Reviewing the Doogee Mix has been a rather different experience from what we're used to and unless you cross beyond a particular buyer's mental threshold, shopping for one will be as well.
The phone's flaws are pretty apparent, once you poke underneath the shiny PR exterior, so is its obvious Xiaomi Mi Mix-centric marketing ploy. If not that, we can always ridicule it on grounds of obscurity of the Doogee brand alone - easier still.
But is still has its own little market niche under the sun and a pretty vibrant and active one at that: Maze Alpha, UMIDigi Crystal, Bluboo S1, IDWell D10... these are all smartphones which you may not have heard of but they battle it out to win the heart of the budget-conscious and yet picky customer. Hence, it's only fair that the Doogee is judged compared to its peers. We have zero experience with those so we've done our best to review this phone as objectively as possible having in mind its sub-$200 device.
With that disclaimer out of the way, our objective conclusion is that the Doogee Mix presents a great value hardware-wise, but it's mostly let down by bad software.
It's a shame really. And since the aforementioned devices generally appear to offer only slight variations in specs, our best advise you to try and find real-world examples of how responsive they are in every day tasks.
If you would rather pick up something with more of an international face locally, there are a few options out there. Sticking to a budget of $200, it is definitely wise to hit up your carrier and see what subsidized deals it potentially has to offer.
As for the SIM-free market, the Xiaomi Redmi 4 throws in an octa-core Snapdragon 435 and a bigger battery on top of the Redmi 4a specs for just a few extra dollars. It is well worth, since that puts it a lot closer to Doogee Mix territory in terms of performance.
Xiaomi Redmi 4 (4X) • Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 • Meizu M5 Note • Huawei Y6II Compact
The wildly popular Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 also adds a few extra inches to the display and an amazingly efficient Snapdragon 625 chipset (in some versions), really closing the gap with the Doogee. The Meizu M5 Note and somewhat obscure, but still impressively good value Huawei Y6II Compact deserve a mention in this group as well.
If an AMOLED screen is a must, last year's Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016) is still a solid pick. If you do your shopping right and get the 14nm Exynos 7870 variant, you can expect near Doogee Mix performance with the added bonus of truly impressive battery endurance.
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