Not long ago I wrote a post complaining about how I had made a terrible mistake by opting for one of the cheapest phones that was available with the Samsung Galaxy A03. It was just over $100 and while I thought I was making a wise decision and was saving money it turned into a relative nightmare pretty fast. I don't need the latest and greatest phone in order to be happy but after just about week I started to realize that this thing could barely run any of the apps that were on it, many of which were pre-installed. I think that Samsung is aware that the phone cannot run the apps but releases the phone anyway.
A warning wouldn't have prevented me from making this choice though because I was already convinced that I was not going to use my phone very often and therefore didn't need a good one. I think there is a certain minimum spec that is necessary in today's world though and the A03 was well below that. Doing something as simple as just replying to a message was a chore since the phone was incapable of even keeping up with my typing and I do NOT type fast.
So two days ago I went to a store and got another phone and this time I actually did a little bit of research before heading that direction.
I found out online that Redmi Note, a company and phone type that I have never heard of before, is considered one of the best mid-range phones on the market. While I am sure that some of these bloggers were paid to say that, the price point and the fact that everyone agrees that the camera is excellent on this phone was all the selling point that I really needed. They claim it has a 200 megapixel camera and I am not sure that I believe that. However, after just a few days of popping off shots I can say that it takes pretty great photos. Of course my standards were set so low by the Samsung A03 that basically anything would impress me.
One thing that might concern people a bit is that the camera lenses protrude quite a ways from the back of the phone and this simply invites potential damage. A case was included with my phone but I am going to get something a lot more robust than the free one. I would imagine that repairing or replacing one of those lenses is quite expensive and not something I am going to very interested in needing to do.
I am so happy to be back in the realm of having a phone that can be easily opened with a fingerprint and the technology on this phone is such that it can identify my thumb very quickly no matter how it is that I pick it up. The A03 didn't have this as an option: You had to enter the passcode or do facial recognition. The facial recognition almost always never worked and I'm not a big fan of my face potentially being uploaded to Samsung (or anyone else's) servers to be sold to whoever wants to buy it.
The interface functions in a slightly different way than Samsung, but this was expected. I am sure that they are legally obligated to do this because of various patent reasons but whatever. I don't do a great deal on my phone other than order food, taxis, and use messenger apps anyway so the other things that this phone can do is not something I am really all the concerned about.
One thing that I noticed right away was how "lightning fast" everything was but then again, this has more to do with the fact that my A03 was such a piece of crap that almost anything would have felt amazing to me.
I will tell you this guys, and I am sure that most of you are already aware of this but transferring all of my messaging apps from one phone to the next was a lot more complicated than I would have liked it to be. This took me all day but I guess you could say that I stayed interested because it was a new toy. I really wish the apps would make this process easier such as simply scanning a QR code to auto setup the new phone. I suppose they have their security reasons for not doing this sort of thing but honestly, what a pain in the ass that was.
I haven't really done enough with the camera to test whether or not the claims of it being one of the best on the market is true or not. But when I was taking photos at the bowling alley that will be released here soon, I was able to take them on the fly no problem whereas it took my A03 so long to simply boot up the camera app that I rarely even bothered to take any photos. I guess you could say that there is some credibility to the camera being good because I was able to zoom way the hell in on these pics to even see moles on people's faces and this was when they were moving in the distance. This might not be impressive to those of you out there that already have decent phones but to me, it is amazing.
I know very little about Mi or RedMi as a company and until I found out about them online the other day during the half an hour of research that I did, the internet seemed to be pretty unanimous about the fact that this particular model anyway, is quality.
I'm thinking that this is "last year's phone" still though because the pricing I was seeing online was somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 and I was prepared to pay that much to get it. To my delight it was only 6.7 million VND which is just under $300. So that was a win/win.
If you are in the market for a newish phone I can recommend the RedMi Note 13 Pro thus far. Hopefully this opinion doesn't radically change in the coming weeks because I am NOT going to go through the process of moving all of my messaging apps again.