Gadgetory

what's up guys lon here from Android Authority and ever since the galaxy note 7 got discontinued a lot of people have been searching for a good alternative and this next one from Xiaomi might be the closest you can get to the real deal but is this all merely a carbon copy or does it have a lot more to offer beneath the surface let's find out what the Xiaomi me Note 2 we've seen a lot of really interesting devices coming out of Chinese manufacturers as of late like the honor magic and even Xiaomi zone remix which was also announced alongside the me Note 2 but something that Chinese OEMs have been notoriously known for is creating smartphone clones and the me Note 2 is no exception we're pretty used to this by now but this is probably the first time we've seen a smartphone clone of a phone that technically no longer exists if you miss the note sevens design this might actually be a good thing because the Meno 2 copies the note sevens design almost 280 the key word here being almost the edges of the front and back glass or curved or a xiaomi likes to call it 3d glass and it's all wrapped in a smooth and solid metal frame the build quality is great and it's a beautiful looking device if you can manage to keep it clean from fingerprints smudges and dusts that all show up very easily especially on this piano black version for the most part it does feel very much like the note 7 in the hand due to general shape and material but there are some notable differences the side bezels are much thicker making them you know to a tad wider and there's a much clearer and sharper distinction with a way the glass and metal meet along the side there's also no s pen or stylus living at the bottom of the device and instead all you have is a microphone the USB type-c port and it's single speaker the headphone jack is on the opposite end at the top along with the IR blaster for controlling your TV or other peripherals in your home on the right side you've got the standard power and volume buttons which are also made of metal so they're very clicky and tactile and finally on the left is the dual SIM card slot there's no micro SD card slot but there is plenty of internal storage with the phone being offered in 64 and 128 gigabyte capacity the front of the device features a home button and capacitive keys for back and recent apps that are denoted by dot which means you can change the order of these buttons within the settings to however you see fit so you can have back on the left and recent apps on the right or vice versa at first glance the home button may look like a solid state home button because of how plus it is to the glass but it is a real physical clicky home button it does have capacitive functionality so when the phone is unlocked you can just slightly touch it in order to go home and the only time you have to physically press the button down is when accessing Google now or when using the home buttons integrated fingerprint sensor to unlock the phone the fingerprint sensor works just as well as you would hope on a flagship phone it's very fast and accurate own lock and very rarely did it ever fail to unlock on the first attempt being on the front also makes it much easier to unlock when it's sitting on a table or desk the screen is an AMOLED display measuring at 5.7 inches but unlike most flagships that are featuring quad HD the Mino - opts for 1080p instead but honestly unless you plan on using this phone for VR you probably won't even notice to the naked eye the screen is still plenty sharp and of course you have all the inherent benefits of an AMOLED screen like a deep blacks high contrast and punchy colors there's also some options within the settings to adjust the color and contrast that make the screen look how you want and the reading modes make it easier on your eyes at night if you like big screen phones for a more comfortable media experience you'll definitely enjoy this one and Xiaomi did a great job of taking advantage of the large size by giving the Mino to a very high DPI that allows you to see a lot more content on the screen at one time the biggest benefit of a 1080p panel is how much easier it is on your phone's battery life and we combine that 1080p panel with a massive 4070 milliamp hour battery you have a recipe for some extremely good battery life the Mino to easily last me all day sometimes even a day and a half if my usage is a little bit more casual but regardless how many hours of YouTube gaming social media or emails that I do the phone always lasted me comfortably into the late night hours of the day aside from the design and screen size let me note two similarities with the note 7 pretty much ends there and you don't have to dig very deep to see what the differences are on the inside it's got all the specs a we wanted on a flagship all versions of the Mino to come with these snap during a 21 shift but the base model will come with 4 gigabytes of RAM while the Premium Edition features 6 gigabytes of RAM the Premium Edition will all become any global version that supports a total of 37 band including 22 LTE bands so this will be the one to pick up for use anywhere around the world or on GSM carriers here in the states like t-mobile and AT&T the version we have for review is the equally maxed out model with 6 gigabytes of RAM and 128 gigs of storage and performance has been nothing short of expectation it's a very fast and fluid experience with excellent touch response it plays all the high-end games with no lag or drop frame and with 60 bytes of RAM jumping back and forth between applications or multitasking is not a problem for the Meno 2 at all but it don't imagine that it would be an issue on the 4 gigabyte of RAM version either taking a look at the camera there's an 8 megapixel camera on the front and a 22 megapixel camera on the rear @f 2.0 unfortunately there's no optical image stabilization but it does at the very least have electronic image stabilization the camera interface is nothing out of the ordinary its straightforward and simple and comes with a handful of shooting modes like panorama a group selfie mode beautify and a manual mode for dialing in the settings yourself while the camera interface is simple and easy to use it could use some improvement it's geared more towards portrait orientation which is fine if you take mostly portrait photos but when shooting in landscape only some UI elements rotate to landscape while the good majority stay locked in portrait of course none of this matters if the picture quality isn't any good but the Mito 2 is capable of taking some great-looking photos that way they are on par with other flagship it stats and focus and capture photos and the 22 megapixel shots provide plenty of detail and you can really see how sharp these images look when zooming in and pixel peeping it does crush shadows a little too much and under exposes in certain situations but it's nothing that can't be fixed by using HDR even without optical image stabilization it does decently well in low-light as far as capturing details but it does sometimes struggle with white balance and there tends to be a flaring effect with highlights it's also much slower to capture photos in low light when using HDR which makes it difficult to grab shots that are in focus without using some other form of stabilization like a tripod the Mino 2 is running the latest version of the UI with me UI version 8 on top of Android 6.0 marshmallow the UI version 8 was introduced earlier last year and it brings a host of new changes to the interface there's a new clean color palette that can be seen throughout the entire interface and inshallah me standard set of apps and the font has been updated through a font that Xiaomi claims is much easier on the eyes even after several long hours of reading the notifications panel received a facelift with notifications and toggles now being bundled into one panel you can also get a convenient weather widget integrated into the notifications panel that will change colors depending on the time of day aside from the aesthetic changes me why a also brings a lot of new and interesting features one of them is called dual app so with dual apps you can run two instances of the same app that are completely independent of one another which I thought was pretty cool and can be very useful on applications that don't have multiple user login support apps like Facebook and snapchat would be prime examples but there's many other apps that can take advantage of this another feature that stands out on me UI is the second space feature second space basically lets you create a secondary profile with its own home screen and app that is completely separate from your main profile if you use your phone for both work and play you could keep your main profile for personal use and have your other for business use and easily switch back between the to me UI is still a far cry from stock Android but shammies much need to overhaul the interface has made it more aesthetically pleasing and many of the features actually add a fair amount of value to the experience without coming off at gimmicks the most unfortunate part about the me no.2 is that Xiaomi is only officially releasing it in China you can still pick it up in the US through resellers but it will cost you a pretty penny ranging upwards of $700 depending on the model but if you're in the US and want proper band support the global version is really your only option there's certainly some better deals out there but if you're still on the hunt for a note 7 alternative the me note 2 will be your best bet at least on the exterior but when you get to know the phone inside and out you'll realize that it's more than just your average smartphone clone as always thank you guys so much for watching this video I hope you enjoyed this review of the Xiaomi me Note 2 and if you did please give a thumbs up down below we definitely appreciate 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