Budget 15-20K Used Xiaomi Phone to run Pixel Experience

greenhorn

greenhorn

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Hi all. I have been totally enamored by my pixel 3 and 4a and have been a total pixel fanboy ever since.
Unfortunately service costs have hit me and hit me hard (14k to replace either mobo or display when you can get an entire refurb phone for that price)
Plus atrociously bad battery life has been annoying me too.
My wife's poco m3 on the other hand is like a maruti - anything breaks, there is a service center around the corner (pixels need to be sent to mumbai) and any repair is 2k ish

So i got a poco m3 from olx and flashed pixel experience on it, and its nice, I do miss the camera, but the battery life is fabulous.
the ui is a bit laggy - I assume It's because of the poverty spec processor (SD 662). I have a redmi note 11 with a SD 680 but I dont think it will be much better.
My 3 has a SD 845, and the 4A has a 730G, and i was looking for something in that range
I almost bought an x3 pro because the specs are out of this world for the price, but then i read hear that they're dropping dead like flies

Whats a reasonably new Xiaomi/Poco phone with a PE 13 support and a snappy CPU I can use as my main phone?
The 3A had a 670 and my Note 11 has a 680 - would that be enough?
Poco F1's are cheap but they support only Android 12
X2 or X3 are next on my list - or are there better options?
I know the x4 pro/ note 11 pro has the 695g. That was a big Miss when i bought my current phone. But spending 17k for a new phone vs 8k for a used one with only slightly better performance, that's tough to justify. I know i can sell/exchange this current redmi but it's hard to swallow that much loss on a two week old phone
I am looking for only phones with official support so i can do a clean from scratch install, and pass the safety checks for netbanking etc
 
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You can try looking for a used k20 pro, I'm currently on Resurrection Remix ROM, but I have tried PE 13 and it is pretty snappy but many of my apps don't run on Android 13 so downgraded to RR.
 
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I'm currently using Pixel Experience 12 plus on my Poco F1. It's steady and running nicely. And I downgraded from Pixel OS 13. I didn't like android 13. Barebone pixel OS is too basic for me. I don't think there's much difference between pixel OS and pixel experience (without plus edition). So I would not go with barebone pixel experience again. Secondly, someone would start building official builds of PE13 for poco f1 eventually. The user base is big.

That being said, I'm not suggesting you to get poco f1 now considering it's in its 4th year now.
greenhorn said:
I am looking for only phones with official support so i can do a clean from scratch install, and pass the safety checks for netbanking etc
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Official build or not it's not guaranteed that all banking apps will work fine. Most will do though.
 
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greenhorn said:
I did look at the k20 pro but redmis are priced crazy on olx compared to pocos, most of the specimens have some issue and I'm not too keen on a 2+ year old phone
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Wow I'm surprised they are that expensive, I bought one used for 14k more than 1.5 years ago and they are still selling for similar price. Anyway your best option would be X3 pro, it has SD 860 and I saw them selling for around 10k.
 
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Basic custom rom is Pixel vanilla rom by default for every chinese phone out there. Its like using a custom rom yet pure stock exp. without any bloatware with custom tweaks and good battery life..
 
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greenhorn said:
Bump. Anyone with an x4 running a custom ROM, preferably PE? How stable/smooth are they? Miui is beginning to get laggy
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Xiaomi is not the best at releasing kernel sources but the bigger problem is with the drivers which are based on what's available for the latest MIUI release, which are sometimes older and buggier than other manufacturers. The more the custom ROM Android version differs from the MIUI Android version, the worse the situation gets.

These custom ROMs will definitely feel faster than the bloated and unoptimised MIUI but you shouldn't expect a lot of stability from the hacked driver blobs.
 
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Wanted to say that just cause rom's name is pixel experience, its not going to make it best and stable rom, it all depends on dev who maintains it. Sometimes in many devices, havoc, crdroid or awaken roms were more stable than pixel experience and even lineage os because they had better maintainers, so talk to people in official group of your device in tg maybe discord, and check it your self that which rom is more stable
Ps. Banking apps have never broken for me even tho im rooted, but just in case you dont want to do any extra steps, just dont install magisk. And use gcam for best photos shooting experience
 
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I joined the telegram groups. Looks like evolution x is best for x4 pro. But i want something that can run banking apps and Google pay. Most of these other roms install guide support is mostly around rooted installs
 
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My pixel experience experiment has come to an end. First my office mdm detected the phone was rooted. Then I shifted the office apps to my x4 ans tried to use the m3 as my daily. It was a disaster with the phone beginning to crash randomly during regular use and finally started to go into bootloops. Figured enough is enough, saw a poco f5 12gb for sale for 15k, closed the deal (while I was in the middle of a work trip) and finally the 7 gen 2 seems to be enough for my needs. Here's fingers crossed!
 
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greenhorn said:
My pixel experience experiment has come to an end. First my office mdm detected the phone was rooted. Then I shifted the office apps to my x4 ans tried to use the m3 as my daily. It was a disaster with the phone beginning to crash randomly during regular use and finally started to go into bootloops. Figured enough is enough, saw a poco f5 12gb for sale for 15k, closed the deal (while I was in the middle of a work trip) and finally the 7 gen 2 seems to be enough for my needs. Here's fingers crossed!
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I have a rooted tablet and MDM apps can still be made to work fine with the correct Magisk modules. I have a Mi Pad 6 and it took 3-4 months for custom ROMs to be stable and provide the same battery life as stock.

Unfortunately, Mi isn't great at updating drivers on their stock ROMs, so it will get worse again after a couple of years when the Mi drivers are too old for future Android versions.

Also, Google has clamped down on device fingerprints, so most rooted devices can only pass basic integrity, not even device integrity, let alone strong integrity. This makes it easy for apps to detect any modification and stop working.

Now, it has become more important to have proper manufacturer software support, which of course isn't easy to get on cheap devices.
 
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These Days its very easy for any app to stop functioning on a rooted device, if the dev wants it .
That said there are alternatives for personal use.
However, when you need to run a specific app, thats where the problem starts.
i agree with t3chg33k that proper software support is very imp these days, atleast for 2-3 years even on budget devices.
 
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