New Phone
I bought a new phone. My Sony Z3 compact's battery was starting to give up, the internal storage was too limited, the backplate was loose and I wasn't too happy with its overall performance anymore. Unfortunately there seems to be no phone matching all my requirements:
- recent model (2016+)
- decent CPU
- lots of RAM (>3GB)
- large battery (>3000mAh)
- lots of storage (>32GB) and SD card support
- less than 500€
- 4.7 inch display
Especially the last requirement is problematic. It seems I'm the last person who likes smaller phones. In the end I decided to to swallow the bitter pill and go with a bigger form factor and bought a Huawei Honor 9. It is very comparable to Google's Pixel 5 but is 44% cheaper than Google's pricy flagship:
| Honor 9 | Pixel 5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Dimensions | 147.3×70.9×7.5mm | 143.8×69.5×8.5 mm |
| Weight | 155g | 143g |
| Screen | 5.15 inches | 5.0 inches |
| Resolution | 1080×1920 pixels (~428 ppi) | 1080×1920 pixels (~441 ppi) |
| Storage | 64GB | 32GB |
| Card Slot | MicroSD | None |
| Memory | 4GB | 4GB |
| OS | Android 7.0 (Nougat) | Android 7.1 (Nougat) |
| Chipset | HiSilicon Kirin 960 | Qualcomm MSM8996 Snapdragon 821 |
| CPU | Octa-core (4×2.4 GHz Cortex-A73 & 4×1.8 GHz Cortex-A53) | Quad-core (2×2.15 GHz Kryo & 2×1.6 GHz Kryo) |
| GPU | Mali-G71 MP8 | Adreno 530 |
| Primary Camera | Dual 20MP + 12MP 2x optical zoom | 12.3MP |
| Secondary Camera | 8MP | 8MP |
| 3.5mm jack | yes | yes |
| NFC | yes | yes |
| InfraRed | yes | no |
| USB | USB-C | USB-C |
| Fingerprint | yes | yes |
| Battery | 3200mAh | 2770mAh |
| Price | 429€ | 759€ |
So far I like it a lot. I switched Huawei's quite decent launcher against my personal favorite Nova Launcher and uninstalled most of the preinstalled apps. I haven't used the camera too much, but the very first snapshot came out quite nice:
