[Upgrading, Modifying and Unlocking] roaringlion:
well, I wouldn't

I would go for the new Meizu Mx4

but if you really like the Zopo zp998, here's a stuff of what I like

1. Look alike leathery finish and curvature, which adds up to comfort.

2. Jetblack screen, is almost unseen with the rest of the body.

3. Beautiful 1080p screen, but!!! there might be some bleeding and as well whitish or redish pressure points (not sure what they I called). They are not that visible, personally I have one hell of an OCD and I didn't mind them, because they mostly show on white and black backgrounds, and again barely visible.

4. plenty of third party support! so lots of customs roms, but till now no cyanogen mod.

5. i like the fact that it has 2 speakers, but not stereo, they can be considered as one big mono speaker, but if you install Viper4Anroid, it makes the sound much better. If you leave audio settings on stock, the fact that you have 2 speakers isn't that much better than 1, and it gets a bit noisy when on raising the volume, especially on BASS.

6. Camera is quite good, capture nice details, but some other phones manage to create better looking pictures at lower size, every pic I shoot on my zopo, they are range from 4 to 6 mega bytes. Again it isn't bad, but they are better cameras out there, like Meizu's.

Now shooting pictures at night, can be tricky, the flash is good, really bright, almost too bright with obviously no colour tone, so be ready to have some people looking completely white.

Also if you take pictures at night, the picture come kinda purplish, there's a purple tint especially on the edges...which i really hate.

Front camera is good, no complaints actually am really pleased, if you are one of those selfie fans, you'll like it. It has no flash, just a reminder.

7. Performance, the famous MTK 6592, I was so looking forward for this SOC, a year ago, and am still pleased with it, I mean it can still handle games quite well, even play PSP games well on PPSSPP and DS games on Drastic and it can achieve good performance on games like Dead Trigger, haven't tried the second game, but lately am seeing FPS drops in some new games like Spiderman the endless runner by Gameloft. Is it showing it's age already? I doubt, the game has nice visuals, and lots of animations, and particles which may a bit overwhelming. So I think its a one of, because as I said Dead Trigger is flawless and even Modern Combat. In order to have better FPS when a game gets laggy, use Set CPU, max it to 1600 something and unticking CPU Saving Mode.

At the end of the day, the MTK 6592 is still a middle range, but is an soc which tilts towards the high end section, so basically you can see it as something in between middle range and high end.

8. Good availability of parts at Aliexpress, so you're covered if anything happens.

9. I like the fact that the screen became really sensitive with the latest screen update, so good job zopo.

10. People claim that Headphone sound is horrible, I really don't know, am not a headphone/earphone fan, so for me it is good. Again Viper4Android has some fixes which may help your cause.

11. It has 2 gb ram, which is good, mostly a standard now, but their optimisation totally depends on the rom you install. Stock rom is good but I prefer Marsapa or the Xiaomi port. There was once a coloros port but it only reached version 2, which was nice looking yet horrible performance.

12. Size is good, 5.5 inch, you may think its big, but I see it perfect, I will never go back to smaller sizes, and it fits just right in most of my jeans pockets or in some it may show a little, but nothing too serious or troubling that it may fall.

13. Micro Sd card slot!, which supports up to 64gb.

14. Removable battery.

Things that I don't like.

15. No battery covers, only normal silicone/plastic covers out there, some leather ones which look like a purse, which are nice, but not a fan of them.

16. Battery is really bad, I like keeping my screen completely on full bright, nuts some say, but i cannot stand a dull display. Zopo's display is really nice and vibrant, a waste to leave the screen brightness to a dull setting, but dull will definitely improve battery life. Also 3G is always on, because its free for me and am a Whats app user, and need constant internet.

But, with the latest kitkat update, battery life is much more better, but still poor, you will definitely charge it every day, if not more...

17. Horrible GPS, just plain horrible, tried using some hardware fixes out there, it helped a bit, combined with the optimisations from the Kitkat update, but still really bad.

GPS is a hardware problem, can't really do anything.

18. wi-fi sometimes drops randomly, but rarely and it has good speed.

19. Slow updates from Zopo Company.

20. Build quality is good but nothing amazing, its made of plastic, and apparently metal around the phone, which doesn't feel like metal at all, it might be the spray, am not much sure about this information, for me its all plastic. I wouldn't be doing any drop tests, and a back cover is definitely needed along a screen protector.

21. Charging and using the zopo zp998, don't go well together, am not sure whether all zp998 do this, but the screen becomes less responsive and i think there is some slight ghost typing when using the phone and charging it as the same time.

Well basically that's it, hope that you find my 21 statements useful.

Last but, a new ZOPO is incoming which is basically a modified zp998 which has 4G, so if you're going for the zp998, check it out

http://www.gizchina.com/2014/09/21/zopo-launching-lte-version-zopo-zp998-25th-sept/

Personally, no more Zopo's for me, despite all the good things I mentioned, its time to move on, to something better and more established.