[Device Reviews and Information] alpine101:
Raw camera app etc

Despite the touch screen fault, which prevents entry of keyboard characters in one area, I've persevered with this M3, principally because of its 20Mpixel Sony camera. It was only 127Euros!. I've got a replacement screen on order from an Aliexpress seller and will gamble on replacing it.

I've replaced the launcher with my usual Apex, and installed Hololocker so I can have my own lock screen image. Once hololocker has been swiped, the phone presents its fingerprint lock screen, which you can also change. Fingerprint detection seems to work OK for me. The phone came with M3_A_20161110 Android 6.

I've now installed TWRP using the Android 6 version that someone has kindly put up in the M3 section of needrom.com. That's working well. I also installed the current SuperSUPro.zip from Chainfire's site using TWRP. The phone is now rooted so I can freeze apps via Titanium backup. Malwarebytes found 3 infected pre-installed apps which it could not remove, so I've frozen those.

As is traditional with MTK chipsets, the battery life was pretty poor. I've installed the Arm64 Xposed and am running Amplify, Powernap and Greenify. I had Powernap set with its Endurance mode on, but that seemed to be too vigorous, so I've switched it off. I think battery life is improved for the kind of use I make for my phones but it's too early to see if its fully tuned...

I also run No Root Firewall to keep an eye on what's going on.

I was surprised to find that the camera app that came on the phone has a RAW mode as well as JPG. The . DNG files are 40.97Mbytes! Adobe Photoshop Express for Android understands these and allows tweaking, the only thing I don't like about it is you can't switch the camera's very loud click off. I've also tried my usual camera apps, Open Camera and Camera Fv-5, but it doesn't seem to get along too well with these.

I got one of the cheap flip cases with the Big Round Window in the front and was amused to find that when you close it, until the screen times out, it presents a round analogue clock image fitting the hole. Flip cases are clumsy, so I've cut the front part off mine now.

The phone is supposed to be able to use Band 20 LTE, but I have no way of checking this. A couple of years ago, I bought an Elephone S2 and that has a very neat Sim/SD tray which can actually fit 2 sims and the micro sd simultaneously, though people didn't seem to realise this in the reviews. Unfortunately on the M3 they've gone back to the more normal twin tray where you can only use one of the holes for either a microsd or a sim.. Reception strengths for me are the same as my Redmi 3S and Moto G3.

I was pleased to find the GPS seems to work better than on my older MTK based phones. Lock is adequate in this area.

It came with the play store, and voice recognition in my quiet setting works OK though as others have said, the gain seems a bit low so YOU NEED TO SPEAK LOUDLY.

EDIT: Well, it worked OK for a day, including texts etc. But this morning, while the rest of the phone is OK, neither network on the installed sims will connect or be seen. Zero signal strength. Tried restoring from a good TWRP backup, it still doesn't go.... SIms OK in another phone. Has something died in the hardware...

Further EDIT:

Well, since a phone isn't much good without a connection, and the screen needs replacement, I decided to take the back off. While you need plastic picks to help remove the top and bottom plastic parts. the main aluminium back is held with 4 screws at the top and 2 at the bottom. Plastic picks are also needed down the sides since some glue has been applied to the edges of the casting. The battery disconnects via a connector and is also held by double sided sticky. I was going to carry on with the stripping in preparation for the arrival of the screen I've ordered. But I thought I'd just check if the hard reset caused by the removal of the battery connector had had any effect on the phone firmware. And lo and behold, the phone signal was back again...