I own a Xiaomi Note 4. It's a fantastic device for the price and has given me no trouble at all. Xiaomi's Android skin (MiUI) is nicely designed, performs well and is regularly updated even on older devices. Xiaomi aren't well known in the west, but they're the fifth largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world.

Depending on your country, you may have to pay import charges if you buy direct from China or Hong Kong. Even with import charges, Xiaomi phones still usually work out to be a good deal. Warranty coverage is limited if you're outside of Xiaomi's core markets, but parts are cheap and readily available if you need to replace a cracked screen or a weak battery.

I wouldn't recommend other Chinese brands like Doogee, Leagoo or UMI. The hardware is usually good, but the software is often poor and you can forget about updates.

> I wouldn't recommend other Chinese brands like Doogee, Leagoo

Those names sound like Dodgy and Leakgoo, easy to remember, don't get those. Thanks.

Must say I've had kind of the opposite experience - I found that the MiUI skin was actually quite confusing and definitely didn't add anything useful. Otoh, my Leagoo T5 has been a great phone, has better specs, a gorilla glass screen (RedMi Note 4X has regular glass and cracked within days of getting it), and has been getting system updates about once per month from Leagoo, all for less than the price of the Xiaomi. ymmv I guess, but that's been my experience so far.

Previous HN discussions about the Chinese company making them:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7748542

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12171276

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12787766

For people who just like their Android flavour, they also provide ROMs for other devices: http://en.miui.com/getrom.php?m=yes&mobile=2 Presumably the same suspicion of Chinese goods coming packaged with spyware would apply to those images too I guess.

Moto E4 can be had for ~$130 unlocked. I got one as a temporary replacement for my beloved Moto G LTE until I could find a decent 4.5" phone. I'm mostly happy with it other than I wish it was smaller.

The Samsung 2017 A3 is what I wish I could get but thanks to pointless market segmentation, the only variant that works well in North America is impossible to buy and it's now being obsoleted by a replacement with a 5" screen.

I too have a Moto E4 and it works beautifully. I don't play games on it, but for everything else its very snappy and it takes pretty good photos. I got mine for $99 when it first came out. I have yet to run out of internal storage (16GB for those who don't know). 2GB RAM seems good enough atm. I can plug pretty much anything into the usb port and it will work with the device too.

The Xiaomi phones absolutely work. They're amazing for the price, and very popular as imports here in Ireland. There's always the chance they might have Chinese govt spyware however, as has been alleged with Huawei https://mashable.com/2018/02/14/huawei-prove-phones-not-spyi...

I've installed lineage os on mine. Availability of lineage is a prerequisite of any phone I can consider buying.

My Xiaomi Mi5 won't power on after 2 months of use. My friend's Mi5 won't power on after less than a year. It seems it's a common problem: google "Xiaomi Sudden Death". For warranty I have to ship it to China, which I knew when I bought it so I'm not complaining, just not recommending Xiaomi in light of the "sudden death" issue.

A sample search: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mi+5+not+turning...

Isn't it nowadays down to: who's spyware do you prefer?

LTE band support isnt great for the US market. Its supports exactly zero of Tmobile's 5 LTE bands, for example. 3G should work fine just about anywhere though.