Best Alternatives to Chinese Apps for your Smartphone

This is high time for India and Indians need to wake up. Yes! you need to wake up from  your everyday routine of posting 15 seconds Tik-Tok videos to a hour-long session of playing PUBGM. Scanning your documents with CamScanner to viewing them on WPS.

In the spirit of the man behind 3 idiots, educator and innovator Sonam Wangchuk who urged people of india to boycott “made in China” softwares in a week and hardware in a year. We have taken it to ourselves to carry the torch ahead and provide you with best alternative to some of the Chinese apps.

We are not asking you completely to shut down the China  based apps and forget your hobbies which you put on for display on tik tok, or stop playing PUBGM on your brand new smartphone (probably made in China), which you recently purchased just for it .

What we are requesting you to do is just take small steps per day leading to a bigger motive .We have made a simple program for you to follow with just three easy steps to break free of the dependency on Chinese apps.

In this pursuit we guarantee  that the quality will not be compromised and you will continue to have a great experience. 

Before diving into the list, if you are skeptical about whether boycotting Chinese made products is even possible, you should check this to get an idea whether it is practical or not if possible.

Step 1 : Replacing the non- addictive apps 

Since you are not addicted to the apps in this category ,you can replace all of them at once in a day without any remorse .

ShareIt     >>>     Files by Google 

ShareIt was found with two security vulnerabilities last year that allowed attackers to download content from a user’s device by evading the device authentication mechanism. ShareIt with excessive ads and inappropriate and irrelevant push notifications  can easily be replaced with Files by Google(multifunctional and without ads). 

Files also work as a file manager which is a great edge over Shareit .

UC browser     >>>     Google Chrome/ X-browser

UC browser displays too many ads and hosts a phone load of inappropriate and irrelevant content. It was caught stealing personally identifiable data and sending it to an unknown server in China. It came under the Indian govt's Scanner for alleged data theft in 2017.

Your browsing data is not secure with it. Though it has many features but feature-richness doesn't make it right to use a privacy harming app on smartphone. It was removed from the playstore in 2017 for misleading promotions.

Google chrome is the alternative you should go for with better speed and ad block. If you are looking for similar app like UC then have a look at X-browser which also comes with ad block feature and with better speed.

 

Cam Scanner    >>>    Microsoft office lens /

                                 Doc scanner (Indian)

                                     

Last year CamScanner was removed from play store after kaspersky found a "trojan horse module" inside the CamScanner app. The researchers said that “trojan downloader can download malicious modules, depending on what its creator are up to at the moment".Later the malicious code was removed and the app was back on play store ,however we have seen this pattern from Chinese apps including Es file explorer and shady publishers like CM and DU.

So if you want to stay away from such malicious incidents that go behind the scene then you can move to more secure and better alternative. In our research we have found Microsoft office lens followed by doc scanner the best alternative to cam scanner and not adobe scan. Because adobe scan is quite slow and doesn't provide crisp scans like microsoft office lens.

WPS office     >>>   Microsoft office (Free)

WPS is an office suite developed by ZHUHAI -based Chinese software Kingsoft .The product has had a long history of development in China under the name WPS.

Microsoft office is the best alternative for WPS office , you can download microsoft word,excel powerpoint for free .Most of their functionality is available without paying.  

Zoom    >>>    Google meet 

ZOOM software is developed by three Chinese companies in China ,all known as Ruanshi software .Despite being based in the US, the user data is allowed to flow through two Chinese data centers . Due to which some of the governments have banned this software including Taiwan for security fears. Google has banned  the zoom app from all employee computers over security vulnerabilities.

Google meet is the most well known and widely used zoom alternative . You can hold video calls with up to 250 participants ,hold  presentations and record meeting and save them to drive .

Now google has integrated meet with gmail so you can start a video call right from the left column.

Turbo VPN     >>>     Proton VPN

Although TurboVPN ran by a company named INVOATIVE CONNECTING which is based out of Singapore. However ,if we look closely ,the company has deep roots with China, as revealed by security affairs.On the top of that ,the privacy policy of Turbo VPN is sketchy at best and we would not really trust it .

ProtonVPN is the alternative you should go for as it provides free access to a wide range of  VPN  servers around the world.

 AppLock     >>>     Norton app lock 

Run by DO mobile and registered in the hongkong,outside of the mainland China. Its privacy policy states that according to the needs of specific features ,we may read the user photos ,media ,and files, use  the mobile camera and microphone.

Users are basically allowing  the app to read the internal storage and have access to the camera and microphone ,for us ,it seems too invasive for an app locker.

So if user want a secure alternative to App lock .it has been developed by the popular antivirus provider,norton labs

Ex- File Explorer     >>>     Files

Ex-file explorer has been removed from play store for violating play store policies, malicious content and ad click fraud. ES-File Explorer committed fraud by automatically clicking on the ads displayed in their apps on behalf of users. It leaves your android phone open to anyone on same network and hackers can easily access your data remotely.

FILES by Google is a multi functional app and without ads and can be used to share data. 

Step 2:  Replacing the addictive apps

This section is going to be hard for you to execute and we are not forcing you either. This call is completely yours to make by which to replace these dangerously addictive apps with.

PUBG Mobile  and Call of Duty      >>>      ?

PUBG mobile is a popular battle royale game by Tencent and VNG gaming publishing. Similarly ,call of duty mobile has also been developed and published by TIMI studios, a subsidiary of tencent headquartered in Shenzhen ,China.TIMI have also made other popular mobile games such as Area of Valor ,Crossfire Legends amongst others .

The new Anti-China movement  has led to many gamers uninstalling PUBG mobile and CALL OF DUTY for the sake of national interest. On a personal note, every single member of our team deleted the two games from our mobiles before jumping into this article for the sake of national interest and our own self satisfaction. 

 Tik-Tok , Likee ,Kwai      >>>      ?

Tik tok is owned by BYTEDANCE - a Beijing based company- has been accused of sharing user data with China. Among the many issues with Tiktok  privacy has been a major concern for many users,allegedly it has been failed to protect the privacy of minors ,and apparently was failed to take down the videos made by the children under the age of 13. According to a new report video sharing app TikTok had “multiple” security vulnerabilities.

Talking about LIKEE and KAWAI,both of the apps have Chinese roots and are known for hosting inappropriate content on their platform.

Step 3: Getting rid of Chinese hardware 

This step will take probably a year or two to take effect. But what can be done right now as you read this article is ,a pledge you can take right now to not buy Chinese made products from  now  on. To not  purchase made in China lights in this and coming diwali festivals but durable Indian lights that will work for longer instead.  

 So these were the alternatives that we recommend in place of some  popular Chinese apps. In the above section (addictive section) We could have provided somewhat of alternatives to the respective Chinese apps but, you need to understand here that everything should not have to be replaced, something have to be left behind. Plus we don’t want our youth to get busy with things that are unproductive and waste their 'Springtime of Youth'.

You can consider this just another attempt to boycott made-in China products and walk your own path blindfolded or be a responsible citizen of this country and actively take part in this, standing by the nation. 

We hope you liked our attempt to educate and inform you about the current situation and remind you of your duty as a citizen of this country.

Jai Hind.