Team-BHP - Android Thread: Phones / Apps / Mods

My 2 cents regarding Nexus 5x, its battery life and usage in general. The battery life of the phone which is about 1.5 months old is enough to last 1 day with average usage. By average i mean, a SOT of approximately 4 hours with phone data constantly on, browsing, light gaming and lots of emails exchange thought the day. I think google has provided just enough juice for about 60-75% of public for it to last a day and only need power connection after you come home.

2 GB Ram is more than enough for now, i haven't faced a lag or slow UI in my 14-21 days of usage.

The phone feels plastic, not premium but the good part is that it is extremely lightweight and easy to carry.

The camera is the highlight of the phone, shoots pictures with incredible amount of detail, although colors feel washed out at times due to the IPS display.

I'd recommend this phone for those
1. Who have stock android as priority
2. Camera is extremely important
3. Future updates are important
4. Screen size is a perfect fit ( Small hands and comfortable pockets like me)

If you are feel battery life is your number 1 priority then this isn't the device for you. You must look at phones with SOT of about 6-7 hours

I own a Motorola Moto G3 2GB RAM version and I'm a heavy user of the phone. Remains on Wi-Fi practically 90% of the day I'm near the phone rest of the time it is on mobile data network. Do close to an hour worth of gaming on the phone and calls of close to a total of 3hours. Rest of the time causal surfing. Still am getting 4.5-5hours worth of SoT over the last 14days I'm using the phone. The latest Marshmallow update too is already applied. I'd say quite a lot depends on the number of apps installed and how good the UI is optimised. I'm pretty impressed with the current SoT given my previous phone used to give around 2.5-3hours worth of SoT before needing a charging point. Two thumbs up to Moto G3:thumbs up

I've been a big fan of Motorola phones since Atrix came out. Although I try Samsung's and LG's now and then most Droid phones were awesome.

My previous phones were

Droid ultra - Super slim and sexy in red
Droid Ultra MAXX - 3500mAh battery!
Droid Turbo - 3900mAh battery with turbo charge!
Droid Turbo 2 - Shatter proof screen and 3760mAh with turbo charge and bigger screen.

Now I'm eagerly waiting for Moto Z Droid - a lot slimmer and still a 3600mAh battery.

Moto Rocks!!

I was also a fan of Motorola till they started making gigantic flagship phones. Even all the Moto Z phones are 5.5".

Did you guys see this M5 pros and cons by geekyranjit?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko6xftiJhzo

He mentions a few cons, the most important of them being frequent network dropouts and the phone eating up a lot of battery in that process with cellular data ON.
I can live with a sub par low light camera or heavily skinned Android but network drops are not acceptable

Any MI5 users here? Do you have any of these issues?
Has Xiaomi come up with any updates to fix these?

Quote:

Originally Posted by adimicra (Post 3995506)

but network drops are not acceptable

It seems to be the problem with every Xiaomi Phone which has 4G.
When you select "prefer 4G" in "preferred network type," it always latches onto the LTE network. Since we don't have VoLTE (Voice over LTE) in most Indian carriers, many calls and messages don't reach you.
I've faced this problem with both my Redmi Note 4G and Mi4i.

The solution I've found is to set "preferred network type" as "3g" and use Wifi for downloading large amounts of data. I generally find 3G speed good enough to for checking mail, downloading attachments and using social media.

Quote:

Originally Posted by adimicra (Post 3995506)

I was also a fan of Motorola till they started making gigantic flagship phones. Even all the Moto Z phones are 5.5".

Agreed about the size. Even I was one with max display requirements of 4.7/5. But with the good phones coming with bigger display, I had no choice but to move on and explore.

Tried 5.5 display and that seems to be OK. 5.7 Surely no. Thats too big. I use the Moto Play and found my sweet spot of its usage (example typing with one hand; which I found it to be very difficult initially). With time I have learnt and moved on. Surely the bigger display is quite useful especially reading articles/books from the Kindle app. 5 would have been ideal yes, but I guess I have learnt to accept the 5.5 inch display as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vid6639 (Post 3994634)

Battery life of the Nexus 5X is better than the Moto X 2nd gen I had but that's not saying much.

Good battery life is becoming difficult in these higher end phones. It's only on the mid range devices.

The new Moto Z gets only 2600mAh with a 5.5" QHD display. I don't know how that will last even half a day in today's day of heavy phone use with LTE.

Isnt that terrible design? This is the phone equivalent of garage queens! Why should flagships be so anaemic that a slim 5mm handset is accompanied everywhere by a brick of a battery pack?

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordvader (Post 3994570)

On redmi note 3 - Additional Settings > Battery > Battery use > Hardware > Screen will give you time on

Cool. I will monitor it this week.

Quote:

Originally Posted by adimicra (Post 3994563)

@phamilyman - that is some amazing battery life you got there.

Thanks everyone for the updates on Nexus 5X. 3 hours SOT is not at all acceptable to me.
In my 2 year old Moto X, I get around 2.5 hours and it has become a huge pain for me.
When the phone was new and had good old Kitkat, I was getting 4 hours SOT.
I wonder why the Nexus 5X has such poor battery life. On paper, 5.2" screen with 2700 mah battery sounds reasonable and Marshmallow is supposed to be be having better battery life. The only reason I was considering Nexus 5X is because of the great camera (best camera in the price range) and the future updates being a Nexus

I need something with at least 4 hours SOT. So, Nexus 5X ruled out for me.

Help me understand the fascination with SOT. e.g my RN3 always gets a min of 1.5 hours of calling but during those calls the screen would be off. Isnt that something which matters over and above SOT? I found that missing in the current discussions.

But that way, I used my RN3 full day on 3G with about an hour of navigation and a lot of tweeting. It consumed only 70% in my 12 odd hours (multiple railway station trips, family meeting, dinner, shopping etc). I think besides the size (which induces carpal tunnel pains in me) and camera its a mind blowing phone.
btw the motog4+ is very usable. The weight and size are quite convenient. Do give it a whirl. Speak to any locals who have it (twitter?). Im sure you'll love it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by landcruiser123 (Post 3995542)

Might be an issue with the carrier also. I had exactly the same issue on iPhone on Airtel 4G in Kerala. Almost 60% of the time, the calls won't reach me. It gives lot of long beeps to the person who calls and then says "Subscriber not responding to the call". No issue when LTE is disabled. Was fed up since I use it as my work phone also, and hence moved on to Idea 4G. Never had this issue afterwards. The explanation given by Airtel back end team was that since Airtel doesn't have a 3G license in Kerala, the network on phone will have to fall back to Idea 3G during a voice call and sometimes the phone becomes unresponsive momentarily during the process.

Quote:

Originally Posted by landcruiser123 (Post 3995542)

I had the same issue in my mi5. Then I disabled voice on VoLTE. Never faced such issue again. Tried doing it again today, but network switches to H when I make calls..

Quote:

Originally Posted by phamilyman (Post 3995633)

SOT is just another measure, nothing fancy or very scientific about it.
Since battery life can't be easily quantified, this is the easiest way to reply when someone asks casually - "How is your battery life?"
AS you rightly said, it depends on usage, apps installed, call duration, data, network availability and a hundred other factors. The only scientific way to do it is rely on proper battery life tests and benchmarks which many review websites like gsmarena publish. But, many times we have seen different observation from real users than the website reviews (similar to ownership reviews). So, that's the point in asking and SOT is the easiest way to reply. :)

I have Airtel and looks like MI5 doesn't work properly in Hyderabad with Airtel 4G. This is really disappointing.

There is a new phone to be launched by Honor, probably Honor 8 this month or the next. Might be a good idea to wait for it as the Honor 7 was/is a very good phone. Also, hoping the ZUK Z2 will be available soon.