Chinavasion | China Gadgets BlogWholesale Electronics and the Gadget Business

It’s been a busy week for us here at Chinavasion.

We’ve added a few more WiFi Phones, HD car DVD players and even a .

We also got a lot of questions and we are answering some of the more common ones below so the whole world can see.

So read on as we tackle sea shipping, buying accessories and a comparison between the thunder (CVCN-M60 and the Odyssey (CVDQ-M56).

Can you provide cheaper air container or sea container shipping if I buy in bulk quantity?

Absolutely! The bigger wholesale quantity you order, especially above 10kg, the better the per-kg shipping prices. Bulk ordering is usually the best way to get the cheapest landed cost for your items.

In Chinavasion, our standard shipping is through courier companies, like UPS, DHL, and FedEx. For air container or sea container, we need to check with our shipping forwarder for a quote.

Normally, the shipping forward needs to check with their container line or airline companies again. This takes up to a week’s time, and it’s just for major destinations. For some countries, where shipping from China is uncommon, we can’t even get a quote.

If you can find a shipping forwarder in your local area first, that will make things much easier.

Most shipping forwarders operate through a global network with offices around the world. Generally speaking, if you can find a shipping forwarder in your local area, we can find its branch office in either Shenzhen, or Hong Kong, as the twin cities are now the major logistics centre in the world. And as the company operates from both your and our location, this means they can provide a much more competitive quote than other shipping forwarders.

Can I order an extra battery/charger/SD card from you when I buy an item?

While we do normally supply things like spare batteries and styluses it is to buy extra. To do this you need to do two things:

1. contact us by submitting a ticket or emailing us at support@chinavasion.com and tell us the code number of the item that you want the accessory for and the item you want. Like this for example:
   
   
   
2. Add a comment when you place the order stating the accessory you need and the item code and supplement the payment in paypal

What’s the difference between the Thunder and the Odyssey WiFi phones?

The Odyssey and Thunder side by side

We’ve gotten a lot of questions about what’s the difference between these two great phones.

Basically not a lot. Visually, each one has its distinctive design and each has tons of followers.

One note, The Odyssey does have bigger action buttons on the front, but bigger isn’t necessarily better.

Another key difference point is that, though both share the same chipset, there is a small difference with the firmware. How small? Negligible really.

When it comes down to it, it’s about which phone looks better to you.

Product Review

Road King 7 Inch High-Def Car DVD Player with GPS and DVB-T [CVGX-C39]

Road King, so called because it IS the king of the road.

This great car DVD flew up the best seller list as soon at was launch, which came as no surprise considering its DVB-T receiver, its HD display and its GPS capabilities.

But with popularity comes many questions. Here are answers to the most frequently asked questions about the Road King:

You mentioned that the screen resolution for this unit is 800 x 480 pixels versus conventional car DVD player system which has 480 x 234 resolution. In plain English, what does that do for me?

Well think about it like this. Remember when you used to use those chunky old cathode ray tube computer monitors. That’s like existing car DVD systems. Then they came out with those really thin LCD monitors where the picture was brilliant like Albert Einstein? That’s the Road King!

You mentioned that this product is compatible with iPods. Which versions will it work with?

We tested iPod compatibility using a 3rd generation iPod Nano 4GB.

Your car DVD players are great, but the user manuals could use some improvement. Any suggestions there?

A lot of work has been put into making this user manual user friendly. The thing is though, this car DVD system is very intuitive so we’re pretty sure you probably won’t even need to read the user manual.

Does this cool in-car total solution support the Greek language?

While the main menu system does not support the Greek language, the DVB-T system does however support the Greek language. What’s more, if your GPS software comes in Greek then the GPS “Voice” and “Text” will be in Greek.

Most popular GPS software titles come in a variety of languages. As for media playback with Greek subtitles, we suggest you download free software from the web to hardsub your Greek subtitles to your AVI files for video playback.

Is the magnetic base of the GPS antenna strong enough to be placed on a moving car?

Yes, the antenna comes with a very powerful magnet. It’ll stay stuck on despite the rockiest ride.

What GPS software comes with this car navigation powerhouse? Is it Route 66?

Evaluation GPS software is included, but purchasing your own GPS software is encouraged.

Seriously, why should I buy the Road King over other car DVD players?

Seriously improved screen resolution, serious response speed and all the features you’ll ever need from an in car system: dual zone functionality, support for steering wheel control and tire pressure monitoring systems, and you can even toggle the safe line (watching DVDs while the car is in motion) ON and OFF.

What is PTY?

A PTY search is a search for radio channels of certain program types like news and classical music. It also provides automatic tuning in the event of an emergency broadcast.

What is AF?

AF stands for Alternative Frequencies which allows a radio receiver to re-tune to a different frequency providing the same station (if available) when the first signal becomes too weak.

What is a Local/DX switch?

Local/DX controls the search sensitivity.

For a bigger list of questions visit the Chinavasion FAQ page or to ask your own question leave a comment to this blog (provided you don’t mind the whole world knowing about it).

We’ll answer them here and, if they’re good enough we may even re-publish them in a future Friday FAQ.

By Michael Wong

Don’t you hate it when somebody gets into your phone’s settings and ‘accidentally’ changes the settings so that they’re in some obscure language, like Latin, Ancient Egyptian or Klingon.

Thankfully, if you’re dealing with a phone from China in most cases go about things in a similar way and usually use either the MediaTek 6225 chipset or the MediaTek 6235 chipset. So, there are some things that will be in the same place (one of them being the language setting).

So without further ado here is how you can change your phone from Klingon to English (or your native language) without knowing any Klingon.

On pretty well every phone I’ve ever come across, the function to change languages is in PHONE SETUP. And PHONE SETUP is always in SETTINGS. And the SETTINGS icon on the main menu always looks like some wheel or cog which is basically as a metaphor for the inner workings of a product, er the settings, it could also be represented by the picture of some type of tool (like a spanner or a screwdriver).

Common settings buttons

So visually locate the SETTINGS icon, press on the 4th menu item which is usually PHONE SETUP, and then press on the 3rd menu item which is usually LANGUAGE. Once you’re there, you’ll see your own language and you can set it as your default.

Another instance of needing to change languages occurs when you do a factory reset. Factory resets of Chinese phones always takes the phone back to Chinese.

Once you turn it on after a reset, the first thing it will prompt you to do is calibrate the screen. Then follow the instructions I provided above to change the language.

And that’s it. Your phone is now immune to any ‘hilarious joke’ that your friends might want to play on it on April first.

Check out our wide range of unlocked cell phones today.

By Ali Dayekh

How would you like to find out what’s going on in your home or place of business just by visiting any web cafe, or even hooking up to the internet with your iPhone or wifi capable-phone?

The potential is here now and it’s called the IP camera!

My colleague, Baya Harrison, the technical and eBay listing wizard here at Chinavasion gave us a way to do that with the webcam in his blog How Your Webcam Lets You Watch Your Home From Work.

However that only really works if you’re prepared to leave your computer on 24 hours a day and who wants to do that?

The IP camera is good in that it uses an IP address without needing a computer, so essentially you are removing the middleman.

IP Surveillance Camera with Angle Control and USB Webcam Server

Essentially you can control the IP cameras from anywhere in the world, setting the angle and zoom setting of the camera from your computer.

As the cameras are digital they provide superior quality footage than analog CCTV and as the information is stored digitally on a hard disk (HDD), there is no chance of footage degradation unlike analog equipment.

Digital footage is also easier to search at a later date.

So with the ability to:

• Check footage from anywhere in the world
• Control the cameras from ANY remote location
• Collect higher quality footage
• Find parts of interest easier

What’s stopping anybody from switching to an IP camera-based security system?

Here’s a quick guide on installing an IP camera which will let you be ahead of the curve.

Installing The IP Camera Software

While the camera might not need a computer to be on all the time to operate you still need to set up an IP address for the IP camera to operate from.

First, connect the IP camera to your network via a ethernet cable or wifi connection and make sure it’s plugged in and working.

Then insert the included CD ROM into your computer and install ActiveX and the Sun Java driver onto your computer by clicking on the buttons shown below:

ActiveX Installation

Sun Java Installation:

After you have installed both applications, only then can you install the IP Camera Utility by clicking on ‘IP Camera Utility’.

Follow the onscreen instructions just like you would do on any other software installation, you may even need to restart your computer once it’s finished.

Once that’s complete you can set up the camera’s new IP address

Configuring The Camera’s IP

Now that you have completed the software installation, select the ‘IP Configuration’ option. This is where you will have to configure your new IP camera’s IP Setting.

If you want to use a dynamic IP address and use the services of a site like dhs.org or dyndns.org then select the “Obtain IP address by DHCP” and start preparing your camera for remote access.

Setting Up A Static IP For Your IP Camera

To find an IP address that you can use the first thing to do is to go to the internet icon in your bottom screen and left click it.

Select support, that will give you all the numbers you need. Copy them down onto a piece of paper.

One thing that is important to remember is that the last three numbers of the IP address for the IP camera can’t be the same as any other internet-capable device in the internet network. So get the IP number for all computers (or anything with an IP number in your home) and select an IP address for the IP camera which is different to all of these.

Once you have worked out all these figures then you can enter in the new details into the software by typing them directly into the panel in the IP camera software.

Make sure that the last three numbers of the IP are new while every other number is the same.

After you have configured your cameras IP address, click on OK to save the camera’s IP address and then hit refresh if the IP is not displayed on the screen yet. Once the IP is displayed, all you have to do is right click, and select Launch IP, or you can just select the launch IP from the left column.

Make sure to setup a user name and a password while you are configuring the IP of your IP camera, this can be done via selecting the advanced tab.

And that’s it for local networks, your internet browser will launch the the feed and adjustment options of your IP Camera, Alternatively you can simply just load a new web page and type in the cameras IP address and you should enjoy images like.

Setting Up The IP Camera’s Remote Monitoring Capabilities

If you are using a static IP for your camera then all you need to do is to take the IP address from your camera and enter it into your web browser.

If you are using a dynamic IP address then you will need to set up an account at one of the following sites:

• 3322.org
• dhs.org
• dyndns.org
• myddns.com

After creating an account with one of these sites they will issue you with a URL.

Take the URL of the site you are using, include your password and username into the IP camera software menu and you will be able to access your IP camera anywhere in the world without the need for a static IP.

Now is a great time to think about replacing your traditional low quality, high maintenance analog surveillance system to a high quality image IP security cameras. This can only enhance your home security for your peace of mind to keep you and your family safe from harm.