Budget 15-20K Spoiled by Poco F1 - looking for a 5G alternative

theagilecoder

theagilecoder

Recruit
Running my Poco F1 as main daily driver for the last 5 years :
  • Compact at 6.1"
  • Legendary custom rom support - I have each year flashed the new android version of custom rom and each was better than the default Mi OS.
  • Easily replaceable battery - have replaced 4 times (from amazon and mobatree). and have been thus getting 10+ hours sot from day 1.
Now that I genuinely need 5G and looking around for alternatives in less than 20k. Please advice if there is one.
 
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gokul.ece22 said:
F1 User here.
Im also in facing the same dilemma.

What rom are you using by the way? Also suggest a rom for good battery backup.
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My views on ROM : I have been part of TG group of various F1 rom groups. and the "best" vary by version. For example - for A11 I used arrow os, for A12 PE rom, for A13 Pixel OS was one of the best etc. Also, clean flashing the last build of each version will give you max stability (for ex, last build of A13 Pixel os released in Q4 2023)

My views on battery: There is only a miniscule difference in battery among roms. You can join the TG groups to find and compare among them. The real difference in battery only comes from battery replacement when the health of the current battery is degraded. Luckily so easy to do in F1.

greenhorn said:
Compact phones are dead. Especially in the budget and value range. Give up :p
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Ya man, compact phones are like luxury items now.:(
 
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For compact phones in the non-iphone world, check out Pixels from Google.
Although, form factor is the only thing in favour of Google, atm. Their SoC is very crappy. If you can wait for tensor chips from 2026 lineup, things can be promising.
 
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while there is good number of demand for good 5" or 5.5" handset, why manufacturers are not pay attention to this?
why only COST like Bomb brand Apple & Pixel keep producing compact size, while all other brands too few years back was producing small size handsets and suddenly all trun to 6.5 & up ... :mad:
 
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Emperor said:
while there is good number of demand for good 5" or 5.5" handset, why manufacturers are not pay attention to this?
why only COST like Bomb brand Apple & Pixel keep producing compact size, while all other brands too few years back was producing small size handsets and suddenly all trun to 6.5 & up ... :mad:
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Feel you man, I really think the demand for 5-6" is actuallly very low. Most budget buyers go for as massive screen as possible as often they do not have a laptop.
Brands are just responding to it. Maybe there is a massive economies of scale of using >6.5" inch screens for budget brands.
 
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Emperor said:
while there is good number of demand for good 5" or 5.5" handset, why manufacturers are not pay attention to this?
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This trend started after the pubgm virus. Every single phone from 10k to 100k was all about how well it performs or looks in pubgm, codm, etc.
I upgraded from poco f1 to OnePlus 9 pro 3 years ago and I still sometimes miss the customisability of poco and the compactness.
 
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I'm thinking of buying the Redmi 12 5G - it's cheap at 13,500 for 8 GB RAM and 256 GB storage, but it has only 18W charging. After buying it, I would have put a custom ROM on it, CrDroid in my case, after about a week, as Xiaomi requires a wait period before they allow you to unlock the bootloader.

However, today I came across this reddit post, which says Xiaomi is not going to allow bootloader unlocking at all:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/18ni90y

There is some confusion as to whether it is only for their phones sold in China or for the global variants. Does anyone have any info as to whether this is true or not? Like someone on this forum who recently bought a Xiaomi device and unlocked the bootloader. If the news is true, I'll have to search for another phone.
 
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I just found out that the Redmi 12 5G has a glass back and can only be opened using a heat gun. Some have suggested that a hair dryer will also do. I'd like to have a phone that I can open myself, to replace the battery or for anything else. Is there any other way to open the phone without applying any heat? What happens if you just take a tool and keep prying, will the glass back eventually come off or will it break?
 
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POCO F1 was by far one of the best smartphones of its time. Top-End SD845 SoC, 6GB RAM, 128GB Storage, at 20K, was an unbeatable deal.
It is still an appealing device but getting a reliable replacement battery for any such old devices is VERY difficult.
If anyone is a seller of batteries here, please advise.
As for Custom ROM, go for it only if you want extreme privacy. Otherwise, standard ROMs offer similar experience in terms of battery life and optimizations. Additionally, several apps just refuse to work on Custom ROMs even if the device is NOT Rooted. Too much hassle.
POCO F1 and similar-era devices are an exception because companies are not offering latest security updates and Android OS upgrades for these devices.
IMO, the Lineage ROM v21 (OFFICIAL), based on Android 14 could be ideal to keep POCO F1 relevant, useful, and secure.
 
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alap4m said:
POCO F1 was by far one of the best smartphones of its time. Top-End SD845 SoC, 6GB RAM, 128GB Storage, at 20K, was an unbeatable deal.
It is still an appealing device but getting a reliable replacement battery for any such old devices is VERY difficult.
If anyone is a seller of batteries here, please advise.
As for Custom ROM, go for it only if you want extreme privacy. Otherwise, standard ROMs offer similar experience in terms of battery life and optimizations. Additionally, several apps just refuse to work on Custom ROMs even if the device is NOT Rooted. Too much hassle.
POCO F1 and similar-era devices are an exception because companies are not offering latest security updates and Android OS upgrades for these devices.
IMO, the Lineage ROM v21 (OFFICIAL), based on Android 14 could be ideal to keep POCO F1 relevant, useful, and secure.
Click to expand...
Poco F1 is the Aswathama !! Just a few disagreements from a couple of points:
  1. Getting the battery have been very easy for the F1 and the replacement even easier as the backplate is not glued. I have replace the battery around 4 times earlier (once per year or 2 years and two devices) from amazon and the last two from Mobatree :https://www.mobatree.com/products/xiaomi-mi-poco-f1-bm4e?variant=43713842413845 Always got 100% health and no swelling, in fact the og battery had swelled.
  2. All popular custom rom where the safety net passes by default, you do not need to root at all. I have been daily driving F1 with various ROMs starting with A11 and now running A14 and have never rooted the phone and have used various UPI, banking and paypal like apps - never faced a failed transaction.
 

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