Also known as: In Search of a Handy 6.3 Inches, I Made These Phones Fight It Out.

In the end, the answer is simple: life is all about trade-offs.

Lost at Sea After Pulling the SIM: My Phone-Hopping History

As a loyal Smartisan user for nine and a half years—from the Smartisan T1 in 2014, to the M1, then the Nut R2, and even the TNT Go tablet—by 2023, when the R2 in my hand was getting increasingly sluggish, I found myself stuck for quite a while in a state of “pulling out the phone and looking around in confusion.” Every brand has its strengths, but without “One Step” and “Big Bang,” ¹any phone felt awkward and uncomfortable to me.

During that time, I briefly tried phones from Xiaomi, Huawei, and Samsung, but none of them really clicked with me. Later, on a friend’s recommendation, I decided to experience stock Android. Drawn by its much-praised camera capabilities, I bought a Pixel 7 Pro in May 2023. It was genuinely refreshing for quite a while: the telephoto really was long, video stabilization really was rock-solid, the haptic feedback really was satisfying, and the global search bar fixed at the bottom of the home screen really was convenient… And using a Pixel in China isn’t actually that hard—the main requirement is just a stable network environment.

I didn’t root the phone. Just to get my China Telecom SIM working properly, I followed a SSPAI article and used Shizuku and Pixel IMS to enable VoLTE. The process was very straightforward—following the steps for the first time took no more than 15 minutes. After that, it was just a matter of spending a couple of minutes re-enabling it after each reboot.

But the Pixel had one fatal flaw for me: it only supports a single physical SIM (you can add an eSIM, but I never really looked into it). Since I separate my call/SMS SIM and my data SIM, I still had to carry my old Nut R2 whenever I went out.

Then, at the beginning of 2024, tempted by the Apple Watch—and gifted one by my partner—I picked up an iPhone 12 on Xianyu and began a dual-device life: Android as my main phone, iOS as a secondary.

I did discover some apps on iOS that I couldn’t find truly satisfying alternatives for on Android, which gave me a bit of attachment to the iPhone. For example, the travel log app FootPrint (the free features are more than enough for me), the English reading app Mengge Reader (cheap and effective), and the calendar app Across (rich views and beautiful widgets). Some apps exist on both platforms, but while their iOS widgets are compact and elegant, their Android counterparts are just big, clunky blocks (I’m looking at you, Minimal Exchange Rate!).

The next issue that surfaced was weight.

The Pixel 7 Pro itself weighs 212 g. Not long after I started using it, I dropped it twice, denting the metal frame, and its protruding camera module also made me uneasy—so I put on the original 37 g case that came from the Xianyu seller. That pushed the total weight to around half a kilo, which was honestly exhausting to hold; my pinky finger was under increasing strain. I also tried switching fully to the iPhone 12 as my main device, but after just a few months, the frustration set in. Every time I opened the Subway WeChat mini program to order a sandwich, choosing bread and vegetables meant waiting ages for each option to load. And if I needed to reply to a WeChat message midway—since mini programs and chats don’t run as separate windowed processes on iOS—once I exited and went back in, I had to start the order all over again. In the end, I switched back to the Pixel as my main phone.

That remained the case until September this year, when Sanyang started looking into LCD-screen phones for eye-care reasons. From a few models she bought, I ended up using an iQOO Z8. At a second-hand price of just 880 yuan, with a Dimensity 8200 chip, dual SIM, and NFC, plus plenty of commendable touches in OriginOS, it felt like a great deal. I finally went from remembering to carry a Pixel, an iPhone, and an access card to work every day, to traveling light with just one Z8. No more using one phone as a hotspot for the other, no more constant switching between two devices. On trains and planes, the presence of the “Atomic Island” feature was genuinely convenient, and that sense of relief lasted for quite a while. Sure, opening heavyweight apps like Meituan still involved some lag, but at this price, what more could I complain about? Even though my eyes aren’t particularly sensitive, I could clearly feel the eye-friendly benefits of the LCD screen. It might struggle a bit under bright sunlight, but even if I lost track of time scrolling for a full hour, my eyes wouldn’t end up with that familiar soreness.

But—life always has a “but.” A month later, I finally realized that even using the phone bare, with the weight down to 200 g, the 6.7-inch size itself was simply too big for me.

What I needed wasn’t just lighter—it had to be smaller too.
And once again, I wanted to change phones.

The Final Showdown: A Three-Kingdom Battle Among 6.3-Inch Phones

At this point, my top priority was crystal clear: I wanted a 6.3-inch phone that wouldn’t be too heavy.

What else did I want? Strong camera performance, more eye-friendly screen tuning, a smooth and quiet system, dual SIM support, and a reasonable price. I don’t think these demands were all that outrageous—after all, I’d already given up on ever using “One Step” again.²

But the reality is that even in a market bursting with options, once you stack six separate “wants” together, there aren’t many “flowers” left to pick. Take eye care to the extreme and you’d be looking for an LCD screen—yet there are virtually no LCD phones on the market with genuinely strong camera systems (here’s hoping some manufacturer revisits this niche someday and gives us a better-specced LCD model).

So in the end, I looked through the flagship and upper-midrange 6.3-inch phones released over the past couple of years (there really weren’t many) and narrowed it down to three finalists:

1. iPhone 17 / 17 Pro: Everyone says the iPhone 17 lineup brings noticeable upgrades, so I figured I’d take a look. The newly added display pulse smoothing is theoretically easier on the eyes, and features like ProRAW and axis-based color grading sounded fun to play with.
2. Pixel 9 Pro: After reading Clyde’s article, I was surprised to find that the 9 Pro had returned to a 6.3-inch size. With a second-hand price of around 3,400 RMB for the 256 GB version, it immediately entered my shortlist.
3. vivo X200 Pro mini: The OPPO and vivo offerings are fairly similar. I also looked into the Find X9s, but ruled it out early due to weaker video performance. I also owe Clyde a thanks here—after I asked him about his experience with the first two phones, he mailed me an X200 Pro mini to try out for a few weeks.

In the end, the choice came down to elimination.

• iPhone 17 / 17 Pro: I honestly didn’t like the new Liquid Glass effect. Even in toned-down color modes, it still stood out too much. Paying over 5,000 RMB for the standard model or over 7,000 RMB for the Pro, only to likely dislike the visual style for years to come, just felt too expensive.
• Pixel 9 Pro: The lack of true dual physical SIMs was still a deal-breaker, and its eye-care credentials were hard to pin down.

And so, the vivo X200 Pro mini survived the final round. As for my six “wants,” here’s what it managed to deliver:

• Size: At 187 g, the weight is quite manageable. I’ve seen complaints about the large circular camera module digging into fingers, but I actually rest my index finger there intentionally, changing my grip so the phone is “half-hung, half-resting” in my hand. That way, my pinky no longer has to support it from the bottom—an unexpected relief.
• Camera: Both the wide and telephoto cameras are strong performers, and the street photography and style modes are genuinely fun to experiment with.
• Eye care: In the Eye Comfort mode, there are options like anti-fatigue brightness adjustment, adaptive ambient color temperature, and full high-frequency dimming. I turned everything on without hesitation. It can’t quite match an LCD, but compared with my iPhone 12 and the Pixel 7 Pro, the viewing experience is noticeably gentler.

• System: Google Play can be downloaded directly from the built-in app store. There may still be occasional app issues overseas, but for daily use it’s more than sufficient.
• Dual SIM: Since I’ll be heading to Australia, and Australian carriers use a VoLTE whitelist system, I checked that the X200 Pro mini supports it. For Huawei and Xiaomi, the information I found was all over the place, and I also came across reports that MIUI cuts off FCM in lock screen, affecting push notifications for apps like Gmail and WhatsApp—so both brands were knocked out of this fight early.
• Price: A 512 GB unit goes for under 3,000 RMB on the second-hand market, which is frankly a great deal.

Post-Match Wrap-Up: Letting Go of the Better, Fuller Moon

I see myself as a perfectly ordinary user—just a tiny bit picky.

I say “picky” because I stubbornly stuck with Smartisan phones for so many years. Even when, hardware-wise, they lagged behind other phones at the same price, I was still willing to pay a premium for the system and the design. It’d be hard to say there wasn’t at least a little pickiness involved. But I also say “ordinary” because I’m not that keen on tinkering. When I used a Pixel, I never bothered rooting it just to unlock NFC. I don’t play games or chase high refresh rates, and I have zero research interest in system interaction logic—you can tell because I barely mentioned any of that throughout this piece. All I want, in a very plain way, is a kind of “comfortable enough” that I can’t even fully articulate.

So when it comes to the oft-repeated mantra “buy new, not old” for electronics, I simply don’t buy into it.

Especially with phones. After all these years, even if manufacturers are accused of squeezing out upgrades bit by bit, there’s still at least some improvement every year. But is the experience gap between two adjacent generations really that big? The reason the finalists didn’t include the latest Pixel 10 Pro or vivo X300 is simply that I didn’t think the incremental upgrades justified the current price difference. I’m also perfectly happy buying from the second-hand market—if I end up hopping again later, I won’t lose much on resale.

When we watch reviews, we’re constantly shown all kinds of flashy new features, and it’s easy to imagine them unlocking endless possibilities. But in reality, only a handful ever make it into our actual daily habits. Take the “floating ball” as an example. When I first saw it in the settings, I enthusiastically set up a whole suite of shortcuts for double-tap, long-press, swipe left, swipe up, swipe down. In practice, though, aside from popping up uninvited to get in my way, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve actively used it—and I still haven’t even memorized the shortcuts I assigned.

Zooming out a bit further, I no longer hold the naïve belief that buying a new gadget will magically create habits that never existed in the first place. Before getting an Apple Watch, I imagined I’d be motivated by those visual activity rings to exercise more. The reality is that I’m still struggling every month just to fill ten rings and earn Grow’s badge. The functions I actually use the most are checking my walking distance while traveling, monitoring my heart rate zones and route deviation when hiking, or using it as a convenient replacement for a kitchen timer when I’m cooking.

New tools can’t take you “from zero to one.” At best, they help you go “from one to two.”

So now my attitude toward electronics—including phones—is extremely pragmatic: I don’t chase perfection. As long as they avoid my personal “deal-breakers” and offer a few genuinely pleasant “bonus points” in certain areas, that’s enough.

If you ask whether the vivo X200 Pro mini truly surprised me, the answer is no. It’s simply the phone that survived the process of elimination. I still have my complaints. Take the global search function I use all the time: on a Pixel, it’s clean, fast, and fluid. On OriginOS, it took me quite a while to figure out that you can set it to “show the keyboard by default upon entering the home screen.” Before that, every time I pulled down and then had to tap the search box again to bring up the keyboard, I’d be silently grumbling to myself. And even after turning off recommended cards and trending searches, the page still feels noisy—rows of Baidu search, Douyin search, and Bilibili search just sitting there.

That said, it does have a few small touches I find genuinely interesting. For example, after long-pressing the bottom gesture bar to summon Blue Heart Little V, there’s an option called “Add to Favorites.” It analyzes and summarizes the entire webpage you’re currently viewing. Sometimes the summary isn’t quite right, but it’s still an approachable and usable feature. So far, I’ve only collected things sporadically and haven’t had the chance to go back and dig them up again. That said, I do still really want to experience how far Pixel’s system-level AI interactions can evolve with Gemini’s backing. In comparison, Blue Heart Little V feels usable in certain scenarios, but far from impressive—so on that front, there’s still some regret.

For me, the most genuinely delightful “bonus point” of the vivo X200 Pro mini is still its camera.

I do own a Sony RX100 II, but aside from trips where I bring it intentionally, my phone remains my primary camera day to day. With the X200 Pro mini, you can just pull it out and snap a shot, and it’ll usually look pretty good. It does have its own tonal preferences due to tuning—unlike the Pixel, which strives more for faithful color reproduction—but it delivers that immediate, intuitive satisfaction of “hey, this actually looks like something.” Whether it’s handling extreme backlighting, or automatically detecting food and popping up a 2.2× food mode, I’ve been quite pleased. Even in less-than-ideal lighting, it can beautify things just a bit, which makes me willing to spend an extra twenty seconds before every meal arranging bowls and plates before pressing the shutter.

Last weekend, I went to see a Les Misérables concert. Thanks to the 50-megapixel periscope telephoto, even with nothing more than mindless tapping of the shutter button, I got atmosphere-rich shots from the very last row of the second floor in stage mode.

In that moment, I suddenly felt that this was enough.

I gave up on the pursuit of a pristine system, gave up on the “better, fuller moon,” and instead, at a reasonable price, avoided some obvious inconveniences in exchange for something that’s everyday, effortless, and readily at hand—an easygoing kind of “enough.”

That’s my current answer.

Finally, here are a few original, unedited snapshots taken casually with the vivo X200 Pro mini, for reference.

1. At least in the 23-year market, there’s arguably no alternative. ↩︎
2. It’s almost 2026! While every company has its own split-screen floating window solution, why hasn’t anyone tried to copy OnePlus’s incredibly sleek 1+3 effect? ↩︎