Any mobile under the sun: Review

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Monday, December 21, 2015

First 56th hour with Redmi Note 2

Now, that I have the Redmi Note 2 running MIUI 6.7.5.0LHMCNCH 2GB RAM 16GB ROM for 56 hours, I experienced more irritating bloatware and advertisement popping up quite frequently right in the midst of messaging or doing other task.

Charging the phone was my biggest hurdle, it is just taking too long to fully charge the phone. Initially, it took 12 hours. I tried using the using the 2.0A charger that came with the Redmi, Anker 5-Port USB Desktop Charger which has 2.1A and 1.0A ports for my iPhone and iPad, and my APC 2.1A powerbank. Just did not do the job. I can confirm there definitely a battery or motherboard problem, definitely the fast charging is not in place. Am going to try the new ROM upgrade tomorrow, and see whether it is the software.

Being a benchmark freak, I ran the Antutu Benchmark v5.7.1, then, a system message popped suggesting I download the 64bit version. Got that done, ran the test with power setting on “Performance”. Hahaha, the test just stopped after reaching 76%. Yet, I am puzzled again. With an expectation of getting 40k plus result. Yet another disappointment underway, so I cheated the benchmark by plugging it to the power source, only then it did complete the test with disappointing result, a far cry from the reviews made on it.

Something to note, as I was replying to MIUI forum and inserting images, suddenly a new error message “running low on memory” and I felt that is strange, equipped with a 2GB RAM is quite sufficient to do this small multi-tasking job, right? Then I checked, I had only four tasks out of two apps opened, which is 3 tabs of Chrome and Facebook app. You kidding me, right? Maybe the other variant of 3GB RAM and 32GB ROM would actually be more practical.

Battery life on the Redmi Note 2 is still bugging me, I have my iPhone 6s Plus and the battery drain pattern is so consistent that I need a 5000mAh APC power bank to suffice my daily use and my Android phone being my secondary backup. With this option, my Redmi Note 2 is sucking so much juice in such a short period of time, despite having a 3060 mAh battery size.

The 13-megapixel shooter is really the strong pointer, pictures are clear and crisp. But, sadly, when there are a few apps running on the background, the camera lagged so bad that I lost a few shots which was not saved for reason unknown.

Next, the screen and resolution is great with a shortfall of the light sensor not working smoothly.

Lastly, the much hyped about Infrared Remote control app, which is nowhere to be found. And yes, the mechanism is there alright. And I had to google the MIUI forum, and I managed to get an APK with some English translation meant for the Chinese market from one of the user.

Hopefully, with the much awaited Global Stable ROM tomorrow, we the MIUI will get the betterment and benefit from the upgrades.

Disclaimer:
This is my unbiased user hands-on experience and thoughts based on the mentioned product and its interactions.

© 2015 Felix Senada. All rights reserved.

Sony Xperia M4 Aqua Dual : A love-hate experience

Sony Xperia M4 Aqua is an attractive mid-range 5-inch HD display Android smartphone with the main striking features like being Waterproof certified with IP65/IP68 rating. A shooter with primary 13 megapixel camera and 5MP selfie front camera. It is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 Octa-core 64-bit clock at 1.46Ghz. And it has a 2-day battery life and support Dual-sim card. Last but not least it actually comes with NFC which is proudly printed on the back cover. Shortfall was no LTE/4G (not available in all markets) for the Dual variance.

After reading many impressive reviews and going through the local Sony website on Xperia M4 Aqua, I went ahead and got one all for $220 which is almost half the price of the flagship Xperia Z3. What a good buy, right? Wait a minute!

xperia-m4-aqua-dual-white-1240x840-0c4c09bcacafc11535b2dff46706facc (1)

With much excitement and enthusiasm, I unboxed it quickly, admiring the built of the phone. And I went on to plug-in my sim-card, I realized it wasn’t the mini-sim as shown on the images on the product website. Anyway, that’s not to worry about, after all being an avid iPhone user, I always get the nano-sim, so I just have to inset it without the adaptor.

Next, setup the phone for initial usage. The screen resolution looks sharp and crisp. Went on to update the Google Play Store and install the popular social networking apps like Whatsapp, Viber, Line App and a few more. And that’s when it started giving all memory warnings. Hell no! I have used 85% of the device memory. What?! I have not even update the preloaded apps on the phone and I already getting these warnings. Alright, no doubt it comes with 8GB of storage (16GB is no currently available), but I just could not comprehend the scenario. Well, first thing first, deleting the preloaded apps. The result, I managed to delete a few Launcher rather than an app which is a few tenths of megabyte, that I gained. What choice do I have other than to plug-in a memory card. Knowingly well enough calling an app will be much delayed from the SD memory allocation. Now, I have to jiggle with app size to download as I have very limited space to deal with. It is kind of silly due to the limitation of memory usage, literally speaking, you have approximately 2.89GB of memory available, for your apps, photos and other media. The Official Sony Product website is very misleading to small print which I extracted from http://www.sonymobile.com
“*****The M4 Aqua Dual has 3 GB of free memory (before you update preloaded applications) available to the user for downloaded applications and their data, music, pictures and movies while the device has up to 8 GB of flash memory in total.” which I found is not correct, as I reset the M4 Aqua to see the real truth to Sony’s claim. Reading between the line, I am pretty sure Sony is well aware, should the “Preloaded Apps” were updated, the device storage will shrink with little or no space for other user apps to be installed, other than to move most the apps to the SD card.

All images have not been edited or Photoshop and “as it is”. (Click to see full size)

Verdict:

Nice build
Camera is good for a mid-range phone
Audio is quite good and loud
HD screen is sharp and crisp
Waterproof, but the headphone jack did went haywire when submerged in the pipe water
Battery life not consistent
Network signal not really reliable
8GB is definitely not enough and not a selling point
Overall performance is sluggish

Thoughts:

I am a bit skeptical about the Snapdragon 615 especially the over-heating glitch and etc, while a few devices manage to work around the problems. The Xperia M4 Aqua does feel hot at times and having a just 8GB simply is not helping since the Android 5.0 (Lollipop) Operating System file is occupying more than 4.00GB of space plus the preloaded Sony related apps which does not give an option to delete is really squeezing the good user experience to the max. Xperia M4 is in line to receive this crucial Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS update with the memory management but will it help?

With all the bloatware (pre-installed apps) on Android’s openness by cellular carriers and phone manufacturers often make the experience worse for it users, and that thin line separate iOS devices user and making iOS platform a premium and maximum user experience, without bloatware.

Redmi Note 2 Prime Reloaded

It has been a week, fiddling with my new Redmi Note 2 Prime with MIUI 66.77.33.00 (LHMCNCH) Stable ROM. Adding another sibling of Redmi Note 2 to my collection of Mi smartphone. I had gotten it from a third party online store, having said that, as usual it came pre-loaded with all the bloatware, adware and malware. This time round I had actually made a folder of the installers and latest ROM to flash it with. Installed V7.0.8.0.LHMCNCI (MIUI7) came out with an error signature failed, which was not fixed yet, hence had to flash V7.0.6.0.LHMCNCI then update to V7.0.8.0.LHMCNCI. Prior to this I had a lot of fun making my Redmi Note 2 as the guinea pig to try out and experiment, not to the extend of a bootloop or bricking the phone for the sack of getting a greater user experience out of it. Anyway, even at the critical state or stage of bricking your phone or simply a bootloop, it can be rectified, as long all the pre-emptive measures were taken in the initial stage before embarking into the fantasies of flashing and all sort.

Just to recap, Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 Prime smartphone was launched in August 2015. The phone comes with a 5.50-inch touchsceen display with a resolution of 1080 pixels by 1920 pixels. Redmi Note 2 Prime is powered by 2.2GHz octa-core MediaTek Helio X10 (MTK6795T) processor and it comes with 2GB of RAM. The phone packs 32GB of internal storage that can be expanded up to 32GB via a microSD card. As far as the cameras are concerned, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 Prime packs a 13-megapixel primary camera on the rear and a 5-megapixel front shooter for selfies.

THOUGHTS:

Both the Redmi Note 2 and Prime are really good or as close a flagship smartphone in the market. Price wise between the two siblings is just a differences of USD16 and Prime sports a slightly higher-clocked Helio X10 SoC (2.2GHz quad-core Cortex-A53 + 2.2GHz quad-core Cortex-A53) and a storage of 32GB. As far as I concern, there not so much of a big different in term of speed, just that the Prime feels smoother without much lags undertaking any given task has ample space for the apps and media. Anyway, I still rely a lot on my iPhone 6s Plus 128GB for food porn and photo taking which I find more realistic in color, details and low-light picture. Shooter on both the Redmi Note 2 and Prime is great with enough lighting and camera software has more to be improved.

Shortfall of the camera, after having taken so many picture, it is very obvious that most of the shots wereover-exposed, eventhough adjustment were made to compensate the exposure. Andanother plaquing and mind-boggling experience was the red color distortion andglitch, which is very obvious in more of the shots.