3 Months After CES Teaser, Vizio Phone Finally Goes on Sale in China

The Vizio VP700 (pictured) is now on sale in China – with dual SIM slots!

A few days into the new year, American TV maker Vizio revealed its first ever venture outside of the North American market with a made-for-China Android-powered smartphone. That was a pretty long time ago. But this week the phone, which some might have been thinking was vaporware, finally appeared in China and is now on sale.

Two models have appeared, both sporting pretty big screens and fairly similar bodies. The pricier Vizio VP800 has a five-inch HD screen that crams in, says PCpop, a resolution of 1920×1280 to give pixel density of 443ppi. The new Samsung Galaxy S4 can lay claim to 441ppi. The Vizio VP800 also offers 32G of storage. But the product’s official online sales page on Tmall says that it packs only a dual-core 1.5GHz chip, short of the quad-core you might expect in a flagship, big-screen device. It’s selling for RMB 2,999 (US$480).

The Vizio VP700 (pictured above) is cheaper at RMB 1,999 ($320) and has a 4.7-inch non-retina-searing screen atop a 1.2GHz dual-core chip. It uniquely has dual SIM card slots, which most foreign brands don’t offer despite it being a popular choice in many Asian nations. So that’s one thing in its favor. But, at that price, it’s smack up against the new Xiaomi Mi2S, which has a slightly smaller screen (4.3-inch), but packs a lot more punch – and a nicer Android skin.

Both Vizio’s China-only models have their Android 4.1 set-up modified with a fairly light and non-invasive custom UI, and features tweaks like Baidu being set as the default search engine.

There are an estimated 160 million active Android users in China right now, with that number likely to double by the end of the year.

(Source: PCpop – article in Chinese)