You can do a lot better for the price if you’re prepared to go without the stylus. Also no OIS on a main camera, and only one year of Android version updates, on a 400 US dollar phone (300 is only a limited discount) in 2023? Surely not. At this price point you can get a Northing Phone 1 or Samsung Galaxy A73 5G, witch both have a much faster and efficient processor, better cameras and much better software support with more Android version updates, some form of water/dust resistance, and OLED displays.
No wonder why Motorola phones are no longer available in my country.
I’ve been getting the g power series for a while now. Battery life is important to me in my field of work. And for ~$200 it’s hard to beat. No, it doesn’t have a great display, or even true 5g. No OLED or high refresh rate. It does have a 5000ma battery that can last two or three days of use. Head phone jack, SD card slot. Features somehow missing from premium offerings?
According to the article it’s only getting one year of Android version updates. That’s pitiful, Samsung gives three or four years of Android version updates for similarly priced phones.
I would love to see comparison to the Poco F1 which at the time had the same price. I suspect its pretty close, despite the 6 years gap. That being said, the F1 was unreal value at the time.
For that price point I’ve had a really good time with using Xiaomi phones. Specifically the Redmi Note series. They’re similarly cheap but they’re built well and feel expensive, not with a plastic case or anything like that.
I have the 2022 version of this phone, and it’s great value for money in the USA. Adequate performance, lots of internal storage, headphone jack, MicroSD slot, and good battery life. I didn’t buy it for the (crappy) stylus, I bought it for the good value for money.
The 2023 version most notably updates the SoC from SD695 to SD6g1, which is about 15-20% faster and more efficient. It also adds stereo speakers, which is nice. It seems like everything else is only a marginal change or the same from last year.
Bought one for my kid because he’s a little artist. Seems nice. I use a Pixel, but honestly I miss the moto “chop chop to turn on the flashlight” feature from my old Moto.
If you go to Settings -> System -> Gestures, there’s an option for “Quick tap to start actions”, one of the options is to turn on the flashlight when you double tap the back of the phone.
That is not an adequate replacement for chop chop.
The screen needs to be on for the pixel gesture to work. Chop chop can be done with the screen off
Tapping the back of the phone to the beat of music will turn on the flashlight by accident all the time. Chop chop is a very deliberate gesture
Tapping does not always register. Sometimes I need to do it 2 or 3 times to get the flashlight to turn on/off, the moto gestures were almost 100% reliable for me
I miss that flashlight thing too. Also on Pixel now but I used an app called edge gestures to activate my flashlight. I just swipe up on the edge of my screen and hold to activate/deactivate. Not as awesome but very functional. If course I use edge gestures for everything, calling/texting certain contacts, activating apps I use regularly, it’s such an awesome tool. Been using for years at this point and can’t imagine using my phone without it.
In case you didn’t know, Pixel phones also have a built in feature called quick tap that lets you toggle the flashlight (or do a few other things) by tapping the back of the phone twice.
The longer answer has to deal with the way that our cellular networks are set up. Most people “rent to own” their phones here and usually trade in their phone long before they get to the owning part.
Contracts are set up so you can get discounts, but only if you stay with the carrier for 2-3 years. The discounts are given as monthly credit towards your bill and if you pay off the phone early you forfeit all future credit.
This system allows for carriers to sell more expensive phones at rates that, while not low, most people will stomach. Phone manufacturers avoid selling good budget phones here and I think that’s a big part of the reason. Why sell a budget phone when you can probably convince someone to finance a flagship?
Now, as an enthusiast aware of other budget phones you might think importing might be an option, but that unfortunately isn’t the case. A couple years ago all the carriers here switched off using the 3G network for phone calls and instead we use Voice Over LTE (VoLTE). This new system requires cellular carriers to explicitly support phones/models for them to be able to make traditional phone calls. These support lists are not public and make it incredibly difficult to tell if a phone not sold by the carrier will function on their network. Gone are the days were you can just check the bands the phone supports and pop in a sim.
This got a bit long and probably was more me ranting than actually explaining anything, but I hope someone finds it at least a little bit informative
Yikes, I knew your systems were different, but holy hell I didn't expect all that. VoLTE is part of the GSM standards, how'd the USA carriers make it work like a proprietary system?
Not a single phone has released their proprietory camera driver blobs in recent history. I wish that would happen. There will always be a loss of image quality in custom roms which don’t use the stock version on the phone.
Yeah, but pixels have a low market share unfortunately. Something like Samsung will have the majority market share in most countries. I had a one plus 5 and even with the gcam mod the image output was significantly low (pixels back then only had 12mp and the aspect ratio etc was terrible.)
I do blame them. I also blame google for not offering those features in android in the first place… A lot of custom rom features are available in the Samsung rom so I don’t really use rooted devices anymore.
Especially hate how android changed with their anti-call recording stance, which now requires root, exposed and an xposed module just for this basic feature. Samsung offers this out of the box.
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