0-10K Smartphone for a senior citizen's regular use

iPwnz

iPwnz

Brutally Honest
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Need a comfortable smartphone for an old person. It will not be his first smartphone. I wanted to go for the Moto G24/G34 but there is no Moto service where I live. And I don't know if there would be any good choice from Redmi/Realme etc.

Budget 10k max. +1-2k only if absolutely worth it.
 
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After checking GSMArena review of the battery of the Samsung A24 I was like this is perfect! But it's not available anymore so I checked the next upgrade model the A25 and the price... holy sheeet! 20k+???
Screenshot_20240625_233443_Chrome~2.jpg

I mean just look at those stats... it's perfect!
 
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Weight and size don't matter unless it's an exaggeration like tablet size 7.0"
What I need is minimal bloatware which have the risk of f'ing up the phone and good battery life.
greenhorn said:
Poco m6 pro 5g would be my recommendation. Snapdragon 4 gen 2 is the latest hardware, and pretty solid. You can get the 6/128 version in your budget
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Keeping the pricing aside, how is it when compared to Redmi 12 5G. I don't remember the exact models but many of these phones are just rebrand of each other with minimal change.
Better battery life and smoother UI/apps.would be preferred.
 
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iPwnz said:
Keeping the pricing aside, how is it when compared to Redmi 12 5G. I don't remember the exact models but many of these phones are just rebrand of each other with minimal change.
Better battery life and smoother UI/apps.would be preferred.
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My understanding is that they are the exact same. Have been told poco supposedly has less bloat but my experience there isn't much difference. Anyway you can use the debloater utility and disable a lot of the unwanted junk. But miui is still pretty bloated. Pricing is in my experience the only difference.

The battery is the same as on most other phones but it's a 4nm soc so that should help a bit with battery life.

I used to have a poco m3 running pixel experience. It had stunning battery life (used to run for a week with light usage and no bloat. Sadly stopped using it after teams decided to stop working as one fine day it was able to figure out that it was rooted.
 
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iPwnz said:
Budget 10k max. +1-2k only if absolutely worth it.
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I suggest that you go with the freshly launched Galaxy F15 (March 11, 2024). I recommend this because Samsung is advertising 4 years of OS version upgrades and 5 years of security updates. That means, the senior citizen gets updates till 2029. That's massive.

6/128 GB Variant is priced at 14,499 without card discounts. You may get upto 2500 discount (Not sure) in CC. 4 GB one is cheaper at 12,999 but considering the future updates, 6 GB would be better. Not that he/she would need beefy RAM config for basic tasks like WhatsApp, Browsing, video/audio etc. https://www.flipkart.com/samsung-galaxy-f15-5g-ash-black-128-gb/p/itm3886145398f59
 

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Thanks the F15 looks very good even though the price is on the higher side for this budget. I'll keep options opened. For now the best option seems to be the Poco M6 Pro 5G and used Redmi 12 5G.
 
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greenhorn said:
I would say cough up for the 256 g version. Have you seen the amount of junk senior citizens forward on WhatsApp. One on the things I hate the most is cleaning up whatsapp junk, and having more space means i don't need to do it as often
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just set whatsapp message to auto clear in every 30 days, no more need to take care of WA junks
 
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Picked up the Poco M6 Pro 10 days back, and i think its safe to say that its probably the best phone under 15k, barring a few key parts. I got the 6/128 version, and coming from a similarly specced Samsung, its a breeze to use. I would highly recommend staying away from budget Samsung smartphones (apart from a few decent ones like F14, it comes with a slim version of OneUI), full OneUI is extremely taxing on budget phones. You'll notice lots of frame skips and animation jitters a few months after usage. MIUI/HyperOs on the other hand, is extremely well optimized, at the cost of bloat (which I'll get to in a bit).

Display is 90hz but its not very bright. Its good enough for indoor usage, but outside, you will have to squint sometimes to look at it. This is coming from a devout "low brightness" guy. Its size is an issue as well, you'll need to have wrists of steel to use it one hand, but you should get used to it after a while.

Battery life is excellent, I get around 10-11hrs of SOT (indoors + WiFi) with movies, browsing and a bit of PS2 emulation (RE4). Didnt check much outdoors, but I think it should be around 7-8hrs of SOT.

Cameras are surprisingly good, especially with a gcam port. I took a few pics, and found it on par or even better compared to OP Nord 2T and Samsung A8 (2018 model, it used to be a good flagship phone). Low light and selfies suck tho. Video stabilization is non existent as well (understandable for the price).

As for the bloat situation, yes its a nightmare. But I've got rid of 95% of it after spending an hour debloating it, and after that, HyperOS isn't even quarter as bad as people complain it to be. Lmk in the DMs if you need any help with it, it feels quite fresh to use after being bound to OneUI (I do miss GoodLock tho). If it helps, its update cycle is good as well, im on the June security patch.

Another key "feature" is its good custom rom support, albeit on TG. I bought it mainly to dabble in rooting and whatnot. I know it doesnt make much sense anymore but for a budget smartphone which didnt receive much love from Xiaomi, I think its fine.

You could consider the Samsung M34 as well, it has a slightly better SoC then M15, and after debloating it thoroughly, it should be good enough.
 
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Thanks for the detailed info. I'm considering the Poco M6 Pro. It costs exactly 10k here. The non-Pro version is also available. Let me know how you removed the bloatware junk.
 
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Just keep in mind about fraudsters on the prowl. Mostly senior citizens are targeted by them. Android phones are very susceptible as these fraudsters send .apk files on sms or WhatsApp and our seniors inadvertently download them leading the fraudsters gain access to the phone. My view is that an iPhone is much more safer than an android phone. At least safe from the.apk files.
 
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iPwnz said:
Thanks for the detailed info. I'm considering the Poco M6 Pro. It costs exactly 10k here. The non-Pro version is also available. Let me know how you removed the bloatware junk.
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I made a post in the User reviews and guides topic about this. Figured i might as well cover the other culprits aka companies
 
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zoozoo said:
Just keep in mind about fraudsters on the prowl. Mostly senior citizens are targeted by them. Android phones are very susceptible as these fraudsters send .apk files on sms or WhatsApp and our seniors inadvertently download them leading the fraudsters gain access to the phone. My view is that an iPhone is much more safer than an android phone. At least safe from the.apk files.
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you can just disable all third party apk installations
 
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