I’m a Filipino expat here in Indonesia and I can tell you that the tech market here is actually deluded with China phones. It’s quite amazing to see that the Lenovo A60 is being sold for more than 5k there in the Philippines whereas here, we often can get rather cheap China phones of the same specs and workmanship as well as performance for about 600,000 to 800,000 Rupiahs (that’s about 3-3.5k in pesos). Also, I just would like to point out to some of your readers regarding the use of the phone in certain parts of the globe, like the Middle East of even East Asia. They need to find out first the telecom frequencies which these countries operate on. It has nothing to do on whether you can use a Smart or a Globe SIM on it then you can also put almost any other SIM out there. It just doesn’t work that way. This is the reason why you have to check the operating frequencies of both the unit and the region you are going to use it on. Hope this helps. By the way, we have quite a few Chinese-made Galaxy Note-type models here anyone might be interested in.

Though let me suggest a better option for you, if you’re willing to wait: import phones from China. That’s also where Lenovo phones come from. They practically have other brands with cheaper yet better specs. Take the NEO NO2-M for example: http://www.fastcardtech.com/goods.php?u=49407&id=7722. It costs 174$+15$ shipping so you’ll get your own dual core 4.5″ phone for less than 9k! Buying it at fastcardtech (it’s SAFE) would take a month to ship. I’m actually planning on buying one this December or January, and of course I’ll write a blog about it. Keep tuned! :)

If you’re thinking of buying one, please do get the A60+ as it is the upgraded version 350mhz more speed! The A60′s transition from portrait to landscape is okay, so long that you aren’t running too many programs. Otherwise, it will be slow as hell. That’s why I turned that feature off to save me more RAM. Like I said, 256mb RAM isn’t really big >.<