[dkaile]

Originally Posted by Klub Class

Mi5 32 GB model launched at Rs 24999

About 4k more than expectations. But this guy still has more juice to fizzle the pants out of the likes of S7 and others. Mi playing spoilsport by again not launching the top spec versions (64GB and 128 GB/4GB ceramic) in a price sensitive Indian market. Still this phone is poised to be a game changer. Cant wait to touch and feel one...

Cheers...

[petrolhead_neel]

Hi all,

I have a one year old Moto G2 running CM13. Some days ago, I dropped it from about 3-4 feet and the screen simply shattered!? This was totally unexpected. Had never expected such bad build quality from Motorola.

Changing the glass will cost a bomb. I have installed a transparent fibre glass screen guard as a stop gap arrangement. It is quite usable now, but there are visible cracks and the touch sensitivity is downgraded(read , typing is a pain now).

The Moto's hardware is nothing close to being future proof. I do a lot of experimenting with ROMs these days and I love using the latest OS available. Use a variety of apps but am not a phone gamer.

So, I don't think that replacing the screen of my Moto would be a good decision. I think it will stay usable for a few months down the line. After that, I will simply buy a new phone when parents permit.

Please chip in your suggestions. I don't want to and rather can't spend more than 12-13k on a new phone. I think I should wait with my broken Moto for now?

Originally Posted by S_U_N

For me the latest security updates are very important. So, I go with a phone which has active developer support. That way, when the vendor gives up on us, the good fellows from CM are still there to keep us secure.

Sorry that is a completely different take on what to look for buying a phone.

I am using my 2 year old Droid Maxx on Cm 6.0.1 with the March security update from Google.

Amen! That's my take on buying a new phone too!

Originally Posted by petrolhead_neel

Some days ago, I dropped it from about 3-4 feet and the screen simply shattered!?

Sorry to hear that, petrolhead_neel. My Lenovo K3 Note passed the unintentional, rigorous on-road testing at 100 kmph.

Originally Posted by J.Ravi

My Lenovo K3 Note proved that it is a tough nut to crack - both literally and metaphorically - although it does not have Corning Gorilla glass. Recently, I solo-rode Golden Quadrilateral on my Thunderbird 500, using my mobile with Navi Maps app as my navigator.

While riding in AP in the first day [15 Feb 2016], the wind force was so heavy in the morning, it dislodged my phone from the holder and it flew out, but luckily, I took a catch on my left hand, thereby saving my mobile. But, on the second time near Chilakaluripeta, I was not lucky. It flew out as I was going in 100 kmph speed and dropped on the road. Fortunately, there were no vehicles behind me, I came back and retrieved it. Thank god, it did not break; only some scratches on the back side.

Now, I am toying with the idea of buying Lenovo Vibe K4 Note, keeping my Lenovo K3 Note exclusively for navigational purposes.

[landcruiser123]

Originally Posted by phamilyman

I personally think the latest and greatest Android OS is irrelevant today. What matters is responsiveness and day to day lag-free nature.

Yeah, the latest OS isn't really all that required of you change your phone once in 3 years or earlier.

Of late, I've been seeing that some apps aren't supported on devices running anything before ICS (v4.0) You can change the look of any android phone with launchers and themes.

So android version is just a number (and not a hindrance) if you're phone isn't too old.

Originally Posted by petrolhead_neel

Hi all,

I have a one year old Moto G2 running CM13. Some days ago, I dropped it from about 3-4 feet and the screen simply shattered!?

Nothing surprising.

Please chip in your suggestions. I don't want to and rather can't spend more than 12-13k on a new phone. I think I should wait with my broken Moto for now?

If you like installing Custom roms, try popular phones like moto g3, mi 4.

Else, there's a plethora of devices at that price. I heard good review about the lenovo Kx note series. (x=3,4,5)

[digitalnirvana]

@arnabchak at 7k the Coolpad note 3 lite with 3GB RAM, fingerprint sensor, 32GB internal memory, dual 4G is the most VFM plus it comes with Amazon warranty

@petrolhead_neel at 12K the redmi note 3 blows the competition away with 3GB RAM, 32GB memory, VOLTE etc. Really good device

[petrolhead_neel]

Originally Posted by J.Ravi

Sorry to hear that, petrolhead_neel. My Lenovo K3 Note passed the unintentional, rigorous on-road testing at 100 kmph.


Now, I am toying with the idea of buying Lenovo Vibe K4 Note, keeping my Lenovo K3 Note exclusively for navigational purposes.

Cheers Ravi Sir! How I wish that my phone was as robust as yours! People simply overrate Moto's build quality. My mother has a Vibe P1m and its really well built too!

Originally Posted by landcruiser123

Nothing surprising.



If you like installing Custom roms, try popular phones like moto g3, mi 4.

Else, there's a plethora of devices at that price. I heard good review about the lenovo Kx note series. (x=3,4,5)

Thanks!


I am NEVER going the Moto way again!

How future proof will the Mi4's hardware be? Also, I am waiting for the OP1's price to come down since it was sort of my dream phone.

Lenovo Kx series are good, but I can't stand the VibeUI, after being used to stock Android and now CyanigenMod. And no, launchers only fix that to some extent.


How would be the custom ROM support of the Redmi Note 3? That phone is a beast! Will hunt on XDA .

Originally Posted by digitalnirvana

@petrolhead_neel at 12K the redmi note 3 blows the competition away with 3GB RAM, 32GB memory, VOLTE etc. Really good device

Thanks!

Again, I prefer stock Android to anything else. I hope that I am able to find good custom ROMs for the Note.

_____________________________________

But, my original question was, should I hang on to my broken phone and not repair it, and wait for it to break down fully and then buy a new phone?

[mukul32]

Originally Posted by petrolhead_neel

Hi all,

I have a one year old Moto G2 running CM13. Some days ago, I dropped it from about 3-4 feet and the screen simply shattered!? This was totally unexpected. Had never expected such bad build quality from Motorola.

Changing the glass will cost a bomb. I have installed a transparent fibre glass screen guard as a stop gap arrangement. It is quite usable now, but there are visible cracks and the touch sensitivity is downgraded(read , typing is a pain now).

The Moto's hardware is nothing close to being future proof. I do a lot of experimenting with ROMs these days and I love using the latest OS available. Use a variety of apps but am not a phone gamer.

So, I don't think that replacing the screen of my Moto would be a good decision. I think it will stay usable for a few months down the line. After that, I will simply buy a new phone when parents permit.

Please chip in your suggestions. I don't want to and rather can't spend more than 12-13k on a new phone. I think I should wait with my broken Moto for now?


Amen! That's my take on buying a new phone too!

You seem to be of my kind, Neel. Sad to hear about the Moto G. However, it might be a one-off case. My friend also uses one and has dropped it a few times before me. Nothing happened. It defeinitely isn't a bad phone. Neither are Motos of its times. In fact all of those were the very best in the game (Nexus 6, Moto X2, Droid Turbo).
Anyway, regarding your query, I think you should change the phone now. The 2014 G is getting a bit long in the tooth now, and the hardware may not hold up very well with Android N and later. However, that is one phone with good community support.

As for the Redmi Note 3 suggestions, it has great specs and battery, but MI is strictly for casual users only now and simply not for people like us, or so it appears. The bootloader is locked, unlocking it is quite a chore made by Xiaomi, and due to closed source hardware, stuff such as fingerprint scanner may not work with custom ROM's. It may perhaps happen at some point that Xiaomi may release sources and some development may occur, but this hope game is a gamble just not worth taking in the budget segment. Ask me if you want. I bought an Xperia E1 over the 1st gen Moto E, as the E was out of stock for a long while, and I was getting excellent offers for the E1, and the Moto E has stable CM13 now, while my old E1 is lying in a drawer with a broken screen on (Xperia UI) Kitkat. Absolutely no development on that phone.

Strictly in the budget that you mentioned, I'd say get the Moto G 3rd gen. The normal one, and not the turbo edition, as the normal one has some really sweet XDA support, including official CM13 builds at the moment. It has a good camera for the price (same as Nexus 6), is waterproof, it will get Android N officially, and almost certainly beyond that unofficially. The battery life is also very good on that one. You said you are not gonna play heavy games, so the 410 will suffice. And it is going to get N officially, so you can stay unrooted for a year till the warranty expires.

However, I have another suggestion. If you can up your budget, I would point to the OnePlus One. It still has really strong hardware, is well built, and an almost religious level of following on XDA. Check out this article. It has around 24 pages filled with threads in the Android Development section alone! That and the Nexus 5 I guess will never die out of XDA support. The 64GB spec was almost 18k the last time I saw, but it is getting old in the market, and you'll find a better deal somewhere. It is a completely different experience to any other phone. I would not recommend that phone to a layman, as it is simply not a device that one can expect to be 100% bug-free out of the box, but owing to XDA, it gets lots of features, quick custom ROM updates, the bugs are fixed in no time and the community behind that phone is unreal. It will almost certainly have amazing custom ROM support for another couple of years, and maybe even more.

If it can wait a couple of months, the new Motos are supposed to come in by June. The 4th gen G is also confirmed to have a fingerprint scanner and a 5"+ screen. But looking at Lenovo's recent moves, I don't know whether it will still run stock Android, or be as dev-friendly as its predecessors. So it is likely that it may not be worth the wait.

Apart from that, there's not much to recommend, as budget phones these days are usually coming in by the truckloads hoping to sell on one or two standout features and are mostly filled with bloat junk and custom software without any support.

[petrolhead_neel]

Originally Posted by mukul32

You seem to be of my kind, Neel. .

We meet again, brother! Thanks a lot! Your help is REALLY appreciated.

I cannot afford to buy a phone at this moment. Has to be within a few months, the Moto isn't holding up very well. Maybe May, during my birthday.

My parents won't allow me to go for a Moto. And yes, apart from the screen incident, I swear by my phone! It has simply opened up the Android world for me. Thank you, dear Moto! We have had a good run.

The XDA thread on the OPO is really reassuring. It is THE phone I want. I have always wanted that phone, could never afford that. I will wait out for a few months, to let the price drop down more. Time to start research on The One.

Thanks again!

Neel

[Blow Horn Ok]

Anyone using the Mi 2 Prime? I am in market for a budget handset as my nokia lumia 520 simply went dead day before yesterday and service centre guys are saying the the chip/mother board is gone and it is not repairable. What other options I have in android with a budget of 6-8k?

I am not a gamer or app fanatic but I want smooth and reliable performance.

[sinhead]

Originally Posted by Sheel

I got an iPhone 5S then [am not suggesting this] and pretty happy with the size.

Hows does this phone handle the latest ios? Is it a lag free experience?

And How fast is the gps lock if you have used it for navigation?

I too need a 4.5 inch phone and I am seriously considering 5s. If not this, then I'll be forced to purchase a 5 inch android phone.

[landcruiser123]

Originally Posted by petrolhead_neel

I am NEVER going the Moto way again!

How future proof will the Mi4's hardware be? Also, I am waiting for the OP1's price to come down since it was sort of my dream phone.

Yes, MI4I's hardware is old. The OPX was 12 k yesterday on Amazon if you bought it with a citibank credit card.

No computer hardware is future-proof. They evolve at incredible speeds, hope you've heard about Moore's law, stating that hardware processing power doubles every 18 months.
He also dragged an automobile in his comparison. He said:

If the auto industry advanced as rapidly as the semiconductor industry, a Rolls Royce would get half a million miles per gallon, and it would be cheaper to throw it away than to park it.

Sorry for going OT.

Lenovo Kx series are good, but I can't stand the VibeUI, after being used to stock Android and now CyanigenMod. And no, launchers only fix that to some extent.


How would be the custom ROM support of the Redmi Note 3? That phone is a beast! Will hunt on XDA .

Lenovo phones don't have stable custom roms. The Redmi 3 may not get official CM builds, but Mokee might have a build for it. It's still a new phone, so you'll have to wait for some time to get a custom rom.
Mokee builds are pretty good, but their battery life is a little poor.

With MIUI, I used to get ~4 hrs of screen on time on my MI4I, but with a stable mokee, I got only 2.5 hours of screen on time. Poor battery life shouldn't matter on the Redmi note 3 though.

But, my original question was, should I hang on to my broken phone and not repair it, and wait for it to break down fully and then buy a new phone?

No point holding on if you can buy a new phone. It may be good to keep checking for deals for a week or two.

[JonSnow]

Originally Posted by petrolhead_neel

I have a one year old Moto G2 running CM13. Some days ago, I dropped it from about 3-4 feet and the screen simply shattered!? This was totally unexpected. Had never expected such bad build quality from Motorola.

I have dropped my Moto G (1st gen) several times without any damage while my friend has cracked his OPO screen twice by dropping it. It could depend on many factors like the angle of impact and the surface dropped on. But I think Moto is not any worse than other manufacturers as pretty much all the major manufacturers use the same Gorilla Glass for the screen, and any other phone screen might also have broken on similar impact (except maybe the Moto X Force). So I don't think you should completely ditch Moto because of this incident. Maybe it was just your bad luck.

Redmi Note 3 does seem like a very good alternative at 12k, though I don't have any idea about installing custom ROMs and how well it will work on that phone. Other than Moto G and Redmi Note 3, no other phone has really caught my interest in that price range.

[lordvader]

I have been using Moto G3 for the last couple of months. I switched from nexus 4 and being a power user it ticked all boxes for me. I was using android M custom roms on N4 and there were no complains with it. Android M, by the way, has not been officially released for N4. The only issue that I had and could not resolve was storage, I had the 16 GB version which was getting insufficient.
So switched to Moto G3 since I wanted the stock android experience. And so far it has not disappointed one bit. Performance is good and it seems a tad faster than N4, maybe due to F2FS filesystem. Battery backup is very good as it lasts for the entire day. And that's with 3G and location on (high accuracy). Screen is definitely better than N4 and its sufficient so to say. Camera is pretty good and is worth the money. Its no dslr but does the job with decent pictures. The only missing feature in this phone is NFC, which again is not a must for most. The inbuilt Moto actions are good though not good as the ones in G2. I think its a pretty good buy at this price point unless one wants to be at bleeding edge of technology.

[bhp_maniac]

Originally Posted by digitalnirvana

@arnabchak at 7k the Coolpad note 3 lite with 3GB RAM, fingerprint sensor, 32GB internal memory, dual 4G is the most VFM plus it comes with Amazon warranty

@petrolhead_neel at 12K the redmi note 3 blows the competition away with 3GB RAM, 32GB memory, VOLTE etc. Really good device

I second that. Have both the Note 3 lite and its big brother in the family. Both are operating flawlessly. Memory management is excellent I'd say, there are hardly any app re-opening upon normal usage. However I noticed that the note 3 lite's screen is much more vibrant (the display setting is set in "Standard") and blacks are deeper than the bigger Coolpad Note 3. Battery life is excellent for day to day usage on both the phones.

[for_cars1]

Have anyone taken the plunge to upgrade their Note 5 to Marshmallow ?

I'm currently in the "once bitten twice shy" syndrome regarding upgrades.

4 years back when life looked perfect with Gingerbread on Note1 and it came crashing down with the upgrade saga to ICS (with multiple followup updates by Samsung to fix battery drain and lag) followed by Jellybean which was stable on Note-1 but made it laggy.

So now i'm at the same cross-roads and received the notification by Samsung to upgrade from Lollipop to Marshmallow saying it has better call stability, memory and battery optimization, security, existing apps no longer working and what not.

Going by online reports of people who have taken the Marshmallow bait, it looks like history repeating all over again with Wifi stability issues, battery drain (during idle), lag and a step down on interface design.

I'm going to hold on to Lollipop 5.1.1 on my Note 5 and it looks perfect from every sense and well optimized for Note 5; read: awesome battery life and lag free performance, great interface and everything works.