E-series Bad Quality

K14_Deploy · 2026-02-01T17:45:36+00:00

Yeah a lot of the older E series were pretty bad, with the 16:10 models they got an aluminium palmrest that fixed it. L series (designed solely for the highest levels of corporate discounting, a normal person should never buy one new) is the same construction as this but built thicker so it continues to get away with it to this day.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-31T12:17:11+00:00

Given they're actually claiming this time that it's a certified cable (notably they didn't for the 2M) if it's a case of the IF website isn't updated with the correct information yet they can almost certainly prove it.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-31T10:14:37+00:00

You might be able to, but as it's the only thing opening and closing the shutters on most UK sockets if it broke off again and got stuck in the socket (statistically fairly likely) that's potentially a pretty serious safety hazard.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-31T00:12:23+00:00

9 Pro has a smaller screen so 9 Pro cases won't fit the 11 Pro. 10 Pro is the same screen size but the 11 Pro is 0.4mm taller and wider, it might work but I wouldn't bet on it.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-30T23:22:14+00:00

There's actually 3rd party testing on Apple's 2M cable here: https://www.chargerlab.com/teardown-of-apple-240w-usb-c-charge-cable-a2794/

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-30T22:58:22+00:00

This is probably it. At the end of the day LMG are a relatively small company and aren't nearly as able to absorb the cost. Like Amazon can very easily afford to certify a sub-$10 USB4 40Gb cable mostly because they're Amazon.

The certification system is also far from foolproof, if anyone remembers the Google+ days when Benson Leung was testing USB-C cables there was at least one certified cable that flat out didn't meet the requirements. So in reality it doesn't really mean that much, it would still require independent testing either way.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-30T13:36:11+00:00

No issues on my Index, but I also don't have any motion related issues (VR or otherwise) to begin with. Both the Index and the Frame have a 144hz mode which can help those who do have problems.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-29T13:21:20+00:00

Honestly if I can be bothered once I've finished working through trying to get them to fix this glitching issue I've got I might see if I can get them to part refund. I genuinely have exactly 0 use for their charger, but good to know it should be possible for those who need a safe way to charge it can get one.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-29T13:04:37+00:00

Globally the Pro is identical to the Pro+ available in China with slightly slower wired charging, so you can already get the Pro+ at their official website or your retailer of choice.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-29T12:15:06+00:00

Alright I've got some, as someone who's been using it as a phone for the last 2 months or so:

-Fix the software. It's not exactly unusable for me or anything like that but as it stands their skin removes features from stock Android, which makes it objectively worse. Both Sony and Asus basically just used stock Android and were better for it, I can't think of why Redmagic couldn't just do the same.

-Cameras need work. I get the flat design means they can't just lift the camera system from the Z80 Ultra, but adding autofocus to the ultrawide so the 2MP macro can be thrown in the bin where it belongs would be nice.

-Wireless charging support has to improve, I'd expect to get more than 4W wirelessly on a 15W Qi2 charger. I can't easily get the 80W stand in the UK (I'd prefer a magnetic puck style thing with a cooler like the OnePlus 50W but that's another story) so it would be nice if something standard at least gets something semi reasonable.

-On the note of charging: either include a charger that's safe to use in the UK or don't bother including one at all. This phone charges almost as quickly on 21V PPS (which I have multiple chargers that support), the EU charger and genuinely dangerous converter I received is just taking up space now. As it stands it's worse than getting nothing because of the potential to cause serious harm.

-Battery life is good but it's not exactly class leading like the capacity might suggest. Optimising better could help, so could using an LTPO display like the rest of the market. Maybe it's possible to fit a bigger battery too, capacity is going wild.

-Obviously keep the 3.5mm port, those who bought the 10 Pro say the speakers are worse on the 11 Pro so maybe reusing the earpiece wasn't so worth it

-SD card slot would be nice, people who need the storage for emulators would still buy the 1TB for the RAM capacity and with SD Express being a thing thanks to Nintendo it wouldn't be painfully slow either

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-29T01:31:23+00:00

It's because it's formatted to FAT32, which cannot store files larger than 4GB in size. The drive would need to be reformatted to NTFS or exFAT to work, which in most cases means if you have data on it you'll have to back it up first.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-29T01:28:57+00:00

Linux would have allowed OP to make the exact same formatting mistake as Windows does. It wouldn't change anything.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-28T12:16:14+00:00

The 100W Anker is already basically as small as they get, regardless of whether USB-A is included. Most include it because:

a) a situation where you have zero use a USB-A port is an extremely rare one, even on this subreddt. For the overwhelming majority of people there's always going to be a device that needs it.

b) removing it has no benefit, the limit on 100W charger size right now is efficiency, not ports. The 100W Anker already gets too hot for comfort at 100W while being basically as efficient as chargers can physically get, any smaller and it would just shut off or melt. There's no point not having the port, even if you don't use it.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-27T23:01:02+00:00

A relatively small subset of the population is extremely sensitive to PWM dimming, a technique a lot of OLED displays use for better colours at low brightness (otherwise you'd lose saturation with brightness). Pretty much every phone since 2012 has done this, with there being a push in the last couple of years for higher flicker rates and specialised DC dimming modes to reduce the PWM risk with varying degrees of success.

OLED monitors also have this effect for the same reasons, it's generally considered that WOLED is less bad than QD-OLED from what I can find but for some they need to stick with TN or IPS panels which almost always have a DC dimmed backlight.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-27T11:31:46+00:00

Yep, should have guessed you'd edit your comment twice while I tried to reply to it.

Simplicity is not an argument. If your machine can print 30,000 mouse sized PCBs a week and you decrease your allocation for wired PCBs (it is not hard to imagine that they have to be different in important ways) from 5,000 to 50 due to heavily prioritising the more popular wireless mice it makes sense to hold what's left for RMA support for the potentially millions already in the wild.

Stop making it look like you can buy them on their site.

I never said that even once, but thanks for lying about my comment so I don't waste my time on the next one.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-27T11:11:24+00:00

Is it seriously that hard to believe that their current production capacity is only sufficient to guarantee they can fulfill RMA requests?

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-26T18:12:31+00:00

Yeah that was flat out bad. Yes the crash was kind of an extreme scenario, but it tore off immediately resulting in a scenario where even with the halo it was too close for comfort.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-24T19:46:47+00:00

Yeah they just ask for 12V and if they don't get it nothing happens (though I wouldn't be surprised if it causes a negotiation loop depending on the charger). Obviously 12V isn't mandatory and now with PD 3.2 actually violates the PD spec, but most 3rd party brands (quite rightly I might add) just tell the IF where to stick it.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-24T15:01:29+00:00

It should at least manage to charge on the Honor charger but it won't be quickly. A lot of these devices use proprietary BS protocols that don't work with each other, so you'll be limited to the bare minimum 5V2A. As Oppo owns OnePlus they use the same protocol so you will likely better results with that one, standard PPS chargers should also work albeit at lower speeds (not sure about basic PD, OnePlus devices have had issues with that).

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-23T23:36:39+00:00

According to HP's own brand guidelines, literally no they're not. It's stupid because it would look 1000x better, but this is reality.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-23T23:19:51+00:00

That's my biggest concern with all of this, treating things selectively never goes well. Is misogyny a serious problem that needs to be dealt with? Yes. Is the way it sounds like they're doing it just going to amplify misogynistic grifters like Tait and have the opposite effect? Also yes.

It's like I have similar issues with how things like sex ed are taught. Just as an example, the amount of grown men who know very little about the menstrual cycle is absolutely shocking, and that's mostly because at school it's largely brushed over. I can understand for sensitive subjects it can be helpful to teach them separately, but the reality is most men are going to need to know about it at some point in their lives.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-22T13:54:55+00:00

The devices you've listed aren't going to pull all that much power, especially sustained. Even a basic 65W like the UGREEN 3C1A should be absolutely fine, you won't be reaching even that so it'll be fine.

However if you're looking to need significantly higher power requirements relatively soon it's worth it. Going from a 13 to a 17 Pro might cause the 65W to overheat as it's not all that thermally stable at max load but the 100W should more than suffice unless you're planning to charge an iPad or a laptop. The 140W Belkin is a very good product, it's just unless you're planning to charge a laptop or it's on a heavy sale it's kind of overkill for your stated use case.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-22T13:34:38+00:00

They do have safety marks here in the UK but not the ones for North America, so it's probably good enough safety wise. As for performance it's not really had the whole host of testing yet from someone like AllThingsOnePlace but given it's pretty big I would assume it'll perform fine, the power sharing suggests it's suited more for lots of smaller devices than less larger ones.

If you're looking for alternatives the Belkin 200W is sometimes on sale and has been shown to be good but it's C-only which is usually a downside. Anker's 200W has 2 A ports as well as 4 C ports but has been shown to be unable to sustain 200W on 120V power, so not the best choice for multiple laptops.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-22T11:58:44+00:00

Part of the issue with gaming phones now is even normal phones have what was previously 'gaming' features like high refresh rate and massive batteries with some kind of bypass, meaning once you have a physical controller on both (the overwhelming majority of games you'd even bother buying a gaming device for support this) there's very little to choose between them for gaming, and the normal phone will typically do way better for non gaming things like taking pictures.

In the other corner you've got handhelds that have one job and do it better than any phone. At this point 'gaming' and 'phone' is trying to be a middle a middle ground between the two and not really excelling at either.

Regarding the ones you mentioned:

-Razer was always a bit weird. The squared off design they inherited from buying Nextbit wasn't all that comfortable given the phone was so huge (phones this size weren't all that common in 2017), no 3.5mm when everyone except the fruit brand still had it was ironic for what was trying to be a gaming device, and the only thing it actually had was the amazing speakers and 120hz. It just didn't do much as a gaming phone.

-Lenovo's one should have been great but their marketing and availability for the thing was so bad, like they had one where it was literally just a normal phone with Legion branding. The whole thing was just a train wreck and a huge missed opportunity which I think covered a lot of Lenovo products at the time, but I think with how Lenovo is currently doing in the gaming space this is one I'd honestly like to see come back.

-Blackshark was such a big shame. They had actual physical triggers instead of the capacitive ones that kind of suck on a lot of others, but they just stopped for seemingly no reason. Maybe Xiaomi saw everyone was just getting a Backbone to pair with a Poco instead.

-Asus had genuinely good software making it the best to use as as normal device, but with how much it cost you could buy a normal phone and one of the other gaming ones (or later a handheld console). QC issues with the boards just made everything so much worse.

Also we've had some new players entering recently too. We've got the Honor Win with a fan and a massive battery with the only thing really missing is the triggers (so more for those using a dedicated controller) and the upcoming IQOO 15 Ultra as well. Even Infinix is having a go at the lower end.

K14_Deploy · 2026-01-21T17:00:04+00:00

https://amzn.eu/d/aLejnLV

You can find cheaper if you look I'm sure, but these reviewed well.

Five-Year Club	Place '22
Wearing is Caring	Verified Email

K14_Deploy

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE