Gadgetory

so I got to check out the yummy meat ate back in June and I had some pretty mixed thoughts about the design first of all it looks exactly like an iPhone and I know that a lot of Android manufacturers have been accused of making iPhone clones over the years but this phone in particular looks pretty much exactly like an iPhone 10 down to the camera module placement but I don't really wanted to get my hands on one of these phones because in theory the me a offers a ton of value to the consumer it's not all the same flagship specs that pretty much every flagship in 2018 has so far but it comes in at just under $400 which is like half the price of every other flagship right now but before we talk about that nitty-gritty stuff I really just want to talk about the design and like I said before it looks like an iPhone and I kind of now understand why it looks like an iPhone chummy's primary market is China if you go and try to buy an iPhone 10 in China it's gonna run you like $1200 in contrast if you go out and try to buy an e 8 it's gonna cost you like 390 or just a little bit less than 400 dollars that means you could buy it like 3 me apes for the price of one iPhone 10 Xiaomi is definitely trying to undercut Apple here I mean their hardware is still really good like in my opinion it's almost just as good as the iPhone 10 and when you can offer flagship specs that are pretty much the same as every other Android manufacturer that's a lot of value for the money and that being said the hardware is just kind of boring I mean it just kind of looks like a black iPhone and there's not any gimmicky features that are gonna make you run out and immediately buy this thing it does have an IR based face unlock feature which is only really seen in like the iPhone 10 and the Oppo find X so that's pretty nice but I don't think that it's a deal-breaker for people that are looking for specific features in a phone even though the hardware is pretty boring the camera is actually pretty good it has a lot of dynamic range and really good sharpness there's actually this Auto enhanced feature in the guy which just kind of brings up the shadows and makes everything look a little bit better if you actually turn it on the new i-10 update in this phone actually enabled front-facing portrait mode and it's actually really good I mean it's not gonna rival like - pixel - or anything like that but it's a lot better than a lot of other flagships that are twice the price of this thing so that's kind of all there is to say about the hardware and I know that wasn't really a lot but I really think that the software is where this phone really shines as a little bit of background me you I actually existed before any Xiaomi phones actually were made so they originally reformed as a competitor to CyanogenMod if you remember that asked eeks and nerds used to flash our phones like every other day just to try different like roms of Android and me you I was like a major competitors to CyanogenMod after a while the company pretty much decided they should just make a phone and their business strategy has been really good so far they're still undercutting a lot of other people in the market and they're making really great Hardware you can if it's a little bit boring MEU eye is really where this phone shines I mean it's pretty simple it's very similar to stock Android and they're using a lot of Google Apps and replacement of like actually making their own apps for things they've also got a meet community app which is built right into the phone where you can go and leave feedback and vote on changes and then you might even see one of these changes in your phone within two weeks that's pretty crazy and I've only really seen companies like essential pay that much attention to their customers and I mentioned this earlier but the phone was just updated to me UI 10.0 and it's not a huge update it's not like they actually moved to Android 9pi they still haven't done that yet but they did make it look like PI which is kind of the interesting thing they've added all those bubbly UI elements that are in material design 2.0 and even like the volume sliders and everything have changed to this kind of bubbly googly design but unfortunately everything's not perfect in the UI there's been a bit of controversy that's popped up lately where users have been seeing ads in their UI and that's kind of a problem and I actually talked to Xiaomi about this and they told me that they use ads like this to subsidize the price of their phones and just make them a little bit but in my opinion if they're not upfront with people about the fact that they're doing this this is kind of a huge problem if you wouldn't bought like a Kindle from Amazon and you got the version with ads it's very obvious that you're getting ads on your tablet but if you just go and buy a meat ate it doesn't say this phone comes with ads on the box so you kind of just need to be aware of that now personally I haven't actually seen any ads on my meat so I don't really know if it's gonna happen in every phone or if it's just a few use cases but it's still really annoying that they would put that there if you can ignore those problems then overall this phone is still a really good phone I mean like I said the hardware is like a little bit boring but it's really just made to compliment me UI it's not like the me mix - or me mix to s which has really interesting hardware it's more of just simplistic and kind of boring hardware to complement the UI and all that leads us to what I like to call the poco problem so if you've been on YouTube in the last like month 32 you've probably heard of this phone called the poco f1 now this is by a brand called polka phone which is actually a subsidiary of Xiaomi which is a little bit strange they spun off from Xiaomi but they offer another flagship phone with pretty much the exact same specs as the me eight for $300 which is $100 less not only that but this phone has a headphone jack uses a Kevlar back instead of a glass back which a lot of people might find better or worse it's up to you and it's got a massive four thousand milliamp hour battery which is a lot better than the me eight cause me eight gets pretty average battery life but it's really nothing special now the issue here is like yeah the poco f1 is a sub brand but it's better than the me eight in almost every single way and it's $100 less so when I was talking to Xiaomi I asked him about this and I said why does the Polka f1 exist if you're trying to still sell me eight they told me that they think that there is room for both phones in the market but I just don't really see that happening why would you not go out and buy a poco f1 which has a headphone jack again has a headphone jack and a four thousand milliamp hour battery now they were like oh you know on the meet you get the glass design and you get the AMOLED screen but in my opinion I don't think that those are things that are gonna make you want to buy the me eight over the poco f1o so reviews are a little bit weird right because I still really like the Xiaomi me eight it's so a really good phone but the poco last one is just kind of a better phone and it's cheaper and it's made by the same company I'm not trying to like skew your thoughts if you're thinking of getting a me eight it's still a great phone but I really recommend you look at the poco f1 first you'd have to remember that nothing really exists in a bubble and when something like this exists especially when it's effectively made by the same company you should probably be looking at that instead anyways I hope you guys enjoyed this review I know it's like a little bit boring but that's because the hardware is kind of boring it just kind of looks like an iPhone but the software is really where it's at so if you haven't tried me UI I definitely recommend it you have any questions make sure you leave them in the comment section and do your thing you guys know how this works because of course we are your source for all things Android