Gadgetory

sheesh well it's that time it's about time I've got to do it I've been using this device for a while and it's time to switch to a new one this is the polka phone f1 the legend itself you guys have demanded that I cover it use it make videos tell you about it and then ultimately have everything culminate in this video here where I tell you the truth about it the truth based on using it for a real extended period of time with my main SIM card in it the truth is this thing is legit it's everything you thought there's no real reason to be worried about this thing it's crazy that it costs 300 this thing blew up in India right and it is for that market specifically but people in other parts of the world can't believe the deal they want to try to import it so to be clear since this is designed for that market your mileage may vary depending on where you want to use it when it comes to getting a 4G LTE signal I am in the Toronto area I have a Roger SIM card in here and there are times and places where I would normally have an LTE connection where this one revert back to a slightly slower connection so that just has to do with the radios that are inside of here in the market that they are developed for it hasn't really hurt me at all or bothered me all that much reception otherwise has been good calls have been good and has been functioning properly let's move on to the good stuff this thing is fast we expected that snapdragon 845 you can see I changed the layout a little bit here this is Nova Launcher I would do this on many devices and actually this launcher brings me to maybe the one thing that kind of bugged me on this phone and that is the fact that it has a skin on it and that skin extends into the settings and it will slow you down a bit if you are used to a more stock experience for me the perfect phone here would be this the polka phone f1 with the Android one program associated with it just like the phone I featured here recently the me a - from the same company shall be of course in this case called polka phone if this device had that stock experience this would be tough to switch away from even at the $300 price point I'll tell you why battery I can't kill this thing I use it extensively at the end of the night there's plenty of percentage left 25% sometimes out of 4,000 milliamp hour battery in it and with the Snapdragon setup that is a ton of battery to work with to put this in perspective it's the same battery size as the note 9 that's a premium device you know the price tag it's got the same chipset as the note 9 the display is probably not as nice as the note 9 the camera is probably not as nice as the note 9 but let's adjust our expectations for the price point and realize how crazy this thing is speaking about the camera I have a few shots on here I can show you I will say I had low expectations for this camera both front and back but I was pleasantly surprised this camera is pretty good and that goes for low-light conditions as well you can see the detail actually holds up I mean look at the gradient in the sky on this particular image so as I've mentioned in past videos regarding budget phones usually the camera is going to be the differentiating factor that's gonna be the place where you're like look that's a cheap phone and I know it in fact in the recent video where I had that knockoff iPhone the Android iPhone the camera was terrible it was a dead giveaway even when I had the most recent blackberry on the show the camera was terrible comparatively this device here is crazy competitive I should mention the fingerprint scanner has been rock-solid never missed the scan it's fast it's in the right spot some people have criticized this device for being essentially plastic in most of its formats this is the armored Edition so this one has this aramid Kevlar kind of feel to it which I like a little bit better that said it does get some fingerprints on it and it mostly feels kind of like plastic it might not feel as premium let's say as glass I don't see this as a drawback I was never a huge fan of glass it's a fingerprint magnet it's fragile so in a way from a utilitarian perspective this might even be a step better let's not forget the fact that it keeps the headphone jack it's also got expandable storage so it's a versatile package and I feel like I need to keep saying it it's all happening for $300 the starting price point now one thing I wasn't able to test due to region specific things is the facial unlock though I do know that they're using infrared so it is a step better than strictly optical face unlock and again that's kind of a feature that we're just not seeing in lower end the lower pricepoint bones the speaker sort of falls into the average realm but it was never an issue for me it felt comparable to some of the stuff that I had been using previously it was sort of in the same realm as the p20 Pro that I was using before this okay so I said a lot of nice things about this I don't know it could be the hit all around smartphone of 2018 I don't really know how anything can touch this right now when you put together the combination of what's inside of it and the price that goes along with it but there is a but okay this is this is the real butt this thing is kind of hard to get your hands on for a regular customer in my particular case that they reached out to me and sent it out so that's how I got my hands on it but for everyone else it's kind of this flash sale situation where some become available and then they sell out so there's this question it started to arise amongst community members tech savvy people like yourself is this thing being sold at a loss do they really want to move a lot of units or is this really a marketing campaign to build hype around the device and then maybe on the next version it comes with a higher price point so they can earn some of that revenue back that might be possible I'm not familiar enough with the specifics of the Indian market and how sales happen there but as I understand it this flash sale scenario is pretty common and the question that exists now is just how many of these devices can they fulfill now I should say one more thing I made a video talking about a problem that this device had regarding streaming Netflix Amazon video and various other services they use a particular type of encoding for DRM purposes and the problem meant that this device couldn't stream those services in full 1080p resolution while someone from shall be reached out to me and actually told me that they may be able to patch problem via software which I didn't know and I didn't state in my original video so apparently this is something that may be fixed in the future take that for what it is don't count on it but it may be patched if it's a big issue for you so there you have it polka phone f1 may be the most important phone released this year it signals a change its signals competition as a customer you win you're seriously winning right now and it's because of more brands playing in the space and customers demanding more for less that's how you get better stuff so I hope you guys keep doing that and I'm gonna keep talking about it and hopefully more devices like this arise so more of you can get your hands on the latest tech for less that's what's happening let me know as usual down in the comments which phone should I switch to next coming up very shortly I need to put my sim card in something so where do you guys want to see that SIM card go name any device that you want to see me move to after this one I kind of have an idea of what you guys are gonna select nonetheless put your votes down in the comments and I'll be picking a new phone immediately after this one