I found this a good deal specially the wireless charger coming with it seems to be good - https://www.harveynorman.co.nz/phone-and-gps/mobile-accessor…
Thought sharing is caring.
And if you are American Express then can save another $50.
Free Samsung Wireless Charger Trio (RRP $159) with Purchase of Samsung S20 FE 128GB $597 + Shipping ($0 C&C) @ Harvey Norman
50
dkiwi on 26/08/2023 - 16:28 harveynorman.co.nz (278 clicks)
Last edited 26/08/2023 - 20:47 by 1 other user
Last edited 26/08/2023 - 20:47 by 1 other user
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hey bro looking for a phone myself, Where did you buy your phone?
I used to buy from Aliexpress or EBay, but now I just buy it from China directly.
Basically, the steps are:
- Find a Chinese friend
- Get them to go to the Chinese equivalent of Chapies, which there are several. Here's one of them - https://www.smzdm.com/
- When a good deal for a phone comes out, get your friend to buy it for you. The deals will come from legit large brand Chinese sites, like JD.com or whatever. So it's a really safe purchase. Alternatively, you can get your friend to buy from Taobao, which is kinda like Trademe. You can get new phones from Taobao at really good prices too, but just make sure you get it from trusted and reputable sellers.
- Use a shipping redirection service to get your phone shipped to NZ. There will be some good ones that you can find, similar to NZ Youshop.
I know it sounds like a lot of extra steps, but once you know what you're doing, it's really simple and easy and you save a lot of money this way. My Redmi K60 Pro is basically the Xiaomi 13T Pro. For Xiaomi, there's always a Chinese and Global variant of the same phone. 99% of the time, the hardware is exactly the same, just that the model is named differently. The Chinese variant will have the Chinese ROM installed, and the Global variant will have the Global ROM installed.
There is no Google or Google Play Store or Google Play Services in China. They use Baidu instead of Google and they have their own app store. Because of this, the Chinese Android OS will have Google apps completely stripped from it, among other things. The Global ROM on the other hand, comes with Google apps preinstalled into the System partition of the ROM.
Furthermore, some countries have regulations and laws around things like call recording. In NZ, I believe it is illegal to record phone calls without the consent of the other person on the line. But in countries like India or Taiwan, this isn't a problem. So the ROMs made for those countries for the exact same phone will have call recording feature supported, but in other countries it will be removed/blocked. So if you want, you can simply flash the ROM of another country.
The firmware (not to be confused with ROM) contains all the drivers for your bluetooth radio, wifi radio and mobile radio, etc.
So basically, my Chinese Redmi K60 Pro phone can be flashed with the Global ROM, making it a Xiaomi 13T Pro. I can also flash the global firmware onto this phone, making the radios of my phone have really good signal strength with low DB noise. All of this saves me at least $500+. And again, the model I've got is one of the high end models, 12GB RAM + 512GB eMMC and a great CPU chip. Flagship level specs for mid-range level prices.
Oh and also, there's no import tax for me to pay. I don't really know why this is the case, but I literally paid this phone brand new for $500. My friends and I usually bulk buy a lot of stuff from China together and ship it in one container package.
Just to clarify: CALL RECORDING IN NZ.
New Zealand operates under what is sometimes called a "single party consent" rule. This means that as long as at least one person involved in a conversation consents to it being recorded, it is legal, even if the other people involved are not aware.
@Dan Baker: Hmm I think it's a grey area. See this:
https://www.cab.org.nz/article/KB00001298In any case, most phones in NZ have the recording feature blocked or removed. I purchased 2 Xiaomi phones from PBTech a few years ago and they had recording removed in the ROM. Even if I tried to enable the recording via some hacky method, it didn't work. The Xiaomi phone dialer itself doesn't have the recording flag support anymore, so your only bet is to either sideload a Xiaomi phone dialer from another ROM that doesn't have this flag removed, or flash another ROM, or flash a 3rd party recorder app - which would most likely require you to have the phone rooted and use a Magisk or LSPosed module to add additional API functionalities.
For the Chinese Xiaomi ROMs, they don't have recording feature removed. And this is kinda why custom ROMs like Xiaomi.EU uses the China ROM as the ROM base.
@NovaAlpha: Where is the grey area?
Its not against the law, you can do it as long as you are a party in the conversation. Single Party Consent.
Wire Tapping without being a party to the conversation is illegal.
That is cut and dry.
Oppo phones (midrange and higher) have the feature built in by default, just got to turn it on. Besides that there are plenty of apps that do this also, I have been recording specific calls for years.
@Dan Baker: Hmm ok, maybe it's not grey area then. But my point is that not all phones have this feature built-in. There are definitely ways to enable this via 3rd party apps, but some of them can't utilize the Android API and instead records using external microphone and the quality is crap. I've used plenty of those apps before in the past.
I can't remember which Android version, but Google have removed the native recording API and a lot of external recording apps are affected by it, since they can't utilize the API anymore. There are articles about this that you can find online. If your phone supports phone recording natively, then that's great and that's the best option. But again, not all phones support this and for some reason, the Xiaomi phones sold in NZ don't have this feature in the dialer settings, but if you flash a different region ROM for the same phone, the setting is there, so it's dumb.
你好张大妈值友😄
@NovaAlpha: An answer from my friend "ChatGPT"
I apologize for any confusion. "SMZDM" stands for "什么值得买" in Chinese, which translates to "What's Worth Buying" in English. It's a popular online platform in China where users share information about deals, discounts, and product recommendations. The abbreviation "张大妈" is sometimes used humorously or informally to refer to SMZDM because it sounds similar to the name "Aunt Zhang," implying that it's a reliable source of shopping advice, like getting advice from a knowledgeable aunt. This is a play on words and not the literal translation of "SMZDM."
I would pay ya a couple hundy to do the above (along with the cost incurred) ha.
Never knew I needed to flash the firmware too. How do I go about doing that? All I am finding about firmware is refering to the rom.
Running EU with magisk by twrp method.
@Bill: It depends.
Firmware is part of the ROM itself. So is vendor image. They're extracted from the ROM.
Let's say you live in India and you downloaded and installed the official MIUI ROM that is made for India. In that case, you don't need to do anything. Your ROM would be India and the firmware would be India. The drivers (i.e firmware) is already the most optimized one for India.
However, let's say you live in Europe. If for some reason, you don't want to use the official MIUI ROM for Europe, perhaps because the India ROM has some additional features or whatever, or you just don't want to bother reinstalling your apps and setting up the phone from scratch, then you can simply download the Europe firmware and flash it. You wouldn't lose any data whatsoever, but now you're running the India ROM with Europe firmware.
It's basically like saying you're running Windows 11, but your WiFi driver is using a Windows 10 or Windows 7 driver.
You can download official MIUI ROM, vendor and firmware from here:
https://xiaomifirmwareupdater.comHere's an example of firmware you can get for Xiaomi 11 (codename agate):
https://xiaomifirmwareupdater.com/firmware/agate/@NovaAlpha: Thanks, I flashed the firmware to global, baseband version has changed. Vendor image seems inapplicable. Hopefully will mean better cellular now.
@Bill: You can always use one of those mobile signal testing apps on Play Store to check your signal.
The lower the DB, the better. So if you get e.g. -40DB, that's better than -60DB. The same goes for wifi signal. I think a lot of people are confused by this, thinking the higher the number the better, but you want the DB to be close be as close to zero as possible.
Run some tests and get an average, then flash firmware and run another test. Alternatively, you can check your Android battery graph and switch to Hardware output. It should show your signal strength. If it's red or orange colour, then it's weak signal.
Oh and I forgot to mention, sometimes you might have a newer firmware from a newer ROM update and if for some reason you don't want to flash the ROM, you can just flash the firmware. Be careful though, because if your ROM is e.g. Android 12 and you flash a firmware for a Android 13 ROM, you might run into issues. But generally speaking, firmware from minor ROM updates are OK to flash and it's a quick and easy way to test out the newer firmware version to see if you get improved radio signals or whatnot.
Typically speaking, firmware is only relevant when it comes to custom ROMs. You don't really need to flash it if you've got nothing wrong with your phone (e.g. bad signals in areas that should have relatively good signals).
There are different radio bands supported in the k60 pro and 12t pro. Is this a hardware difference or can be rectified by flashing global firmware?
@kingzzz: Pretty sure the global variant equivalent is the 13T Pro, not 12T Pro.
The radio bands are all controlled by the radio chip that's integrated into the CPU. In this case, it's the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. If you're interested, look up the Snapdragon keynote events on Youtube, they'll tell you what's new in their latest chip, such as how they integrated the latest WiFi 6E and 5G into their chip, etc. It's not just a CPU chip, it has a bunch of other things integrated.
When you think about this logically, why would Snapdragon waste their resources to create the exact same chip but with certain radio bands blocked? That would actually cost more money. Instead, they simply just block it via software. It's the same idea as overclocking and undervolting. The chip is able to do more just by software tweaks.
The firmware you flash would allow the chip to support additional bands. However, this isn't always the case, as there might be situations where it doesn't work simply due to hardware differences.
Anyway, I've used plenty of Xiaomi devices and haven't really had any problems with the radio bands or the radio signals. I doubt the average NZ user would actually run into any issue.
Hey quick question (if you were to know): I have the Note 11T Pro from China - this has a dimensity chipset. The global version has a snapdragon chipset. Can I flash the global rom to this phone, or will the chipset being different brick my phone?
@Latex Fist: I think the codename is what matters. The global variant seems to be the POCO X4 GT which is running the same SoC.
@Latex Fist: No, it won't work if you flash a ROM that's for a completely different CPU, because it's actually not the same phone model.
Aside from the region variants, there's also chipset variants as well. It's not just Xiaomi, other brands like Samsung have the same issue. For example, a global version of Samsung Galaxy S series could have the Snapdragon chip or the Exynos chip, depending on where you buy the device from. If you buy it from e.g. Europe or South Korea, you might get the Exynos version, but if you buy from the states or elsewhere, you might get the Snapdragon version. Both are the global variants, but with different CPU chip.
For Xiaomi devices, this typically means a slightly different model. For example:
Xiaomi Redmi K50 = Mediatek Dimensity 8100 (https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_redmi_k50-11430.php)
Xiaomi Redmi K50 Pro = Mediatek Dimensity 9000 (https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_redmi_k50_pro-11372.php)
Xiaomi Redmi K50 Gaming Edition (or Ultra I believe) = Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 (https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_redmi_k50_gaming-11362.php)They are the Chinese variants. The global variant of e.g. Redmi K50 Ultra would be Xiaomi 12T Pro. If you go to PBTech, they would sell the Xiaomi 12T Pro but not the Redmi K50 Ultra. Article for reference - https://www.mysmartprice.com/gear/xiaomi-12t-pro-rebranded-r…
Say if you have the Redmi K50 Ultra. You can flash the global ROM for either Xiaomi 12T Pro, or the global ROM for Redmi K50 Ultra. They're both the same phone with the same chip, just named differently depending on Chinese or Global version.
You cannot flash a ROM that is made for a completely different CPU. You'll brick the phone.
Also, every device (doesn't matter what brand) will have an internal codename. For example, Redmi K50 has a codename of "rubens". So you can also search for "Redmi K50 rubens" on Google to find the exact ROM you need. It's almost always easier to search by codename, because that's unique per device. Otherwise, you might find ROMs that maybe for Redmi K50 Pro or Ultra. It can be quite confusing.
Anyway, if you have the Chinese ROM on your phone and you want to flash the Global ROM, then you can find it from here:
https://xiaomifirmwareupdater.com/miui/xaga/You'd probably want this one that came out on July 19th or July 10th:
Redmi Note 11T Pro / POCO X4 GT / Pro GlobalThere're typically 2 ways to flash a ROM. One is using fastboot and the other using recovery. You can lookup how to flash the ROMs using either methods. In your case, since you're flashing a ROM for a completely different region (global instead of China), you should go with the fastboot one, i.e July 10th.
Used Redmi few years ago, not going to buy anymore. Spec was good comparing what you paid for, however it started having issues and hanging over and over.
It's not for everyone.
I work in IT. I'm a power user. I know how to tweak my phones, root and flash custom ROMs, etc. Most people don't know tech, so they just go for Samsung or iPhone. Pick whatever you prefer. For me, Xiaomi phones have the best hardware for your buck. I never have problems with the software and never experienced any crashes. Do your research and check forums like XDA and get a phone that has proper first party and 3rd party support.
Well, I won't say I'm a power user but I did flash the rom to an one using native google android to that Redmi because the ongoing crashing. It's more about quality of the hardware used in the phone not the software.
It may be just my bad luck, I'm happy with my S9 after 5years because I'm sick of buying cheap one annually
Time for me to buy a new one for 5G, sorry to say but probably not a cheap one
You know the weird thing is, I work in it and everyone just gets iPhones.
We are all contentious about laptops but most of us couldn't give a rats about a phone.
While nobody has really bought it up, I think work would be very annoyed if people were running jailbroken phones or phones that fail integrity checks or Knox or whatever it's called now and loading things that are potentially confidential…
I did partake years ago, but honestly ROMs are so similar now and phones are so similar that it's just not even worth bothering / making the stability / security tradeoff. I use a pixel 7 and it works without flaw.
@Grandma: There's different levels of IT. The service desk is considered IT, but that's the lowest level and they don't know anything. A Solutions Architect or cyber-security expert or DevOps engineer or SRE are also IT, except that they're high salary roles. So when people say they work in IT, it doesn't mean anything unless you demonstrate knowledge and skills in multiple different areas. I know some people who are sysadmins and have been working as sysadmins for 20+ years, but they don't know anything. They don't know how to script using Powershell, don't use automations, poor networking skills, no knowledge of IAC or whatever else.
As for how "IT" people use their phones, I think it depends on your needs and how much you care about certain things. I automate the crap out of my phones. I run Linux binaries like cURL and do a lot of scripting against APIs for multiple services, like Google Maps or Auckland Transport, etc. I run Powershell scripts and shell scripts on my phone. I use webhooks and a bunch of really cool automations as well - hence I root my device and use custom ROMs, etc.
I have unlimited Google Photos storage, but I don't pay for Google One or whatever the subscription is called. I get it for free, because of mods.
I can use Z Sharetank and spoof location to anywhere in NZ and get the best petrol price, because of location spoofing hacks (which again requires root).
I also do a lot of dual booting on my phone (like using Kali Linux), as well as using it as a server for various things (instead of using Raspberry Pi).
I do a lot of ChatGPT automations, as well and run Python scripts, etc.
If I want an app that's not available in NZ's play store yet, I can get it using Aurora Store, which typically requires root to use properly. I can install region locked apps/games or get early access to them.
I also do a bit of hacking using my phone, like bypassing inApp payments, etc.
And if I lose my phone, I can easily restore 300GB worth of apps/settings/data in under 30 minutes. A one-to-one clone. I can buy the same phone and get it up and running in no time, like I never lost my phone in the first place. You can't do this easily with iPhone. You gotta configure all your settings etc and it wouldn't be exactly 1-1.
Basically, I'm not your average user and so my use case is a bit unique.
Comparing Redmi with Samsung? Since when is Redmi a flagship product?
does that still make Redmi a flagship brand? Are you serious? A brand not sold by either of the major retailers - Noel Leeming, Harvey or JBHIFI
@NovaAlpha: Wow, you must be fun a social gathering!
Why are you always so obnoxious & conceited?
Take a chill pill Bro@NovaAlpha: If that's your response then maybe a better criticism would be that you clearly lack emotional self-awareness/social intelligence. And I doubt that's the first time you've been told that, based on how you carry yourself…
@NovaAlpha: Wow do you mean you judge your friends on their job? I have always loved McDonald's friends (get some great extras in ya bag)
@quote: I don't judge them, but I also wouldn't stay long term friends with them if they just stay stagnant and never progress further.
I know heaps of people who became complacent, or people who never want to achieve anything in life and that's fine and that's their choice. But I don't surround myself with people like that, because eventually you'll get dragged down with them. Some people just want to live a very simple and normal life and never amount to anything great. Some people just want to keep working at McDonalds or some elementary job for the rest of their life until they retire. They will spend years paying rent without owning a house, living paycheck to paycheck and basically live what I consider to be a boring and meaningless life. And that's great for them if that's all they want. Everyone has different goals.
The thing is, you typically lose friends as you progress through life and one of the reasons is basically what I had already explained. A lot of people lose contact with friends from intermediate, college, Uni, etc. That's the reality, everyone goes through this to a certain degree.
You typically shouldn't associate or compare yourself to someone who's worse off than you. You always aim for something higher. I make a salary of 200K and if I compare myself to people who earn less than me, then yes I would probably seem like I'm financially successful to them. But if I compare myself to someone who makes 1 million in salary per year, then the amount I make is nothing. Knowing this, I'm always aiming for something higher and better. And it's with this mindset that I continually do better and achieve a better life. I know some old colleagues who are still making 50K to this day and I was very close with them at one point. I don't associate with them anymore, because they're just not friends who can help you grow. Our worldviews are too far apart now. Their knowledge of the subject is still stuck in the elementary level and you're already grown far too much to be able to relate or associate with them.
@NovaAlpha: I am just curious, Does Android Pay/Google Wallet still work after flashing the MIUI Global ROM?
@ttt: Yes. Flashing official MIUI ROMs doesn't break anything.
It's only when you root your device that it breaks the Android system integrity checks. But even then, you can hide root from apps, so it won't be a problem. My phone is rooted and I can bypass apps that checks for root, including Google Pay.
There are benefits to rooting though. For example, you can use unlimited Google Photos storage with some mods (which require root). You can spoof your location so that you can purchase Z sharetank at cheaper prices. With the current petrol prices, I often buy petrol from e.g. Sanson or Matamata or elsewhere, much cheaper than buying in any Z station in Auckland and usually it'd still be cheaper than other petrol stations in Auckland. The benefits of rooting goes on and on. But it's not for everyone. If you don't know what you're doing, then just stick to official non-rooted ROMs.
In case anyone asks about the sharetank thing, I posted some instructions here:
https://www.cheapies.nz/comment/186324/redirAs for the unlimited Google Photos storage, lookup Pixelify. There are a lot of solutions out there. Google it yourself.
Fyi, a Snapdragon x in phone y is not the same as a Snapdragon x in z phone. Performance binning is a big thing and the more expensive models get the better tiers.
Also memory speed, storage speed, touch polling (that's a suprisingly big one!) Are contributors not often on spec sheets
Also why the McDonald's worker hate? Everyone has circumstances. This isn't a very cheapies chat.
@Grandma: Yes I'm well aware of binning, but we're talking a very minor variance here.
Phones that use the same CPU will have slightly different performance benchmarks, but not by much. There's no way that a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip on phone X is going to perform like 15~30% better than the same chip on another phone. You're not gonna find a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip suddenly perform at the level of an older Snapdragon chip, like the 865 or whatever.
The chips will all go through QA and perform within an acceptable range defined by the chip manufacturer (Qualcomm in this case). And nobody will know how good your chip is anyway, until you buy the phone and benchmark it for yourself. So basically, it's pointless to think about this.
And it's not just mobile CPUs, it's the same for desktop CPUs. Look at the variance reported in this article, it's really small. You'll still get pretty much the advertised performance for the chip:
https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-core-i9-10900k-binning-comet-l…
Also, phones these days are getting so good that none of the specs really matter much anymore. For someone like me who works in IT, you'd think I care about the latest and greatest tech, but I don't. I own so many phones I've already lost count of how many I have. I have a Galaxy Z Fold 4, which is one of the most expensive phones that came out year and I can confidently tell you that it's not worth the price. It's more of a gimmick and is overpriced. For the average user, they will not notice any performance difference if you compare it to my $500 Xiaomi phone. Nobody really cares about the CPU, storage and memory speed nowadays, they care more about the camera and other gimmicks.
So, if you're just comparing pure performance in terms of CPU, storage, memory, etc, then a flagship level phone that's $500 will pretty much perform on par with a phone that is 2x or 3x the price.
@NovaAlpha: Yeah fair.
I've had a few over the last few years and aside from running a bunch of games on our tv over lockdown through my OnePlus 7 pro I wouldn't ever notice a performance difference.
I think the most flagship chip I've had was a z flip and it's no different day to day to my pixel 7. Camera and battery are the two main selling points.. most people don't care about much else (see iPhone 11 still selling for $700 en masse with a display that screen doors when you zoom)
I've got the duo version of their charger and one thing to know is one of the pads is limited. Only he trio is appears one is exclusively for watches and not all watches will work. On the duo half of it is only usable for galaxy buds or watches, a second phone won't charge on it and old watches also don't work. So I got it thinking my old gear sport would work and it doesn't, so it rarely gets used as my buds rarely need charging.
Best phone to get if you want to have offline music player and local warranty, get a couple of 1TB SD cards and you're good to go with this phone.
Thats a bit old for $600. Be aware that we've had exynos and snapdragon skus for s20fe in new zealand. This one is snapdragon
$600 - 3 year old phone…. Hmmmm when does it stop receiving updates if they are still flogging this and the S21FE?
I would have happy bought an S22FE last year if they had made one…. Instead I went Oppo and couldn't be happier. :-)
Android 13 and One UI 5……those are the last updates on the S20FE and they have already been released (just researched it).
It's already gone EOL (End Of Life).
S21FE has EOL at the end of 2025……..
Yeah this phone is old as. Partner brought one of these 2 years ago for $600
I don't understand the point of the FE range, Samsung have done a great job with muddling their models. It's confusing.
In another life I sold S20fe phones at a retailer (that was a few years ago too, shows how old this model is)…. and it just made no sense when the A series were on the other side of the table and the higher end of those had better specs / cameras / screens for a lower price
Lol I still have 4 Samsung S21 FEs with Galaxy Bud2 Pros that I got for not much more (per phone, that is) from last month that I need to return (I double ordered by accident if anyone is wondering).
Happy to get rid of the separately as well with full receipt and warranty since I'm still waiting for those slowpokes at Samsung to get back to me (over 2 weeks …) regarding a return.
$600 for a phone that came out 3 years ago?
You can get really good flagship level phones for like $500~$550 these days and a 55W wireless charger for another $30~45. My Redmi K60 Pro + 100W Xiaomi charger combined is only like $595 total. And that's the 12GB RAM 512GB model with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2