Quality: Established phones and tablets manufacturers often makes it their culture to use the choicest hardware and software in their device manufacturing - and almost always offers very agreeable and user-friendly designs. Of cause, all these comes at a price and these manufacturers' devices often can be pricey - though worthy. In the contrary, other SA mobile phones & tablets companies imports generic semi-finished Chinese hardware (and software) that are normally of no much vouched quality.
OS/ROM or Firmware: Like with may electronics, smartphones and tablet's use ROMs/firmware prone to bugs or crashing - requiring a reload. Established manufacturers publish their devices firmware on their official sites for download whenever need be and delight is rolling out system updates periodically to address bugs. Yes, even with those great many phones using the standard Google Operating System called Android, almost all manufacturers running this OS have to first modify the source code to fit their various device models. This means that almost every model requires its own non-cross compatible system software compilation. Making almost impossible to download an Android ROM/firmware from the internet at random to load to your phone when if it crashes.
Replacement Parts: Established companies, amongst others essentials, believes in making replacements parts for their devices available. Making it easy for their customers to avail them if any part of their devices fail or get damaged. This is sadly not the case with some devices marketed around SA. MTN had no replacement parts for the famous MTN Steppa - no, not even a battery! If such device brakes in part, it is over.
Below is a list of Mobile Phone and Tablet manufacturers in their order of vouched value for money all around (quality, support, design, expertise, parts availability, firmware/ROM availability and reliability) - Also broke them into two groups
- iPhone, Samsung, Microsoft\Nokia, Sony, Blackberry, HTC, LG, Motorola, Huawei, Acer, Alcatel, Vodafone,
- ZTE, Verssed, AG, Sinotec, Mobicel, Other phones and tablets