It’s been some time since I last posted. One semester has passed and lots of things have changed. This was indeed a troubling semester, but whats in the past should stay in the past. Forward is the only direction I should face now.
I bid goodbye to my zenfone 2 about a month back. It was a fun 1.5 years with the zenfone, however the battery drain and unpredictable reboots was as much annoying as it is unreliable. Many a times towards the end of its life did it give up completely on me. How can I continue using a phone that will brick itself on the most critical of times, only recovering when I manually reflash the firmware?
Even then, sometimes the firmware flashing fails and I have to do a even deeper level of flashing. Considering the amount of personal data I have on that phone, I sure wasn’t going to call it a day and give up. Reminder to self: backup more frequently. The last straw came when the phone died again on the first day of camp. It’s like a rude reminder that I should get a new phone, which I did, immediately after I got home. I had enough of you zenfone 2.
This was not really a rash decision, after all I have been researching into the best phone to fit my usage needs long before this. And I did this research on my zenfone. Not sorry here 🙂
Delivery took 2 days, which was really fast. The phone of choice was the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (snapdragon 64gb). This was probably the most value for money midrange smartphone on the market as of late may, discounting those obscure chinese phones that get updated every month. Upon first boot, I was once again impressed by the responsiveness, fluidity and thermal performance of the snapdragon 625. Of course, I would have preferred the performance of the 650/652 but they did not offer that configuration.
Battery performance is amazing. I can watch 3 hours of shows/youtube, browse the web and listen to music and the phone will still be >30% battery at the end of the day. With minimal usage, I did hit 3 days once. I intend to use this phone for the next 3 years, till the day it dies on me or another worthy successor appears.
On a sidenote, I purchased a screen protector which was advertised as having a carbon fibre layer making it indestructible somehow. Sadly I could not get it to make peace with my casing, so I decided to go with the casing alone. The screen protector didn’t play nice with the slightly curved screen as well. No matter how I pressed down the sides, it would pop right back up immediately leaving two rows of unsightly bubbles. They also did not make the bottom transparent, which covered the capacitive touch buttons making usage mildly irritating.
OBEAN
Curry rice. Appearance wins half the battle.