[Question] S5 Clone MTK 6592 Octacore - Impressions and questions.

[daftpunk9050]

Hi,

I am new to this community, so first of all hello to all of you I can see that some of you are pretty dedicated to the subject of chinese phones (clones or not).

I decided to write little something about a phone I bought 2-3 months ago. A kind of a normal user review.
The phone calls itself SM-G9006V. It's a Samsung S5 clone MTK 6592 the octacore version.
Android version 4.4.2 should be Kitkat, but not sure as some people pointed out that it is not.

At first look the phone looks almost identical to S5 as you can hear from many youtube videos. After few initial touches I confirmed what I suspected when I was buying this phone.

Negatives:

Functionality of fingerprint, heart sensor and I will go as far as saying that even GPS is fake.

1. Fingerprint is basically just a simulation how it should work. However anybody doing the scanning gesture will unlock the phone.

2. Heart sensor measurements are completely inconsistent. When I take 10 measurements in a row they are sometimes even 60 pulsations away from each other. So basically just a demo of the real thing.

3. GPS takes updates position like every 3 minutes and despite that it gets the postition wrong sometimes for around 100 meters.

4. The display has 4 brighter spots accross the screen which is only noticable when the screen is completely white or black. So not so bad.

5. Most annoying thing is that phones seems to be hacked and is installing apps without my consent. One of the apps is even flagged by Google as containing malicious code.

6. No Warranty - The shop I bought it from ceased to exist about a month after the purchase.

Positives:

1. Good performance - real Antutu benchmark v5.6 (I am saying that because phone came with a fake Antutu app which shows higher performance.) evaluates the performance score at 31054 where real S5 is rated at around 43000 points.

2. Good looks of the real thing

3. Good Value phone
I paid more for express delivery as I needed a phone but you can get it at around $100 - $120. Even with negatives listed above the phone does it's jobs and few missing gimmicks from the real thing are not an issue. The phone is more than fit for normal Smartphone use.

Overall still good Android phone I would say and it gives me a reason to tinker with it. Even with so many negatives listed above I believe that $500 saved justifies the purchase.

I had a look at the few tutorials on the forum but I could not find a proper rom to reflash the "original" compromised one.

My questions:

1. Did someone else have similiar issues with it?
2. Did someone else successfully reflashed different rom fixing the software issue I mentioned above?

I understand that this phone is not widely used and therefore any flashing is done on very thin ice. I wouldn't want to brick it, I still think the phone is not that bad.

[WuddaWaste]

WOW! Welcome to the forums @daftpunk9050 and thanks for the detailed review! Seriously. Great stuff, man.

Obligatorily, I have to tell you this first: MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR ROM NOW. I know it's a pain in the butt and you don't actually get anything out of it, but on the chance that something goes AWOL, this might be your only hope in restoring the phone back to full function.

In regards to your phone installing software on its own, this isn't terribly uncommon with sketchy Chinese Clones. It probably has some spyware/bloatware on there that's controlling the phone and doing it's own thang.

Don't panic. It's easy to remove. There are several threads on this forum which talk about just that. In short, what you're going to do is this:

1. Backup your phone. Seriously. Do it.
2. Root your phone
3. Install some antivirus to scan for the malware
4. Remove the malware with an appropriate tool (I use Titanium Backup)

Presuming you make it to this point, backup your phone again. It should now officially be clean.

[daftpunk9050]

Hi WuddaWaste,

Thanks for your reply. As I was writing this review I realized that even my google account is most likely compromised.

I factory reset the phone and changed my google account password.

Your suggestion sounds very good actually. I am very reluctant to flashing a new rom on it as I am afraid to brick it. It is quite uncommon phone and there is not much known about it from what I saw (being an octacore version). When I read these forums I can see that lot of people bricked them.

Gonna back up that ROM.

Thanks again,