Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite

July 2018, I had never heard of xiaomi. And I can still barely spell it.
I was using phone arena to spec out my new phone to upgrade my S5.
I needed IR Blaster, SD card slot, replaceable battery, sub $200 price and wanted a larger screen and better specs than the S5. I was willing to give up some on screen quality.
Replaceable battery fell by the wayside pretty early as they are, sadly, almost extinct. But I still wanted ample battery life to go longer than 24hrs on a charge.
I liked the big screen on the redmi pro, but the smaller battery (and I think no IR blaster made that a no-go.)
Eventually, I settled on the Redmi Lite and have never regretted it. Since the phone had just been introduced I had to order the Euro version from ebay which was easy to do.
The screen is great. It's not really larger than the S5 once you subtract the notched area, but it's usually adequate.
The cameras are Not as good as the S5 but still very good. The color and brightness of the screen is great, tho the contrast was slightly better on the S5.
But all of those have been acceptable tradeoffs.
My GF inherited my old S5 and occasionally in some fringe areas, she will have enough signal to use her phone on the Cricket network when I cannot. But that's kind of splitting hairs as well.
The memory and specs of the xiaomi were significant improvements over the S5 and I have enjoyed the extra power.
I have dropped the phone a few times and it still doesn't have any problems. It has gotten splashed with water and been trapped in the pocket of jeans soaked with sweat and no problems. So I'm impressed with build quality. I would never buy another LG for those reasons alone.
The carrier also upgraded the OS from Android 8 to 9 over the network, which I suppose is a bonus. Although it doesn't look like we're getting the upgrade to 10 at this point. The only plus I see of having the upgrade is that your apps maintain support. Usually they fix some things and break other things, so an upgrade is overrated from that perspective. But, some of the newer apps, I could no longer load on the S5.
The battery still holds a charge for 24hrs even after 18mos.
I have never regretted this purchase and highly recommend this phone.