Xiaomi Note 3 now R1899

Dee96 said:
Has anyone found a tempered glass for the phone locally?
Has anyone dropped/scratched their note 3 yet?
Click to expand...

I have found someone selling a few online from Pretoria. Anyone in Durban(Umhlanga Area) interested in doing a bulk order?
 
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Hi guys. If you not interested in holding onto this, let me know. Missed the deal.
 
The only thing that will stop me from getting one of these cheaper phones is their ability to deliver just about 90% of my needs. I smashed my Note about 2 years ago and I got a temp replacement while I waited for my contract to expire. It was the HiSense. Great phone, good screen, quick enough and good build quality etc. Where it fell short was poor camera esp in bad light. And when I say bad lighting, I mean indoor pics. The other thing that drove me nuts was the light sensor was terribly slow to adjust to the change in lighting. I ended up opting to switch auto adjust off and had to toggle between the settings manually. I had the phone for about 8 months, but eventually I ended up getting the Note 4 which just works as required. It really was a pity that just 2 minor things affected the overall phone experience.

I was looking at going for Xiaomi as my next budget phone, but it seems to suffer the same fate as hiSense.
 
Review

After two weeks of using this phone as my primary device, I’m can give a short review in terms of things I like and things I dislike. Before this phone, I used a Samsung Galaxy S5 for 2.5 years.
Pro’s:
1. Cheap! This phone costs a third of the price of the current flagships. I could buy this cash instead of having to be locked into another 24-month contract just to afford it.

2. MIUI: Xiaomi’s flavour of Android, called MIUI, is very fun to use. It offers quite a lot of customization. The Theme app lets you browse and install hundreds of themes. In the phone’s settings you can customize a whole bunch of different things which aren’t standard in Android. There is also a Security app to help keep your phone clean and performing well. MIUI also has some of its own tricks to manage the battery, RAM and data usage. I don’t like the MIUI stock launcher because of the absence of an app drawer. Nova Launcher, free from the Play Store, works much better for me. MIUI has certainly borrowed some styling from iOS – but it looks good and I won’t change ROMs for now.

3. The 4050 mAh battery – with moderate use you can get 2+ days of battery usage.

4. The Updater app keeps your software up to date with the latest versions via Over the Air updates.

5. MIUI Forum: The MIUI forum is very active and acts as a massive support base connecting users of similar devices with the developers. There is an app you can install too.

6. Fingerprint scanner: It’s insanely quick and works really well! I’m not using it, though. I don’t use any screen lock protection. But if I did, the fingerprint scanner would definitely be efficient enough.

7. Expandable storage: Can you believe that some mainstream devices don’t offer expandable storage anymore?

8. Dual sim: Choose between expandable storage or dual sim.

9. Speaker: The speaker is quite loud. It might not be the best quality, but it certainly is loud enough.

Cons:
1. The camera: Yes, it really is as bad as the reviews say. Sure, photos with lots of natural light look good, but in darker conditions the camera really is dreadful. As a side note, I’ve found the app Camera MX is easier to use than the stock camera and it also allows you to take 4k video – something the camera and chipset supports but not the stock software.

2. The screen: It’s not that great at all. When you view pictures with a gradient, it can look a bit choppy. What’s more, is that the screen doesn’t work like AMOLED screens where the pixels are turned off when it needs to display black, instead it tries to display black with some back lighting. That means that your blacks come out grey.

3. No Fast Charge: the big battery can take quite some time to charge, like up to two hours. But because I charge less often, I’m able to live with it. But they could’ve include Fast Charge.

4. Versions – The version I have is codenamed Kate, it’s the Redmi Note 3 Special Edition elsewhere, although it’s not marketed that way here. The dimensions are slightly different from the normal version - just enough to make finding a cover that sits properly quite difficult. Also, ROMs etc. are more popular for the standard version, codenamed Kenzo.

5. It’s a sealed unit – you can’t replace the battery should it ever be necessary.

6. No earphones included – the box literally has the phone, chargers + USB cable, the little pin to remove the SIM card frame, and manuals in it.
Click to expand...
 
mike156 said:
Mine stutters every 10-15 seconds while the phone is idle.

Any idea how to fix this?
Click to expand...
Go into other settings, additional settings, battery, manage and there is a place to select certain apps not to be power managed - worked for me
 
I excluded Tunein app from being power managed, yet if I stream a station, minimise the app, it plays for a couple of minutes while I do other things on the phone and then the app just closes. Kinda annoying!
 
So some advice for guys who would like to buy from Geekbuying.

1) Use paypay. If you use your CC, they will ask for pics of CC and ID.
2) if you sign up to the newlsetter, you get a 4% site wide discount.
 
FlashSA said:
I excluded Tunein app from being power managed, yet if I stream a station, minimise the app, it plays for a couple of minutes while I do other things on the phone and then the app just closes. Kinda annoying!
Click to expand...
Isn't MIUI maybe killing the process to save memory? See if you can turn memory management off under developer settings and see if it helps
 
wabbit16 said:
Isn't MIUI maybe killing the process to save memory? See if you can turn memory management off under developer settings and see if it helps
Click to expand...

Will try that and let you know how it goes. It is definitely Miui killing it off while in the background because if the app crashed, I would get a notification of "stopped working"
 
FlashSA said:
Will try that and let you know how it goes. It is definitely Miui killing it off while in the background because if the app crashed, I would get a notification of "stopped working"
Click to expand...
Interested to hear if u find a solution!
 
Djin said:
The only thing that will stop me from getting one of these cheaper phones is their ability to deliver just about 90% of my needs. I smashed my Note about 2 years ago and I got a temp replacement while I waited for my contract to expire. It was the HiSense. Great phone, good screen, quick enough and good build quality etc. Where it fell short was poor camera esp in bad light. And when I say bad lighting, I mean indoor pics. The other thing that drove me nuts was the light sensor was terribly slow to adjust to the change in lighting. I ended up opting to switch auto adjust off and had to toggle between the settings manually. I had the phone for about 8 months, but eventually I ended up getting the Note 4 which just works as required. It really was a pity that just 2 minor things affected the overall phone experience.

I was looking at going for Xiaomi as my next budget phone, but it seems to suffer the same fate as hiSense.
Click to expand...
Xiaomi are world's apart from Hisense. They are even better than Huawei in most instances. Hisense are over pricing their sub-par devices because they never really had a competition in this segment of the market.
 
wabbit16 said:
Isn't MIUI maybe killing the process to save memory? See if you can turn memory management off under developer settings and see if it helps
Click to expand...

Is anyone having issues where Whatsapp messages are being delayed?
 
You can set the apps to "unrestricted" in settings, battery.

Haven't had trouble with those apps yet
 
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