Hi guys,
I just lost my phone and looking for a new smart phone around $200. Is there worth waiting for boxing day/ new year sale? I am not in a hurry and am able to wait until 5th Jan.
Thanks
Looking for a new smart phone $200 max
Lozuserforbargain on 24/12/2017 - 15:59
Comments
Samsung galaxy J3 is decent. Has nfc too.
Xiaomi!
which one? There are so many chinkdroids
Leeco x722 https://www.kimovil.com/en/where-to-buy-leeco-letv-le-pro-3-…
Powerful, well built, great price. If you know how to flash phones (or know someone who does), this phone has plenty of roms so you can install stock android, and it's also possible to flash modded camera app that will improve photo quality.
umm. Did you mean plenty of RAM
Buy online from China
Stay away from xiaomi phones, had 2x in past biggest pos I've ever owned.
what happened to them?
Kept resetting, drop outs, bootloops
I've had two Xiaomi phones as well, which I bought after recommendations from here. The first one was a Redmi Note 2, which I paid $118 AUD. I actually really liked this phone. It worked great for about a year, until one day the battery became incredibly hot and it kept rebooting over and over again, so I had to replace it.
I then got a Redmi 3 for $158.98. The battery life on this was incredible, but the software was really annoying. It only had a Chinese ROM, so although I could get it to display most things in English, it didn't come with Google Play installed, so I had to jump through hoops to manually install it. It also had a lot of frustrating software behaviour - Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger would never show me that I had received a new message until I opened the app, the Camera app would often fail to take pictures, which was super annoying to find out that none of the pics I took had actually been saved. Push notifications have never really worked on it. At one point I tried to install the Global ROM since I figured that it might have fixed some of these issues, but I could never figure it out. This phone has lasted me for just under 2 years, and it's still working, but unfortunately I dropped it the other day and the glass broke, so now I'm the market for a new phone.
So I'm kinda torn on these Xiaomi phones. The first one was great, but it died. The second was annoying to use, but for the most part it worked. I would still consider buying another xiaomi phone, but I'd have to make sure that it comes with the Global ROM. I don't want to have to deal with installing Google Play manually or fiddling with custom ROMs.
For me never again, I had 2x rmn3. One Kate the other normal. Both had the same problems from day 1, I installed global roms, unlocked officially and installed at least 10 different custom roms, still same problems.
It was a pain in the arse to install twrp, it's not like any other android, I thought I had bad luck with the first phone but decided to try again because of all the hype here. Then I purchased the Kate model and that was a pos also.
I like xiaomi products but hate their phones and will never buy another one again.
What would you recommend instead? I was thinking about getting the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X, but I really don't want to run into the same issues with Whatsapp/Facebook Messenger not showing me messages. The Leeco s3 x626 is cheap, but I don't like the fact that the company is going out of business and there will not be any more software updates. The only other one I was thinking about was the Moto G5 Plus. It might be more expensive than the Chinese phones and have less impressive specs, but I'm hoping that it'll "just work" without needing me to mess around with downloading ROMs and flashing bootloaders and all that other tedious stuff.
If you want to try cheap and take the risk of having similar issues as the xiaomi go the leeco. Me personally go the g5 plus you shouldn't have headaches with it.
I have a mate 9 and couldn't be more happier after the xiaomis I've had. On the 4x I wouldn't bother
I had global roms on both xiaomis nothing but the headaches including the ones you had with camera etc.
I've used both, along with about 8 custom roms and they all ran like a nightmare.
For this reason I'll never get another xiaomi, I got stooged from all the praise of these phones on ozb. Never again, I learnt my lesson after the second one
@bti_jet: I've got Huawei for an year now. I've not faced any such problems so far. Was about to get a note 4X but I don't wanna run into these issues
I think I bought one from geekbuying. Never buy from there again they never responded to my tickets and kept ignoring my messages.
They Kate version was from aliexpress, I didn't bother writing to them as I've had problems in the past with disputes.
The best experience in the past I've had was with banggood, I bought some Chinese phone can't remember the name had a faulty screen with some dead pixels they refund half the money
@ozuserforbargain did you find something? I am in the market for a decent unlocked phone as well.
Leeco s3 x626! Best bang for your buck