Bankrupt, Shuts Down Operations appeared first on Gizmochina.

A few weeks back, we reported about a new iPhone 6 clone called as the Dakele 3. The device was one of the best iPhone clones that we have seen till date, bringing high end specs along with a beautiful design.

Many readers asked us when the phone was going for sale. Now, we finally have some more information about the device.

The Dakele 3 is currently available for sale from a number of resellers on TMall.com. There are two different versions of the device, and the one we spotted on TMall was the high end Dakele 3. There’s another variant of the phone, the Dakele 3X which comes with less powerful specs and a cheaper price tag. However, this particular device retails for 1699 Yuan which comes to around $272. Unfortunately, we could only find the Chinese mainland edition of the phone.

To recap on the specs, the Dakele 3 comes with a titanium chassis and aircraft grade aluminum body. You get a Full HD 1080p 5-inch display up front with Sapphire glass protection. Inside, there’s an MT6752 octa-core 64-bit processor which powers the device along with 3GB RAM and 16GB internal storage. For camera, you get a 13MP Sony IMX214 rear camera with an 8MP Sony IMX219 front shooter. It supports Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, TDD-LTE, TD-SCDMA/ GSM connectivity. Finally, for battery you get a 2500mAh one at the back.

The phone is priced at 1499 Yuan officially, but if you want to be ahead of others, you will have to shell out the above mentioned $270 to get hold of the device. Still, even with this pricing, it looks like a very good deal.

Anyways, we’ll keep you guys updated if we spot the phone on international resellers anytime soon. So, stay tuned!

Meanwhile you can check out the review of the device here.

Also, if you are looking for iPhone clones, check out the Blackview Ultra, which retails at a much cheaper price but with lower specs.

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Back in December, we saw Dakele 3, a powerful iPhone clone at a very affordable price tag. The device was probably the best iPhone 6 clone in the market. However, not everyone is willing to spend over $240 (1499 Yuan) for a device which is basically a clone. So, it looks like Dakele has another device for the masses, this time a slightly lower version of the powerful Dakele 3 called as the new Dakele 3X. The phone will be the China mobile edition of the Dakele 3 and will feature less powerful specs and a much more affordable price tag to lure in customers.

The new Dakele 3X will come with the same sapphire glass protection as its powerful brother. It will also have the same 5-inch display with 1280 x 720p resolution. According to official data, the device will have a less powerful processor as the Dakele 3. The processor inside this model is clocked at 1.3Ghz which could be Mediatek’s MT6582 or MT6290 quad-core processors. The phone will have 1GB RAM onboard along with 16GB eMMC memory. The rear 13MP camera will be of Sony make and the front camera will be of 5MP. The phone is said to support China Mobile 4G / 3G / 2G networks, and China Unicom 2G networks and will be Dual SIM compatible.

Thankfully, the company has kept the same metal design as the original Dakele 3. So, you have the same aerospace grade aluminum alloy on the phone with a solid titanium frame. This should make the overall phone quite sturdy especially with the sapphire glass on the front.

Like the elder brother, the Dakele 3X will feature the company’s own kele UI which comes with intelligent application sorting option. Further, the company adds that users can also install other third party ROMs like MIUI, Color OS and Lewa OS with ease.

Dakele has not yet announced an official pricing of the device, but expect it to be much cheaper than the 1499 ($240) price tag of the Dakele 3.

Stay tuned for more updates. Meanwhile, check out more images from the gallery below.

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As we were just writing in one of our previous reviews, the companies both around the world and China take a lot of inspiration from the Cupertino, California based company. Some of them take that just an inspiration and “borrow” this and that, but other companies, however, think that copying the whole thing is a way to go for their business strategy. We are talking about one of the iPhone 6 clones here – Dakele 3 (or Big Cola 3). We’ve heard that it is quite good, but is it true? Is another clone from the far east worth your attention? Let’s find out in our review of the Dakele 3.

Specs

As we can see from the specs sheet, the device is really hi-end offering. The powerful chip, 3 GB of Ram, a powerful combination of cameras, sapphire screen layer and full aluminium/titanium casing makes it really interesting device, which is definitely worth the attention.

[embedyt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa9rRNZkXuQ[/embedyt]

Unboxing

The box is pretty simple, yet elegant.

The package contents include the phone itself, SIM removal tool, charger with the Micro USB cable and some instruction manuals. Headphones, however, are not included. Well, we are not too sad about it since usually the stock headphones included in the box do not have the best sound quality anyway.

The charger does not seem like the copy of Apple’s charger. For us, it reminds a bit more of the HTC charger design. Anyway, who cares about charger’s design.

100-240V power adapter supports a wide voltage and has an output of  5V1.5A, which is a bit lower at the nowadays standard of  5V 2A, but still faster than the iPhone 6’s 5V 1A charging speed.

Here is the device itself. Does it look familiar?

Since the Dakele Big Cola 3 has a bigger screen of 5 inch, it makes the device bigger than the iPhone 6.

The device (bottom device) spots the same home button design. However, it only takes you home as there is no fingerprint scanner inside.

What is more, there are two more capacitive buttons next to the home button. They light up as soon as you use them.

After flipping the device upside down we can see the difference in colours. The Dakele 3 spots a bit darker colour design. It may have something to do with a different shell technology. The iPhone uses aluminium alloy whereas the Dakele 3 uses aluminium/magnesium alloy.

The camera along with the LED flash light seems to be placed at the same spot. Also, there is a Dakele logo on the back. What is more, there are two stripes at the top and bottom, which should help receiving a signal. They are thinner than the ones on the iPhone 6 and look better in our opinion. Moreover, the Dakele spots a back speaker in contrary to the iPhone, which has its speaker setup on the bottom of the device.

Since the Dakele 3 is a bit thicker, it does not have a protruding camera.

Here we can see two slots for either dual SIM or SIM/Micro SD (up to 128 GB) combo.

On another side of the device we can see a very similar placement of volume rockers. They have a good tactile response, but in general a bit of the lower quality than the iPhone. What is more, the Dakele 3 lacks volume with button as the iPhone has. Anyway, we do not really see the point of having it as we consider it being a heritage button of Apple devices.

On the bottom you can see a Micro USB charging port, mic and 3.5 mm headphone jack. The difference with the iPhone seems obvious when it comes to a speaker as the iPhone has it on the bottom of the device and Dakele 3 has it on the back.

There is nothing on the top side of each of the devices.

Overall, the device is really very similar to the iPhone 6 with a few minor differences.

User Interface

The Dakele 3 comes with a Coke Kele UI 15.01, which is still in beta stage, but it is functioning without issues.

The UI looks to be a bit of a mashup of the iOS and the MIUI as the icons and the whole design language has a lot of inspiration from later user interfaces.

Once we said that the UI is still in Beta, you can see that some of apps look very basic. Indeed, they are subject to upgrades in the future.

You can check the rest of the UI pictures in the gallery below.

Overall, the UI is pretty good looking and very smooth. We did not see any hiccups or lags doing daily tasks, which we really liked.

Performance

The Dakele 3 spots a Octa-core MediaTek MT6752 processor, which is clocked at 1.7 GHz (64-bit) along with the 3 GB of Ram. Also, the Mali-T760 GPU helps handling the graphics.

Here is the full list of specs of the Dakele 3.

We ran through some benchmarking tests to see how it performs. We can see that the device performs quite good and it is on par with the last year’s flagships. Considering the low price tag, it is a good achievement.

Besides benchmarks, we did not have any issues with the daily use, which included scrolling through menu, playing games, surfing the web, watching videos and youtube and taking pictures or recording videos.

Camera

Dakele 3 uses 13mp Sony IMX214 camera sensor with a  F / 2.0 aperture, 1.4um single pixel. Also, it supports 60FPS 1080P video recording. Let’s take a look at he camera UI first.

As you can see, the camera UI is pretty basic and similar to the one found on the iPhone 6. There are camera / video recording buttons, picture preview, camera switch, flash on/off, camera filters and some other basic functionality.

Actually, we are more interested in the image quality. How do you think it performed? Let’s see in the pictures below.

The daylight shots turned out to be pretty good. The 13 mp shooter provides plenty of detail, the colour reproduction is natural. Also, the sharpness and the white balance levels are very decent.

The night shots are also pretty good. They may not be as good as the iPhone 6, but still amazing for the 1499 Yuan spruce tag. The pictures have much more noise in comparison to the daylight shots, but we have seen much worse performance even from some flagship devices.

Overall, the camera on the Dakele 3 seems to be a great all-around performer. With the future software updates we can expect to have one of the better shooters around since the IMX214 and f / 2.0 aperture looks like flagship camera specs on paper.

Battery Life

The device has a 2500mAh battery inside. It is not really juicy according to today’s standards, but we should say that it performed really well. Thus, we could easily each the end of the day without the need to look for a electricity socket or power bank. Our test included some surfing the web, gaming, taking quite a lot of pictures, texting and calling.

Final Words

Well, you may think that the Dakele 3 is just another Chinese clone of the iPhone 6. Well, you may be right in some certain aspects. First, it was design to depict the beloved shape, look and feel of the Apple’s flagship. Second, it really looks and feels very similar, if not the same with the iPhone 6. On the other hand, there are some differences, which we really enjoyed. It begins with the a bigger 5 inch screen, which is covered by the sapphire glass. Honestly, we did not try to scratch it with knives or keys on purpose, but we didn’t save the device either. The screen is still not scratched and we can assure you that you would not need to bother about any crappy screen protectors, which usually distort the view of the screen or make it reflective. What is more, we loved the metal built of the Dakele 3. Also, the stripes on the back are much narrow than the iPhone 6, which makes it look elegant and sleek. Moreover, the dual SIM or SIM/Micro SD card combo is definitely an advantage of this device. Also, we loved the battery and the performance of the 13mp camera. Finally, the price tag is probably what attracts us most. With the cost of just 1499 Yuan in China, the Dakele 3 smartphone may be even better choice than the iPhone 6.

So there you have it, two similar, yet different devices. One is priced very high, another much lower. What would you choose? Let us know in the social poll or the comment section below.

The post Dakele 3 Review – The Best iPhone 6 Clone Yet? appeared first on Gizmochina.

Apple’s products have always been popular for its design. So, its no surprise that many Chinese manufacturers try to bring its beautiful design at an affordable price tag with mid-range specs.

Last month, we saw Dakele 3 and the device was up for sale starting December 9. Now, we look at some of the real life images of the device and its as good as expected. We already know that the specs are top notch, much similar to the iPhone 6. Now, we can see that the device looks and feels just like an iPhone 6!

The Dakele 3 features a 5-inch 1080p display on the front with sapphire glass protection. Yes, you heard it right! This iPhone look a like has got the best screen protection in the market. The 1080p resolution translates into a impressive pixel density of 441 ppi. Next, the device will sport a 64-bit Mt6752 octa-core processor clocked at 1.7Ghz, Mali-T760 GPU, 3GB RAM and 16GB eMMC memory.

In the camera department too, the phone brings top end configuration. It features a 13MP Sony IMX214 sensor at the back and an 8MP Sony IMX219 sensor up front. It supports Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, TDD-LTE, TD-SCDMA/ GSM connectivity. Finally, there is a decent 2500 mAh battery to power all these specs.

Apart from the high end tech specs, the phone is built using premium materials. The outer frame is made of aircraft grade aluminum and the internal frame is made out of titanium. The company claims that this makes sure the phone will never bend. At 7.25mm thickness, its a slightly fatter than the iPhone 6 model, however the company says that this increased thickness has an advantage —  the rear camera does not protrude!

Overall, the Dakele 3 is the best iPhone 6 clone till date. The specs and the features and the amazing 1499 price tag ($240) gives tough competition even to the real iPhone 6.

It would be interesting to see how Apple reacts to this high end iPhone clone. We’ll keep you updated in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, check out the beautiful phone in pictures down below.

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Still remember Dakele debuts Dakele3 with Sapphire Glass in China? Even Dakele bragged about the metal body, the home button, the slim body(7.25mmm thin, 148g) But we can’t help to think it turns out the model is really like apple’s iPhone6. But Dakele made something unique indeed, the camera lens is not raised like iPhone6. It is said it’s not easy to bend as the iPhone6.

[embedyt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa9rRNZkXuQ[/embedyt]

Apart from the minor hardware difference, Dakele 3 also got a sapphire 1080p display,3GB RAM, 16GB ROM, 8MP front/13MP rear camera. 2500mAh battery with 1.7GHZ MT6572 octa-core processor. The dual SIM card slot also be used as Micro SD card slot.

Dakele 3 developed it’s own Kele UI2.0 based on Android 4.4. And it can be rooted easily and install MIUI, Color OS, Lewa. It has a launcher like Nokia’s Zlaucher can display the apps according to the users’ daily usage at different moment.

Dakele priced Dakele 3 at RMB 1499($244) will be sold from 9th Dec at JD.com and Dakele.com. With price and hardware like this, we all know it will be sold out in a few minutes and bought by the resellers. People who really want to buy this device would need to pay more.

The post Dakele 3 released to be the Mystery MT6752 phone appeared first on Gizmochina.

GT Advanced Technologies, the sapphire glass manufacturer that had a partnership with Apple, filing for bankruptcy protection has been a hot topic among financial and tech news media. Once again, everyone has wondered how the future of the sapphire screen will be like.

Dakele CEO Ding Xiuhong thinks that Apple ended its relationship with GTAT due to the high costs of sapphire screens and that there is a big problem with the production rate. Not long after, another member of Dakele’s upper management confirmed that Dakele is trying out sapphire screens and that the results are good, implying that the Dakele 3 may use a sapphire screen.

More Chinese manufacturers are producing sapphire screens due to their hardness, scratch resistance, and elegant appearance. Devices that use such screens include the ELIFE W808, Huawei P7 Sapphire Edition, and Vivo X5L limited edition. Besides being the first devices to use sapphire screens, they also have other things in common. They are rare and more expensive than the regular versions. It goes back to what Ding Xiuhong said. Due to low production rate and high costs, not every Dakale 3 phone may sport a sapphire screen.

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While for now, MediaTek has already release their new octa-core processor through the MediaTek MT6592 octa-core processor, the one of Chinese smartphone vendor, Dakele is also announced that its upcoming smartphone will feature the MediaTek Octa-core processor as well.

According to CEO of Dakele Corp., Ding Xiuhong, he said that their company is ready to release a smartphone that powered by MediaTek MT6592 octa-core processor. We assume that the phone is dakele Phone 3 or also known as Dakele 3 smartphone.

The Dakele 3 smartphone will becoming the new flagship smartphone from their manufacturer and will be available in two different model. The first model will available with Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor and the other one wil be powered by MediaTek MT6592

Those phone will also available for two kind of mobile network such as TD version and WCDMA version that working with China Unicom and China Mobile provider.

The new Dakele Phone 3 is ready to compete with Xiaomi, ZTE Nubia Z5S in the Chinese market with a lower price tag.

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