So recently i Got myself an IDA-16 amplifier which came with a BTR-8 bluetooth dongle which is Apt-X capable and i also have an AKG Y50-BT headphones which also features Apt-X capability so my old phone which uses standard Bluetooth was not providing the "socalled" best outputs for wireless audio playback .... some people claim that Apt-X would sound better than standard Bluetooth because it is less compressed than standard bluetooth and also provides a wider frequency range than standard bluetooth
All of which left me looking for an Apt-X capable phone which was moderately affordable but which also had the highest possible spec for the amount of money that i was willing to spend .... so this meant that i could go for Iphone XS or Samsung Note 9 models which cost R1k per month on contract, or close to or above R20k when purchased for cash
Enter Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi who make a number of decently specced phones for much less cash than their rivals ... and Xiaomi suited me because my previous phone was a Xiaomi Note 4x so i was already used to their MIUI launcher so in the end i decided to go for a Pocophone F1 .... heres a link to the specs
https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_pocophone_f1-9293.php
this phone is quickly becoming an internet sensation because overseas it is around $300 for the base model but its underlying specs are equal to many phones that cost around $1000 or more so its basically a budget buster ... and you can get it from Gearbest for pretty cheap
https://www.gearbest.com/cell-phones/pp_009492488405.html?wid=1349303
change the currency in the above link to ZA rands and you will see that its available for R5048-60 at the time i posted the link with R46-60 required for priority line shipping (and from what i know you will have to pay VAT when it arrives) .... However i was too scared to take a chance with the direct self import because of a couple of sad stories regarding Gearbest and Aramex so i decided to order it from a local company who charges a bit of a markup which i accepted because these guys take over all the importation headaches - so i paid a bit more and got it from here
https://miphones.co.za/products/poco-f1?variant=12765276143693
i see that they now have the blue version available and i would have gone for that one instead of the Graphite black which looks more like a dark grey but anyways im using it with a cover so it isnt the biggest trainsmash in the world but the blue looks like a very fashionable color though the advantage with black is that it wont go out of fashion somewhere along the line :nfi:
anyways the phone has 6GB of Ram and 128GB of storage space and uses a Snapdragon 845 processor which is what the Samsung Note 9 uses and its Watercooled as well - heres a link to the actual Xiaomi website for anyone interested in reading about the phone
https://www.mi.com/in/poco-f1/
the camera is more than acceptable for a phone in this price range though it wont give Apple or Samsung nor Huawei any sleepless nights .... and this phone doesnt have an Amoled screen nor is it one of those pretty looking units with the steel/alu sides with a glass back or the glamorous paint jobs with changing colors .... and it also isnt IP68 rated water resistant .....but it definitely is a phone that is functional with loads of storage space (it accepts MicroSD cards of up to 256GB and i got myself a 128 GB card for R589 from Takealot which is decent for now since the cheapest i saw any 256 GB card online in SA were all R3k+ so thats for a later stage when the price drops on those) so i can manage to store more than a fair amount of music given nowadays we audio enthusiasts are more interested in FLAC rather than MP3 - but imagine the number of FLAC files you could store on a 256GB MicroSD card
Im not going to say much about the phone functionality because it pretty much does what most flagship phones do in terms of android and phone functionality (remember though this is more of a budget phone since its still cheaper than the top of the range Samsung A and J series phones) but this thing is also pretty decent in the audio functionality ie it allows for many connectivity adjustments with Bluetooth and yes it is definitely Apt-X HD capable not sure about LDAC since i dont have any devices that receive LDAC
it also has a pretty decent onboard DAC which is definitely capable of driving my Sennheiser wired headphones to pretty decent levels and its really more than acceptable if you are using it as a DAP style device with a decent pair of headphones
the big disappointment when tyring to use the USB functionality to power up an external DAC is that it really wont power up the more power hungry DACs and as an example my Note4 just connected to my Nuprime uDSD via an OTG cable and just worked whereas this phone needs me to use a powerbank with a splitter cable that will seperate power and signal .... like so
you can see the white cable that the red arrow points to is the Hi-Phibian USB power adapter cable and im using a 20000 mah power bank which makes the setup more transportable than really portable .... you definitely wont carry that on a run around the local park - the good thing is that the onboard headphone jack provides pretty decent and loud sound compared to my old Note 4 which had to have the volume levels at full to be listenable - when you do get the DAC to work though you will definitely get a pretty "Hi-Fi" experience as long as your headphones are up to the task
One other thing that i enjoy is the 4000 mah battery on the phone which gives me more-or-less two days of usage inbetween charges if i dont use the bluetooth for too long (i generally use it for around an hour every second day for my 4km long exercise walk and with this it still lasts the two days in total) and in this respect its identical to the Note 4 which also had a 4000 mah battery
im pretty happy with this thing for the price .... since that price is low enough to not expect any additional high end features and having the processing power and ram to do more-or less the same work as other flagship phones is a great thing and makes this phone a huge bargain even though its more costly here because of shipping charges and VAT being added above its budget price - it is still around 1/3rd the price of other phones that will do the same job even though its less glamorous than those real flagship phones but for me at R7,5k its definitely more phone than i expect for that price point :thumbs:
some people may consider it ugly compared to most of the other flagship glass backed beauties - but most people will use any phone with a cover anyway and heres the one i got
https://miphones.co.za/products/covers?variant=12991277727821
so at the moment just enjoying this thing and its pretty decent audio capabilities and huge storage capability :thumbs: .... moreso because its pretty cheap for what it is capable of doing and normally i wouldnt have spent this much cash which i really wouldnt normally have had, but i got rid of many other audio items that i currently wasnt using but hoarding instead .... and this thing is far more useful that items that i wasnt using much anyway
EDIT : sorry i cant really add photos of the phone because the phone is my actual camera now and its hard to use it to take photos of itself but i will see if i can borrow a camera to take some pics of the phone ... it doesnt look very fancy, but its fairly heavy and doesnt seem as cheaply built as many reviews claim
All of which left me looking for an Apt-X capable phone which was moderately affordable but which also had the highest possible spec for the amount of money that i was willing to spend .... so this meant that i could go for Iphone XS or Samsung Note 9 models which cost R1k per month on contract, or close to or above R20k when purchased for cash
Enter Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi who make a number of decently specced phones for much less cash than their rivals ... and Xiaomi suited me because my previous phone was a Xiaomi Note 4x so i was already used to their MIUI launcher so in the end i decided to go for a Pocophone F1 .... heres a link to the specs
https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_pocophone_f1-9293.php
this phone is quickly becoming an internet sensation because overseas it is around $300 for the base model but its underlying specs are equal to many phones that cost around $1000 or more so its basically a budget buster ... and you can get it from Gearbest for pretty cheap
https://www.gearbest.com/cell-phones/pp_009492488405.html?wid=1349303
change the currency in the above link to ZA rands and you will see that its available for R5048-60 at the time i posted the link with R46-60 required for priority line shipping (and from what i know you will have to pay VAT when it arrives) .... However i was too scared to take a chance with the direct self import because of a couple of sad stories regarding Gearbest and Aramex so i decided to order it from a local company who charges a bit of a markup which i accepted because these guys take over all the importation headaches - so i paid a bit more and got it from here
https://miphones.co.za/products/poco-f1?variant=12765276143693
i see that they now have the blue version available and i would have gone for that one instead of the Graphite black which looks more like a dark grey but anyways im using it with a cover so it isnt the biggest trainsmash in the world but the blue looks like a very fashionable color though the advantage with black is that it wont go out of fashion somewhere along the line :nfi:
anyways the phone has 6GB of Ram and 128GB of storage space and uses a Snapdragon 845 processor which is what the Samsung Note 9 uses and its Watercooled as well - heres a link to the actual Xiaomi website for anyone interested in reading about the phone
https://www.mi.com/in/poco-f1/
the camera is more than acceptable for a phone in this price range though it wont give Apple or Samsung nor Huawei any sleepless nights .... and this phone doesnt have an Amoled screen nor is it one of those pretty looking units with the steel/alu sides with a glass back or the glamorous paint jobs with changing colors .... and it also isnt IP68 rated water resistant .....but it definitely is a phone that is functional with loads of storage space (it accepts MicroSD cards of up to 256GB and i got myself a 128 GB card for R589 from Takealot which is decent for now since the cheapest i saw any 256 GB card online in SA were all R3k+ so thats for a later stage when the price drops on those) so i can manage to store more than a fair amount of music given nowadays we audio enthusiasts are more interested in FLAC rather than MP3 - but imagine the number of FLAC files you could store on a 256GB MicroSD card
Im not going to say much about the phone functionality because it pretty much does what most flagship phones do in terms of android and phone functionality (remember though this is more of a budget phone since its still cheaper than the top of the range Samsung A and J series phones) but this thing is also pretty decent in the audio functionality ie it allows for many connectivity adjustments with Bluetooth and yes it is definitely Apt-X HD capable not sure about LDAC since i dont have any devices that receive LDAC
it also has a pretty decent onboard DAC which is definitely capable of driving my Sennheiser wired headphones to pretty decent levels and its really more than acceptable if you are using it as a DAP style device with a decent pair of headphones
the big disappointment when tyring to use the USB functionality to power up an external DAC is that it really wont power up the more power hungry DACs and as an example my Note4 just connected to my Nuprime uDSD via an OTG cable and just worked whereas this phone needs me to use a powerbank with a splitter cable that will seperate power and signal .... like so
you can see the white cable that the red arrow points to is the Hi-Phibian USB power adapter cable and im using a 20000 mah power bank which makes the setup more transportable than really portable .... you definitely wont carry that on a run around the local park - the good thing is that the onboard headphone jack provides pretty decent and loud sound compared to my old Note 4 which had to have the volume levels at full to be listenable - when you do get the DAC to work though you will definitely get a pretty "Hi-Fi" experience as long as your headphones are up to the task
One other thing that i enjoy is the 4000 mah battery on the phone which gives me more-or-less two days of usage inbetween charges if i dont use the bluetooth for too long (i generally use it for around an hour every second day for my 4km long exercise walk and with this it still lasts the two days in total) and in this respect its identical to the Note 4 which also had a 4000 mah battery
im pretty happy with this thing for the price .... since that price is low enough to not expect any additional high end features and having the processing power and ram to do more-or less the same work as other flagship phones is a great thing and makes this phone a huge bargain even though its more costly here because of shipping charges and VAT being added above its budget price - it is still around 1/3rd the price of other phones that will do the same job even though its less glamorous than those real flagship phones but for me at R7,5k its definitely more phone than i expect for that price point :thumbs:
some people may consider it ugly compared to most of the other flagship glass backed beauties - but most people will use any phone with a cover anyway and heres the one i got
https://miphones.co.za/products/covers?variant=12991277727821
so at the moment just enjoying this thing and its pretty decent audio capabilities and huge storage capability :thumbs: .... moreso because its pretty cheap for what it is capable of doing and normally i wouldnt have spent this much cash which i really wouldnt normally have had, but i got rid of many other audio items that i currently wasnt using but hoarding instead .... and this thing is far more useful that items that i wasnt using much anyway
EDIT : sorry i cant really add photos of the phone because the phone is my actual camera now and its hard to use it to take photos of itself but i will see if i can borrow a camera to take some pics of the phone ... it doesnt look very fancy, but its fairly heavy and doesnt seem as cheaply built as many reviews claim
