I live in China. For various reasons I need to upgrade my smartphone.
But I’m finding it hard to find information on what English-speaking people should do about running Android here. Google Playstore is blocked. As is Google maps. The google translate app also doesn’t work (though the webpage works).
The alternatives the locals use generally don’t have Pinyin, let alone English.
Loading other apps first has the hurdle that you must install them without the Google store.
Zenme ban?
Sorry I don’t have answers, just questions.
Did you buy the phone in China? There have been several alerts about backdoors being built into android devices in China, e.g. Chinese Android phone maker hides secret backdoor on its devices | Computerworld and others.
Also it isn’t surprising that Google sites are blocked, since Google has been notoriously cooperative with NSA surveillance, but you did get me wondering how restricted is the Chinese web. Considering all the pirating and so on the govt tolerates you would think blocking websites would be hard to maintain.
Mei banfa.
Google is basically fucked in China. Google drew a line in the sand about 7-8 years ago on China. Chinese haven’t forgotten and the Chinese government really wants to drive their own software industry. Chinese government want Baidu to succeed because they have “influence” over Baidu. The last thing they want is unfettered Google doing no evil.
If you’re going to do android in China, you need to really get your chinese up to speed. 
Doh!
Well, thanks anyway. I actually speak some Chinese but I’m not sure there ever will be a point where Hanzi is as convenient for me as English or Pinyin.
I live in China and have recently purchased a Mi4 from Xiaomi. They make a cheap, powerful Android device that can be switched to English when you set it up. While it doesn’t run Google Play or Google apps natively, it is an easy fix to find and install.
Open the Mi store and search for Google. Eric Xiang has created an app that will allow you to download and use the Google Apps.
Here is a link where they explain it and show screen captures for instructions. http://www.technobuzz.net/install-google-play-store-xiaomi-mi3-smartphone/
Good luck!
Well Wolverine I think that’s enough reason to make me buy that phone, since it also seems a good phone generally. But just to confirm: so you can actually run google play (not just install it)? And do other google apps work (e.g. maps)?
I play a lot of Marvel Puzzle Quest and was able to download and play it from the Google Play store. I don’t use a lot of other features, so I can’t verify, but I haven’t heard anything negative.
Have you tried the Amazon app store? It carries most of the same apps (the popular stuff, anyway), and will automatically update. It launched in China in 2013.
There are easy ways to get beyond the great firewall, search for “goagent”, that’s the one I use. It takes a little work to set up and isn’t the most intuitive though. I have an iphone now and I’ve never been able to get it to work on iphone so I just suffer in silence. There are also ways to get android APK files stand alone, without using the store.
Well, you’re a better man than I, because I couldn’t get go agent to work on my PC, let alone my phone.
So I use a paid-for proxy for browsing (securitales).
On your latter point, I’ve downloaded APK files when the specific app’s web page has a link to do so, and then have no issue installing manually.
But few apps have such a link. Is there is a way to get an APK of any app directly? Accessing google play via my proxy, and then trying to download an app doesn’t work: Play Store insists on sending the file to my phone directly, itself, which fails.
Update
Well, I bowed to the peer pressure and bought a Xiao Mi 4. Great phone, especially for the price, but my situation was the same: no google apps that require data connection work: maps, translate (even though it works via a browser), gmail, play store, search.
Perhaps Wolverine is in a different area of china from me (I’m in Shanghai)? I’ve seen that in some parts of china, more things were blocked than in Shanghai so it would not surprise me if there are areas where fewer things are blocked.
Anyway my workarounds:
Play store: Amazon store does indeed work. But more commonly I find apps via my browser and searching for the apk. I wish google’s play store would let me manually download the apk (I can access play store via my proxy, but installing something always tries to automatically send the app to my phone, which does not work).
Maps: Skobbler / “GPS Navigation & maps” seems to work and has pinyin street names.
Translate: Nothing yet, just using Pleco for word-by-word translate.
Search: Bing 
Since this thread’s been resurrected I’ll take the opportunity to add a couple things:
Translate: I found that for Chinese-English baidu translate is actually more accurate than google, so there’s no reason to install the latter.
It doesn’t have pinyin, but there’s a button to copy a translation, and then you can paste it into e.g. pleco for pinyin.
Download APKs: I can’t believe so recently I was ignorant of sites like e.g. downloader-apk.com. Just copy in the web address of an app on playstore and you can directly get the apk.
I also live in China and use an Android phone I purchased here in Beijing. Mine has the option of operating in three languages: Chinese, Korean, English. It also came with a rather good app store which I think beats Google. Here’s what I’m using to get stuff done:
[ul][li]Set the operating language in English. That’s fairly straightforward even if you don’t read Chinese characters as the icons are standard.[/li][li]Use Pleco and pay the $5 through the in-app purchasing option for the handwriting recognition so you can just write the characters. (Note: My phone came with handwriting recognition but it’s not as forgiving as Pleco is.)[/li][li]Install Mobogenie app store, if your phone didn’t come with it. The beauty of this one is two-fold: it’s not blocked in China and the app’s language is English. Here’s how to do that:[/li][list][li]First go to your phone’s settings menu and navigate to security.[/li][li]Tick the block for “Allow unknown sources” or whatever the current Google terminology is for “I’m going to get stuff from the competition so sod off, Google”.[/li][li]Connect to Wi-fi.[/li][li]Launch your internet browser and go to Mobogenie.[/li][li]Tap the button that says “Android” on it.[/li][li]Wait for the action dialog to pop up after the apk file downloads, then click on “Install”.[/li][li]Launch that app once a day because you get points for it. The points can be used instead of money to buy apps that aren’t free.[/ul][/list][/li]
Note: Google was in the Chinese news in the last few days regarding its upcoming “return to China”. You can imagine that many a foreigner here is juuuuuust a bit excited about that.