277
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #97,040 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★★★★
This is a great mid-range phone
If you are looking for a phone for less than $400, this one should be on your short list. If you are looking for one under $300, this may be your new phone. Unverified purchase because I bought a Forest green 64GB/ 6GB Note 8 Pro / SD Card bundle, but since this is so new, I thought I'd post it here. :D
What I like:
The phone itself looks nice aesthetically. The green is rather striking with the glass exterior. It's easy to hold as it is long and thin. The phone is fast. It loads from powered off to ready for use in 15 seconds. The fingerprint reader is also rather quick. It has a vibrant screen, a screen that stretches over almost the entire face. The touch response is fantastic. Operation while running multiple apps is silky smooth. I scored ~278000 on Antutu benchmark, which seems pretty good (that's slightly better than a Galaxy S9). The camera is good, low light pictures come out nice. I don't use it but it has NFC. There is a small white notification light in the teardrop. The GPS is fast to acquire and accurate. The phone aggressively tries to save your battery life, which is already really good. I can easily get 2 days or regular use. 3 or 4 days of battery life if it's mostly just on standby. Still has a headphone jack and the external speaker is plenty loud for ringtones. Comes with a clear, rubber sleeve.
What I don't like:
No app drawer. (meet MIUI, the modified android on this phone) Perhaps that can be remedied with a launcher. (I actually like MIUI so I live with no drawer) Phone doesn't come with a proper US charger, it comes with a European(?) plug, an adapter and a standard usb cord. MIUI comes with some ads here and there. Like when you use the play store, you may see one. They can be turned off though (see below). The camera lens protrudes off of the back of the phone, so it isn't flat (without some kind of real case). MIUI isn't vanilla (pure) android (but is still somehow like-able too lol). It's a little heavy (200g) but not crazy heavy. Sound quality from the bottom firing single speaker could be better but I've heard far worse.
For $240, this is a pretty fantastic phone.
FYI - I'm using mine on TracPhone, using AT&T towers. I had to manually set up the APN to get my mobile network running but that may just be because this phone is so new that it wasn't automatic.
To remove ads from Xiaomi MIUI 10:
Your phone must be connected to the Internet. Permission can only be revoked online.
go to: Settings > Passwords & Security > Authorization & revocation
set "msa" to Off. (wait for 10 seconds)
After waiting, tap Revoke.
Once you tap that, you may see: “Couldn't revoke authorization”. Keep trying until you succeed. (3-5x)
Go to: Settings > Additional Settings > Privacy > Ad services Personalized ad recommendations
set that to "Off".
October 2019 · Cell Phones and Accessories