Posted: 30 November 2022
Stats: 471 words / ~3 minutes
I am in the market for a new phone.
One of the phones I nearly purchased is the Coolpad Cool S.
Wait.
Sorry.
That link isn’t right.
This is the Coolpad Cool S.
You might have noticed a striking similarity between these devices.
Look. See?
Moving on.
I did not buy that rectangle phone, nor did I buy the phone that is not that phone.
Why am I not saying the name of the phone that is not the Coolpad Cool S. Well, for one, they are not exactly the same. It looks like one has a bigger battery than the other. The other reason I don’t want to explicitly type out the name of the company that makes the phone that is not the Coolpad Cool S is because they are trying to take things in the right direction. They really are. If it gets people thinking outside of the Android/iOS box, that cannot be a bad thing.
You might have also seen a pricing difference. I was uncertain, so I did the math:
$$\because \newline 350 - 160 = 190 \newline \therefore \newline 350 > 160$$
Why pay more, right?
Moving on, iterum.
We are not all so naïve. I’m sure that many of you have seen a phone exactly like you own, but with a different logo on it. I have. It is abundantly clear that many OEMs sell us devices that they did not concoct in their secret labs. This is where ODMs come into play.
I only just learned about this in the last few hours. Clicking around the web, as one does at work, I came across an old-ish post on Reddit which linked to an article on Nokiamob.net which states that
“in 2019, some 9% of Samsung phones were designed by ODM companies, 17% of Huawei devices, 49% of LG devices, and most importantly 54% of Nokia devices. In 2020, the percentage rose and now some 22% of Samsung devices, 18% of Huawei, 74% of Xiaomi, 89% of Lenovo, and 88% of Nokia phones are designed outside of the house. This means that the brand OEM is just tuning the details, but companies like Wingtech is doing all the rest.”
After that, I thought I would look up one of the phones I was considering. It was as easy as heading over to GSMArena and using their “Phone Finder” tool to look up devices with the same processor, a fingerprint scanner on the side, a 48MP camera, etc. and poof, there it was: a near identical match the phone I was looking into purchasing.
Well. It pays to look around and do your research. I do hope that the next phone from the company that does not sell the Coolpad Cool S is worth the price they ask for it.