I am considering an Android One phone

[jnelsoninjax]

I have been reading about the Android One phones and they seem to be better (and cheaper) then the Pixel line of phones. My only question is which one do I get? I am going to set a budget of $200, and on Amazon there are quite a few that fit into that guideline. My real question is what brand(s) are more trusted (or better overall), I see Huawei, Motorola, Xiamoi, and Nokia, which would be the better one to look into buying?

 

As I stated before, I went ahead and bought the Motorola X4, so I am going to close this topic now.

[neoraptor]

xiaomi mi a2 lite is a great phone with decent spec (considering the price bracket) i good looks.

[shockz]

6 minutes ago, jnelsoninjax said:

I have been reading about the Android One phones and they seem to be better (and cheaper) then the Pixel line of phones.

Cheaper yes. Better? Not by a long shot.

 

Nokia is your best bet.

[jnelsoninjax]

3 minutes ago, shockz said:

Cheaper yes. Better? Not by a long shot.

 

Nokia is your best bet.

Please explain your answer, I am really curious what you mean.

[shockz]

24 minutes ago, jnelsoninjax said:

Please explain your answer, I am really curious what you mean.

It depends on what you're looking for? Sure, Android One is great for staying consistent with updates, but you're truly getting what you pay for. The pixel blows away any of the One Phones you mentioned in hardware specs... 845, amazing camera, good hardware (although it is marked up a bit).

 

Nokia is probably the best bet for an Android One phone, you get decent hardware at a good price and their support is solid. I've learnt from experience that specs matter with Android much more than they do with Apple. If you want to use the phone for multitasking/power user don't skimp out on the RAM and processor, unless you want to wait for the apps to load up in memory again and bog down the proc if you are running more than a few. Snapdragon 630 is the lowest I'd go.  Xiamoi is probably the only other Android One I'd consider. Motorola hardware is lousy. Don't know much about Huawei, but I would avoid just from privacy concerns alone.

Edited March 19, 2019 by shockz

[Brandon H Supervisor]

to expand on what shockz said. In my experience on current android versions it's good to aim for a phone with at least 3GB of ram; weird lag tends to start happening in Android when you get lower than 300mb of free ram I've noticed in a lot of devices (phones and HTPC boxes).

 

As for brands I agree Nokia will give you the best bang for your buck. My 2nd choice would be Huawei/Honor though it's getting harder to find models with the US LTE frequencies now thanks to the US trying to ban them ...

Xiamoi I don't know much about.

Motorola I also agree they don't have the best hardware; I'd rate their hardware quality a step below LGs (which in fairness LG has been improving but Motorola doesn't seem to be)

[lethedoom]

Check out Project Fi sale through 3/24--$50 less than direct purchase from Motorola:   https://fi.google.com/about/phones/#android-one-moto-x4

[FunkyMike]

If you are looking at Nokia my only advise would be that Android One on Nokia doesn't equal no bloatware and the hardware quality is debatable.

Research the faults of a model prior on the official Nokia forums or Reddit.

 

HMD outsources software development to FIH / Foxconn. They handle bug fixes, write the services, bootloaders and internal hardware layouts for some models - the exact same resources are also shared with other brands such as Sharp.

They also create the Asian non Android One roms for HK/China/etc.

 

Part of what FIH does is write the evenwell services for the roms which act as non native Power Saver, Telemetry services, Camera software (at least the initial revisions).

These services are also included in the World Wide Android One releases. 

A lot of people have been complaining since the first gen HMD Android phones about performance issues, telemetry being sent to China, apps not recovering from sleep because of these services.

These can be uninstalled via adb.

 

Also watch out for known hardware issues such as failing USB-C ports because of design issues by HMD. These fail gradually after time for quite a few users spanning across a couple model lines.

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

I can recommend the Xiaomi Mi A2. Myself and my brother got my Mum a Mi A2 for Christmas, she has been very impressed with the phone having used it for a few months now.

• The 5.99 inch screen has been great for her, she can see it perfectly. The much smaller screen on her old Moto G was becoming increasingly hard for her to see.
• With 4gb of ram and a Snapdragon 660 the phone is very snappy, everything loads pretty much instantly. Apps have no problem staying in memory when multitasking.
• Both cameras use a Sony sensor and take some great quality photos, these look great printed out and are fine for social media.
• The Mi A2 had the Android Pi update by Christmas day.
• The phone has no notch, which to me is a nice bonus.
• On average she can go three days without charging the phone, even with heavy use i suspect it would last a day no problems.

With a phone like the Mi A2 you are getting a good all round phone, sure it's not the best of the best, however it will do what most people what to on a phone really well, without breaking the bank. For myself personally the only thing it's lacking is NFC, so you wouldn't be able to make contactless payments.

 

For some context the 64gb 6” Pixel 2 XL is £799 here in the UK, in comparison the 64gb 5.9" Mi A2 is £200. So you could buy the Mi A2 four times before you get to the cost of one Pixel 2 XL. The general every day apps most of us use would work great on either device, the right corners are cut to end up with a nice all around device.

 

I'd recommend you have a read of the Android Central Xiaomi Mi A2 review.

[jnelsoninjax]

OK, I just had a look at the Xiaomi listing on Amazon, but they all appear to be international versions, I am not sure how this translates to for US use, anyone have any input?

[Circaflex]

1 minute ago, jnelsoninjax said:

OK, I just had a look at the Xiaomi listing on Amazon, but they all appear to be international versions, I am not sure how this translates to for US use, anyone have any input?

You just need to verify the bands on the phone, IE whichever carrier you use youll want to make sure the phone supports those bands.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

5 minutes ago, jnelsoninjax said:

OK, I just had a look at the Xiaomi listing on Amazon, but they all appear to be international versions, I am not sure how this translates to for US use, anyone have any input?

yeah that's the problem with Xiaomi and Huawei; neither has much of a presence in the US right now

It looks like it will work but it doesn't have ALL the US LTE bands so you could have occasional dropout depending on which band is active on the towers near you.

 

here's a comparison for you using AT&T:
AT&T bands – https://forums.att.com/t5/Phone-Device-Upgrades/What-are-AT-amp-T-s-4G-LTE-bands-in-2018/td-p/5359265

Mi A2 bands – https://www.frequencycheck.com/models/OMKZD/xiaomi-mi-a2-dual-sim-global-td-lte-64gb-m1804d2sg-xiaomi-wayne

[jnelsoninjax]

8 minutes ago, Brandon H said:

yeah that's the problem with Xiaomi and Huawei; neither has much of a presence in the US right now

It looks like it will work but it doesn't have ALL the US LTE bands so you could have occasional dropout depending on which band is active on the towers near you.

 

here's a comparison for you using AT&T:
AT&T bands – https://forums.att.com/t5/Phone-Device-Upgrades/What-are-AT-amp-T-s-4G-LTE-bands-in-2018/td-p/5359265

Mi A2 bands – https://www.frequencycheck.com/models/OMKZD/xiaomi-mi-a2-dual-sim-global-td-lte-64gb-m1804d2sg-xiaomi-wayne

So I might not be understanding this completely, but it appears that Xiamoi only supports about 50% of the US bands (info) is that what I am understanding?

[Brandon H Supervisor]

8 minutes ago, jnelsoninjax said:

So I might not be understanding this completely, but it appears that Xiamoi only supports about 50% of the US bands (info) is that what I am understanding?

yep; that's the problem with most 'International' variants of phones; they're more meant for the eastern part of the world since countries are smaller & easier to travel between.

 

they'll 'work' in the US but will often drop down to 3G or lower if the towers you're near don't happen to be broadcasting one of the supported frequencies

[jnelsoninjax]

5 minutes ago, Brandon H said:

yep; that's the problem with most 'International' variants of phones; they're more meant for the eastern part of the world since countries are smaller & easier to travel between.

 

they'll 'work' in the US but will often drop down to 3G or lower if the towers you're near don't happen to be broadcasting one of the supported frequencies

So would I be better off buying a Motorola or Nokia?

[margrave]

I've been considering an Android One device myself, and this is a great read. Still not sure what I would get as I'm waiting to see more about the upcoming new Pixels.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

I am using a Motorola moto x⁴ (4GB RAM, 64GB storage) with Android One and Google Fi and a 200GB Micro SDXC card to hold my music collection.  I'm using it on another carrier, but the model I purchased is for the US market, so it supports all the US LTE bands.  Here are the specs for the device: https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_moto_x4-8634.php.  It seems to run all the apps I need without any issues or lag.  Here are some pictures I took inside and outside with the camera, to give you an idea of how well it works.

 

This phone replaces my Microsoft Lumia 900, which worked fine--and still works, it just received an OS update yesterday--but with the inevitable cessation of that platform I wanted to get a new device.  

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

 

[DentedAphid7]

I've recently got my hands on Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 after using my LG G6. The phone itself is very solid. Built on glass and a front facing camera slidiing mechanism. However there is downside is no headphone jack nor expandable storage. But 128GB version should be enough of a storage. It has wireless charging and face unlocking as well (only available if you switch the region to Taiwan or HongKong to be able to use face unlock). And running Android 9 as of now and security updates are separate from main update. As for the bands:

[jnelsoninjax]

I ended up buying the moto x4. But now my question is can I update it to the newest android without having to download and install the security updates first? I have been updating for about 3 hours now and am only up to the September security patch

[Circaflex]

If you can get our hands on the official 9.0 firmware you can flash that via your computer.

[eddman]

13 hours ago, jnelsoninjax said:

I ended up buying the moto x4. But now my question is can I update it to the newest android without having to download and install the security updates first? I have been updating for about 3 hours now and am only up to the September security patch

Here is the thing that most people miss about android one. You get two major android updates and then a year of minor updates after that. Since X4 launched with 7.0, version 9.0 is the last one it gets.

 

If you want to have long time support, you should try to get a phone with the latest android.

 

I, personally, am using a nokia 6.1 and the only relative downsides are the aggressive battery and memory management, although it's not really that big of a thing. Everything else about the phone is good. It shipped with andoird 8.0 and is projected to get 10.0 (Q).

Edited March 23, 2019 by eddman

[Christopher Garrison]

look towards xiaomi, they have good phone for 200$