What's on my phone?
Apps and setup
My device
My current device is the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5, a pretty cool 😎 (in my humble opinion) budget Chinese phone 📱. It offers a great value for money 💸 and has a good battery life 🔋.
The case for budget phones
In my experience budget phones have been getting closer and closer to the industry flagships 🚢. They can’t offer the same quality and refinement as flagship phones but you can get a pretty sweet package 📦 for a fraction of the price, allowing you to upgrade more often and to worry less about breaking stuff 👌.
MIUI Android is kind of cool
Since MIUI Global 10+ and EU’s GDPR legislation Xiaomi’s default apps don’t ask for weird permissions 😨 and network monitoring shows nothing fishy 🕵️ clearing my worries about using a Chinese ROM.
What is left is a pretty decent OS with Android Oreo 🍪 as a base, recent security updates, and a nice design. The single app grid, quick search, and left side widget screen make for a good experience 😍, it’s like a cross between stock Android 🤖 and Apple 🍎 devices. I grew to like the default apps too 👍.
Cloud
I try to sync as much stuff as possible with my Nextcloud 📡 server, so I use the DAV protocol to sync contacts, calendars and tasks, and a special notes client 📔 that can talk with it.
My apps
Standard
On my phone 📱 you will find a lot of social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, Peach 🍑, Mastalab, or Linkedin, a bunch of communication tools like Messenger Lite (because 🖕 Messenger), Telegram, Signal, Slack, media apps - Spotify, Twitch, Audible, YouTube, and others for shopping 🛒 or banking 💰, Google Maps 🧭, Jakdojade 🚌, Wavelo 🚲 and Uber 🚗 for moving around and an endless list of utility apps.
Winners
- Selfie editor: Snapseed
- Communicator: Telegram
- Music streaming: Spotify
- News source: Google News
- Car service: Uber
- Social bikes: Wavelo
- Browser: Firefox
- Password manager: LastPass
- Two factor authenticator: Google Authenticator
- Budget: Money Manager
- Cloud: Nextcloud
Developer
Outside of standard developer’s settings there is a bunch of tools 🔧 that I find very handy.
- Color Picker - lets you grab colors from camera feed
- Designer Tools - overlay mockups and grids over screen
- FastHub - best GitHub client I found
- Ping Tool - you never know when you gonna need it
Worthy mentions
Get Temp Mail 📧 if you want single use, throwaway, email address - it’s an amazing tool to kill spam. Google Trips 🌴 is awesome for planning 🎫 your next adventures ⛺️ and nobody I ask knows about it.
The weird ones
Replika 🥚 might blow your mind 🤯, it’s a really weird and super impressive chat bot 🤖 and Casual dieting 🐰 is a weight tracker that’s just soooo cuuuteee 😊.
Games
Stuff I’m currently playing 🎮.