Database Info

Htc 7 pro - warning - do not buy !

Hello
I just want to warn everybody that want to buy HTC 7 PRO. It has been 5 days since it arrived from UK. It is already packed and ready for a journey back to reseller. It suppose to be a business tool but it with that kind of battery life it is just a joke. But U can somehow manage the juice usage and it is not the worst part. The worst thing about it is sliding mechanism. There are "reviews" all over the internet saying that great and durable. But it is a lie. It is weak designed and the build quality is also not so good. It makes "spring like" sound when it tilts and what annoy me the most is that after 5 days front part of mechanism wobbles. The keyboard is awesome but in combine with such poor sliding mechanism it is not a thumb up at all. I can not imagine how this mechanism will behave after couple of months with heavy business usage and seriously I really do not want to know. If You will add to this poor built headset Windows Phone 7, which is in my opinion awesome but still have a lot missing the HTC 7 PRO it is not a good choice. And I seriously do not recommend to buy it. The most funny part is the HTC customer support. I shared my concerns with them and they replied:
"all I can advise you is to use both hands when sliding the mechanism"
I expected the answer like "we tested the mechanism in advanced tests and it is designed to take a lot of hard usage"
but noooo they just advised me to use both hands. I wasn't quite sure if I want to send it back, but after I read their reply I will send it back for sure.
Of course the HTC BH M300 which was free gift has to be sent back also
I do not care that I spend a lot for delivery both ways I do not want to have this phone in my pocket, it is not worth even half money it costs.
Cheers
Pawel

Thanks for the heads-up. Have been wanting a landscape slider and looked at the Quantum, but I couldn't type good with it so I passed it by. If not knowing the user experience of the 7 Pro, I like its looks well enough to consider it. But thanks to you, I can discard it.

marianoitalianoo said:
There are "reviews" all over the internet saying that great and durable. But it is a lie.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you ever think about the possibility that you've simply got a broken device?

I agree, I just got my hands on one and it's terrible... the battery life is at best on par with the HD7 and the keyboard though decently laid out feels cheap. the sliding mechanism is gritty and I do hear that spring noise...

I received mine from O2 Germany three days ago and I'd like to share my opinion that is much more favourable than the above posts.
On the hardware, I will not mention things that we all could miss such as a front camera, a micro SD card slot, I'll concentrate on what we have:
- tilt screen, I love this! You will hear a spring noise when sliding and tilting the keyboard out, yes. So what? Usage will show if it has been badly designed and cannot resist prolounged usage (and if so, it will be my pleasure to send it back to O2 during the warranty period to get a replacement phone).
- the screen is crisp, has a good contrast and is very responsive, I do not have any complaints here
- the sound is much better than past HTC phones I had such as Qtek S200, HTC Touch Pro, Blackstone and even HD2
- the material of the keyboard is of the type "grip" plastic and suits my taste. The keyboard is rather well designed, BUT we miss the ability to change language from within the hardware keyboard itself (the Touch Pro allowed this and it was very useful) and the ability to get CAPS LOCK - both issues very annoying. In comparison, the smileys key is really useless in a business phone and could have been replaced with a more useful feature!
- as far as the battery is concerned: as I am currently roaming, I have chosen to be in 2G mode, no wan access and with w-lan always on. I have the phone sync with 4 email accounts, three calendars, three contacts databses, and facebook + windows live. I managed to have the phone on with no recharge for two full days, with one hour of calls and approx. 40 internet pages browsed! I suspect that in 3G mode, with wan access an wlan on, this will drastically fall and result in the phone surviving less than a day on an intial full charge (same as with HD2 or similar devices, actually). I shall report when I have tested this.
- Before receiving the device, I was a little bit concerned about weight. Although it would be nice to have it 60 grams lighter, which would be quite a performance for its format, it is actually not an issue: the phone is simply big and I know this before buying it
- Speed is always very dependent on the OS. With WP7, it feels more responsive than a HD2 with Sense
- Mass storage: 8 Gb of which "only" 5.6 available is enough for my needs, but definitely too tight for those who want to carry 20 music albums and 5 full films with themselves (which is not an unreasonable expectation). The good surprise however is the speed at which files are being transferred from the PC to the phone (I did not measure it but it was definitely quicker than my class 4 SD Card with 64kb cluster size)
On the software (sigh):
- first feel of a system that is straightforward to understand and to use but...
- no copy paste. Other WP7 limitations such as lack of customization possibilities or lack of flash support or limited landscape support. We were warned. I personally can live with it.
- typical windows narrow-minded approach: exchange does not work if the certificate of the server is not matching its IP address, although iOS and Android support this with no problem, this makes me crazy!
- need to use exchange or windows live to replicate contacts and agenda, no active sync anymore. Lots of time lost to find a way to get Outlook synchronyze with the Phone via Outlook Connector. Need to copy paste contacts and calendar between Outlook main account and Windows live, no automatic synchronization between the two within Outlook - very very very poor design of the whole ecosystem
- need to use Zune. Cute programme but redundant with Windows Media Player WMC. MTS video format (used by my Lumix HD camera) seemingly not supported. Android does.
- only English, German an Spanish languages supported by the phone delivered by O2. I need more languages such as Italian and French
- no smart dial nor the possibility to jump to a contact by entering the first letters of it - you have to scroll the contacs or use the search functon, a real pain!
All in all, I think it is a good bit of hardware for business purposes, even if not at the forefront of the current possibilities (amoled screen, tegra processor, storage). You can live with the OS but it has to improve quickly to live up to its ergonomy promises. The reasons I did not buy the Desire Z were the processor, the three rows keyboard (instead of four) and the screen not tilting. The reason why I would not buy the HTC 7 Pro is... WP7. I've hesitated long and I've decided to stick to the device in the hope that WP7 improves soon, but I also hope that we will soon be able thanks to the XDA community to load other OS such as Android on it should Microsoft not deliver

Thanks,
I saw your reply and ended up with HD7. great device.

Prophete said:
Usage will show if it has been badly designed and cannot resist prolounged usage (and if so, it will be my pleasure to send it back to O2 during the warranty period to get a replacement phone)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I asked HTC what if in time the sliding mechanism will fail to deliver high usability let say and just break.
They said that warranty do not cover "wear and tear" , so if it will get damaged, You will get nothing from O2, maybe some stickers or key chain

it's the same thing htc singapore told me before
i went to replace the keyboard on my touch pro twice
the same keys failed both times (0, space bar, backspace)
guess what? they told me to use the onscreen keyboard more! if so, what is the point of buying a phone with a physical keyboard?

I am ashamed to say that It turns out that the only thing that actually works as supposed to is iphone :/

I have a love/hate relationship with HTC.
Most, if not all of their devices are very beautifully-looking. But I will always question their build quality, and that's ultimately their downfall, because it's ****. I mean, it's hit or miss with their devices. They either knock it out of the ballpark or fail at something that makes you scratch your head and wonder. For example, something as simple as their power buttons. But I won't get into it. I wouldn't be surprised if the keyboard on the HTC 7 Pro fails after prolonged use.

Hello All,
I just wanted to add my 5 cents...
I bought an HTC 7 Pro almost as soon as they were available from O2 Germany since they are not available in Luxembourg.
I have to say that the device is great!!
The tilt mechanism is smooth, and works really well. The battery life is fantastic!! I have sync with my exchange server running all day and with that, phone calls (not too many), using the GPS etc, I have so far never gone below 50% battery.
I wonder if HTC have manufacturing problem because you seem to be less happy, but I can honestly say that I find the phone to be GREAT and would HIGHLY recommend it!!

Hi, I also do not agree. The phone is great.
Indeed you need to slide with two hands, but a springy sound does not bother me. It probably is a spring If anything breaks than I expect normal warrenty.
WP7 is a blast! I needed to set my PC to US to trick Marketplace, but otherwise it is great. Many apps already and more on the way.
That was my 5 cts.

Maybe my problem is that I expected much more for the price. The price is only a bit less then Iphone 4 which costs in UK 510 quids. But the build quality of i device is a lot better.
I really like WP7 and iOS looks childish a bit

Just posted to Clove cheers

Just picked up mine from Sprint today and I have to say it is well built and I'm loving WP7 so far!

I to just got the Arrive and I have to say, it is definatly worth changing over from my Evo. I've been playing with this all day and havn't had to charge it yet (going off the initial charge it had from factory).
The keyboard works great, device tilts wonderful and while i'll admit, it's not the easiest to open one handed, it's still possible.
Nothing like the TP2 if anyone is wondering, it's alot slicker, feels better, works better.

WARNING!!!
Do NOT install and run the free HTC app "Connection Setup" with the Sprint Arrive.
I had to hard reset multiple times until I narrowed it down with Sprint Tech Support (who said they had an HTC Tech Rep on site during this launch). If you run it with Sprint as your carrier it will lockout your data connection until you hard reset (wifi will still work though). It took me a while to figure out which app screws up while on the phone with them, but it's definately this app and they confirmed it with an Arrive they had on hand. They still haven't removed it from the Marketplace yet, so here's your fair warning.
Hopefully this will save someone a lot of time and frustration after setting up your phone, only to have to redo it all over again. Cheers.

I am the Arrive advocate at my Sprint store, and I can confirm that I had the same issue with the HTC connection setup program. After hard resetting the phone my data connection came right back, but DO NOT download that program as of this point.

I was getting download speeds between 71kbps and 300kbps. I used the HTC connection setup and it also borked the data. It took me 2 hard resets and like 8 tries forcing data provision until it worked again.
I'm still getting piss poor download speeds and so it my TP2 that is on the same plan. I'm calling Sprint tomorrow to have an engineer look at my account settings. The Sprint store employee said he could do nothing if it was working at all. Had mine since 3/18.

Thanks Savage for the heads up! I was looking at that app until I read your posts.

My Detailed Story: iPhone to SGS2

I used to be a iPhone fanboy and somewhere along the way I thought I'd give Android a try and I got myself a Samsung SGS2. There must be a lot of people out there in the fruit cult wanting to be brought to the green robot cult or vice versa. Here's my complete NON-BIASED story that might help you out with consideration of both the user experience and the technical side of things.
WARNING: This is a looooooong story. So if you're not into a good long thread, please skip.
NOTE: The iPhone being discussed is a jailbroken, fully utilized iPhone. A non-jailbroken iPhone cannot come even close to the SGS2.
------------------------
APPS:
Surprisingly, the Android Market and the Apple AppStore are not created to be equal. Although most of the popular apps like Facebook, eBay, Google apps are available on both stores, the Apple equivalent apps are usually several versions ahead (i.e. Navigon, Tunein Radio, etc.) except for the Google-centric apps and/or other apps that I don't typically use. The apps simply look / feel better on an iPhone. But for sure they run faster on the SGS2 hands down. There's IXX0XX on the iPhone for the *free* apps. The Android-equivalent AXX, BXX, 4XX, etc simply cannot compete against it. Although it's much easier to find *free* Android apps from all over the place, IXX0XX, as a centralized place to go, has all of the popular high-quality paid apps/games, up-to-date version.
RESOLUTION / SCREEN SIZE
I don't know why people always want a 4.3", 4.5" or even bigger screen on a phone. For me, as long as the same amount of information can be displayed on a screen, that's what counts. The SGS2 screen is huge compared to the iPhone, and certainly things do appear bigger and easier to read. However, the iPhone resolution is just much higher. If you look very closely on an iPhone 4 screen, you simply cannot see the pixels, whereas for the SGS2 (non-HD version), it's just like every other smartphone, you can see the pixels (but not so bad). Why does this matter? Say, you open a webpage in overview on an iPhone, it's almost like the letters that are too small to see is because my sight is not good enough to read it. But with the SGS2, the letters that are too small to see is because the screen doesn't have a good-enough resolution to display it. This is the best way I can put it. The text does appear much sharper on the iPhone.
PHONE QUALITY / FEEL
This is really a personal preference. The SGS2 has a huge screen, so it is bigger. Both look very slick. I like the weight of the SGS2 because it feels much lighter so if I ever drop it, it *should not* be destroyed. The iPhone is a little too heavy. Heavier = Better Quality? I don't think so. Some people complain that the back cover of the SGS2 is just soft plastic. It feels quite good though. The textured surface prevents fingerprints. The iPhone is only good in terms of its size. I can do one-handed operation where my thumb can pretty much reach both sides of the screen. The SGS2 is slightly too big where it's not too comfortable to use it single-handedly over a long period of time.
ROOTING V.S. JAILBREAKING
Android ROOTING = iPhone JAILBREAKING. It is so much easier for the Android to be freed. You simply flash a rooted kernel, then you're "jailbroken" no matter what firmware version you have. Everytime an iOS version comes out, we have to wait for the Dev team to find a new security loophole in the firmware in order to get a jailbreak. Note that Apple appears to be hiring these bright guys one by one. Even if you can get a tethered jailbreak, it is still not acceptable. If your iOS ever crashes, you need to plug in your computer to properly boot the phone. What I really like about Android is that you can do everything without a computer (once rooted). You can flash new kernels, new ROMs, complete restore (nandroid), all without a computer. With an iPhone, if you want to reflash your firmware to newer/lower version, you need to be beside a computer, even for restoring apps / app settings.
BACKUP / RESTORE
On an iPhone, you cannot do a true "complete backup" because everytime you want to install a firmware to the phone, the firmware needs to be signed by Apple (or Tinyumbrella with your SHSH). And naturally, your saved data cannot be integrated to this "firmware". With the SGS2, there's a system partition and a user partition. And you can do a "nandroid" backup, which is a complete image of your system (think Norton Ghost or Acronis Home Image), saved on your sdcard partition or EMMC (external sdcard). On the iPhone, you need PkgBackup to backup your Cydia apps (as a list, now with settings as well), and Chronus to backup your AppStore apps. After the backup, you must copy the backup files (at least for Chronus) to the computer because you only have a single partition on the iPhone. A wipe will take your backup with it. On the SGS2, we can use CWM to do a complete system image as mentioned above, or use TitaniumBackup for individual apps (this includes both the app itself and the settings). If you use CWM, once restored, your phone is EXACTLY the way you left it. With TitaniumBackup, it's even a greater concept because you can constantly backup updated apps individually whereas with CWM you have to do a system image everytime. So this means the apps become like "modules" that you can put on different ROMs for instance.
LATEST PHONE??
The good thing about Apple is that once you get the iPhone of the year, you know you have the latest and greatest of that year because of the steady annual release. As for Android, once you buy one, another manufacturer might come up with a better (if not better, a slightly different hardware offering) phone that makes you wonder if you should've waited. This brings us to fragmentation. There are so many Android phones with all kinds of hardware combination and you just don't know which one is the best. As of this writing, the SGS2 is the best available phone IMHO, the SGS2HD is the even better one yet to come. But if you want a balance of specs and price, there are too many to choose from.
FRAGMENTATION / NOKIA
Why the heck would I mention Nokia here? In my opinion, I think one of the reasons why Nokia failed is that it tries come create so many differnt phones to suit the different needs of everybody whereas Apple created a phone that is good for all. Even worse, Nokia will create two phones with similar specs, and one phone will have a need-to-have feature while lacking one need-to-have feature, which appears on the other phone, which is itself not perfect. This is crap. They have the power to give you everything you want but they don't. With Apple, the user experience is the same for everybody. With an Android, I am hoping it doesn't get to the level of how Nokia played the game. Think of iPhone as a PS3 while the Android is a PC. A PC is all powerful, you can have different amount of RAM, different video cards, etc. Every PC user will tell you how they tweak their machine to achieve a certain benchmark score and you wonder why you can't or if the score posted is a fake. But with PS3, everybody playing the same game experience the same thing. That being said, there are too many firmwares (ROMs) to choose from for Android, each offering something different, suited for phones with different hardware. I think this model will be improved once Ice Cream Sandwich comes along where phones with different hardware can share just one firmware.
BACKGROUNDING / MULTITASKING
Android users keep saying that iPhone doesn't do true multitasking, which is somewhat true. But now that Android does full multitasking, everybody complains about battery life and everybody is looking for the "best task killer", which is not supposed to be required for a UNIX kernel. True, iPhone does not do true multiasking. But the iPhone "semi-multitasking" is very well implemented. Whenever you quit an app, the OS stores the last state of the app. So technically it has stopped running. But when you go back, you are at where you left it. This is great for most of the apps like games, readers, etc., where they don't really need to be running in the background. But for Nav apps like Navigon, Tomtom, or even Install0us while downloading an app, these apps do run in the background. With Backgrounder, you can set the behavior of how each app implement multitasking. With Android, every app can run in the background and there is no quick kill button. Although the kernel will kill the app automatically when the memory is low, some apps can misbehave. Try to have Dolphin HD Browser open a page with Flash content and go back to the home screen. The app simply keeps playing the flash content in the background all day long, draining your battery. Thankfully, there's Watchdog Task Manager, which does not blindly kill apps but use CPU threshold to determine what apps are misbehaving. To summarize, with Android, get Watchdog and Wave Launcher, then Multitasking works great. With iPhone, get Backgrounder and use Activate to set up a good gesture to bring up the multitasking bar.
BATTERY / PUSH
All smartphones drain battery fairly quickly, including the iPhone. But Android (SGS2, specifically), drains battery even quicker. On the SGS2, there's this Android OS Bug (Google AOS Bug), which can take off out of nowhere, and drain your battery within half a day without you even touch the phone. But it has been fixed now with Siyahkernal 1.8. But even then, the SGS2 does eat much more battery than an iPhone. One big reason I believe is due to how each phone (or app, actually) manages data. With Android, you have Background Data and Sync to transmit data in the background. But the problem is app developers don't need to follow this API. They can write any app the way they want. Some may keep transmitting data in the background with you knowing unless you use Droidfirewall to block it. With iPhone, we have PUSH notification, which every app follows for transmitting data in the background. I have only now come to really appreciate it. Although for some reason, PUSH email chews a lot more battery out of the iPhone (for Android too) compared to the regular PUSH notification. But the way PUSH is implemented on the iPhone, it IS superior. Android users, due to the battery drainage, have become paranoid about their data toggles. Everything must be toggled off (data/wifi/etc.) when the screen goes off (using Juice Defender or the like). So you are missing out being able to get real-time messages while out and about. With the iPhone, even with PUSH notification on 3G you hardly notice any battery drain when idle and screen off. This is a big plus for Apple. The iPhone has VERY LOW consumption when idle even with PUSH/3G/WIFI all turned on. The SGS2 has a constent ~1.5%/hr drain even when everything is turned off. But of course, if you are on a naked ROM with absolutely no other apps installed, the standby is somewhat better. That's why I think the fact that app developers can program any way they want is not always a good idea. Once you install some apps that do things in the background, your idle battery drain increases.
HARDWARE BUTTONS
Why, Apple, why only one button?? I really like the SGS2 with back and especially the menu buttons. All settings can be accessed in the app instead of going through "settings". Maybe because I'm used to PC's. I still don't like having only one mouse button on a MAC. Having BACK button makes multitasking that much easier. Although the iPhone home button can be assigned different tasks (double click / single click, using Activator), the way SGS2 implements buttons is much better. That being said, I don't like the other variants of Android phones with 4 to 5 buttons. If the function can be consolidated, I'd like that better (i.e. Menu + long pressed = Search).
TV OUT + BLUETOOTH MOUTH/KEYBOARD
If you have a SGS2, you have a fully functional computer in your living room. With the HML cable and bluetooth keyboard/mouse, you can surf the web, watch movies, and do just about everything else on your HDTV. With a BT mouse you can actually have a cursor on your screen (only a BT keyboard works on the iPhone). Although the control is not perfect, but it is certainly usable. Note, the videos (or Youtube videos) are in HD when you watch it on the big screen via SGS2. I am very very impressed. The only downside is that "sometimes" the phone drains the battery instead of getting charged. This goes the same with using SatNav apps while on car charger. The kernel has a 650mA limit on charging while using GPS and a bright screen, the usage might go over 650mA, this might explain why. With Siyahkernel and an inid.d script, you can change the charging limit to 1000mA, but it makes no difference for me. But my theory is that the battery charges slower when the phone temperature is higher in order to protect the battery. Becuase when it's nice and cool, the phone does get charged even when using GPS.
PHONE / MSG APPS
Android comes with a pretty good set of apps by default. The phone app, for instance, I cannot live without being able to search a contact by T9. (i.e. find Richard by typing 7424). With the iPhone, you need to go to Contacts and search by scrolling, which is very inconvenient. But with the jailbroken app iSmartDialer, it solves the issue. The Message app is about the same for both phones. But with the jailbroken app Tlert, or iRealSMS or etc, the experience is even better. You can set up a gesture to bring up the non-intrusive messaging box to type and send. But in general, the Android has a much better notification delivery system through the drop down menu (which has the toggles too). iPhone has SBSettings for the toggles but it doesn't looks as nice. Notification-wise, the iPhone is very intrusive. Without the special SMS jailbroken apps above, when an SMS comes in, you either HAVE TO reply to it, or you have to dismiss it (and possibly forget about it). The Android notification drop down stores all the notifications very nicely.
LOCKSCREEN
iPhone + LockInfo = great. But with Android + JKAY V11, although we don't get notifications right in the lock screen, we can have different ways of launching apps quickly. With Android you can kinda get lockscreen notifications through widgets and WidgetLocker.
BROWSER
Coming from a Nokia N85/N86, the iPhone stock browser is a big upgrade. Although there's no flash support, most sites are formatted quite well on the iPhone. But going from iOS to Android, it is at least 10 times better. Even the stock browser loads pages really fast. When you scroll up and down through a very long page you no longer see the "squares" (where page is not loaded properly). I use both the Dolphin HD for full webpages and Opera Mobile for everyday use. The Opera Mobile is REALLY FAST. And Flash support is just great. You finally get the real desktop browsing experience that you cannot find on an iPhone. I don't like the idea of Apple restricting the way developers write their browsers. Every browser on the AppStore simply runs the default iOS browser as its base and add visual tweaks to it. This is true even for the iPhone version of Skyfire. Back in the Symbian days, the Skyfire is truely revolutionary (for the Nokia phones) where contents are compressed on the server side and streamed to the phone. However, Skyfire is a little too slow waiting either for the webpage or the video. The Android browser is so much so much faster. And tabbed browsing interface is good on both phones.
CAMERA
SGS2 camera beats the crap out of an iPhone 4 camera. It is true that the iPhone 4 can take a pretty decent photo when you are "absolutely still". SGS2 camera is simply better with more options. The night mode actually takes very good pictures even without flash. The iPhone 4, if you move at all during the picture taking, the photo becomes blurred. The iPhone camera is only good under very well lit condition and that you're absolutely still.
SYNCING
With SGS2, you can forget about iTunes. If you have a picture, drag it in because your phone shows up as a USB drive. If you have music, pictures, or whatever, create your own folder, drag them into anywhere you want. The iPhone depends on iTunes too much. Although with PWNTunes you can make the iPhone into a USB drive and drag music in there. But everytime you drag something new in there, the scanning for the new content takes a while. Also, SGS2 is truely integrated with Google services. I keep a copy of my Contacts on the Gmail server and that's all I need. The iPhone with Gmail exchange server set up, it can do the same, but the battery drain does apply for the iPhone (i.e. battery drain with exchange email described previously).
MULTIMEDIA
SGS2 can play all kinds of file formats, which pretty much eliminates the need for a computer. The iPhone requires VLC player or alike. It does work, but for one, you cannot organize your files by folders.
VOIP
SGS2 has a fairly sufficient VOIP client built in. And you can get a modded phone app to do call recording. This is not as easy on the iPhone. I use Acrobits as my VOIP client on the iPhone and I can only do call recording on VOIP calls but not regular GSM calls. The VOIP incoming calls rely on PUSH notification, which is a bit inconvenient because once you get the notification, you have to consider the delay of opening the respective VOIP app to properly receive the call. By the time everything is opened, the caller might've given up. On Android, the client itself is constantly listening for incoming calls at the cost of battery. But it does responds like the regular calls.
GPS
The actual GPS performance when a signal is locked is pretty much identical for both phones practically. However, when you depend on AGPS for a triangulation, the iPhone works much faster and accurately. For instance, the Camera geotagging works more reliably with the iPhone because it will record your location nearest to the cell tower you are connected to. But with Android, many apps apparently do not use this information and try to wait for a full GPS signal. The result is, if you take a picture, the location recorded can be way off.
ACCESSORIES
When I went to Best Buy / Future Shop to find a car holder for my beloved SGS2, I was totally pissed by the fact that every (+95%) accessories in the store are for the iPhone!!?? Ebay is probably the only other good place to look for accessories. The good thing is that the iPhone headphone with mic and control does work on the SGS2. Note the microphone jack pins changed from the Galaxy S to the S2. S2 follows the iPhone (i.e. headphone works, mic works, call button works, but not the volume buttons). For the Galaxy S, two of the pins are reversed like the Nokia phones. So I'm glad that SGS2 is more "future-proof" in this regard. At least it accepts iPhone headphones (which is the trend??)
WARRANTY
I haven't had to deal with this yet for my SGS2. But when my iPhone broke the last time (home button stopped working), I just unjailbreak it (new flash) and took it to the nearest Apple Store (not the one I bought the phone from), and a brand new iPhone was given to me no questions asked (they only checked for any sign of water damage by looking at the special stickers in the headphone jack and charger port). But I am pretty sure the Samsund warranty cannot be as good as the Apple warranty. For one, I got the international version from Expansys.ca. So if it breaks, I guess I would need to buy a new one.
SELLING THE PHONE
The iPhone retains its value very very well. My iPhone 4, I bought at about $6xx, I sold for $540 after one year. My iPhone 3GS, which I bought locked, I sold it much higher than my buying price. I think the SGS2 is more like a car, once you drive it, the price is at least halved.
-----------------
I'm so tired of typing, I'll type some more some other time. Feel free to ask me questions though.

I also just switched from the iPhone to the S2. I have had a iPhone since THE iPhone so this was a big decision for me.
For the most part, there is no comparison. The S2 is so much better.
But...and there always is one isn't there?
I am now thinking about switching back. The one big hold up I have right now is sending videos via MMS. With the iPhone, ANY video I shot could be sent. No matter the size, the duration or the settings. I always shot video at the highest quality and could send them any time later.
Can't do that with the S2. 1000k limit. That sucks.

Bloody hell thats one long long story...Some parts i agree with you some i dont.
Apps yes hands down appstore is the best..If i was you i would not be posting about Installous and about the same for android cause its against the rules here my friend.
Display i have to say the S2 beats the retina anyday...Sorry i had iphone 4 and although i loved it for me the S2 is perfect you cant beat AMOLED..But again thats my opinion.
Jailbreaking and rooting...il be honest i find jailbreaking alot more easier and simple to do than rooting....Regarding downgrading to a previous version on the iphone that was pretty easy to but sometimes right painful...Just factory reset the phone and you got as it was out of the box.....Well i always managed to find a way just incase i messed up..
Anyway im happy with the S2 it does what i want and most of the apps i manage to live with...I cant see myself without it and only as time will come we will see more quality apps coming in the market..
Next upgrade for me..Galaxy S3...Be sure to find out that will be a world beater my friend...Nice post though very good reading

MuddyPaws1 said:
I also just switched from the iPhone to the S2. I have had a iPhone since THE iPhone so this was a big decision for me.
For the most part, there is no comparison. The S2 is so much better.
But...and there always is one isn't there?
I am now thinking about switching back. The one big hold up I have right now is sending videos via MMS. With the iPhone, ANY video I shot could be sent. No matter the size, the duration or the settings. I always shot video at the highest quality and could send them any time later.
Can't do that with the S2. 1000k limit. That sucks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the limit is usaully set by the network not the phone (its usaully 300kb for mms)
unless your talking about sharing online via youtube or facebook etc ???
there is no way you sent a hd video longer then 10-20 seconds via mms on the iphone

I too have been an iPhone owner since it's inception. I toyed around with an Android phone I bought from Craigslist earlier in the year just to see what all the fuss was about. It was an HTC something or another on AT&T. I REALLY wanted to like the Android OS, but I hated that phone. I had to charge it every 3-4 hours, even WITH Juice Defender running. I promptly sold it on Craigslist for more money than I paid for it, so that was a lose/win.
I went back to my iPhone 4, which was tried and true. Then one day, I dropped it on it's face, and spiderwebbed the screen. My entire life was on that phone. Thankfully, I have a no-questions asked warranty from Squaretrade, and they fixed it for $50. (Would have cost me $150 from local iRepairman). I needed a phone to use while it was on vacation, so I bought the Galaxy S brand new on Craigslist for $200 cash. Again, I decided to try to give the Android OS another chance. (I also have a Xoom, and make love to it every day. It KILLS my iPad, but thats another write.)
My iPhone4 came back fixed after a week, but I have yet to reactivate it. I continued to woo the Galaxy S.
When the Galaxy S2 was released. I had a dilemma. Wait for the iPhone 5 and hope it went to the 4.5" screen, (which would have been THE selling point for me), or buy the Samsung Galaxy S2. As soon as the iPhone4S was announced, it was decided. I went straight to the ATT store and upgraded to my Galaxy S2.
I have had it for a week now, and I can say, this IS a fantastic device, if not the best I have ever owned. While I can agree with most of the OP's remarks, the iPhone is a dummies phone. It is no-frills out-of-the-box, and it just works. To also mention, I had a PhoneSuit on it, which gave me 2-3 days battery life without a recharge. The PhoneSuit is amazing. I would only hope they would make one for the S2. The Android phones take some tweaking to get them to work like you want. I expect to see a flood of accessories before x-mas.
I will leave the verdict out on which brand I like better. I enjoyed the no-frills of the iPhone, but I love the Android phone too. It is a true nerds phone.

buxz777 said:
the limit is usaully set by the network not the phone (its usaully 300kb for mms)
unless your talking about sharing online via youtube or facebook etc ???
there is no way you sent a hd video longer then 10-20 seconds via mms on the iphone
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well it was for sure better resolution than the "record for mms" setting on the S2. And the iPhone did the conversion on the fly. So you could take the video in HD today, and a week from now send it to someone via MMS. You can't do that with the S2. You have to know you are going to send it via MMS and record it in that setting. Which means you can't also use that video to send to youtube or use on your computer because the quality is terrible.

MuddyPaws1 said:
I also just switched from the iPhone to the S2. I have had a iPhone since THE iPhone so this was a big decision for me.
For the most part, there is no comparison. The S2 is so much better.
But...and there always is one isn't there?
I am now thinking about switching back. The one big hold up I have right now is sending videos via MMS. With the iPhone, ANY video I shot could be sent. No matter the size, the duration or the settings. I always shot video at the highest quality and could send them any time later.
Can't do that with the S2. 1000k limit. That sucks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
think you should just switch over mate..you sound like an iphone boy through and through...be honest if the 4s was a tad bigger i would of gone for it as well but like i said im happy with what i got now

MuddyPaws1 said:
Well it was for sure better resolution than the "record for mms" setting on the S2. And the iPhone did the conversion on the fly. So you could take the video in HD today, and a week from now send it to someone via MMS. You can't do that with the S2. You have to know you are going to send it via MMS and record it in that setting. Which means you can't also use that video to send to youtube or use on your computer because the quality is terrible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
iam sorry but through mms the limit is set by the network which is 300kb - 600kb
if i take a video and add it to my sms , the sms turns into a mms , it then converts the picture/video small enough if it can ie it wont be able to ahrink a 30min hd video into 300kb
i dont have to take the video in mms settings the sgs2 can convert things on the fly and does , what it doesnt do is make the impossible happen and shrink a 30mb file into 300kb
the iphone wouldnt either i have owned one (the iphone4) it cant magically make a video shrink from 30mb-300mb into 300kb , as you say the quality would be horrendous even on a small video taken in mms mode , so a longish clip shot in hd would look just as bad if not worse
the iphone works on exactly the same principal so i dont understand your post and your problem isnt even a problem?? try adding an 8mp photo to your sms , its over 1mb and hus to be shrunk , everytime i do this my sgs2 says converting .... then adds the picture
seriously mate the sgs2 does convert media but it cant do the impossible and make the alps fit in your car garage at home

King Shady said:
Cool story bro
... I didn't read it :/
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was JUST asking myself, did King Shady read this? I hope he tells us or I won't have a decent sleep tonight!

Exidrion said:
I was JUST asking myself, did King Shady read this? I hope he tells us or I won't have a decent sleep tonight!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad you'll sleep tight tonight. . Anyways I don't understand how some people can write this much for an online forum - where we don't even know each other!

i love reading these write up before buying a phone. thank you! I pretty much agree with you on most points.

buxz777 said:
iam sorry but through mms the limit is set by the network which is 300kb - 600kb
if i take a video and add it to my sms , the sms turns into a mms , it then converts the picture/video small enough if it can ie it wont be able to ahrink a 30min hd video into 300kb
i dont have to take the video in mms settings the sgs2 can convert things on the fly and does , what it doesnt do is make the impossible happen and shrink a 30mb file into 300kb
the iphone wouldnt either i have owned one (the iphone4) it cant magically make a video shrink from 30mb-300mb into 300kb , as you say the quality would be horrendous even on a small video taken in mms mode , so a longish clip shot in hd would look just as bad if not worse
the iphone works on exactly the same principal so i dont understand your post and your problem isnt even a problem?? try adding an 8mp photo to your sms , its over 1mb and hus to be shrunk , everytime i do this my sgs2 says converting .... then adds the picture
seriously mate the sgs2 does convert media but it cant do the impossible and make the alps fit in your car garage at home
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The S2 does not convert on the fly. I have a 20 second video I shot on the S2 and it will not send it...tried with many MMS apps and it always says file too big.
I have sent 3 minute videos from the iPhone and it just goes through.

King Shady said:
Cool story bro
... I didn't read it :/
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What a numpty! Most pointless post I've read on XDA to date. Go back to GameFAQs. (why am I even bothering?)
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

Good write. I have decided to sell my Galaxy SII and get an iPhone 4S

Sgs2 is class for iphone 4s .Pleas go buy iphone and leave this forum wee hawe job.what kind of smartphone dhont hawe flasplayer?
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium

I like the luxury of having flash but never use. Not a good case anymore. Try watching a half hour video and tell me how much battery you have left...

Thank you dikai_yang and taking time writing and for posting.
As for many others commenting Ipone vs. SGS2 you seems to have good insight and have taken time to write in a educational way that many of us could learn a bit from.
If you later take your time writing about your experiences I would definitely read it.

blunted09 said:
I like the luxury of having flash but never use. Not a good case anymore. Try watching a half hour video and tell me how much battery you have left...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On Saturday I went to an artist Showcase (half wanted to go, half forced by the queen), and watched three quarters of the Auburn-Arkansas game. I would say Flash is pretty useful indeed.

Currykiev said:
What a numpty! Most pointless post I've read on XDA to date. Go back to GameFAQs. (why am I even bothering?)
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Its funny because your post was just as useless as mine . We both troll!!
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium

The only point I do not agree with or am knowledgeable enough to disagree is Rooting vs Jail breaking. Firstly root for me means being able to do anything with your device. Meaning the ability change roms, kernels and aspects of the system.
Now rooting in some phones do not or did not have such a privilege. Phones like droid 2, x10, droid x. These phones you could "root", meaning say the ability to use titanium backup or root explorer. In other words gain superuser access. What you could not do was change kernels, which is the heart of a rom.
So the point you are making about rooting on Android being easier isn't entirely true since some phones do not actually have "true root".

An android developer's first contact with iOS

Hi long time xda fellows. Just wanted to share with you some of my thoughts
Brief Intro
This is just my personal thoughts and it only may apply to me so please don't feel offended by this article. Well, I am developing android apps for a few years now, doing this for a living. Developing various project for my clients most of the time I came across projects which involved "Make it work on android as it works on iOS" and I ended up with the same thing "I need to get an iPhone for testing". I finally took the step 4 months ago and purchased a used iPhone 5 16 GB. The reason was for getting an older version were pretty obvios: I did not wanted to spent too much money on a device which will be used primarily for testing. Iphone 5s was too expensive and 5C was basically an 5 with plastic body.
I am very picky when it comes to my daily driver device. I have owned in the past many devices, my first acceptable device was Galaxy S1 (oh, the lag of android 2.3), then went for Galaxy Nexus (which was quite a good device and I still own it and runs pretty acceptable), Galaxy S3, Galaxy Note 3, LG G2. Given the fact that I have small hands, I found G2 to be quite impressive: such small bezels, pretty acceptable firmware, good camera, great form factor and battery life... until I noticed the slippery back which was the main reason to get rid of it. I can't really understand why producers tend to get this shiny plastic as back-cover which offers zero grip. All the time I had the impression it will slip from my hands. I love the back material on black Nexus 5 and I hope they'll continue to use it on the next model. The Note 3 was quote a near perfect phone, contrary to many, I liked the fake leather back as it gave me good enough grip, the touchwiz isn't that bad, stylus was working very good but, after trying to get used to its form factor for 2 months I had to give up. It was simply to uncomfortable for me use, most of the time I found myself needing to use it with one hand and couldn't. Just try to put the shopping list on it and hold the note in one hand and the grocery basket in the other and then check what you buy. But this really comes to personal preference since I gave it to my wife and she says she'll never want a smaller device.
So back to main idea, I purchased a used iPhone 5 for around 350$ while iPhone 5s it is being sold in my country for around 900$. Since I got rid of Note 3, I told myself that if I paid for it, I should use it, so I started using iPhone 5 as a daily device. This means two gmail accounts, calls, skype and instagram.
First impressions:
Where is my notification light ? After years of getting used to it I find it a bit hard to live without. Many say it is not needed but to be frankly I prefer to look at the phone on my table to see if I missed something rather than waking the screen up. Not to mention that I recently released JeFeel app on Google Play and I receive a lot of Instagram notifications. For each of them my iPhone's screen wakes up.Not great for battery life I suppose. Let be honest, how much would a blinking led cost for production ? one cent? Not to mention the other cool things like RGB LEDs on most of the android devices which can be configured to know exactly what notification you received by the color it shows.
What's with this small text size ? Went to Settings to make it bigger and it seems that the Dynamic Font size only works on some of Apple's apps and the rest simply ignore it. I have good eye view and I really find it too small to comfortable read it. Might be because of only 4 inch of diagonal or something. It was a small relief to find the Bold setting which makes things a bit better. Not to mention browsing reddit funny pictures was not that fun.
After being spoiled for years with SwiftKey keyboard, with multiple language support, swipe, fantastic auto correct, I found to iOS keyboard horrible. The auto correct gives me more trouble than helping me so in the end I disabled it. Also to press 2-3 keys to get to things like comma "," or numbers/symbols I find it far from ergonomic. Basically these were my main three things I did not like, coming from android
After three months of usage
Well, believe it or not I got used to the small text size and now I find it acceptable. Still, the screen size is too small to do serious browsing or email answering. I find the keyboard to be still a pain to use. However, I noticed a lot of other things: * I like the notification center and how notification are shown on lock-screen. Swiping a notification opens the app to which it belongs to without the need to unlock. I like how when I read an email on my computer, the notification from lockscreen gets dismissed. Quite cool.
Control center is handy and I use it mostly to toggle auto rotate lock and media volume. Is great that I can access it from anywhere but sometimes I simply open it by mistake when browsing a webpage in landscape orientation
I like how auto brightness works and it really is pleasant for my eyes.
I like the fact that there is a physical button on front, I am definitely not a fan of using the Power button. On android I specially developed StandBy Touch Advanced app to deal with putting the phone to sleep without reaching the Power key. I took a look at iOS SDK and couldn't find a way to do it so I suppose this is not allowed. I have to say inhere that many Android offered quite a nice way of waking the phone from standy by: LG has KnowckOn, HTC has something similar, OnePlus one has it, if I recall well Sony too... Double tap to wake is way more convenient than searching for power key, especially on tall devices. i5 is not the case since it is easy to reach, but I use the Home key a lot to wake the device.
I am not a big fan of metal and I never use cases, I find it slippery and cold, however given the size of the iPhone, it is easy to hold it and never had the feeling that I drop it.
Battery life is not so great, I charge it every day.However it seems to be dropping constantly and I haven't noticed any battery drain (GooglePlay services drain rings a bell on android ?) I am 95% of the time in WiFi coverage and I did a test: I disabled the Cellular data, since WiFi is always on and have found that the battery life has improved a lot. So even if data is not used, I suppose that the cell module is active, most likely waiting to do a quick switch if WiFi turns to be poor. I would have preferred an option to keep it disabled until actually leaving the WiFi area. This things make me miss tools like Tasker on Android.
I like the screen and color reproduction. There is no back-light bleed and colors look real enough for me. Best LCD screen I had. Also the resolution is more than enough for 4" and I don't miss 1080p from android
iOS feel more smooth, I remember not resetting the phone for about 2 months and it was as smooth as in day one. Transitions are smoother, rotate is smoother, app switching is smoother. I like it, I feel that it's more polished than android and even the screen seems more responsive to touches.
some apps seem better on iOS, with more attention to details. My last app JeFeel relies a lot on instagram so I am using it quite a lot to check followers and pictures. Instagram for iOS is easier to use, easier to reload, I don't know, it just feels better. I also like TapaTalk more and some other apps like Reddit pics browser, skype, dolphin browser and so on. I sure miss FireFox since is my browser on PC and I would have loved to have bookmarks sync but since I don't to that much browsing, I'm ok with Dolphin/Safari. A special mention goes to Safari for reading mode (or how it is called) when it renders the text from the page at big size, making it easier to read. Great feature.
As android developer I rely on Google services: Maps, GMail, Google+, Drive and some apps are working ok, some are bad. The biggest disappointment is the Gmail app which is more ergonomic and nicer on Android. No contact pictures, no swipe to delete, I miss these features. Also the rendered text in emails is quite small, so it's good enough for email checking if you don't have many emails.
I haven't changed my ringtone yet because from what I saw I need iTunes for that... well that sucks.
Ah the camera, I don't think I made so many pictures with a phone. I know the camera is not top of the chart, but the form factor of the phone actually made it easier for me to take it out and grab a quick picture. Note 3 had a great camera but getting it out of the pocket, 2 hands needed to use it... You know where I'm going to.
I also like the silent toggle on the left size, very convenient but I would have preferred a visual notification on status bar, that is on, like on android.
As for widgets and stuff, on my android I initially did all sort of customizations and widgets but in the end I started to install more apps, drag shortcuts around and it became a mess. Basically I ended up with a grid of icons, just as the iOS launcher is. So for me, the lack of widgets is not a negative point
I don't like the dialer, seems so... I don't know... limited. No contacts photos on Recents/Contacts list makes it look boring. I also have like a 1-2 seconds delay between the moment I pick up and the moment the caller hears me, that is annoying and does not happen with same SIM on other phones
Unfortunately after 4 months of usage my iPhone's camera started to fail. Sometimes it worked sometimes it just shown black screen. After a few more days I have realized that the screen glass on top of the phone was raised 1-2 milliliters above the frame. I went to a service center (since no warranty) and they glued it somehow back, and now the screen is ok, but the camera still does not work. One nice addition was discovering that I can disable the whole camera feature, so I did and it disappeared from apps and Control Center. I guess that is the only customization of Control center hehe.
Since the camera is not working and I don't want to put any more money on this iPhone, I don't know how long I will be using it, probably until Nexus X or Moto X+1 is released. Or why not, IPhone 6. But overall I can say that the experience with iOS was not as bad as expected. Probably it has to do with me not using so many widgets and apps. I don't remember how many times I have flashed android phones with so many custom ROMs in order to achieve a better phone. Indeed on android you get more freedom, you install custom ROMs and kernels and you squeeze some more performance but this sometimes comes with the cost of bugs and instability. This is the beauty of android, you can customize it, want a toggle of auto rotate, you have it on a custom ROM, want different screen calibration, want to hide on screen buttons, want... you get the point. On iOS you are limited, you can't customize too much and after a while I guess you just get used to it. Unfortunately Android OEM's have started to implement various techniques that will detect rooting/bootloader unlock and will void warranty. We all know the famous Knox trigger on Samsung devices, so installing a custom ROM is starting to get harder and harder without voiding warranty.
Another point I'd like the mention is updates. On android things are starting to catch up, but still with updates through carriers and all the delays, after an android version is released you need to wait for 3-6-never months for an update. Of course this is not available for nexus line. The updates are primarily for flagship devices as previous year devices will take even longer to receive an update. This really forces me to look for a nexus when I get an android device and I sure hope they will get it right this time and not make cuts on screen quality or battery size as on previous models. Motorola seems to be doing quite a good job on updates and I hope they will continue to do so in the future. Android L seems like a really big change and I think it will start to catch up on next year's flagships, so mostly on Q2 2014 but given the skinning of frameworks like TouchWiz/Optimus/and others I somehow doubt the user will see too much material changes. I hope performance will improve since I can see small lag here and there even on latest models. As for iOS8 it seems promising, the new keyboard support will allow fixing one of my major annoyances, also battery statistics will offer more info on apps battery usage. I am curious to see how widgets on Notification center will be received but seeing Apple opening is a good thing. I am also keeping an eye on their Swift language and might start learn it since ObjectiveC was never ever on my taste. I really like the swipe on screens to go back, that is implemented on some apps and I am really curious to see how on bigger screen sizes, reaching the top left of the screen for Back option will fell file. I sometimes feel the need of a Back button. I fear that on 4.7 and 5.5" iPhone one handed usage will be hurt by having hard times to reach Back within an app.
So in the end, is iOS that bad ? It depends, for me, when I use the OS for a few seconds to launch apps that I am using, it does not matter so much what OS it is, as long as its fast and reliable. I find iphone 5 to be fast and smooth and it's a device 2 years old. I bet Iphone 5s with his TouchId and 64bits would have a bigger impact on me and to be honest I am starting to see phones with screen bigger than 4"... too big. It would be interesting to find myself buying iPhone 5S as my next phone.
Thanks for reading and sorry for the long post, hope I haven't bored you too much.

Meizu Note1 -- Initial thoughts -1st Pass Review

Hi All,
As a moderator for the Samsung devices, I have pretty much owned every device Samsung has made ...... So, I decided to venture out into some of the less known Phones from China/Far-East.
This one I purchased is The Meizu M1 Note I decided on this phone because of the price point and specs ...... Hey Octo Core, 403 ppi 13mb camera 32 gig internal memory
All for 205 bucks ....... not bad I figured I ll roll the dice ... After all it really is just a back up phone and a toy to learn more about ...... Glad I did.....
1st I paid the extra 27 bucks for fast ship Through DHL ..... I got the phone off of AliExpress.com (this is a subsidiary of Alibaba website) China's Amazon equivalent. There are many other decent sites to buy from do your research before buying ......... some sites are not so good. One way of discerning a reputable site is to make sure it is PayPal confirmed..... do your research. Anyway, after ordering I got a confirmation pretty quick... 6 days later the device was in my hands........ Cool !
A MUST HAVE BOOKMARK ...... http://www.trackingmore.com/ This site has all the major shipping services in one place. Makes it easy to track say "ChinaPost" or DHL or whatever......... Much easier on you ...... this allows to track the front end of the shipping better and gives you a better understanding why things take a bit of time to get out of China ...usually China then to Hong Kong through customs and then to USA.
As for the device...
Getting around on the phone when you 1st turn it on is a bit confusing......... Uhhh Most of the Icons are in Chinese, but after looking at it is easy to figure out how to configure ...... It runs Android 4.4.4 with Meizu's Flyme Shell ...... No worries what you really just need to do is to register on flyme I connected to Wifi then (THIS IS IMPORTANT) register with a Name, Like "Oka's-phone" do not use the phone number to register it will not recognize the Out of China number ... said it would I could not get it to work that way. Upon further investigation I discovered, there are 3 types of Roms it is running All the same ending with a letter . Either "U", "C" , OR "A" A.... is the international generic Rom. But, no biggie really they all work the same. Once you register with Flyme, you just go in and "Open System Privileges" and Voila' you are rooted.
Once you have done that you go to their App store (called App Center in English ) There you search for Google installer, install that 1st then each of the Google apps separately. Once you have the Play store installed you now can download everything you need/want.
Now, one of the Downsides of using a Chinese phone here, for some reason Not all my paid apps would recognize on this , so They would not load from my Google backup.... ..... My guess the reason for this is some licensing conflict with the Play store and Flyme .... but it is what it is. ~~ Update All but 3 of my apps did eventually update to the paid version-
Performance
The device is pretty much performs like a Samsung S5 ........ but there are differences for one ....... you can root the phone just by Opening System privileges .... easy But...... The Boot-loader is locked...... so I do not see any Custom Roms coming soon until that is solved...... if ever.
The phone Benches on Antutu 42-43,000 much like a S5 ...... The graphics work very nicely, but I am not a gamer so.... can't comment on that.
Phone reception is excellent....... the Phone rings soft for 2 seconds then goes loud out of the box ... like to change that , haven't figured out yet, will update later on this.
Music Quality is decent considering it is a single speaker, I am going to install a sound app to improve the quality and see if that helps.
The stock software for the camera is Pretty lack luster........ so I installed FV-5 and Pro-capture........ FV-5 seemed to really improve the performance of the camera. I do not think the front-facing camera will work on Skype I tried and could not make it go ..... my guess it is not configured for that. ~~~ See Post #5 Suspect008 found the fix it is in the video configuration Thank you for posting the fix !
Video works pretty good actually ....... On the still photos, they seem only to be sharp to about 15-20 feet then they soften noticeably ... could just be me but I think the software that is controlling it is not modern enough......
The WiFi seems not to be strong as my note 3 or note 4 I need to be closer to the router seemed a little weaker ...... 15% +/- not a big deal but noticeable to me
GPS Works great ! Google maps is flawless, The Battery life is better than the S5 ...... Medium Use 17 hours and @ 56 % so that is excellent.
Bluetooth I have had no issues connected to my car, a keyboard and speakers 1st so that is good.
I tried using it with the Dual sim It works fine I used a ATT, Verizon and Tmo so it does work on both CDMA and GSM.
Those are my Initial thoughts ......... This is WAY worth the 205 bucks it cost me ..... It performs well enough that it can be you daily use device no problem .......... Not as good as a Note 4 but 1/4 the cost ......
I will update more as I discover more and provide some Chinese Translations on the device icons .....
:good::good::good: Give it 3 thumbs up for the price to performance .... Hope that helps all of you looking at this device

Extracted Ring Tones From the Meizu M1 note
Here are the ring tones in 3 zip folders 1 of 3 enjoy Check out ... call-of-love has a cat meow in it Crystal and Guitar are pretty nice

Meizu Ring tones 2 of 3
Here is the second Zip of ringtones ... check out Mario, MusicBox, Nighty-night, Progress

Meizu Ring tones 3 of 3
Here is the Third Zip of ring tones
The-kittens is kinda interesting Technology and the Waltz all are pretty cool

Skype Front Camera Works
About the front camera for skype,
I had the same issue but solved by going to skype settings and disabling the "use skype in back........" setting under video and voice calls. mine works fine. and I agree on all your points. its a really remarkable device for the price. Flyme needs some polishing. like we cant save a number to contacts from dialer and dialer has no access to contatcs. thats really painfull. but it is powerful as s5 for 1/4 cost. I play all the high end games without a sweat/ Asphalt 8 dead trigger modern combat no hassle for this device.

I have been using the phone for almost two months now and was previously using a samsung galaxy s3.
I am quite happy with the phone's performance. The screen is great. The camera is decent. The battery life is good.
I hope meizu releases the lollipop firmware soon.

Lollipop has been released it is the flyme 4.53 I think google it you will find it was easy to install

Really interesting, Thank you for this Information!

I believe the LP version released is beta.

Question Do you recommend mix fold 2 ?

Hello brother i have mi 11 ultra
And wanna new fold
Do you recommend fold mix 2 ?
And what you like and what you don't?

Why no answer?

Definitely yes if you like miui

Only if you don't have problems with chinese rom, bc mi fold doens't have global rom yet

I answered some of your questions on the other post but I will make my summary here.
1. Either:
a) you must not use Android Auto/ Google Assistant or
b) you must be willing to wait out the 7 days and comfortable rooting your device (with all the issues with banking apps that brings).
2. You must be prepared to suffer compromises on audio quality (very big difference) and camera quality (low light and stabilisation difference) compared to a similar priced candybar flagship.
3. You must be someone who babies their phone a little bit. I'm sure if I dropped this phone it would shatter into a million pieces (as with any foldable).
4. Compared to Fold 4:
a) it lies flat on the table without that stupid shape where the hinge is
b) fold is much less visible in my opinion
c) you would hope that Samsung has the fold technology "safer" given its the forth iteration. That said, haven't heard of any issues from Xiaomi owners thus far.
d) one handed operation is so much better on the xiaomi because of the front screen size and thinness
5. MIUI is a pain in the ass sometimes (10s lockout to enable third party apps for example) and there is a lot of fiddling around to allow apps to run in the background and turn off battery optimisation (prevents notifications from showing properly)

I have been using the Mix Fold 2 for over couple months now and it's awesome from a hardware perspective, with great in hand feeling and the cover screen is usable just like a normal phone, IMHO its definitely better than Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2, 3 & 4!
However my biggest gripe is the OTT battery management of MIUI 13 it is a pain, sometimes there is a 10s lockout to enable third party apps for accessibility etc... Even when you have enabled this after while MIUI will randomly disable it in the background so you have to go through the whole process again so frustrating!!!!!
Maybe because it's a Chinese ROM that's its so aggressive either way for that reason alone I will not be buying a another Xiaomi phone in the future.
My next fold phone will most likely be a Honor Magic VS which is definitely getting a global release so the software should be be better optimised for western market, also very keen on the Google Pxel Fold due ETA May 23

The hardware itself is amazing - thin, light, the cover screen has an aspect ratio allowing to use it as your main screen if you wish; doesn't feel cramped like the Z Fold 3/4. You can feel the difference with a 8.02" screen; no other foldable gives you such an experience.
The crease is annoying though, especially if you happen to slide your finger across it when scrolling documents, websites, or playing. Despite the aforementioned, it hasn't been a deal breaker yet for me.
Camera - it's not flagship material, but I'm not a photo junkie, so I don't care.
Wireless charging - it's not present; quite convenient, but you can learn to live without it.
Expandable storage - not there, but same as above.
Audio is good enough; 99% of the time I stream my audio via bluetooth anyway, so I don't really care how it sounds on-device.
Battery - once you configure your device, disable some of the apps, it's exceptionally good, especially with such a big screen. I easily manage 6h+ of SOT while gaming.
Apps - it's a minefield of bloatware - one of the first things you need to do is uninstall them. Some can be removed via the app manager, others need to be deleted from profile 0 via adb.
Connectivity - OK for that generation; better than my SD888 devices.
WiFi is fast; As for cellular reception, I live in an area with terrible cell rception & can comfortably hold conversations on my Fold 2, compared to my other devices where the network often dropping or cutting me off in the middle of sentences.
Software - it's awful; the amount of tinkering to make it remotely acceptable for use is amazing.
Worse - some of the settings, like customization to the profile of each app's battery usage gets reset on reboot. You're forced to register/sign in to Xiaomi if you want to unlock some of the deeper customization features - example: USB Debugging (Security) split into 2 parts.
Some features are locked for use with Xiaomi apps - example: you can't change the launcher. Even if you do, you can't use fullscreen gestures.
After upgrading to MIUI 14/Android 13, my company apps stopped working, although I presume that's going to be affecting a small portion of users only.
It doesn't seem you can flash/boot a GSI (like phh's) yet. I'll hang on to this device for the time being, but if a more compelling offering comes out, I'll probably switch. I was hoping the Pixel Fold would be that device, but I wouldn't go for a gen1 from Google.
In summary - good hardware albeit with some compromises, horrific software experience.
Score - 4/7

adwinp said:
The hardware itself is amazing - thin, light, the cover screen has an aspect ratio allowing to use it as your main screen if you wish; doesn't feel cramped like the Z Fold 3/4. You can feel the difference with a 8.02" screen; no other foldable gives you such an experience.
The crease is annoying though, especially if you happen to slide your finger across it when scrolling documents, websites, or playing. Despite the aforementioned, it hasn't been a deal breaker yet for me.
Camera - it's not flagship material, but I'm not a photo junkie, so I don't care.
Wireless charging - it's not present; quite convenient, but you can learn to live without it.
Expandable storage - not there, but same as above.
Audio is good enough; 99% of the time I stream my audio via bluetooth anyway, so I don't really care how it sounds on-device.
Battery - once you configure your device, disable some of the apps, it's exceptionally good, especially with such a big screen. I easily manage 6h+ of SOT while gaming.
Apps - it's a minefield of bloatware - one of the first things you need to do is uninstall them. Some can be removed via the app manager, others need to be deleted from profile 0 via adb.
Connectivity - OK for that generation; better than my SD888 devices.
WiFi is fast; As for cellular reception, I live in an area with terrible cell rception & can comfortably hold conversations on my Fold 2, compared to my other devices where the network often dropping or cutting me off in the middle of sentences.
Software - it's awful; the amount of tinkering to make it remotely acceptable for use is amazing.
Worse - some of the settings, like customization to the profile of each app's battery usage gets reset on reboot. You're forced to register/sign in to Xiaomi if you want to unlock some of the deeper customization features - example: USB Debugging (Security) split into 2 parts.
Some features are locked for use with Xiaomi apps - example: you can't change the launcher. Even if you do, you can't use fullscreen gestures.
After upgrading to MIUI 14/Android 13, my company apps stopped working, although I presume that's going to be affecting a small portion of users only.
It doesn't seem you can flash/boot a GSI (like phh's) yet. I'll hang on to this device for the time being, but if a more compelling offering comes out, I'll probably switch. I was hoping the Pixel Fold would be that device, but I wouldn't go for a gen1 from Google.
In summary - good hardware albeit with some compromises, horrific software experience.
Score - 4/7
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
all of these problems/complaints you have are easily solved by unlocking and rooting. anyone not willing to do that probably shouldn't get this phone.

knives of ice said:
all of these problems/complaints you have are easily solved by unlocking and rooting. anyone not willing to do that probably shouldn't get this phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As probably should every user of every major flagship device.
Sarcasm aside, there are reasons why one such as myself, hasn't resorted to that alternative.
Apart from that, a large number of the issues can be solved via adb; no need to root.
ADB, knowledge, time.

..and here I am, a gorgeous, tactile experience, really monolite-like and premium materials.
finally the MIX brand shines again after years of tarnishing. I'm really excited about the aesthetics.
when unfolded is one of the nicest foldable experiences I had, a large display light to handle.
The crease to me is almost invisible, no problems at all.
Some doubts come from the software, chinese rom only, in social networks (for example whatsapp) messages do not always arrive on time (80% ok), which creates some problems.
usual things that Xiaomi NEVER solves..

I've been very impressed with the Mix fold 2. I came from the Fold 4, and was concerned it wouldn't feel as polished as the Samsung device. It's actually worked out the other way, the Mix Fold 2 feels generation's ahead design wise, closed, it feels like a normal smart phone, and whne open, its an an ultra thin tablet. Even in its 4th generation, the Fold 4 still didn't feel right.
My main concern with the Mix fold 2 was the software, being a Chinese phone. Thanks to the help on here, I have everything I need working just as I want, mainly my banking app, and notifications. For me, it feels smoother, and the animations are better than on the Fold 4. From various reviews, I read the camera wasn't as good as others. I must admit, I've been very impressed with the images produced.

jamesbilluk said:
I've been very impressed with the Mix fold 2. I came from the Fold 4, and was concerned it wouldn't feel as polished as the Samsung device. It's actually worked out the other way, the Mix Fold 2 feels generation's ahead design wise, closed, it feels like a normal smart phone, and whne open, its an an ultra thin tablet. Even in its 4th generation, the Fold 4 still didn't feel right.
My main concern with the Mix fold 2 was the software, being a Chinese phone. Thanks to the help on here, I have everything I need working just as I want, mainly my banking app, and notifications. For me, it feels smoother, and the animations are better than on the Fold 4. From various reviews, I read the camera wasn't as good as others. I must admit, I've been very impressed with the images produced.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree. Got my Mix Fold 2 one week ago. Feels great to use. Do not think I ever will go back to a normal phone again. I am very impressed with the battery life. Screen on time when using the large screen is actually the same as on my Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro. According to Accubattery both phones consume 13% per hour when the screen is on.
The only important thing missing for me now is a virtual keyboard adapted to foldables in order to make typing on the large screen more comfortable. Microsoft SwiftKey has this functionality, however if I apply this setting the same keyboard is used on the smaller screen.

flipp0 said:
I agree. Got my Mix Fold 2 one week ago. Feels great to use. Do not think I ever will go back to a normal phone again. I am very impressed with the battery life. Screen on time when using the large screen is actually the same as on my Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro. According to Accubattery both phones consume 13% per hour when the screen is on.
The only important thing missing for me now is a virtual keyboard adapted to foldables in order to make typing on the large screen more comfortable. Microsoft SwiftKey has this functionality, however if I apply this setting the same keyboard is used on the smaller screen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Battery life is really impressive. We're on holiday at the moment, there's been quite a few times where the super quick charging has come in very useful too! I'll use that more than the wireless charging of the Fold 4.
I'm the same, after experiencing this, I don't think I would go back to a normal phone again.
I agree with regards to the keyboard. I'm using SwiftKey, it would be great to have the split on the larger screen, and smaller on the outer screen.

The phone is really nice and with a lot of tinkering, you can have almost everything working on the Chinese ROM.
However, I'd suggest waiting a little bit until the end of the month when the HONOR Magic Vs will be officially released in Europe with Google-friendly software.

The exclusivity of this device is in the lightness combined with the reduced thickness. This makes you forget the fact that it is a bit too high and thus makes it usable.

adwinp said:
The hardware itself is amazing - thin, light, the cover screen has an aspect ratio allowing to use it as your main screen if you wish; doesn't feel cramped like the Z Fold 3/4. You can feel the difference with a 8.02" screen; no other foldable gives you such an experience.
The crease is annoying though, especially if you happen to slide your finger across it when scrolling documents, websites, or playing. Despite the aforementioned, it hasn't been a deal breaker yet for me.
Camera - it's not flagship material, but I'm not a photo junkie, so I don't care.
Wireless charging - it's not present; quite convenient, but you can learn to live without it.
Expandable storage - not there, but same as above.
Audio is good enough; 99% of the time I stream my audio via bluetooth anyway, so I don't really care how it sounds on-device.
Battery - once you configure your device, disable some of the apps, it's exceptionally good, especially with such a big screen. I easily manage 6h+ of SOT while gaming.
Apps - it's a minefield of bloatware - one of the first things you need to do is uninstall them. Some can be removed via the app manager, others need to be deleted from profile 0 via adb.
Connectivity - OK for that generation; better than my SD888 devices.
WiFi is fast; As for cellular reception, I live in an area with terrible cell rception & can comfortably hold conversations on my Fold 2, compared to my other devices where the network often dropping or cutting me off in the middle of sentences.
Software - it's awful; the amount of tinkering to make it remotely acceptable for use is amazing.
Worse - some of the settings, like customization to the profile of each app's battery usage gets reset on reboot. You're forced to register/sign in to Xiaomi if you want to unlock some of the deeper customization features - example: USB Debugging (Security) split into 2 parts.
Some features are locked for use with Xiaomi apps - example: you can't change the launcher. Even if you do, you can't use fullscreen gestures.
After upgrading to MIUI 14/Android 13, my company apps stopped working, although I presume that's going to be affecting a small portion of users only.
It doesn't seem you can flash/boot a GSI (like phh's) yet. I'll hang on to this device for the time being, but if a more compelling offering comes out, I'll probably switch. I was hoping the Pixel Fold would be that device, but I wouldn't go for a gen1 from Google.
In summary - good hardware albeit with some compromises, horrific software experience.
Score - 4/7
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So, Nova Launcher wouldn't work on this device ?
What about AoD Notify ?!

nex_t said:
So, Nova Launcher wouldn't work on this device ?
What about AoD Notify ?!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It will work with a workaround I mentioned in my debloat thread. You need to install the securitycenter, install the 3rd party launcher & reinstall the securitycenter.
Quickstep will not be working.

Thank you
I've read, there are some issues with the whatsapp notification
Is there a fix for this ? Could you please give more details about ?
I don't think I'd like to open the phone manually, to check if I have a message
Does the Nova Launcher works ? Aod Notify ? Youtube Vanced ?
And the last question : would it be possible to add another software button ( volume ) to the navigation bar ?
As the Good Lock for Samsung
Thanks, again

Well, bummed out about the Magic VS launch. Not coming to UK before July, and no release dates for other EU countries? Rly? It’ll be almost a year old when it finally arrives, not much cheaper than Fold4, and not long before Fold5 will be announced. Pointless.
Guess it’ll be a Mix Fold 2 for me anyway. Was going to get it close to 2 months ago but decided to wait for the VS…