Hello everyone, sorry for the brief title lol so as it says i’m looking to replace my old LG phone to a new one. So one option i have in mind is the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 and for the price it seems like it would be a nice upgrade but as well i would like to know if there’s any other options i could consider. Also I don’t have any experience with brands like Xiaomi or Huawei for example, so i would like to know any thoughts or what I should have in mind regarding the quality of those phones or the experience with it.
So i’m open for suggestions and my budget would be around $200-$250 (i think is the same range of the Redmi).
I personally have the Redmi Note 5 and my wife the Redmi Note 6. Both are awesome phones. You make some sacrifices for the price. No NFC, Camera is mediocre at best, Screens are good but not the brightest. No WIreless Charging etc. You gain incredible Batterylife though. Like, i charge my Note 5 Pro once every three days or so.
Xiaomi is a great Brand. I’ve had no Problems so far. Just expect any Waranty claims or support you need to be a major pain. I factored this in when buying the phone. Anything that happens to it basically renders it Dead, as shipping it to China is more than the phone is worth.
The Redmi Phones have a decent developer Community and Xiaomi still allows you to unlock the bootloader. So, if MIUI isn’t your thing, there is a great chance of having some kind of custom ROM that’s closer to stock android.
At 250$ i would also look into Nokia. They are doing great midrangers that come with stock android and have been getting good updates. Not as flashy but certainly solid phones with less Problems in terms of Service.
Also, the new Samsung mid-range looks really promising.
Finally, if you can stretch the budget a bit, maybe look into the Poco F1? That’s a huge upgrade in terms of performance.
I’ve got the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4.
It’s a $200 phone, so it’s not the greatest, but it’s a hell of a lot of phone for $200.
My only complaint with it is that Xiaomi makes you wait through a 72-hour “anti-theft” waiting period to unlock the bootloader, and doing so requires an unlock app (i.e. can’t just use fastboot) that doesn’t run on Linux. That app loads under Wine, but font rendering issues make it unusable. It worked fine using USB passthrough to a Windows VM.
Considering how many phones can’t be unlocked, it’s an acceptable compromise. LineageOS runs fine on it, and is my daily driver.
Camera’s “meh”, the IPS screen is decent (I’ve seen worse AMOLED displays), external speakers are garbage, but I use headphones or Bluetooth so don’t care.
Battery life has been wonderful. It’s nice only having to charge a couple times a week.
If I had to buy another phone and the Librem 5 weren’t on the horizon, I’d buy another Xiaomi without hesitation.
I’d so want this. My Contract will be due in August. Currently they are estimating Q3 2019, but who knows if this will happen. The Linux Tax is really high though. I’m more stocked on the Pinephone. This looks much more reasonable.
Pretty sure you can buy a brand new Galaxy S7 or LG G6 or LG V20, or pretty much any 2 year old phone (but still brand new in the box) for around $200 on EBay.
Maybe take a look there, instead of buying a phone from the past year or so; phones really haven’t increased in performance significantly in the past two years, since Qualcomm has pretty much 0 competition.
Currently they are estimating Q3 2019
I posted a thread about that. It’s a confirmed shipping date now, no longer an estimate.
My Contract will be due in August.
The Linux Tax is really high though.
I like to think of it as a fairly priced phone, without the subsidies from carriers or OS vendors who slurp up your data in trade for those subsidies. 
You won’t be getting any updates though.
How can they have a confirmed shipping date, if they don’t even know how much RAM will be in this thing?
Even if you leave carriers out of the question, it’s expensive. You are paying flagship money for a phone that’s rocking two year old hardware. Screen is unclear, 32G of Storage is low even for a 200$ phone and camera is unclear too.
Basically, you are paying a large amount of the price for having the first phone that’s running native linux with support. That’s totally fine by me. But after having seen videos of the devkit, i’m not sure i want to drop 650 bucks on outdated hardware, just because it’s running Linux. Not if i can get a Samsung, Xiaomi or Nokia and run LineageOS on it.
I’d love to be proven wrong. And at the 150 or 200 bucks the Pinephone is intended to cost, i’d be willing to get it as a test device. 650 is just a bit much to be spending without knowing if this can work as a daily driver…
Some people don’t care about software updates. Also, there are companies which give 2 years of software updates, and 1 additional year of security updates (I think HTC and Sony?)