Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro long-term review

20 Mar 2020


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  • 20 Mar 2020

Fantastic and detailed review. Get this reviewer to do more phone reviews; lately you guys' reviews have been too similar and boring.

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    • Anonymous
    • KSu
    • 20 Mar 2020

    This phone is brilliant and aged so well.
    Gcam solves all the camera issues and works on all cameras.
    Huge difference in stock camera images vs gcam.
    GSMarena didn't include gcam review, they should have. The digital 2x zoom using gcam gives better images than optical 2x from OnePlus 7t stock camera.

      What an amazing review. Very wordy but very detailed. For those who REALLY want to know everything about this phone, this is THE review

      I have been using the Redmi Note 8 Pro since its release and i can agree with the battery life. Its very very good. And one thing i never seen any reviewer do is actually measure the battery drain rate when GPS is being used. That said, this model has one of the slowest drain rate for GPS i have ever tested. I wont say the same for Qualcomm SoCs though.

      However, I almost never notice any stuttering or lag on this phone since using it. If any, maybe 0.2 of a sec, and definitely not more than half a second but its extremely rare. Btw i have animation totally disabled under Dev Options.

      The navigation is great. The only real 'performance' issue i encountered is when a game totally frozed on me, and I'd have to clean it from RAM and reopen the app. It doesnt happen often, but totally of 3-4 times using since its release.

      One thing i totally cannot agree is the speaker quality. It is downright atrocious in the most complimentary way. Even my older Redmi Note 3 Pro sounds better which by normal standards should be the actual 'OK' or 'acceptable' standard. But definitely not the Redmi Note 8 Pro's speaker. I tried so hard to like it or get used to it. It seems OK initially but the more time i spend on it, my bad experience never got over it.

      Im can confirm it's not faulty as i have compared with another model. The quality is just plain horrendous. Theres something about how it handles the high pitched notes in a very thinny piercing manner. And this is the biggest downside i can about this phone. One of the most annoying too. Especially for a gaming centric SoC. You cant use Bluetooth either because of the latency lag.

      If i had a choice, I'll rather take a downgrade elsewhere than this speaker. Give it a plastic back, remove the macro camera, how much more can they cost in comparison? But one thing for sure, the bottom placed headphone jack is the RIGHT choice. It's the only practical thing to do when using on the go. Believe it or not, I would not have gotten this phone is they do another top mounted jack.

      Speaking of Redmi Note 3 Pro, that old phone even have a RGB notification light. But this Redmi Note 8 Pro doesn't. I find that quite disappointing. What's the excuse now?

      Ok my last complain is the new aspect ratio of the phone screen with FHD plus. This is aimed at all new phones rather than this phone. It just feels too stretchy and narrow. That includes apps that accommodate for full screen in FHD+. I still personal prefer 16:9.

      My old Huawei Mate 8 still significantly wins in overall screen experience. I'm not even going into the idea of bezel-less display too, because i am one who finds the Huawei Mate 8 bezels much better in real life practical use. As such, I don't really care about bezel-less phones. It is just less practical in real world use.

      I believe the design of the phone (with regards to the big camera bump) expects users to actually use a case over it. Such is what i have been doing and gladly so.

      The camera is of course not the best but more than good enough. I use both native camera gcam port (i recommend the Begonia version). The gcam is not perfect as it has framerate issues, but on more often than not, the portrait and tone is much better than the native, although itthe gcam of Begonia surprisingly does suffer from light flares. The only time native cam is better is if you want more details under good lighting or less light flares on night mode. I find myself only using the main camera and surprisingly not the wide camera (as much as i thought i would) as the performance hit is too significant for me.

      Overall, this phone have its pro and cons. And as a whole is pretty good value. For those who are considering it, i strongly recommend testing the speakers in suitable environment. If it's 'acceptable' to you, then this would be an absolute great phone.

        Oled worship makes me sick

        "Because it's not OLED, there's no always-on display here, as that would kill your battery life since no matter how little content it shows you, the LCD screen needs to light up all of its backlighting LEDs. "

        Then explain why an IPS LCD panel has one of the greatest always on displays energy efficiency?

        I.e the LG G5 which defeated the Samsung galaxy S7's Always on display:

        https://m.gsmarena.com/lg_g5_time_saver-review-1422.php


        Then they go even further saying they didn't use dark themes as only OLED benefits...

        Common sense would dictate then to use FULL WHITE themes then .. smh

        There is no infinite contrast for oled or any display there are to true blacks either the display would have to endure to light escapes and I'm sure no display has black hole technology..

        All that should matter is noticeable difference of blacks to the human eyes...

          I have one. Using for 5 month. This phone is brilliant for it's Price.

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