From specs and reviews it looks like pretty good phone. Despite many reviewers saying that cameras are average, they are actually quite good. There isn't any visible overprocessing in photos. Macro cam is e-waste, just like many others. Ultrawide is serviceable. And that's probably the weakest part of that phone. Everything else is solid and well balanced. I don't really think that it will suck in long term usage.
Those cameras would be fine, if Samsung removed e-waste depth camera and used that budget to remove crappy post processing and gave us real manual mode. Oh and 4K mode that phone supports and can record, but for some reason it was removed by Samsung from stock camera app.
I would take a Galaxy S5 over that! Back in very-late-July, 2016, I was given a Galaxy S5 and while there was no cell service, the camera was excellent, when it came to clarity! I also regularly connected it to wifi hotspots. The camera was so good, that it looked like even Canon, would start panicking!
From specs and reviews it looks like pretty good phone. Despite many reviewers saying that cameras are average, they are actually quite good. There isn't any visible overprocessing in photos. Macro cam is e-waste, just like many others. Ultrawide is serviceable. And that's probably the weakest part of that phone. Everything else is solid and well balanced. I don't really think that it will suck in long term usage.
Ok so, I have a Google 4XL. I am now holding out for the 6. Which is slated for OCT'22, as far as I know. By then, 5G should be a little bit more solid. I know a delivery guy, has the new IPhone, w/ 5G. He is on T-Mobile. He says he doesn't even get Ultra in the suburbs, around the edges of the first ring of suburbs. That should improve over the next year. I just hope Verizon doesn't tax me to death for 5G!!
I would take a Galaxy S5 over that! Back in very-late-July, 2016, I was given a Galaxy S5 and while there was no cell service, the camera was excellent, when it came to clarity! I also regularly connected it to wifi hotspots. The camera was so good, that it looked like even Canon, would start panicking!
Well, I previously had Note 3 Neo. It was an odd phone, because despite tremendous value that it offered for ~300 Euros almost nobody bought it. Media didn't give a shit about it and yet it was better than 98% of phones then. Anyway, it had excellent camera. Due to not having any of this stupid post processing, it took excellent pictures. There is no doubt that it beats A50, but not because sensor or lenses were awesome, but because of no software retouching of photos. A50 has some great camera sensors, but if you look at picture size, photos at same resolution as Note 3 Neo's are 1-2MB big, meanwhile Note's are 5-8MB big. There's a ton of compression, the bad kind of compression, lossy compression. To fix it up, A50 oversharpens, overexposes and often sacrifices dynamic range to make those small photos somewhat better. Not only that, but default 16:9 mode crops sensor's natural 4:3 aspect ratio and then reduces megapixel count (hopefully to reduce noise and improve quality in poor lighting). So from that 25 MP sensor, you lose megapixels in final photo and you end up with maybe 12 MP or so. And then photo is compressed, oversharpened, overexposed, noise-smoothed. Such a waste of hardware is really maddening. The most ridiculous thing is that there's no reason to compress photos so much. Lower end galaxies, have post processing cut out and they embarrass even S series in terms of pictures quality that they produce. But then reviewers, who have shaky hands and zero photographic skills or knowledge, shit on those cameras, because they are not used to that and post processing was saving their sorry asses from complete photographic disasters. Not only Note beats A50, but even in some cases, my ancient Galaxy Ace 2 beats it.
But when it comes to actual digital cameras, I can tell you, that even Note isn't at that level. I have very old Canon IXUS 85 IS camera and it has 10MP sensor. If you know what you are doing, that thing can and does take better pictures than Note 3 Neo and is leagues above A50 or or even S10. It's truly lovely digital camera, which is easy to use and achieves great results with little effort. I once even compared it to DSLR (some modern Canon something with stock lens) in same conditions. I gave myself time to learn to use that thing and I learned that, but despite all that it didn't really beat a decade old digital camera. Only in some scenarios it managed to beat it. That honestly was quite underwhelming, on the other hand, I learned that decent digital camera can be a strong rival for entry level DSLR. The only things that were a lot better on DSLR were shooting in very unusual conditions or using very specific settings. If you want super low exposure shot or perhaps take a quality picture of moon, digital camera has nothing on it. Also DSLR is great for super underexposed light bulb shots, but in more common scenarios it was no better than IXUS 85. In fact, it is quite slow, has unreliable autofocus and is more transportable than truly portable. Note 3 Neo came surprisingly close to IXUS 85, but it lacked proper manual adjustments that sometimes were needed. In more ideal conditions, it produced good photos, but a notch bellow IXUS 85. Considering sensor and lense size differences, Note 3 Neo did as good as it could. Right now, many phones do truly have very respectable sensors and lenses and they have potential to be excellent, but for some reason automatic post-processing, which you cannot disable or adjust is forced to smartphone owners. It is often possible to overcome file compression issues with 3rd party apps, but there's nothing to disable that annoying post processing. It seems that many people don't notice or don't have a clue that there's is post-processing and that cameras on phones weren't as bad as they are today. As to why phone makers do that, I have no idea. Maybe it's for faster social media sharing, maybe it's for same reason why TV makers post process the shit out of videos and make them nearly unwatchable, if you know how they are supposed to look like, maybe it's due to people wanting to be able to store shit ton of pictures (by that I mean over 10k pictures) on their phones and never delete them. Whatever that reason is, it made phone choosing much harder than it should have been and taking higher quality pictures with modest equipment literally impossible. It's not just Samsung, but all phone makers doing that shit in some quantities. Some have rather small touching up, meanwhile others go completely bonkers with post processing, so far that they ruin some poor cameras.
Despite all that, during lockdown I managed to take some rather good pictures with Galaxy A50:
P.S. I really miss lock-down and all that free time. Everyone was panicking and being depressed, meanwhile I just chilled and had some very nice days. I walked outside almost everyday, took pictures, explored my own city and was doing well academically. I even started to invest. I don't think that I will ever in my life will get to enjoy my time any better than during lock down. That peacefulness of nearly no people and almost no cars in streets is irreplaceable.
I'm sorry mate, but I have no idea if that's a lot or not. I frankly don't even care much about performance of phone and I only understand Antutu scores to some extent. 30k is what Note 3 Neo gets and that is acceptable. Galaxy A50 is probably at over 100k. Beyond that, anything more is very excessive. I always leave power saver enabled and it limits CPU usage to 70%. In years that I used this phone and previous Note 3 Neo, I never, not even once, felt the need to disable power saver. They were fast enough for everything. Phones are not meant for productivity or heavy gaming, that's what desktops are for. There's also so much of power that you can get out of phone, before you ruin its battery life or make it excessively hot. Anyway, those scores are probably great and likely beat my A50 by two times. Those 700 series Snapdragons are no slouches.
I'm sorry mate, but I have no idea if that's a lot or not. I frankly don't even care much about performance of phone and I only understand Antutu scores to some extent. 30k is what Note 3 Neo gets and that is acceptable. Galaxy A50 is probably at over 100k. Beyond that, anything more is very excessive. I always leave power saver enabled and it limits CPU usage to 70%. In years that I used this phone and previous Note 3 Neo, I never, not even once, felt the need to disable power saver. They were fast enough for everything. Phones are not meant for productivity or heavy gaming, that's what desktops are for. There's also so much of power that you can get out of phone, before you ruin its battery life or make it excessively hot. Anyway, those scores are probably great and likely beat my A50 by two times. Those 700 series Snapdragons are no slouches.
For comparison, the i5-10400F scores around 5200 single-core and 25000 multi-core. They claim scores are directly comparable between manufacturers and even architectures.
The numbers under the main score show the actual tests it performs, like AES encryption, file compression, and the like.
I'm using a Verizon carrier subsidized Motorola One 5G UW.
Next phone will not be carrier subsizdized. I don't terribly need an unlocked bootloader, but Verizon makes it helluva hard thing should I want one later in the phones life.
Otherwise, the phone has been good to me with a solid battery.
I live in the middle east, thing about Samsung phones i noticed, is they're sometimes cheaper internationally than the us market
be patient tho, you can find it around 200$ at times, if not i might suggest the Redmi Note 10 non pro version, its one of the best buget phones right now
I'm using a Verizon carrier subsidized Motorola One 5G UW.
Next phone will not be carrier subsizdized. I don't terribly need an unlocked bootloader, but Verizon makes it helluva hard thing should I want one later in the phones life.
Otherwise, the phone has been good to me with a solid battery.
My new Motorola One Ace is also through Verizon. Been trying to figure out what apps I should disable. I've removed the cancer like Candy Crush (my nemesis), Facebook and the like. Also disabled most of the Verizon stuff.
How long have you had yours? I'd love to be able to put stock AOSP on it, but I dunno if I'll be able to.
Might get a Pixel 5a (factory unlocked of course) in the future. I dunno.
They won't unlock the bootloader on it. And yeah, disabling the crapware makes it much more livable. One of the apps (dtignite I think?) actually installs "recomended" apps without your permission. Fun.
The most important thing for me is the battery size. And i refuse to pay more than 250$ for a smartphone. I like Motorola, so i went with a Moto G 5G. But the 5G part is draining the battery fast so i just stick to 4G that is sufficient for all my mobile needs.
For comparison, the i5-10400F scores around 5200 single-core and 25000 multi-core. They claim scores are directly comparable between manufacturers and even architectures.
The numbers under the main score show the actual tests it performs, like AES encryption, file compression, and the like.
If that is actually possible and is true, then those mobile chips are seriously impressive. They have cores as fast as FX 6300 and they usually have 8 cores. Anyway, there are no phones today that are slow due to CPU power anymore. Most slow phones are due to eMMC storage, insufficient RAM or poor governor choice and setup by manufacturer. Most people aren't aware of Android governors, I/O schedulers and perhaps some other tweaks that make or break phone's performance and battery life. Also most of those chips are choked in some way by manufacturers to deliver proper battery life and since those trickle down from flagship devices to low end devices, there's a chance that they can make phone way slower or unpleasant than it really needs to be. The hardware itself (minus GPU) isn't really as much problem as it used to be, even 400 series Snapdragons have plenty of CPU power.
The most important thing for me is the battery size. And i refuse to pay more than 250$ for a smartphone. I like Motorola, so i went with a Moto G 5G. But the 5G part is draining the battery fast so i just stick to 4G that is sufficient for all my mobile needs.
That's unfortunate. I like my iPhone 11 Pro Max and it has served me well for the last year and a half-ish. Initially it was for the camera, but that's less of an issue now that I have a real full frame camera. Out of curiosity, what about the phone do you not like? I have very few complaints about it.
Well if you don't have the cash in one go for a premium phone, it can be an option to pay off the phone monthly.
This is normal in my country, many people who can't buy a premium phone because they don't have the cash for it.
Hi,
Majority of cell providers sell phones monthly with 1-2 year contracts nothing new there
What is new is xfinity actually giving away free smart phones with same 1-2 year contracts
If you don't have cash for phone, then you don't buy such phone. It makes no sense to go into plan (debt) for something this cheap and what is not financial asset. And there are some good inexpensive devices which are totally enough to get by. Besides overpriced plan, those "cheap" phones are the main way how carriers make a shit ton of money. They literally do the same as banks do, when they issue debts or mortgages, it looks like profitable business, there's collateral, legal protection, so even if client refuses to pay (defaults), they can't really default on that as carrier already has too much information and can easily find out where you live. And despite that, they make quite a big premium on that loan, they are not a bank and don't deal with few percent yields per person, they are making double digit yields per person. They can also increase price without notifying you and if you live in USA, they usually make request slightly custom hardware and software, so that you won't go into XDA and won't hack it as you see it fit.
All in all, it's just totally not worth doing that, because what you get are peanuts and and what carrier gets is a lot more. It doesn't really take long to read a bit about Verizon, AT&T or or some other carrier that is as evil as they can possibly be.
I have no idea if they rip off people in my country (which is certainly not USA), but either way phone carriers aren't your friends and have never been. There's no good reason to just not pay full amount up front and be done with it.
Not really, if you calculate everything, carrier phones are significantly more expensive over time than paid for ones. It's just a basic economy. Carriers wouldn't sell phones if it wasn't profitable to them.
LG G7 ThinQ. Bought one used a few months ago since my HTC 10 started failing on me. Probably would've gotten another HTC if they still made phones (and if they worked w/ Verizon, the last 2 flagships didn't connect to the right LTE bands).
The camera on the G7 is bad but I use a mirrorless for anything significant, otherwise really happy with the phone.
