Techie Ramblings

Category: Uncategorised

  • Oppo Find x8 Pro (Global)

    After getting bored of the lack of innovation from the conventional brands available to western markets I decided to look to the east. I’d seen devices from Xiaomi, Honor, Vivo, Oppo and Oneplus and they all looked to be making leaps where our more well known brands have been making calculated baby steps.

    I settled on this Oppo Find x8 Pro, global edition. UK brands could learn a thing or two from these brands. This flagship arrived with an 80W charging block, a quality protective case AND a screen protector pre-applied.

    Undoubtedly this was the most capable and premium smartphone I’d ever owned and it cost me £400 less than an S24 Ultra. The cameras were the best I’ve ever seen on a smartphone. The battery life was immense and the phone was so speedy in day to day use. This truly was an enthusiasts phone that made no compromises.

    The operating system is very different to the likes of “Pixel Experience” or “One UI”. It has a lot of features crammed in and is quite unfamiliar at first. It feels more like iOS in it’s layout and theme.

    For me though it was the external design that lead me to not keeping it. It feels like a very hard device to protect. The camera array protrudes a lot, and is essentially a big circle of exposed glass. The screen is curved, not majorly so but enough that screen protectors are difficult to get right. Adding on to that the phone is very heavy to start with, so throwing either a bulky case that covers the camera or a regular case with a glass camera protector and the phone becomes unwieldly.

    I did try for a short time to use the phone without any protection, just trying to enjoy it and it’s design but I couldn’t. The anxiety caused by knowing how easily it could break got the better of me. This is an enthusiasts phone that makes no compromises to offer the ultimate specifications and performance. Unfortunately it turns out that I do need some compromises!

  • Samsung S23 Ultra

    I purchased the S23 Ultra outright from Samsung, using credits I’d accumulated to get a decent discount and also utilised the trade in deal. Never-the-less I still had to put down a considerable amount of money to get this device. Flagship smartphones were becoming eye wateringly expensive.

    Make no mistake this was the most capable phone I’d ever owned, and I absolutely loved the party piece of it’s 100x digital zoom. I’m just not sure it justifies it’s hefty price tag. It started at £1249, I think I still had to pay around £800-900 with my discount and trade in.

    I went full in with customising OneUI with Goodlock and all the other add-ons that Samsung provides to really make the phone my own. I still don’t think any manufacturer comes close to this level of tweaking without having to revert to third party apps. I do remember having problems with some of these apps though. I had apps disappearing from my app drawer, my home screen would sometimes just show blank amongst other little glitches.

    This was also around the time I was going out hiking a lot with a group of friends, the pictures I’d bring back were phenomenal and it saved me lugging my DSLR around with me. In the back of my mind though, I was always worried about dropping and damaging this valuable phone. This wasn’t helped by the curved screen. Yes I had a rugged case, but trying to find a quality tempered glass screen protector that fit properly was nigh on impossible. In the end I opted for a TPU film protector, however this slid around the screen and doesn’t offer the protection of glass.

    In the end I resold the device after a few months as the worry of damaging the phone and losing its value was weighing me down. This was replaced with a Pixel 7a which I’ve already written about, a mistake that at the time I wasn’t wise to.