Over the past few years I've had various phone woes. My Samsung Galaxy s2 developed a fault that the Samsung service centre repaired. After a week the same fault appeared again so I sent it off for repair again only to be told there was water damage (which I deny ever happened) and they wouldn't repair it. That was it 4 months into a 24 month contract - left paying but without a phone. I went back to an iPhone 3s for a while then bought a Nexus 4. The Nexus 4 was a brilliant phone but I dropped it and shattered the glass but crucially I'd damaged the digitiser so it would respond to touch any more. I had that repaired only for it to stop working again. then the repair shop lost my phone for 3 months! Finally the Nexus 4 was returned and worked fine for 6 months until it died.
Desperately needing a half decent Android phone but without signing up for a new mobile contract I looked around and discovered the Cubot X6. It cost £119 on Amazon. There are pages with specs here and here.
After a month's use I'm impressed. Infact so much so we just ordered one for my wife too. The X6 seems comparable to the Galaxy S3 in look and feel. It is supplied unlocked and can be used with any network. On initial set up it doesn't want you to log in with a Google account which I know is important to some folks that prefer not to use Google. Also quite a few of the essential everyday apps on it are Cubot versions of apps rather than the usual Google ones.
As for criticisms there are just a few. It seems only able to record 3gp video and no other format despite trying various different camera apps. That is a little disappointing as I do my phone as a camera a lot. One of my favourite games is Monster Ate My Condo which is full of animated graphics. My last 3 phones all could play it but it seems to just hang on the X6. Lastly it uses the same sort of storage partitioning as the Samsung phone I had and I had rather gotten used to the Nexus way of doing it. Having to be on top of storage space and move apps to SD card is a bit annoying. Not hugely but it is something I'd prefer not to do. However given the price I'm more than happy with the phone.
tl:dr
I needed a new phone so bought a cheap Cubot X6 and it works better than I assumed it would.