I'm looking to buy my first Android after years of using iPhones, I'm coming from an iPhone 6+ so looking for something which compares the that. Fast, good camera, no lag etc. I am hoping to keep the phone for the next two years or so.
I have a budget of around $600 and saw I can get a Motorola Nexus 6, OPPO R7 plus and Huawei p8 but not sure if these phones would be the way to go or I should look at other models?
Thank you
Man that phone looks amazing !
Is there anyone locally that sells it ? Would prefer that for the warranty.
Is the Redmi note 2 the best phone they make at the moment ? I couldn't figure out where in their range it sits.
No Redmi Note is their low-mid phone.
Mi4 is still the Xiaomi flagship I think.
Again, the camera is not going to compare (but what can you expect for $200?)
I don't mind spending more money to get better quality. A good camera is a deal breaker for me.
All of the Xiaomi phones seem to have very similar specs but the price varies greatly.
This is one of the best Android phones available now and more comparable with the iPhone 6 plus.
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/216900
The note 2 prime is great bang for buck phone but comes with a lot of compromises and is not a flagship.
The G4 is a good phone too if you are happy to go with Grey import can be found for under $600. The only main negative with G4 is battery life and it also lacks finger print scanner. Battery life still lasts a day for most people and with a replaceable battery means it's easy enough just to carry a spare if heavy user.
The nexus 6 I'm sure you'd be disappointed by camera coming from an iphone 6 plus.
I would love to go for a 6p but at the moment it's out of my price range.
How would the OPPO R7 and Huawei P8 compare to a Nexus 6 ? I was also looking at an LG G4 but the reviews said the Nexus was better.
Don't know about the review with the nexus 6, but I only brought up the G4 because it's in your price range and is considered as having one of the better camera's on a smartphone currently. I went from a note 4 to a G4, the reason being I changed was down to Touchwiz and it's lagginess. The main issue with lag was when switching apps, using the camera and switching to the gallery app after taking photo's. Also TW poorly manages ram, and when switching between apps would often need to reload an app that it shouldn't really needed to on a phone with 3gb of ram. It really odd how it acts like a lower end phone that needs to keep freeing up memory. I was concerned that the G4 would be similar, but have pleasantly been surprised how great the G4 performs. Despite the specs the G4 runs Android very smoothly, and doesn't suffer the ram management issue that was a problem with my Note 4. Really it was the best decision I made, the G4 performance is flawless, and the camera imo is considerably better too. Not that the Note 4 camera is bad, it's a great camera too. Samsung did improve things on 5.1.1, the Note 4 was definitely performing better and hopefully with Marshmallow they sought out the poor ram management. If you want fast phone with a camera as good as iPhone 6 plus, there's really only a handful of Android phone that fall into that category, and most those phone's are above $600 unfortunately.
Thank you for the great advice ! I love to hear reviews from owners it really helps to know how good the phone is in the long run.
I use my smart phone fairly basically. Social media, photos, music and youtube. I just wasn't sure how the phone would be in a year or two time but i guess in my price range it's the best option.
How are you finding battery life and screen quality ?
The screen quality is great, one of the best screens on a mobile phone. I find if you use autobrightness that it tends to be too aggressive to conserve battery but apart from that I have no complaints screenwise. The battery is average to poor, I usually have the screen brightness set to around 50% and I am getting around 2.5-3.5 hours screen time over a day use. It depends on how often I use the GPS and how much time I spend outside. I normally keep location settings off to try and conserve battery. I don't used powersaving mode either, I have tried it and found it did make a big difference to battery life and it didn't seem to make any noticeable difference to performance. And yeah in your budget it would be either the G4 or S6 if you can find one on sale. The G4 will be fine phone for a long time, and is supposedly getting Marshmallow update a lot quicker than other phones. It should at very least get Android N as well in 12 months time.
Thanks mate really do appreciate your help !
I can get a second hand S6 32gb for $550 but i'd rather get a brand new one.
Hopefully a deal for an Aus model G4 comes out soon though.
Same i'd much prefer a Nexus.
I have a friend who works for a telco and can get me a new one for $650 but i'm hoping I can get it for cheaper.
Note 4 would be alright (I assume that they'd come down to your budget region if you give it a time, I've seen it go down to $699 before). Nexus 6 would probably give you better user experience based on performance though (Nexus tend to have better performance at similar spec, Galaxy series tend to be worse with similar spec due to "bloat"), other than the camera I assume (which I have no clue in since I am not a camera guy).
I've seen Galaxy S6 Edge coming down to $648 with vouchers, https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/216891. I personally think flat one is much practical though. I've heard that it has one of the best cameras according to DxOMark in mobile. I am not sure how much of that is true though (as I said earlier, not a camera guy). It has one of the best hardware for this year's flagship.
There are few irks with software. More specifically, they've made LowMemoryKiller settings too sensitively (basically it sets what gets completely shutdown to conserve RAM), causing too many refreshes. I think it is getting fixed (or alleviated) on next update, from what I've seen on a forum I go to. To summarise what I've seen, somebody uploaded stats of LMK process kills with newest Korean firmware, it was far lower than what I've seen with mine. (Koreans tend to get firmwares earlier than us it seems, i.e. we got Note 5 features in S6 this month, whereas they got it July/August? Can't remember)
Yeah i'm currently thinking to avoid the nexus due to the camera.
I hated the Samsung touch wiz but coming from Apple with ample support the Samsung might be the closest thing.
I have to get the phone by end November (perhaps earlier) so I have a bit of time. I'm strongly leaning towards the OPPO R7 unless I can get an S6 on the cheap.
:P I probably would sound like a fanboy (I probably am a bit), but from what I've seen with S6, they've culled down a lot of the bloat on TouchWiz. It's still there and some of them are rather annoying, but they are far less than older TouchWiz from what I've seen. Though unfortunately, we'd have to wait until we see AOSP ROM on S6 from what I've seen on XDA.
R7 is pretty much a mid-range phone, I'd personally recommend G4, Note 4 or S6 over R7 because of that.
Anyways, just in case somebody asks where I got "new firmwares might fix or alleviate LMK issue". If you ask me, the software team in Samsung deserve to be fired for this, it's a problem that is easy to fix with root access… Anyways, sigh.
This apparently is after the new firmware in Korea, After update apparently, top one is LMK, buttom one is OOM.
Thank you so much for the advice !
After spending hours researching i've knocked the Nexus out as it doesn't have expandable storage and the OPPO R7 for user based performance reviews.
Currently now looking at the G4 and P8. Only issue is I can't find heaps of information on the p8 so don't know if it's a good buy or not.
I was looking at Sony but a lot of people seem to have issues with them so i'm a bit weary but I really like the Z4 and Z5. I wish I could afford an S6 or the new Nexus but it's too expensive.
For those of you with the LG G4 do you think you could run Marshmallow on it and if the phone has enough grunt for two years of use ? I also like that there would be support available for the phone instead of next to non like the p8.
@sshazam: The problem I see with G4 is that it's not a flagship in my opinion. I personally see it as a high end mid range phone. I've talked about this before on another post, but basically hardware wise, LG have cut down on areas that they could've used better things on.
That said, you'd probably not have a problem with the phone in 2 years period (I think, this is something that I have to say with some hesistance for all phones, since some phones start to have problems after 1 year of release). The phones nowadays are good anyways, more than adequate for many people unless you play resource intensive games. LG has been amazing with Lollipop and I assume similar things with Marshmallow. Software wise, LG has been making Nexus since Nexus 5 and I think it really shows with how fast they are with software updates. LG tried to release Marshmallow few days ago in fact which is bloody fast since Marshmallow was released late last month (it was taken down due to technical difficulties, but I personally think it was LG trying to do trial runs too quickly).
Basically the specific worries I have with LG G4 are minute, it's more of, they could've been better and there is a better hardware option out there if you want to say it's a flagship.
There are few irks I have with LG products, but they are not exactly related to G4. They hold bad reputation in the forum I go to. I had few issues with my gf's LG G2, but I don't think it applies to G4. I personally would choose G4 over P8 from what I see on the paper at least.
Though this is just my opinion.
I do agree it's not a flag ship but one good thing is that the phone falls within my price range which is a huge positive :).
If I can get two years usage out of the G4 i'd be very happy but i'm used to an iPhone so don't know the life span of an Android.
@sshazam: You'd get two years (more than likely) unless you like changing phones, given that G4 do not have any problems in design (It's higly highly highly unlikely that it would have any, but I am basically playing my cards safe). I personally think G4 could use a better SoC or lower resolution, but other than that it'd be fine. I've seen people still using Galaxy S2, S3 and those are 3~4 years old models, so yeah.
Btw, do check out the back buttons before buying it, if you want to get it. It's different from having the buttons on the side (it can be a good thing or a bad thing).
You can effectively get rid of Touchwiz by installing a different launcher like Nova.
Nope, the shitty software job they've done with the kernel and other settings still stay with the phone unless you grab a custom Kernel and stuff.
LMK setting would be untouched without actually tweaking system parameter (which requires root access, at the very least).
Ah, how hard I fight the temptation :( Rooting would solve most of the problems I have (and it'd only take few tweaks too).
I digress, but yeah.
Sure, but the day to day appearance aspects of Touchwiz (which is what most people dont like about it) can be largely overcome by installing a different launcher.
@scubacoles: Yeah, but the major problem with the phone would still stay. People tend to hate TouchWiz because of lags (which is caused by massive number of bloats on previous TW. I argue that they've have been removed significantly on S6, though other problems appeared as I've mentioned above).
Besides, the TouchWiz launcher didn't look that bad either with the new Theme Store (it changes icons and other aspects of Vanila TouchWiz UI like colour of notification bar and stuff). They now allow you to change the grid on the launcher (4x4, 5x4, 5x5). I don't use it (I have already bought Nova Launcher and it allows me to do more with the home), but I thought they've improved it since S4 Active (my old phone).
EDIT: Actually scratch the things I said about the TouchWiz launcher, the animation on them are still too slow for my taste.
R7 or the R7plus? http://www.dicksmith.com.au/oppo-r7-products http://www.oppo.com/en/smartphone-r7-plus/
remember you are going from a $1000 phone to $600 or less so don't expect the same quality other wise you will need to spend similar to the iphone price ($800 or more)
I loved the look and feel of the OPPO but some owner reviews suggested it was slow.
I'd be more inclined to go for a Huawei than the R7. I'm not sure if any Huawei models compete with the G4 though.
I will likely remain - very - stubbornly disinclined to buying any phone without a removable battery, despite trend.
Regardless, OP, as opposed to OPPO, I did read this review on the R7 Plus - detailed and with lots of photos, with some interest, when it popped-up in my feed, recently.
Phones and other, OPPO are interesting and make some pretty good gear.
Android Australia remains a virtually unknown site. Worth a follow, in addition to Ausdroid.
From the other day. Also of interest.
Thanks so much !
Yes i'm looking at the G4 vs Huewei P8. I think the LG is a smarter choice since tech support would be there but nobody around me has one on display for me to feel so it's making it tough.
I'd like to compare the camera to my iPhone 6 and see if it's as good.
Other issue is getting content off my iPhone to the LG that will be a challenge.
http://google.com.au/search?q=backing+up+iphone+to+android
http://ausdroid.net/2015/06/25/lg-g4-review/
http://ausdroid.net/2015/08/31/huawei-p8-review/
Any concerns you have about the G4 camera vs. the iPhone 6, are answered in the first review. You are very unlikely to be disappointed. G4 camera-app also offers very impressive manual-settings functionality, absent elsewhere.
Maybe a somewhat longer delay for Marshmallow update, it would seem
Many very keen deals on the G4 on OzBargain, lately. Especially keenly priced, given overall performance.
Search OzBargain. Lots of threads for you to read + no doubt, more deals to come.
Thank you so much I really do appreciate it !
How would you compare the G4 to the Sony Z3 ?
https://talk.sonymobile.com/t5/Xperia-Z3/Xperia-Z3-cracked-s…
I've just linked you to the last page on Sony's own forum.
Plenty of discussion, elsewhere.
Also, a reluctant (and a warranty saga for customers) acknowledgement that their phones aren't 'waterproof', after all.
If you are after a water resistant phone, maybe consider the Sony. Otherwise, considerably more expensive than any of the recent deals on the LG.
@Tas:
Thank you for your advice so much, I really do appreciate it.
I"m going to go for the G4 it seems to be a great phone at a great price.
Now all I have to do is figure out how to transfer my iPhone data over to android.
great reveiw, thanks. It doesnt have NFC, thats a bummer for me.
But overall it seems an OK phone for the price and pretty good looking too.
Do you think its OK for the cost seeing youve played with it a lot, thinking it may be fine for the wife to replace her aging xperia z - she really only texts/phones/whatsapp/facebbook/photos - photos is one where she'd like decent pics, the sony is poor (with her white phone all pics are white/washed out like light comes through the white body, our black one doesnt do it)
Get an Alcatel 2052. $12.50 this week Woolworths. That smartphone is watching and recording you. Google it. Look at the threads I've posted here. All that info is sold and onsold to the coppers and marketing agencies. They never stop. Match it to your Opal card that is probably registered so they are watching where you travel and how often and combine all that with credit/debit cards spending info and you have a pattern of life. Social media is the cherry on top. They can anticipate what you'll be doing before you do it. You don't need to be chipped, your smartphone does it for you.
If anyone is watching me I feel sorry for them. I spend half my life on Ozbargain so nothing great.
Which brand of tin foil hat do you recommend?
I have a Oneplus One, best phone I have ever had (and I have had a few!)
They are a pain to get but well worth the effort. Stunning camera, fast processor, and I like the 'pure' Android-based OS, without all the geegaws that end up on phones like the Galaxy(s).
Can be a bit bulky but I have big hands, so the new and smaller Oneplus X might suit better, another premium handset at a bargain price.
Whilst it is a good phone, the reviews I saw showed that the LG is a better option.
I"d prefer buying warranty due to being covered if anything goes wrong.
Thank you everyone for the advice I really do appreciate it.
I think i'm just going to get a grey import but which of these retailers is safe to buy from ? I'm happy to spend a bit more for someone who offers good service in the initial dealing and if I have any warranty issues.
The iPhone 6+ is a $900 phone (for the small one). Make sure you have reasonable expectations as to how close of an equivalent Android device you can really get for $600.
My iPhone 6+ 128gb has been having so many problems since day one that unless this phone suffers from freezing, constant lag, disregard of user settings and has a mind of it's own it will be a step up from my current phone.
All I use the phone is for hardcore texting, Facebook,browsing the web, youtube, photos, social median music. Whilst i've never used an Android I imagine an LG G4 should comfortably be able to do this ?
I know my budget is unreasonable but from the long term reviews i've seen the phone does seem snappy and responsive.
But I do appreciate the advice PTSD :)
Just wanted to say thank you everyone for the help !
I finally got a G4 this morning, I was thinking of going with a z5 but preferred the feel and price of the G4.
You made the right decision, the G4 is an excellent handset.
Only issue i'm having is getting the content from my iPhone to the g4.
The guys at the Telstra store said it would work for Mac, LG have the software for Mac but haven't released driver support for it meaning it doesn't work.
How much was it? From where did you buy? I might get one too.
$505 from Telstra store promotion.
Got a refund on the phone and went for a galaxy s6.
The G4 is an excellent phone and definitely worth the money but the camera was over hyped I felt and it lacked Mac support.
Thanks for the info. I too was going for it because of the camera.
The camera is nice in very high light situations in manual mode.
But in auto mode and sometimes in manual mode I found it tends to make images over sharpen and over exposed.
In the store play around with it but you'll find the best results when you mess around in the settings in manual mode. I did not want this so went with an S6 which has a much better camera, although the LG was nicer to use.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Helio X10 Octa-core 64-bit 3GB RAM 32GB ROM (Enhanced Edition) the new version.That one can take in to consideration.
Consider a Redmi Note 2 Prime. I too was an avid iPhone user and have fallen in love with it…