Is OnePlus Nord CE 3 a good deal @20K(considering snapdragon 695 is available next door)? Is IQOO Z7s(with snapdragon 695 and not the superior Z7) good @18K?
I have to get one before 6th as I am going out of town after that(basically why I need 5G won't get wifi out of the house, and need a few days to set it up\. Which hurts especially since: *www.amazon.in/b?node=86194189031&ref_=MH1_Smartphones
At this point, I don't think this issue will be resolved before either this offer or the world ends, and I don't have a friend with an axis bank card.
Is M34 still a good bet @19K?
Is G73 @17K worth it considering IDC about their UI? Is OnePlus Nord CE 3 a good deal @20K(considering snapdragon 695 is available next door)? Is IQOO Z7s(with snapdragon 695 and not the superior Z7) good @18K? Is redmi note 12 worth it @19K(4GB RAM version @17)? Should I buy give up and buy Poco X4 and hope against hope custom ROMs would be available someday? M4 @12?
Sorry for bothering you guys again, screw Amazon/HDFC
For non-gaming usage, get M34 & be done with it. Not the most efficient chip but 6000mah battery should be fine. Check A53's review for review on chip's performance & battery life.
Ofc I like that phone already for my needs, its just that I am not getting the 2K off on it(despite repeated calls to amazon customer care) and was confused if its still a good one @ that price or should I consider other options that were mentioned.
From what you said is its chip's a little worst than SD695 in terms of performance(which seems to be the best I can get at this price range)? As for battery life that seems to be the phone's strong point...
Have to buy you a drink, turns out it was my friend's card afterall. I asked a relative to buy one from their account and using their HDFC card and it just worked. There's also a slight possibility that my account is flagged for that 2K offer. Need some better debug logs
BTW thanks a TON @nac & @omega44-xt; learnt a lot in this purchase
All I can do is speculate; but it could be amazon algorithms flagging my account cz they knew (smartphones is all I searched up in amazon in the past month and no other activity for a whole year) I would make this purchase anyway(which I was very close to doing).
But again its just wild speculation based on past amazon behaviors(Had to make a new account to purchase a thing amazon had hiked up prices for just for me back in the day). More likely is the problem is on HDFC's side. I have no idea what kind of purchases and cacellations my friend has been making ha ha.
Full review coming in a bit, but there's something I want to ask real quick; I inserted jio SIM in my phone and got very spotty 5G speeds(2-10Mbps) and the connection regularly switches to 4G(this is the first thing I checked). Now I am not gonna use 5G services in here but in a city where 5G coverage is really good, so my only concern is, it isn't something to do with the 5G bands M34 supports or is it?
I know jio supports n28, n78, and n258 bands from their website and M34 does these:
No, I am not sure how it's in the area I am currently at, but it sure is for other phines for where I bought this phone for(200Mbps+ on Jio) so I just wanted to make sure if the issue wasn't with the hardware(especially the multiple band support thing)
No, I am not sure how it's in the area I am currently at, but it sure is for where I bought this phone for(200Mbps+ on Jio) so I just wanted to make sure if the issue wasn't with the hardware(especially the multiple band support thing)
No, I think I need to be more clear. My connection is very spotty in this phone. I only got 2-10Mbps here. I know for a fact my device is missing one band that jio uses (n258) but has the other 2. Would it be the culprit for the slow and spotty connection or just my area not having good 5G coverage(I know no one who uses 5G in immediate vicinity). I have no idea how 5G bands work, so I am at a loss to what is the case here?
Since this is the only reason I bought m34 in the first place, I really want to know this. Though what's more baffling most brands, not even the latest OnePlus 11 supports the band I am talking about(but iPhone 14 and premium ones do)
SOC: System on ship. Basically CPU/Processor for your mobile.
Custom ROM: You needn't know it if you never felt the need; but basically its a way we can install different OS(Like one UI and Oxygen OS and MIUI) in your phone if you aren't happy with the one preinstalled. It comes with a risk to break your phone though.
GSI: Again a term you don't need to know but basically before someone had to make custom ROMs for your device specifically and installing custom ROMs was very risky. GSI solves both of these problems and if I am not wrong, is a solution by google.
IDC: Acronym for I don't care
Chip and GPU versions...especially...which one is better: Can't help you there, its confusing beyond anything. I just believed what @omega44-xt & @nac said was better.
Finally got speeds I was looking for. Went into the roof(chaath) of my house and got these when standing in a specific spot. Is 5G this finiky with a well insulated house? Anyone noticed the same behaviour?
Finally got speeds I was looking for. Went into the roof(chaath) of my house and got these when standing in a specific spot. Is 5G this finiky with a well insulated house? Anyone noticed the same behaviour?
Here's the M34 review I promised:
Gonna divide it into 2 parts since I chose to be really pedantic in the software department; and I encourage you to skip it if you want to. M34 Review
Camera: Easily the best thing about this phone. I haven't had a camera this good(I have been rocking phones that are 7-13K till now). Only thing you would notice that samsung puts a yellowish tinge on skins and generally makes everything more brighter than it is(which could be intentional from samsung). It had a pro mode, with just 4 customisable settings.
Audio: Easily the worst thing about this phone. Audio is loud but sounds canned and just plain bad. Yes audio is subjective, but everyone I showed a youtube video in this phone pointed out the same. Redmi note 11 beats it dead in the water.
Display: The display is big and colors are awesome. Brightness is good too. AMOLED is AMOLED. (Just make sure to disable vivid mode in settings to get better colors)
FingerPrint: Fingerprint sensor is in its correct place(lockscreen button )and is blazingly fast.
Network: WiFi is good at 2.4 GHz. Cannot comment on 5G, as I have no frame of reference and cannot say if this phone's antenna is to blame for extremly poor reception(if anyone can chime in, they'd be really appreciated). Lacks the higher frequency bands, but does everything the phones in this price range and above can do, this can too. 4G works as expected. It has NFC too, something none of my previous purchases did.
Performance: I am not certain weather its the software or the hardware but the phone feels really sluggish for switching apps. Gets hot easily(even on simple apps).
Battery: I have been spoilt with 33W charging. 22W feels slow. Gives me as much backup as redmi note 11 with 5000MaH battery. Good when compared to competition.
Form Factor: Surface is grippy but soft to touch. Phone is a little unweildy due to size, but its always a compromise. Has a no-nonsense look.
Software: It has oneUI with opt-out ads and without goodlock.
Overall, I like it
Edit: Redmi 11 have dual speakers. I encountered bad 5GHz connectivity
oneUI on M34 Review:
The initial experience was horrible, and at some point I thought there's no difference between this and MIUI.
It took me a day to figure out how to do it, and at one point I factory resetted my phone just to see if I messed up somewhere. :
Samsung, it turns out, favors their own inhouse app to sync apps and data from a older to a newer phone, and it syncs the wrong things. It clearly stated it will sync my app data but it, just didn't. Google on the other hand, does it for some apps that chose to opt in. Samsung also shared some folders, but only the pdfs and images in them(and not text and other files), all these folders I had to delete and share folders manually. My download folder was also synced, and I have no idea why.
Recommended apps: Samsung also has a half unskippable "Recommended app" wizard that I am sure is reserved for the F,A,M series. It was clear that samsung haven't worked on it much, as it tended to bug out and break a lot and was separate from the normal wizard.
One thing in the initial setup that was better from MIUI: There's also a prompt for apps that would be downloaded after the fact from Google, which had all the bloat manufacturers install. I unchecked everything and the experience was massively better. It only came up after I factory resetted my phone and went through the initial setup wizard again; so I am not sure if samsung intended that or it was just a "bug".
Then I had to clear up the preinstalled samsung apps(Which to be fair, I tried out one by one patiently. In the end none were worth it. At least Xiomi has MIUI remote, which is vastly better than anything on the market.
Meat N Potatoes:
I realise I arguably being too pedantic about the inital setup, since after those excruciating 3-4 hours I was ready to go, not to encounter those horrible things ever again. There are some things that are left to be desired in Samsung UI prime too:
1. Samsung imposes a weird 1 second delay(feels bigger than it sounds) when getting the recents app in 3rd party launchers. It cannot be disabled. WHY. Makes a pain to use 3rd party launchers. Just like in MIUI where they disable navigation altogether in 3rd party launchers.
2. There are some uninstallable apps that make no sense to so. Stuff like samsung VPN and Samsung store.
3. Samsung doesn't embrace Material UI. Since its a personal choice, I get it; but then there's the fact that Samsung's UI feels very incoherent, Half of the stuff is from their own design language, half from Google's and it results in a very disjointed experience.
4. There are 2 preinstalled apps to do the same thing(EG messages) which factors in the same incoherent department. Samsung if you have decided that Google's sms app is better and set it as default, don't make your sms app as uninstallable!
5. Animations are choppy, and oneUI is heavy. Switching apps doesn't feel smooth. I have a redmi note 11 and M34 felt even slower than that, which has Pixel Experience. Heck, it even felt slower than Redmi A3 a 12K device from 2019 with android one.
Customisation in the settings app is great, with my favorite being inbuilt equiliser, but it doesn't make up for the bad experience,
Unless....
Now don't tell Samsung I told you this, since they decided to lock this feature out of M34, but if you install a app called FineLock, and if you install GoodLock and its modules by samsung using that; you get customization I haven't seen in even some custom ROMs. All kinds of useful functions. No, it doesn't cancel out the points 1-5, but its really neat app for everything. It seems to be so good infact, samsung removed it even from a phone (M34) that says oneUI on the box(NOT oneUI core). So, I tested all the modules for this review and everything works as it was expected to. Seems to be just a artificial limitation samsung decided to put in.
In conclusion Samsung UI isn't for someone like me who just uses a few essential apps and just wants to have a coherent experience, but I could see people who like customizations and features like that being happy with it. Its basically KDE(OneUI) instead of Gnome(Pixel UI), if you are into Linux. The 4OS updates are a treat though. All in all not as bad as MIUI
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)and is blazingly fast.