From Mlais MX28 to Greentel G9 4G, a.k.a. Android 4.2.2 to 7.0

Disclaimer: This post comes from way back - end of 2018 - but most of the points still hold.

This may be a small step for Android, but a great leap for myself.

After 4+ years of faithful service, I decided it's time to give my dear old Mlais MX28 a break.

Why the MX28 had to go

The real reasons were, indeed, a bit more profound:

• The battery degraded to a very poor and highly unreliable state: right now it could be at 80%, and then, when I open up a simple text editor, poof! It's dead.
• Some apps (esp. Skype for Android kept on logging me out whenever the phone was restarted. Combined with the first point, this meant that I had to keep on logging in almost every day. Given that my employer has several customers who use Skype as a quick support channel, this was both inconvenient and risky—to say the least.
• One of our teams was developing a SoLoMo Android app—and we inadvertently became their lab rats; and I was often mocked as the owner of a "stone-age smartphone" because many of their app's features didn't work on my phone.
• There was a lot of features I was actually missing—lock screen notifications, ability to dismiss an alarm before it goes off, 4G, fast GPS location fixes, and so forth.

Farewell MX28, enter G9 4G

So I got myself a G9 4G (locally owned brand, with Chinese make; because the only locally manufactured 4G brand had already been discontinued).

• Android 7.0 (a leap from Jelly Bean to Nougat)
• 1.3GHz quad-core CPU (slightly forward)
• 1GB RAM (standstill)
• 8GB internal storage with 4.2GB actually free (a 2.5x leap as the MX28 had only 1.7/4)
• Mali-400MP2 GPU (standstill)
• 4G (leap from 3G)
• 3200mAh "mega" battery (a considerable improvement from the MX28's 2500mAh)

G9 4G + 7.0 Nougat: many things are looking up!

However, there was a few things that made me really happy:

• GPS is working smoothly—with the MX28 I could never get a GPS fix on time (it would take 5-10 minutes, or perhaps forever if I'm inside a building).
• Lock screen notifications!
• Now I can dismiss my 6AM alarm whenever I get up at 5.55 (without manually turning off the alarm setting and forgetting to turn it back on the following day).
• Skype never logged me out again (although it did once, when I updated the app—probably the expected behavior).
• Built-in flashlight (finally!)
• Built-in battery saver and data saver
• Screen color inversion! It was a big, unexpected and pleasant surprise. Now I can do all sorts of stuff at night, without straining my eyes with bright backgrounds.

But... is it all unicorns and rainbows?

And now for the disappointments:

• No root! (Unless I want to ruin my one-year warranty) So no more hacking around (moving apps around when out of space, getting rid of pesky system apps, tcpdump, editing /etc/hosts—and a lot more) :(
• Darn those ads! Thanks to root, on the MX28 I had an ad-resistant /etc/hosts that helped me totally forget about them—on my PC as well, since I access the internet through a phone tether. Now suddenly, in every app I open, there's a pesky ad popping up every now and then!
• Lack of granular data usage views: in 4.2.2's Data Usage graph I could use two movable guides to limit the usage view period to a few days or hours; the new interface is really dumb as it just shows the usage for the whole billing period, without any ability to drill down.
• Lack of a volume controller in the top drawer! Really, Google? What were you thinking? Now every time I want to put my phone in silent or vibration mode, I have to long-press the hardware power button :(
• Google Now Launcher, ever so intrusive: there's no way to get rid of the Google Search bar at the top of the home screen. It just sits there, eating up precious space—and I never ever google on my phone!
• Automatic updates? I have marked every known Wi-Fi network as metered, yet every time I connect to one of them I see a few brief flashes of progress bars in the notification drawer. Even with app updates disabled on the Play Store side as well.
• Crappy browser (or is it in the OS/device itself?) that crashes every now and then upon opening a saved page; in 4.2.2 I never ever had the browser crash, and now it's happening on a hourly basis! Although Chrome comes preinstalled, I was never a fan, and never will be!
• Lags like a grandma: probably because 1GB is not sufficient for 7.0 (which seems to take up well over 500MB, right after startup)?

The worst part: how G9 4G really pisses me off

And now, the greatest (worst) of them all:

The phone restarts itself randomly!

Yep, especially when travelling (so I guess it could be something related to cellular signals); when I pull out the phone after a ride, the screen remains frozen for 10-15 seconds (not responding to anything, even to hardware buttons), and then the whole damn thing restarts.

But the worst part? Sometimes it decides to shut itself down (also when travelling), right inside my pocket without me even touching it. So I could be cut off from the rest of the world for hours, if I don't check whether my phone is "alive" every few minutes.

Yet, proud to be part of the ගන්න අපේ දේ movement...

It is comforting yet painful, to know there was a time Greentel actually manufactured and exported smartphones from Sri Lanka.

Painful because, when I asked about it from one of their agents, they said the profit margins were too low so they had to abandon it.

Even today, probably only the middle-lower class of Sri Lankans would go for a Greentel smartphone - even them, I'm not so sure. Heck, even the support agents at our "always caring" mobile services provider do not know of a brand name called "Greentel" - let alone "Sri Lankan owned".

I don't see the සූර්ය සිංහ branding on Greentel (although our patriotic Dilantha does some good work in getting the word out); but I'm proud to be the owner of one, despite all the bumps along the road.

Way to go, Greentel!