RFC: Smartphone for light user

Looking to buy a smartphone in the upcoming BBD/GIF sale. In fact I am looking for quite some time now. I am using base variant of Redmi 4 which cost me 7k back in 2017, in that line up Redmi 15 is now priced @ 14k, doubled in 8yrs. The price feels like a lot especially considering the life of smartphone isn't very long. Despite knowing that we're buying a smartphone every few years on an average. I am kinda not comfortable spending this much for a phone, probably the reason I am dragging this purchase for a long time.

I am a very light user and I tend to go for cheaper option, I don't know if I can get away with SD4/D6x00 powered phones for under 10k. On the other hand, I seriously doubt how these will age esp. when I intend to use it as long as possible.

Should I stick to LCD display, cause of green line issue in AMOLED?

And this new GST reform making me to think if I should wait.

Since I don't have first hand experience with any other UI, I am thinking of going to local shop and see if there is any display unit which I can check. I have heard that local sellers try to match or come close to online pricing, will see if that's true as well.

yes, wait for it if you can. i have used mi, motorola and samsung. nothing very difficult, just needs a few days to identify and remember. check motorola models as it has a very light ui.

In around 15K you can get very good phones. Especially Motorola.

vidhubhushan said:
check motorola models as it has a very light ui.

Vyom said:
In around 15K you can get very good phones. Especially Motorola.

Yeah, that's what I learned - Moto has light UI. CMF has even better UI and lighter, but current gen CMF is outta budget and Moto has very poor update policy. G35/45/64 came with just 1 OS update promise. G85 came with 2 update promise, only one left and it has curved display which I am not a fan of. Recent launches G96/86 Power both outta budget and came with only 1 update promise. Other than this, Moto's spare price cost the highest among the budget phones. All these pretty much rules out both Moto and CMF.

nac said:
Yeah, that's what I learned - Moto has light UI. CMF has even better UI and lighter, but current gen CMF is outta budget and Moto has very poor update policy. G35/45/64 came with just 1 OS update promise. G85 came with 2 update promise, only one left and it has curved display which I am not a fan of. Recent launches G96/86 Power both outta budget and came with only 1 update promise. Other than this, Moto's spare price cost the highest among the budget phones. All these pretty much rules out both Moto and CMF.

i agree with these motorola issues. service centre quoted somr thousands (3-4000 i think) to replace the power button of g5s+; even the receptionist girl was shocked and told the technician how can i say this much. i have noticed the arrogant attitude of moto people before sales as well but a lot of people use it and find it ok so suggested. i have a bad experience of mi service centre as well. in both the cases, local tech shop did well.

Visited more than half a dozen shops but couldn't get hands on all the brands. Retailers straight away said when I asked for Moto phones, "we don't do online phones and they don't have service center here, so don't bother". Despite that few had Moto phones but they are boxed and sealed, no display units. Didn't see any iQOO either, no CMF - less than handful of service centers in the entire state.
I said my budget right off the bat, so pretty much all shops gave the same suggestion Samsung A06, A16, A17, Vivo Y series budget phones, Oppo A series budget phones. The cheapest 6GB phone costs about ~14k. And all the shops pricing are same. No shops have any pricing advantage. As normal sales people, most of the suggested models are above the budget and insisting on buying today as there is offer extended and today is the last day. Don't worry if you don't have full money, there is EMI with almost no paper work.
With the little time I had, I don't get why some UI is better than other. Pretty much all looks the same. May be if I had tried every model extensively, may be I will get it. But for now, all feels more or less same.

I got the Moto G86 for my father because that was the only one with flat screen. Won't even consider other phones with iOS wannabe UIs as they are just bad.

SaiyanGoku said:
I got the Moto G86 for my father because that was the only one with flat screen. Won't even consider other phones with iOS wannabe UIs as they are just bad.

You wanted only Moto, so it was easier for you to make that buying decision. I am still all over, like do I need to spend this much to get a decent phone, isn't Samsung M06/Lava Storm Lite like phones enough for light use, if bloatware are all removable why is it bad, if the updates gonna break the phone should I not look for phones with long software support and so on. I believe discussion like this will help me decide better, so here I am exchanging thoughts/ideas/views.

Samsung A06 and Vivo Yx9 both felt not that smooth with about half a dozen apps. These are display units, so only the apps that came with, no extra apps are installed. But A17 is smoother than A06, which I didn't expect - did 6GB helped? Not sure. May be A17 is just few days old while the others are on display for months, and slowed with age? A06 screen brightness is very poor, it's worse than my Remdi 4 despite A06 has better numbers on paper.
There was this thought that I can live with sub 10k phones, but after checking these phones I am not sure now. May be I can live with it, but I don't want to go for it.

Like PSU Tier List....Any Mobile Tier List available?

shreeux said:
Like PSU Tier List....Any Mobile Tier List available?

My personal list:

Samsung S series / Google Pixel phones: S tier
Motorola phones : A tier
Phones which have custom rom support: B tier
Phones which have crap iOS wannabe UI and no custom rom support: Garbage tier
Everything else: C tier.

Every month more phones were released... It's hard to choose the best one.

Any criteria to select the best one?

Like standard specifications for long-term usage of at least 3 to 5 years

shreeux said:
Like PSU Tier List....Any Mobile Tier List available?

I haven't come across one and I guess it's near impossible to make one.

SaiyanGoku said:
Phones which have custom rom support

It looks like in today's scene pretty much all phone makers made it impossible to unlock bootloader, at least that's what I read.

shreeux said:
Every month more phones were released... It's hard to choose the best one.

What's best for one, wouldn't be the best for other. So you have to decide based on your budget and what you need from a phone. Your budget defines many things in your buying decision.
One of the sales person from a local shop said, todays phone don't last long even if you carefully handle your phone, manufacturers will kill it by pushing update. I guess it's coming from his experience of seeing many in his line of work.

I use my smartphone like a feature phone most of the time but there are features I appreciate about smartphones, so the reason I am looking for a smartphone instead of a feature phone. I bought Poco M4 Pro 3yrs back for my mom, it has received all the updates and it's running as good as it was running in the 1st year. It's a base variant 6+64, if there is such a good 4G phone today, I would happily go for it. But todays 4G phones aren't any better than ultra low budget 5G phones and there is no significant pricing advantage either. So no point in going for 4G phones.

Generic expectation from a budget phone

Good processor with good amount of memory.
Display with decent enough nits and good glass protection.
Good built with decent IP rating.
Acceptable camera.
Good battery life and charging.
Good connectivity.
Decent software and support.

Again the definition of "good", "decent", "acceptable" varies from person to person.

I agree on the points mentioned in this thread.
Which is why I had to increase my budget and go for Samsung S23 last year, which costed me a whooping 49k, after discounts. Which was A LOT for me.
But I didn't want to compromise on certain things like updates, camera and stuff. Even then I had to compromise headphone jack and removable battery. But they say it's to make it waterproof.
Sad state of affairs for budget market.

Yeah, people who look for phones in this budget sure have to compromise, I just need to figure out what's the least amount of compromises I would be okay with.

At least...every month, create a list of the top 10 mobile phones based on their specifications. and

We will choose accordingly.

shreeux said:
At least...every month, create a list of the top 10 mobile phones based on their specifications. and
We will choose accordingly.

There are tonne load of youtubers do that already.

nac said:
There are tonne load of youtubers do that already.

Mostly they never reveal everyting...they are also sponsored

shreeux said:
Mostly they never reveal everyting...they are also sponsored

Saying every bit about a phone would make the video super long, yeah when it's sponsored they pretty much tone down a lot.

nac said:
Generic expectation from a budget phone

This is how I am prioritizing.

1 Good connectivity.
2 Good processor with good amount of memory.
3 Decent software and support.
4 Good battery life and charging.
5 Good built with decent IP rating.
6 FHD display with decent enough nits and good glass protection.
7 Acceptable camera.

Sale date is announced, roughly 3 weeks from now. And these are my final shortlisted candidates,
iQOO Z10x
realme P3
Samsung M35

I am price sensitive, so Z10x is likely be the one as it's the cheapest in the lot and with LCD display I don't have to worry about the possibility of developing green line issue. But it lacks secondary mic and memory card slot

P3 is all good, except high spare price.
M35 comes with Victus protection, OIS and produces better images. But it's already a year old, don't have that long OS support advantage it had last year, have to shell out more for charger, case and all and it's spares are expensive. As it's 1yr+ old, some deep discount would be nice. But recent pricing and sales feel like they are selling the last few batches, likely they have stopped the production after the launch of M36.

Which one is considered...as of now, 128GB or 256GB for future proofing?

RAM 8GB or More ?

Why are 5G bands different from mobile to mobile...9 to 13 bands? which one consider?

shreeux said:
Which one is considered...as of now, 128GB or 256GB for future proofing?
RAM 8GB or More ?
Why are 5G bands different from mobile to mobile...9 to 13 bands? which one consider?

I don't need big storage (I have about 6GB of free space in 16GB storage) and it's not gonna affect performance of the phone, so I am going with minimum.

My 2GB phone uses ~90% of memory even when idle. In 2025 brand new phones uses over 2GB just for system & background services and reserved memory. Typical social media apps like whatsapp generally consumes about 0.5GB, this is just a rough guideline we can use. What are the kinda apps we use, how many apps we want in the background (multi tasking) will help figure out the amount of memory we need. I feel like I would be okay with 4GB, but my recent hands-on experience isn't that smooth and I am not sure if it's because of 4GB RAM or the puny D6300 or the heavy UI/skin. So I am going with 6GB, and all 6GB variants comes with a minimum of 128GB, and I am settling for that.

I didn't dig too deep about 5G bands. Samsung and Moto gives more number of bands in this budget, I guess (I am generalizing here). Except few sub 10k phones, all phones in this budget covers popular bands in India. More expensive phones tend to offer more bands, and obviously flagships offer most amount of bands. We can further research the list of bands offered by our service provider/ones available in our area and pick the phone which offers that. I don't know where we can find all those information. If someone who does international travels a lot need to look for bands in that country as well. I am gonna go easy on that and assume the phones in this budget have enough 5G bands.

What about Lava Agni 4?

shreeux said:
What about Lava Agni 4?

Didn't consider Lava. Their recent launches are very good, Storm Play, Storm Lite, Play Ultra, Blaze Dragon, Blaze AMOLED 2. Their bloatware free/ad free Stock Android is a definite plus, their spec are good for the price, but poor update policy, no service center - don't know how good their door step services are, made me not consider them. They have definitely managed to make people notice about their products this year. I very much expect their sales will reflect that. Agni 4 is yet to be launched, and likely be priced higher and I wouldn't require that much raw power. If I am considering, that would be Storm Play.

Came across this article. The in-display fingerprint scanner is not any way better than side mounted dedicated scanner and it costs more. Despite that phone makers are choosing in-display one :facepalm:

Article is 3yrs old, but I am assuming still the scene is pretty much the same esp. in the budget phones.

somegadgetguy .com/2022/08/30/can-we-finally-admit-that-in-display-fingerprint-sensors-on-phones-are-terrible-and-that-no-company-should-use-them/

As suspected M35 6GB variant gone out of stock and there goes my Samsung option.
My expected prices for base variant,
Z10x - 12k
P3 - 13k (But doesn't look like it will get there)
With P3 I have least amount of compromises, esp if it comes to 13k and the price difference is as narrow as I expect between Z10x, then it's a very sweet deal. But still there are few concerns.

View attachment p3 z10x.png

Prices are revealed for both iQOO and realme
Z10x got price deal as expected.
They didn't reveal any discount/deal for P3. If any we will see it on the day of sale.

CMF 2 Pro and OPPO K13 are priced @ 15k, that's nice. Interested ones can grab them.

P3 8GB variant and K13 base variant mostly sold for the same price. In that line, I am assuming P3's base variant will only come to 14k, not 13k as I expected. Already P4 is launched and selling, it has got nice price deal too. If they've stopped production of P3, it may not get steeper discount.

Looks like even if we buy from phone maker's official online store, replacement process is same as buying from e-commerce sites. And their order processing and shipments takes about a week, that seems very slow.

If P3 drops to 13k or lower, I will be picking P3. If there is no price drop, I will be picking Z10x for 12k.

nac said:
Looks like even if we buy from phone maker's official online store, replacement process is same as buying from e-commerce sites. And their order processing and shipments takes about a week, that seems very slow.

If P3 drops to 13k or lower, I will be picking P3. If there is no price drop, I will be picking Z10x for 12k.

What about this Motorola offer sales ?
Compare to your best picks
Your view?

nac said:
If P3 drops to 13k or lower, I will be picking P3. If there is no price drop, I will be picking Z10x for 12k.

Which specs...?
8GB+128GB
or
8GB+256GB

I am not picking Motorola for few reasons,
No service center where I live (Amazon/Flipkart support ends @ delivery, after that we're on our own and we have to run to service center if there is any issue)
High spare price
Just 1yr OS support.

G45 - It's been selling for the same price for over a year now.
G96 - Best camera wrt image quality in this price segment.
G86 Power - All good except 1yr OS support.

I am considering just the base variant of P3/Z10x - 6/128GB. I don't know without VIP/Black membership, others could see the deal price of P3 tomorrow midnight when sale starts. If not then it's 23rd :Fingerx:

WHY 6/128GB VARIANT?

Offer sales will be only for CreditCard options?

I feel 6GB memory is good enough for me. I checked with my mom's POCO M4 Pro (I know A13 is not same as A15, and there are 2-3 OS updates too in the future. At this time, this is the best I have), opened bunch of apps (what we typically use, dialer, message, whatsapp, youtube, camera, files, maps etc) and still 2+GB of memory available free.
I don't think I will need big storage, if I ever fill up the storage, I will move them to PC and free up the space.

Banner says, offers are for both debit and credit card. Usually they give more discount for CC than DC, will see how this time works. If there is no offer for DC, I will have to ask around - someone who is not using their CC this time of the sale and enough balance left to use.

P3 didn't get any price cut/offers.
Z10x one can get it with coupons, no need of any cards.
There is no point in waiting further, I will be placing the order as soon as sale starts.

iQOO phones are sold in Amazon. And you're checking Z10x vs Z10 Lite, 8GB variant would cost 1250/- more. 256GB storage would cost another 1.5k more. Last year in this sale, POCO X6 8+256 cost under 15k :thumbs:

Received iQOO Z10x 6+128 Titanium.

Setup the phone without internet, 50 pre-installed apps in the drawer, 21.8GB of used storage on first boot. Rebooted after disabling RAM extension. Phone came with 40% battery, charged the phone to 100%. Turned ON internet, Sep patch of 700+MB ready to download. Along with patch, google installed it's apps - that's about ~6 more apps.

Uninstalled 17 apps
Turned off 2 apps?/folder?
Disabled 7 apps
I am keeping 22 apps (including 2 installed apps)
I am not sure what to do with the other 10 apps which are not uninstallable, except one others can't be disabled either.

View attachment iq.jpg

finally. congrats @nac

nac said:
Received iQOO Z10x 6+128 Titanium.

Setup the phone without internet, 50 pre-installed apps in the drawer, 21.8GB of used storage on first boot. Rebooted after disabling RAM extension. Phone came with 40% battery, charged the phone to 100%. Turned ON internet, Sep patch of 700+MB ready to download. Along with patch, google installed it's apps - that's about ~6 more apps.

Uninstalled 17 apps
Turned off 2 apps?/folder?
Disabled 7 apps
I am keeping 22 apps (including 2 installed apps)
I am not sure what to do with the other 10 apps which are not uninstallable, except one others can't be disabled either.

View attachment 23263

Congrats...
Keep this thread alive...update regularly.

All mobiles will have the same problem...comes with more installed apps?

shreeux said:
All mobiles will have the same problem...comes with more installed apps?

Not all, but most are. There are few immune to this, CMF which comes with the least no. of preinstalled apps, followed by Lava. These two comes with no ads, no bloatwares. Next to that Moto comes with least amount of bloatwares and ads. Other popular brands in this budget, all comes with plenty of preinstalled apps. Samsung and iQOO/vivo comes with least amount among them. K13 tops @ ~80apps, P3 @ 70 apps among the models I checked.

nac said:
Not all, but most are. There are few immune to this, CMF which comes with the least no. of preinstalled apps, followed by Lava. These two comes with no ads, no bloatwares. Next to that Moto comes with least amount of bloatwares and ads. Other popular brands in this budget, all comes with plenty of preinstalled apps. Samsung and iQOO/vivo comes with least amount among them. K13 tops @ ~80apps, P3 @ 70 apps among the models I checked.

How to get rid of everything...any tool uninstall completely using PC?

nac said:
Not all, but most are. There are few immune to this, CMF which comes with the least no. of preinstalled apps, followed by Lava.

I like CMF...except for the battery capacity...They still stick with 5000mah

You can use this to remove/disable the bloatwares:
github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-android-debloater-next-generation

SaiyanGoku said:
You can use this to remove/disable the bloatwares:
github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-android-debloater-next-generation

How to use this...no installation file?

shreeux said:
How to get rid of everything...any tool uninstall completely using PC?

There are ways to get rid of them, debloater tool like the one Saiyan suggested or tools like Canta/Shizuku mobile app.

But for start, remove all the things you can without any tools and disable the ones you can. Leave the rest and use the phone. If you still feel the need to get rid of them, then you can check out those tools.

CMF is light, so even 5amps would give longer life than 5amps of other phones.

I checked debloater tool, and it shows 33 apps under "recommended" tab and total of 300+ apps and services. These are the 33 apps, yet to check what they are.

com.android.bluetoothmidiservice
com.android.calllogbackup
com.android.egg
com.android.email.partnerprovider
com.android.providers.partnerbookmarks
com.android.systemui.plugin.globalactions.wallet
com.android.traceur
com.bbk.iqoo.logsystem
com.facebook.appmanager
com.facebook.services
com.facebook.system
com.google.android.apps.maps
com.google.android.apps.messaging
com.google.android.apps.nbu.files
com.google.android.apps.restore
com.google.android.apps.setupwizard.searchselector
com.google.android.apps.wellbeing
com.google.android.as
com.google.android.feedback
com.google.android.gm
com.google.android.gms.location.history
com.google.android.marvin.talkback
com.google.android.onetimeinitializer
com.google.android.partnersetup
com.google.android.printservice.recommendation
com.google.android.projection.gearhead
com.google.ar.core
com.google.audio.hearing.visualization.accessibility.scribe
com.mediatek.atmwifimeta
com.mediatek.mdmconfig
com.microsoft.appmanager
com.vivo.browser
com.wapi.wapicertmanager

Coming from custom ROM, I obviously miss somethings. It was the same when I moved from MIUI to custom ROM - I missed some then too. Still these are few new things I liked, (may be these are already available across Android, but these are new to me)

Lock shortcut
Vibrate when call starts/ends
Lift/Move to show charging percentage

Strong battery - still on first charge with 50%+ battery left, and 7+hrs of SOT.

With custom ROM and about 8yrs old battery @ ~63% health, I get SOT of ~60 min over a period of 3 days with 2G network.

Z10x with 4G network I am getting over a week. Didn't expect it actually that it will last this long. 4hrs+ of this was on first day for setting up the phone. 99% of the time with no WiFi or mobile data. I don't know if I can see how long it was in deep sleep like in custom ROM, if I have to guess that would be over 95%
View attachment sot.jpg

How is Phone...Worth to buy this range?

Realme P4x 5G
*event.realme.com/in/realme-p4x-5g-new-launch

or Any alternative

shreeux said:
How is Phone...Worth to buy this range?

Realme P4x 5G
*event.realme.com/in/realme-p4x-5g-new-launch

or Any alternative

After purchase I am not tracking mobile phones. P4X looks decent but without offers 15k feels too much for what it offers. Don't know if mobiles got any price hike or something, many are selling more than it was few months back. What are the other options you have?

Indeed there was a price hike across all phones and it's gonna stay this way. These two would be in the same league of realme P4X, you can consider them too.
iQOO Z10X
Moto G57 Power
May be when there is some offers, you can expect somewhere around ~13k including all offers/discounts. Everything has its own plus and minus, weigh your priorities and get it. Surprising Moto's pricing is good, given the current pricing scene. Don't know if they are yet to hike prices for their phones.

People are speculating this price hike is gonna get worse. If anyone looking to buy, grab it at the first chance (offers/sale/discount) you get. In terms of % budget phones gets/will get the highest price hike.