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

Quote:

Originally Posted by INJAXN (Post 5294297)

Please suggest a good Android phone in the range of 30-35k. Will be used by my wife for basic stuff like social networking apps, youtube videos etc, no heavy gaming.

I recently got a Samsung s20Fe and it's a pretty decent higher-than-mid-range but lower-than-flag-ship class of a product.

Very good camera, great stereo sound (compared to my wife's OP7), 3 update policy from Samsung it's actually 4 years, but saying 3 as this is last year's flagship).

Coming from OP5, with near stock Android, I found the Samsung One UI to nearly as good. I did make some customisations like disabling some Samsung stuff and putting the gboard keyboard etc. Fantastic improvement from earlier days I must say.

Cons:
1. Bulky (which phone isn't now a days?) I am comparing to my outgoing one plus 5
2. Proximity sensor is virtual one - although I myself have never had a problem with this till now, some others in this thread have felt is a problem.

Quote:

Originally Posted by driving_smartly (Post 5294613)

Samsung A52s would be my pick!

My sister picked up one recently for a similar usage pattern and she is happy with it.

Do you have/or could you please get any information on the battery and the camera performance?

Quote:

Originally Posted by harry10 (Post 5294694)

Below 40k Iqoo SE is the best all-rounder phone. It's around 33-34k with some card discount on Amazon. Great screen and cameras with a last gen flagship processor.

Samsung A52s is another good one which is below 30k now.

Do not go for Samsung A53 as the processor isn't upto the mark.

Never heard of this brand - Igoo, I checked about it and it seems good, but I want to avoid such new brands for now.

A-52 has Snapdragon 750G, where as A-53 has Exynos 1280 (5 nm), may be this is the reason. As far as I know Snapdragon chips are good. Thanks for highlighting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by deep_bang (Post 5294724)

I was also looking for Fan Edition models, S21-FE price seems very high, above 50k mark as of now. S20 FE is a year and a half old model, so did not check much on that, I will check now.
Does your phone's screen goes off when taking calls with virtual sensing? Even Samsung A52 has virtual proximity sensing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by INJAXN (Post 5294781)

Does your phone's screen goes off when taking calls with virtual sensing? Even Samsung A52 has virtual proximity sensing.

As I said, I do not have any issues and only after I read about the virtual proximity sensor I started to observe more carefully, but I have never had any issue till now and it's always switched off the screen as expected during a call and also switched it on when I remove it from my ear to look at the screen. I never even knew about this virtual sensor till I read about it, so definitely works well. Perhaps there may be some special use cases that may fail, but I have never till now in the last few months have had an issue with it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by INJAXN (Post 5294781)

Never heard of this brand - Igoo, I checked about it and it seems good, but I want to avoid such new brands for now.

I was also looking for Fan Edition models, S21-FE price seems very high, above 50k mark as of now. S20 FE is a year and a half old model, so did not check much on that, I will check now.
Does your phone's screen goes off when taking calls with virtual sensing? Even Samsung A52 has virtual proximity sensing.

IQOO isn't an unknown brand. It's a sub brand of VIVO just like Redmi is a sub brand of Xiaomi. Do check some you tube videos to get a better idea about it.

S20 FE is an excellent option if you are fine with lesser updates cycle in comparison to S21 FE.

Also do check A52s. These 3 are the best options below 40k.

If budget can be extended to 45k then Realme GT 2 pro has just launched with Flagship specifications.

FYI, One plus Oxygen OS is now absolutely same as Color OS of Realme. So, if you buy a realme GT 2 pro or One plus 10 Pro, the experience with be mostly same. Although the cost difference is a good 20k between them.

Is the Realme GT 2 Pro the only phone in the market that has a QHD display?

My wife has been spoilt by the lovely QHD on her Honor 8 Pro, and doesn't seem to like the normal Amoled ones.

But splurging 45k on a Realme phone sounds like not such a great thing to do. Moreover, I am concerned about the heating issues that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and even the SD888 SOCs come with.

Any suggestions? Which is the best phone for someone who only cares about the display and nothing else?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oxy (Post 5295160)

But splurging 45k on a Realme phone sounds like not such a great thing to do. Moreover, I am concerned about the heating issues that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and even the SD888 SOCs come with.

Midrange phones have come a long way. Unless you really need flagship level performance, stick to the mid rangers. Any phone with SD 7xx processors. The 778G is a really good chipset and will get the job done for most use cases. Both the SD 888 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 are prone to heating issues.

Quote:

Originally Posted by longhorn (Post 5295804)

I agree. The SD778G has got good reviews from almost every source on the internet.

Which led me to compare the recently launched Samsung A73 (with SD778G) and the popular Samsung S20 FE 5G (with SD865). Both are available for the same price, but though the A73 looks massively overpriced due to the chipset, the promised next 4 Android version upgrades and 5 years of security updates make up for it in my opinion. The S20 FE 5G is going to receive support for only one more year.

The more powerful chipset on the S20 FE will only be useful for intense gaming sessions, which is irrelevant for a non gamer like me. The bigger battery and yet lesser bulk on the A73 is also a plus. 8GB of RAM is standard on both, but there is a 256GB storage variant available in the A73, unlike in the S20 FE 5G.

Yes there are other Chinese OEMs that have released much cheaper phones with the SD778G, but the user interface and bugs on those is a deal breaker for me.

I will wait for the price of the A73 to reduce further over the next month or so though. As of now it feels like a rip off.

I think people should take the claim of 3 years of Android updates with a pinch of salt. What I have seen is that you get prompt updates only when the phone is new. My previous phone (Oneplus) got the first Android update very promptly (within a couple of months after Google released it). But the next update took about 6 months after Google released (which is still fine). The third one didn't arrive even after a year by which time I sold it off and moved on.

Also the quality of updates keeps going down and slows down the device. I think if you get monthly security updates (Nokia was very prompt) or at least every 2 months better buy that. After all, it does not make any sense keeping a phone beyond 2 years unless it is an iPhone.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dragonfire (Post 5296312)

I had the same experience as yours. I was using a OnePlus 7, had to change the phone as the Android 11 update was full of bugs and OnePlus couldn't fix it even after numerous updates. I'm fine with two years of Major updates as long as they are stable. The problem with Android manufacturers is that they only test the updates on the latest flagship phones or on the ones launched a year before but once a phone is around 2 years old, no one gives attention to whether the update is stable or not. There's this interesting video by geekyranjit on YouTube which states that many companies intentionally give out buggy update so that a person is forced to change the phone. In the case of OnePlus, this seems to be true.

It took a few days to get back to the Android ways, and so far the experience is enjoyable with the S22. Samsung flagships now have iPhone-level of finesse and the UI is capable of providing almost stock Pixel-like Android experience.

A few observations after 5 days of usage:

The camera is vastly improved, photos look more real, the portrait mode easily beats the output from say, an iPhone 13 Pro Max.
The Vivid screen mode can make everything looks a bit more colorful. Switching to Natural makes it much better and easy on eyes.
Samsung proprietary apps can be easily uninstalled/disabled or relegated to the background. So the Samsung Pay is off, Bixby is not a nagging presence any more, and Google native apps can be made as default for browser, messages, assistant, clock, payment etc. Samsung apps are now tucked away in a separate folder.
Maybe its an Android thing, but I don’t understand the need for having a Home Screen and App Screen (maybe I am used to the iOS way). Luckily, there is an option to keep Home Screen only mode, and I have almost iPhone-ised the home screen (screenshot below) :)
The Always on Display is awesome. And no more taping on screen to see the time and waking up to a brightly lit screen.
Battery is better than the iPhone 12 Mini, but could have been better if it can last for the whole day. Fully charged in the morning, and just around 30% left at 4pm.
And lastly, that Galaxy Store app – Good Lock is actually a good one. Some of the customization options (e.g., the clock faces for Always on Display).

Android Thread: Phones / Apps / Mods-screenshot_20220413150612_one-ui-home.jpg

Quote:

Originally Posted by vb-san (Post 5296821)

, Bixby is not a nagging presence any more,
[*]Battery is better than the iPhone 12 Mini, but could have been better if it can last for the whole day. Fully charged in the morning, and just around 30% left at 4pm.

Actually bixby now provides some advanced functionality that can help you save on your battery. You can create routines that get activated for certain tasks. For example you can create a smart routine to keep screen at 60Hz refresh rate when you are watching videos (using YouTube etc) or disable location but enable it only while using certain apps etc. There are YouTube videos to help setup that. It's quite nifty and really works.