WHY Buy a Chinese Phone?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,390 words · ~6 min read
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my first xiaomi phone was the mix 2 a cutting-edge nearly full display phone
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that gearbest.com helped me get my hands on last year
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and that i abandoned reviewing after spending four hours fighting with
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bootloader unlocking crap in an attempt to load the english rom on it
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only to find out that xiaomi had
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a bloody english version coming a couple weeks later
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anyway the me mix 2s so called for its
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speedier snapdragon 845 processor
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presumably is better across the board anyway
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including the out-of-the-box support for
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english yes but i still can't figure out why
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anybody in this hemisphere is buying premium phones from brands like xiaomi
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is there something on the surface that i am missing here
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like for example a sponsor for this video like madrina's coffee madrina's
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coffee blends specialty cold brew coffees into 16-ounce grab-and-go cans
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for everyone's convenience check them out and use offer code Linus to save 40
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at the link below
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it's really easy to fall in love with the mix 2s it manages to have the sex
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appeal of a nearly bezel-less design coming just one percent shy of the
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screen ratio of the iphone 10 and that's without resorting to an unsightly notch
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and the work that they've put into their ceramic coated back has paid off in
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spades glass-backed phones are back in vogue
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now to enable wireless charging but
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as hard as you might try a glass back will never feel as premium
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nor be as durable as this and after a similar amount of time in my
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pocket my oneplus 6 is noticeably more
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scuffed up and it's packed full of all the right
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hardware sporting the latest generation snapdragon 845 processor up to eight
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gigs of RAM up to 256 gigs of non-expandable storage blah blah blah
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blah blah so it's super fast like you guys get the point and the price is
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right too lining up right across the oneplus 6 as a flagship grade phone for
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hundreds of dollars less than you would pay a tier one like apple or samsung
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and it's got lightning fast fingerprint unlocking the ability to choose between
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button-based or gesture-based navigation and even wireless charging which as we
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outlined in our video recently has the potential when used properly to improve
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the lifespan of your non-removable but respectably sized 3 400 milliamp hour
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battery so uh
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wait why was i so down on this thing a couple of minutes ago
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i still can't figure out why anybody in this hemisphere is buying premium phones
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from brands like xiaomi that seems kind of unfair doesn't it i
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mean even the dual rear camera absolutely blows away previous
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generation efforts from chinese phone makers like this low light shot here
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does have more noise than any other camera that i tested but it avoids the
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over sharpening of the mate 10 pro and the undesirable flaring of the
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galaxy s9 so i mean at least xiaomi
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isn't actively processing the image to make it worse
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and then in this challenging situation the me mix 2s ends up noisier than
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samsung and with less true-to-life colors than the oneplus 6 but it looks
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better than both the iphone 10 and the pixel 2 xl and under ideal conditions
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you can get some really nice images out of it so let's talk about some of the
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weaknesses of the me mix 2s the earpiece
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speaker isn't amplified for stereo sound
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there's no water resistance at least nothing officially ip rated
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1080p slo-mo only goes to 120 FPS rather
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than 240 the display is ips rather than
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OLED which means almost no potential for burn-in
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but at the cost of ambient or always-on
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technology and there is no headphone jack so you
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will need to pull out an adapter every time you want to watch my little pony at
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the back of the bus without anybody finding out
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so all that is kind of a drag
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but again it's hundreds of dollars less for top
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spec hardware and it's got no display
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notch so i can accept that stuff even if i don't
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like all of it the part that is unforgivable is the
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software miui is like going back in time to when
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samsung still thought that having a bunch of bloat in there okay well hold
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on samsung still has a lot of bloat in there so
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um okay whatever in xiaomi's defense
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some of the stuff that they include is legitimately useful like a screen
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recorder app and a quick link to my downloads
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but there were just so many annoying things that i ran into that ground my
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gears from having in my pocket for two weeks
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let's take google hangouts if i got a message an hour ago but left
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it unread because i wanted to deal with it later every new message that i get or even
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opening up another conversation sometimes will make it pop up again
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why when i create a folder on the home
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screen it doesn't pull up the keyboard automatically for me to start typing
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why the included weather app wants access to
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my phone for some reason when all it
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should need is my location not to mention that it cannot be removed
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or even hidden so you have to create a
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useless crap folder iOS style there's no
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obvious way to expand a notification from the lock screen and reply to it
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which is good for security but i would like to at least have the option for my
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convenience i can't install netflix off the app store the workaround seems to be to
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track down the apk and install it manually
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it wakes the screen for notifications which is nice but not when you lift the
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phone something that i've come to take for granted these days and there is no
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hardware button to launch the camera yuck now taken
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individually every one of those things would seem
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like a pretty insignificant little gripe
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and there are things that their software does reasonably well so their screenshot
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management something that i use a lot blows one pluses out of the water
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and a separate account for another user is super handy if i want to give the
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phone to my kids but i don't want them accessing all my stuff
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the bottom line though is that this device was annoying to use for me
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and not just compared to a flagship one like the s9 plus compared to other
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devices that cost the same xiaomi would do well to take a page out
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of oneplus book on the software side of things
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there isn't really such a thing as stock Android anymore i mean even
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google's own pixel lineup customizes stock Android
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but they would do well to try to get a
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lot closer because the hardware and the design are already really
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impressive so i'm looking forward to seeing continued improvement
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speaking of improvement the only thing that could improve this video is this
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pad their k63 wireless gaming keyboard features the same low latency connection
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options and cherry mx red switches with a blue led backlight and you can check
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out their entire lineup at the link below
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so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if
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it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to
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where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description also down there is
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our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum
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which you should totally join