General Great phone! And I almost did not buy it - ASUS ZenFone 8

All the discussions about battery life in here almost made me skip this phone. I am now using it for the past four weeks and I couldn't be happier!
I consistently get two days of use out of it (with ~5 hours of screen on time). Performance is great (I'm upgrading from a Snapdragon 820 device, this is a _huge_ leap in performance)! I'm still on stock firmware, but I'm planning to switch over to LineageOS next, as soon as time permits.
I think this is the best small phone out there at the moment.

Glad you like it! I know what you mean

Related

Considering a Nexus

So I started my android life with a G1, then eventually got a Mytouch. Now I am considering getting a Nexus one, I have the money saved up but I am not 100% sure... I want some experienced users (mainly the people who's root) and tell me, does the battery last good? And are you truly happy with it? Because I can't make up my mind rather to get the Nexus, or the Droid..Or some other new android phones coming to t-mobile soon..(rumors)
But then again I hate the fact that every time I buy a phone a new one comes out.. lol.
Side note: If anyone is selling a nexus, let me know.
G1-evolve said:
So I started my android life with a G1, then eventually got a Mytouch. Now I am considering getting a Nexus one, I have the money saved up but I am not 100% sure... I want some experienced users (mainly the people who's root) and tell me, does the battery last good? And are you truly happy with it? Because I can't make up my mind rather to get the Nexus, or the Droid..Or some other new android phones coming to t-mobile soon..(rumors)
But then again I hate the fact that every time I buy a phone a new one comes out.. lol.
Side note: If anyone is selling a nexus, let me know.
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Click to collapse
Tough situation. You have to realize that at some point, the trigger has to be pulled and when it is, another device will be coming out. That is just how it works. Look at Apple users...they buy a laptop to find out 6 months later something even better is arriving. Technology never waits, so when you want something, jump on it.
If you are on T-Mobile, you can look at the Desire. If you are interested in Verizon, the Incredible is landing soon which is basically a Desire with a boost.
The Nexus is a very open platform with amazing community support and having owned two, I regret nothing. This phone is amazing.
deprecate said:
Tough situation. You have to realize that at some point, the trigger has to be pulled and when it is, another device will be coming out. That is just how it works. Look at Apple users...they buy a laptop to find out 6 months later something even better is arriving. Technology never waits, so when you want something, jump on it.
If you are on T-Mobile, you can look at the Desire. If you are interested in Verizon, the Incredible is landing soon which is basically a Desire with a boost.
The Nexus is a very open platform with amazing community support and having owned two, I regret nothing. This phone is amazing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+infinity!!!!
I have good battery life now with some setting changes in custom rom I run. I have the extended battery so the feeling is comfortable for 1 hand texting. I still have and toy with my G1 but when I leave the house the I have the N1. I wouldn't trade my N1 for any phone out. It took me a few days to get adjusted to not having the physical keyboard but the size of the screen really make it easy. I just didn't get it when I had a mytouch. These are just a few of my options.
Definitely get a Nexus. Like deprecate said, technology will keep moving. You just gotta take the plunge. Battery life has been decent for me but that is most probably cause mine is still a brand new battery. Once it's broken in a little, it should be good.
The processor is ridiculously amazing. Things just work, and work very fast. Trust me, once you use the Nexus for a day and try to go back to G1/Dream, you will wonder how you lived all this time. The HTC Desire Rom for Nexus is actually very good if you like Sense. It also has Flash Player Lite if you're into that. Cyan's Rom, of course, gets better all the time. Honestly there aren't a lot of Rom options yet but that's because there isn't very much that could be improved at this point. Everything just works.
All in all, I say go for it.
the desire seems ok, idk I really might get a nexus I just don't want the battery to suck for a $500+ phone.
Well you gotta be reasonable. It has a 1ghz processor. The thing is gonna be a bit of a juice monkey no matter what. There are undervolted kernels available that help with battery life though.
After a month playing with my rooted N1 (previously had a iphone 3g) i can only say: Wow, this beast is fast. You can multi-task, load custom ROMs, browse fast and soon we will have flash support. Battery life is accetable, so great performance with a so thin design is acceptable. And android is a powerfull and flexible OS. Im very happy with my nexus1.
Sent from my Nexus One using the XDA mobile application powered by Tapatalk
I went through the same thought process as well before buying my Nexus One. The thing that really sold me was the fact that I have a few friends with Android phones and they all seem pretty frustrated that they see all these new Android releases coming out and their phones remain stuck at 1.5. Since the N1 is Google's showcase phone it's pretty much a given that it will always get timely updates to the latest version of Android. I don't think you can say the same for ANY other Android phone (a lot even have boot loaders that can't be unlocked like the Milestone and Rogers HTC Magic) and I doubt any that might come out in the next few months will be that lucky either. Plus this thing is just mind blowing fast.
I came from an iPhone 3G so initially I was slightly disappointed with the touchscreen (it doesn't reject spurious input from fingers and palms that might wrap around the phone) and the less than stellar reception. Every time I put my hand on lower part of the phone and see 2-3 bars of reception disappear I feel shame.
Coming from a Magic I doubt I would ever notice this because these problems exist in those phones too as I believe it uses the same touchscreen and the radio placement is identical.
As for battery life, I actually get pretty good life now that my usage has settled down.
For the Battery if you run one of the UV kernels as well as setcpu with profiles. Also do some of the main things you do with your Mytouch like turn off wifi, GPS, screen brightness to low, only use 3G when you need it other wise leave it on Edge, as well as the many other battery saving ideas. You should should get great battery life. I can go about 16 hours of ok usage and have about 50 to 60% battery life left. Check my Sig for what i am running. Over all i paid full price for my N1 and i am love with phone in every way.

[Q] Contemplating purchase this phone

To date, this post is for anyone that has had this phone from november december area. I have always struggled with battery dwindling on my phones. The LG G2 lasts 1.5 hours of screen time now on AOSP when it used to push almost 5hrs, and my girlfriends older droid razr m went from 3 hrs of screen time to a struggling 1 hour. I would wait for the next nexus but i hear its coming from hauei whoever they are. Im not comfortable going with that company yet. I have been looking at the Sony z3 (or waiting for the new Us versions z4 with the 2k screen) but i am abe to get this phone for 380 through my work. How is the stamina of the battery 7-8 months later?
ang1dust said:
To date, this post is for anyone that has had this phone from november december area. I have always struggled with battery dwindling on my phones. The LG G2 lasts 1.5 hours of screen time now on AOSP when it used to push almost 5hrs, and my girlfriends older droid razr m went from 3 hrs of screen time to a struggling 1 hour. I would wait for the next nexus but i hear its coming from hauei whoever they are. Im not comfortable going with that company yet. I have been looking at the Sony z3 (or waiting for the new Us versions z4 with the 2k screen) but i am abe to get this phone for 380 through my work. How is the stamina of the battery 7-8 months later?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Had the phone since early December, no battery dwindling here, even with Quick Charge. I'm on Verizon, and I use LTE, never WiFi. I normally get 2-3 hours of screen time. If I use WiFi I can get 4 hours or so. It easily lasts me an entire day, but I struggle to get through 1.5-2 days. Keep in mind I do not underclock or undervolt. I am running AOSiP ROM and have Lean Kernel as my Kernel. But I don't underclock.
I did run the phone completely stock for about a month and got about the same battery life, maybe even slightly better. I have over 120 apps on my phone, and I have the 64GB White version. Let me know if you have any other questions!
P.S. For $380 you could easily buy the phone and sell it in a couple of months and lose nothing and still upgrade to a newer phone.
Its the best phone i ever had hands down and with a powerbank or using the quickcharger you will never run out of juice. Besides that its fast, responsive, has a great screen and dual speakers so overall i can recommend to anyone who appreciates vanilla. If you want bloat get a Sony, Samsung or LG BTW my screenontime is about 3-4 hours depending on usage and i think Huawei makes some pretty damn good phones like the Mate 7 for instance.
gee2012 said:
Its the best phone i ever had hands down and with a powerbank or using the quickcharger you will never run out of juice. Besides that its fast, responsive, has a great screen and dual speakers so overall i can recommend to anyone who appreciates vanilla. If you want bloat get a Sony, Samsung or LG BTW my screenontime is about 3-4 hours depending on usage and i think Huawei makes some pretty damn good phones like the Mate 7 for instance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you use WiFi or LTE mainly? If LTE, what carrier?
chris23445 said:
Do you use WiFi or LTE mainly? If LTE, what carrier?
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Click to collapse
My carrier (T-Mobile) in the Netherlands just rolled out LTE where i live and coverage isn`t optimal yet (HSPA+). I`am about half the day on wifi and half on LTE (HSPA+).
All great info. No bloatware on the z3 international, and it's certified ip68 were the nexus can take a dunk but not certified. I agree 380 is good price it was a debate of this or s6 a and I'm leaning to this one
agree 100%
gee2012 said:
Its the best phone i ever had hands down and with a powerbank or using the quickcharger you will never run out of juice. Besides that its fast, responsive, has a great screen and dual speakers so overall i can recommend to anyone who appreciates vanilla. If you want bloat get a Sony, Samsung or LG BTW my screenontime is about 3-4 hours depending on usage and i think Huawei makes some pretty damn good phones like the Mate 7 for instance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I couldn't agree more. It is the best phone I ever had too. Recently I have purchased a Qi charger for the office, so i do not even use the turbocharger that sits at home. No battery deterioration noticed. Oh, and I never use the car charger.
WiFi / LTE - 50/50.
This is the best phone I've had as well, have had it since it came out end of 2014, on the Verizon network the entire time.
I'm on LTE 10-13 hours a day, and WiFi a few hours, the battery will last me from 6:30am - 10pm everyday, without charging at all, and being around 15%-25% when I am about to put it on charge during bedtime.
The phone is rooted, on AOSIP ROM, with AOSIP default kernal. The battery life is amazing. I get between 4-5 hours of screen on time. I am currently at 61% battery (6:30am to 3pm now), with 2 hours SOT.
I use Servicely to hibernate apps while phone is asleep. I also use 'App Ops' to disable 'Location' and 'Keep Awake' access for apps that don't need the access. I have Google Now and Facebook running normal all day, and WhatsApp is my preferred method of texting throughout the day.
Coming from a Galaxy Note 3, I'm a bit disappointed by the screen and battery life. Color reproduction is kinda weird and the screen is too dim in bright sunlight for me. I can live with the relatively weak battery but the screen is just...disappointing. Still, I love it and felt never so happy with a device!
HSPA+ is not LTE

Why should i buy Nexus 6?

Dear Folks,
I am about to buy and phone and i am reading and reading reviews about Nexus 6 vs Note 4, i don't know what to buy because after reading all that my mind is not working well, could you please help me to choose what phone should i have?
P.S i heard battery life on Nexus 6 is not good, is it true? :fingers-crossed:
Battery life is great on the Nexus 6 especially on Marshmallow. Under 30% a day with full time data and wifi and moderate use. I only use Battery Saving location, it"s accurate enough unless you're navigating your car.
As for the question itself, I too was choosing between these two, but I was searching for a device to develop on rather than just use it, so it clearly made the decision easy. First in Europe the official unlocked device is the Exynos one, I didn't want a locked device, it's a nuisance and since I was about to trip Knox the first day, it's a phone you can't sell later.
So the Note 4 has a better camera, it's not as huge (I had a Note 3 before), and the S-Pen that I never really used, but other people love it.
Also before I decided to buy a new phone for development, I was already using cm12.1 on my Note 3, and was looking for something even more stock than cyanogenmod. So there was not an option for me to go Touchwiz again.
So if you make up your mind what you are wanting this phone for, then I hope I helped to choose.
Dear @istperson all i am concerned about is little bit good battery life which help me to spend full day with wifi and data usage, i am not a developer, i also don't like S-Pen at all, i used S5 and touchwiz was lagging all the times, CM themer is available for Nexus 6 right? i think i will go with Nexus 6 its beautiful phone with large screen but i still find Note 4 screen more better than Nexus 6, what do you think?
Battery life for me is great 40% at least at the end of the day. Speakers are stellar as is the screen, camera is good can't complain.
I just bought an N6 about 2 months ago, and I have loved every second of it. I came from a Samsung Galaxy S3, so I would definitely not recommend buying a note 4. I am amazed that I was able to handle a GS3 for that long given how locked-down the software was. It took me no time to unlock, flash TWRP, root, and get a custom ROM running on my Nexus, whereas I was never able to do more than Xposed + root on my old phone. The software is amazing (and can be whatever you want it to be), the camera is nice (except for some strange autofocus bugs), and everything works like a charm.
As far as battery, I usually got 3 hrs SOT over about 18hrs (wifi, 4g, location, and always-on voice all turned on) running stock. With my current setup with Chroma ROM and kernel, I got 4hrs SOT over 18hrs yesterday even with a strange bug that caused mobile radio to suck up a third of my battery. Plus with Doze, standby time is unbeatable.
Hands down, go with a Nexus. I'm never going back.
I bought my nexus 6 a month ago and it is amazing! My battery life on stock was around 5 - 5.5 SOT, but now, after unlocking and rooting, with custom kernel and doze I get around 6-7 SOT!! Keep in mind that I don't use location, brightness is often on low levels, data is on 3G, but I am web surfing a lot, watching youtube, on tapatalk and whats app. Also nexus 6 will be among firsts to receive latest updates, patches and bug fixes straight from google. The speakers are really loud and great, and you get used to phone's size very fast. Camera is ok, nothing special, works just fine with third party apps...
Nexus screen is gorgeous (same resolution as Note 4 at Quad HD) but not as bright, most likely. Nexus will have no lag, and the battery should be no problem getting through a day

How awful is EMUI, and can it be made more stock-like?

Hi guys,
Happy New Year to all! Seems like my first resolution for 2017 will be to get a new phone as my LG G3 decided to die a few days after Christmas while on vacation... lovely, as it was to be my only way of taking pictures! Anyway, I'm looking for a cost-effective replacement phone (I'm in Australia for reference). My preference would have been a Pixel phone, but they retail north of 1000 AUD for the entry-level 32GB non-XL Pixel here, which is just too expensive for my liking. Alternatively I would have considered the S7/S7 Edge, but just a few months before release of the S8 I'm not willing to pay full price for it.
This brings me to the P9, which is currently on sale here bringing its price to roughly half of the Pixel/S7 Edge (600 AUD), and given a major point for me is camera/picture quality, it is a serious contender. My main concern however is the rather heavy-handed EMUI skin. Are there any P9 users around here who generally prefer stock-ish Android and who have switched to the P9? What's your feeling around EMUI? As long-term users, did you get accustomed to it? Things like the notifications shade and the recent apps are making me cringe a little, partly because they seem much less practical than the default implementation in Android, and partly because.... they look like an iPhone
Are there any apps available to make EMUI look more like stock? I'd unlock the bootloader and root this thing if I buy it, so I'm thinking things like xposed modules? I'd also be fine flashing a stock-based custom ROM, but would rather avoid stock-based/CM/Lineage ROM as I'd like to keep full camera functionality.
Also - unrelated question, but are people generally happy with battery life on the P9? I'm a light/medium user and the 2 hours of screen on time I'd routinely get on the G3 would be okay most days, but obviously short for days of heavy use. I seem to be reading that 4-4.5 hours of SOT is standard, is that what people experience?
My fallback plan would be to get a ZUK Z2 to tide me over until this year's phones.
Thanks for reading!
I got a zuk z2 pro after initially moving from Windows Lumia 950. The hardware for price was awesome but the software on it was a nightmare so I sold it and switched to P9.
First I used Nova launcher which was great as Emui didn't have an app draw.
Now I am beta testing Nougat Emui 5 which is a lot better and closer to stock although still stuck with the Icons.
Currently Nova crashes with my widgets so until that is fixed I am keeping with standard launcher, actually now I am used to it I may just stay using it.
Sent from my Hauwai P9 EVA-L09 using Tapatalk
I used a Nexus 5 for 2 years , S6 for 1 year and now I have a P9 (HTC 10 for some weeks,other phones only a few days).
Emui is something new . For me,it feels like a new, fresh experience.
I'm done with stock android. If I buy a flagship device,i want some features . The phone is fast (feels faster than HTC 10,S6,etc) .
For me ,it's better than stock android. S6 had the features,but it was laggy (s7 is the same). P9 has the features but it's also fast.
For me it's BAD, but not the EMUI by itself. It's bad because it's poorly made. No double tap to wake up the screen, no wave to wake up but there are ton of other useless motion controls.. Even Knuckle gestures that pretty sure no one is using (or 5 people at most)... Notes app doesn't sync with Gmail. No Reminders app. Don't like the colors, even in the Nougat update. Black with dark blue is so ugly (to me) that if I knew this would be enough to skip this phone. One of my biggest problems - can't turn off the haptic feedback, everytime I am using google search the phone vibrates and drives me crazy, and of course is draining battery. The worst part of the Phone is the updates, mine is still with 1 September security patch, it's January now... Flagship not getting monthly security patches in 2016-2017 is a joke, especially with the raising virus attacks. Took them too long to update to Nougat - another flaw. Everything else - Screen, build quality, camera is pretty damn good. Battery is pretty good to 5 hours without any problem and on Nougat most people get 6 and more hours.. Software is the biggest flaw.
Yes you can make it more Stock like - take a look at the themes here that some good people are making. No need of another Launcher. They are great and make the phone at least look better. And they will be released for EMUI 5 too. I won't suggest installing launchers, at least I had really bad experience, my phone started lagging so much I had to factory reset it. And I asked many people, they had the same problem after installing another launcher. This is my opinion and my experience. To be honest, if I knew how I will feel with this phone, I was going to get me S7. My advice is just wait for S8... Or LG G5 right now is on great price in most countries, great phone, would take it everyday instead of Huawei... It's your money and your decision after all.
Thanks guys for all the valuable feedback. I gave it a good thinking and eventually went to buy the P9 last weekend. I'll be writing up some more thorough thoughts about it when I get a chance, but so far I'm quite satisfied. It's very fluid overall, and I have 61% battery left as I write this with 1.5 hours of screen on time - at this stage my G3, also with a 3000mah battery, would be close to throwing in the towel already!
Two noticeable drawbacks, the lack of OIS for a phone supposedly focused on photography is annoying, and the 3D performance is definitely very middling. I did know this going in though so it certainly is no big surprise.
Hi
Battery life on the P9 is way better than the G3 (I had one that sadly died as well). P9 is also much smoother and doesn't heat as much as the G3 did.
EMUI is OK. Takes a bit more time the first day to set things up, because some things are buried a bit deeper in the settings. If you're worried about the look... There's a good theming community with some really good "stock android" themes available. Pair that with something like Nova launcher and you won't even notice it's there.
The camera is indeed excellent.
I also came from the G3 to this phone. I am loving it. I was ready to unlock/root/custom after reading all the professional reviews slamming EMUI. It took a bit of getting used to, but 7 months later this remains the first Android phone I have not rooted. I haven't even given it a factory rest to combat slow-down, and battery life remains excellent.
There is a customer skin in this: (https://forum.xda-developers.com/p9/themes/theme-material-vui-t3429075) thread which provides a nice stock look to icons and notification bar. I missed the app drawer for about 2 days then just got a folder page set up and organised. On balance it doesn't take me any longer to get to where I want to go.
About my only complaint is that even with my White-list protecting certain apps from being killed, they still do not seem to perform as they did on the G3. These are automation apps like IFTTT which I used to auto arm/disarm my home security when I arrive leave.
cooldoud said:
Hi guys,
Happy New Year to all! Seems like my first resolution for 2017 will be to get a new phone as my LG G3 decided to die a few days after Christmas while on vacation... lovely, as it was to be my only way of taking pictures! Anyway, I'm looking for a cost-effective replacement phone (I'm in Australia for reference). My preference would have been a Pixel phone, but they retail north of 1000 AUD for the entry-level 32GB non-XL Pixel here, which is just too expensive for my liking. Alternatively I would have considered the S7/S7 Edge, but just a few months before release of the S8 I'm not willing to pay full price for it.
This brings me to the P9, which is currently on sale here bringing its price to roughly half of the Pixel/S7 Edge (600 AUD), and given a major point for me is camera/picture quality, it is a serious contender. My main concern however is the rather heavy-handed EMUI skin. Are there any P9 users around here who generally prefer stock-ish Android and who have switched to the P9? What's your feeling around EMUI? As long-term users, did you get accustomed to it? Things like the notifications shade and the recent apps are making me cringe a little, partly because they seem much less practical than the default implementation in Android, and partly because.... they look like an iPhone
Are there any apps available to make EMUI look more like stock? I'd unlock the bootloader and root this thing if I buy it, so I'm thinking things like xposed modules? I'd also be fine flashing a stock-based custom ROM, but would rather avoid stock-based/CM/Lineage ROM as I'd like to keep full camera functionality.
Also - unrelated question, but are people generally happy with battery life on the P9? I'm a light/medium user and the 2 hours of screen on time I'd routinely get on the G3 would be okay most days, but obviously short for days of heavy use. I seem to be reading that 4-4.5 hours of SOT is standard, is that what people experience?
My fallback plan would be to get a ZUK Z2 to tide me over until this year's phones.
Thanks for reading!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Using Nougat Beta I find EMUI 5.0 to be much more tolerable, as it is much closer to stock than 4.x, but also resembles iOS more than before which isn't great.
My biggest annoyance is its cloning of MiUI which, while understandable for a Chinese brand, is impractical. MiUI wastes very large amounts of screen space due to its obsessive "Top half=graphic, bottom half=details" design. Lots of screens have trivial graphics that have only a small amount of useful information, yet they're expanded to take the whole top half of the screen.
My only real annoyance is the stock features it replaces with versions that have fewer features. Case in point, the data usage monitor. Instead of taking the stock version and improving it, it seems Huawei built it from scratch because it can't do several things the stock version can do. Its interface in 4.x is ugly, in my opinion (also very MiUI), but even in 5.0 where it resembles stock, it isn't stock. You can't, for instance, check data usage for the previous month. You also cannot change the day of the month on which the monthly counter resets.
Considering it has the ability to cut off after you surpass a limit, it's clearly still designed with managing bills in mind, like its stock counterpart, yet they assume everyone's billing period resets on the 1st of the month.

Lollipop or Marshmallow when it comes to battery?

I've been using a MM based rom for sometime now, but from the start I've noticed that battery life has been way less impressive than it used to be. When on LL, two days of moderate use was not something unusual for me, but with MM I haven't last more than a day not a single time, on a busy day my phone can die in 16 hours. My battery is rather new, about 6 months old and really well taken care of.
So, what's your opinion? Is LP more gentle on our phones than MM?
Actually, in the beginning it seemed like LP was friendlier but after months of use, I have to say MM is excellent.
It's very smooth and in comparison to ask the rest of the phones I currently own, all 2017, it's battery lasts forever.
I can never quite get to two days but certainly a day and change.
Services and controls in MM are updated and with that comes better battery if you know how to set everything up.
Also, stock should no longer be an option for Note 4. I'm getting better performance AND battery on ported roms... because they're better programmed and updated, where as Note 4's firmware is now stagnant.
Get a NOTE 5 or NOTE 7 port, get the right Kernal, you will NOT regret it. Changed my life.
Marshmallow is better! The only reason there was ever a dispute over this, Is because in the early stages of marshmallow there were bugs and problems, but now all is good.
Marshmallow added much more features. Anytime you add more code and processes, I don't care how little they are, they're gonna use some power. Hence why your battery drain. But for me marshmallow had been smooth and more secure.
Which is the most stable note 7 which u suggest...with min no of bugs...i have a n910g

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