@zhadj030 wrote:
@killer23d wrote:
Like I always tell everyone: you get what you paid for. Chinese phones are designed for specific markets, and XiaoMi does not sell to North America. If you are willing to accept lack of warranty and your info "potentially" intecepted to China, then they are great value.
Otherwise, down in the US, there are many options like Nokia 6.1 and Motorola G series which at least you can get some warranty and North America support.
I rather get I really paid for then pay for an overpriced 1K smartphones despite the fact that it should only cost half of that price in a perfect world. Chinese phones are making a huge breakthrough in Europe and the rest of the world except North America the only 2 reasons they are not as popular and an option in North America is lack of full bands support and Lobbying.
Regarding Warranties, they are a nightmare no matter the name of the company, (I am not even going to mention Samsung/ LG because of how annoying their warranty departement is)
About the info being "leaked", it is the same as in the US. You cannot tell me that your info are not with NSA or other agencies just because you have an Apple or a Samsung product. No product is fully secure no matter what.
It is always a value proposition and what is your comfort level. I had a fair share of experience with Xiaomi and LeEco and the phone is almost a throw-away when it needs service. The costs to send back is just not economical. At the very least you can talk/chat with someone on LG, Samsung and even ZTE if you need service. It could be a nightmere (never in my case), but it's at least possible. Samsung and LG have service center in Richmond, so I always drop the phones off.
Chinese phone makers have been caught multiple times embedding tracking/adware/malware into their firmware. I have yet to recall similar numbers of reports on other manufacturers. I just don't want to be in that statistic.
You are correct that some phones are overpriced, but I would counter-argue that the costs could be justified. I had a ZTE Axon 7 which is very good and cheap ($450 for flagship), but service sucks, battery died in 6 months and I waited a month to get my phone swapped from Toronto. On the other hand, I paid full price for the Pixel 2 XL, my camera lens has some dust inside, Google replaced the phone in 2 days. There are just a lot of intangible inside higher priced phone (like the image processor) and camera that so far none of the Chinese makers are even close to the calibre.
The days of ROM flashing is also getting to an end as Google and other manufactures have introduced A/B partitions and hardware fuse. Not that I dislike flashing LOS or other ROM, I just don't think maintaining kernel, ROM, Magisk is worth my time, and like another poster said, if the phone software is done right, it should not need custom solutions. This is also where Chinese phones are weak at, they just simply don't have any support due to higher cost and competition there. They rather spend the money to sell you a new one than fixing/updating the current working one.
I have been using Andorid since Donut, I have been a ROM flashaholic since then and it seems I have stopped doing it since Nexus 5X, I tried to like Chinese phones like Xiaomi, ZTE and LeEco which they last about 9 months because custom ROM is lacking some features (ie Widewine for Netflix), but I ended up picking up the Pixel again. So far none of the Google phone has been disappointing in the software department.
We can argue all day on custom ROM and overpriced phones, but at the end of the day. Do you want to spend time tinkering your phone or just want to enjoy it?
I also enjoyed tinkering my car in the younger days for extra performance, but now I just buy a higher performing one instead. Same idea.
