Kogan Agora XI

Good phone for the price – It's a good unit but do not drop it. The phone performs very adequately and the camera is sufficient for most family snaps. I don't use my phone in place of a PC so it's basically a phone to make calls, send/receive messages and show people photos. Unfortunately I dropped it and smashed the glass screen. Phone still works fine through the spider… Read more

web of broken glass which is held in place by the 3rd party film screen protector that I stuck on earlier. BUT, there is not a repair shop that will touch the job of replacing the screen. They hear "Kogan" and the instant response is "can't do that job". They do not have replacement parts for Kogan phones. Kogan will fix the phone but it is cheaper to put their repair and postage price toward a replacement phone than to muck around with deliveries etc. I'll not buy another Kogan phone from Kogan/Dick Smith.

What the hell is this page, Kogan? – This thing told me to state accurate facts and be objective? Aren't reviews completely subjective to the writers opinion? What's the point of writing a review on a phone, and being completely honest, if we are given multiple guidelines to follow. The exempla for the review I was given (in a nutshell) is: “it's perfect”. Stupid. Don't get me… Read more

wrong, I love the phone, however, this entire review page, seems kind of obsolete, if we have to write 100 percent objective facts. That's not a review, that's more like a book report.

Edit: 2 years later and I re-read my review. Realised I barely spoke about the phone.

I absolutely love this phone. The Agora 11 (XI) ticks all the boxes for me. Not even as a budget phone. I would still be using it today if my whole family didn’t use apple. Customisation options, for everything: you can set a keyboard wallpaper. Meaning you can set a picture to be the background of your keyboard.

The software itself runs so smoothly. The interface is so simple. And it supports RCS, MMS and SMS messaging (depending on your carrier specifications ie. Telstra, Optus, etc.)

The battery on this phone is phenomenal. Using it all day connected to wifi, listening to music, and streaming videos, and by the end of the day, battery sat happily at around 20-30%. Battery only takes about an hour to charge 0-100%, with a cheap Kmart charger.

Also this phone was dropped countless times and had no impact on the screen or the performance of the phone.

This phone is 100% worth buying for anyone. Just, this website could use a bit of work.

:)

Nothing but trouble, never buying Kogan again – Camera is terrible very poor quality see https://youtu.be/bNcI4PR-FUQ for visual proof of this. So Many issues from the unable to move photo storage to sd card and it stopped taking photos completely deleted all photos then wouldn't allow access to anything Kogan was no help I had to research for myself Only way to continue to use was hard reset… Read more

so I also lost all downloads cosy me more money, even things like callander won't work unless you hand everything over to google, the clock alarm is the worst I've ever used, now it won't open playstore and apps won't open it just can't be trusted much like all the things I bought from Kogan are in the bin, I won't ever shop there again support is terrible to not at all.

Low price and low quality, – Not a good phone, first one was faulty out of the box with weak WiFi and odd issues with notifications not working. They replaced that but the replacement wasn't much better. Plagued with numerous minor issues, things like MMS not working despite ALL settings for the network being check and correct. Gave up on the phone, bought a Samsung and put this in the bottom draw as an emergency backup. Cannot recommend at all. Show details

Great Android Phone for the low price – Ordering and Delivery: I bought the new Kogan Agora XI Android Phone as an alternative to Samsung, I'd always bought the Galaxy series of phones previously but the last two had problems accessing mobile data even in strong 4G CBD zones.. Delivery of the Kogan phone was good, sent via Australia Post (not sure why I was prompted to opt for 'freight… Read more

insurance' when this would have been covered by Australia Post anyway, possibly another way of Kogan getting more money out of you, not sure..).

Setup: Was relatively simple, though the Android 9 menu and options are quite different from previous versions so it took longer to find things in that regard.

Performance: Screen seems good and clear, loses the brightness setting when you restart the phone however, strong connection to nearby WiFi modem and fast download speed when installing apps. Good response from the touchscreen and stable operating system.

Annoyances: The phone has a region at the top of the screen where a camera sits in the middle, which divides the top part of the screen into two areas (left & right), for some reason Kogan decided to make the time, date, and other data/icons at the top sit right up against the outer curves of the screen, which cuts a small bit off of them (very unaesthetic), when they could have simply aligned them in the middle of the two areas which would have looked much better..

The Android system on this phone is quite limited, I chose to install Nova Launcher Prime so that I could have a lot more control over how it looks and is set up and lots more features.

Another major annoyance is that the operating system is highly locked, even after unlocking developer mode and unlocking the bootloader, apps such as Automatic Call Recorder will simply not work as the operating system and 'Google Play Security' blocks them.

The 'Sim/Sim/MicroSD' tray is quite difficult, I went from a Galaxy S4 to this phone and my sim was a standard micro size, this phone only takes 'nano' sized sims, which meant a trip to an Optus store to get my sim changed over to a smaller one so that I could use the phone.

No ability to replace the battery so when the battery eventually starts dying the phone is essentially dead along with it, that's a very major flaw for this model and is what lets it down the most.

The back of the phone is very slippery and smooth with no indents or grips of any kind so the phone drops out of your hand VERY easily, I chose to opt for a soft plastic case also from Kogan a little later on which feels better and protects it more.

The lowest volume on the volume selector is still very loud with the only other option being completely muted.

Overall: I only paid $150 for this phone new so based on that it's a very good phone, and has worked well for the last few weeks I've had it,.. if I had of paid more for a phone it would have had to be a phone where I can change the battery when needed, as mentioned above that's the only major flaw which lets this model down.

CAUTION: Since I bought this phone I have received numerous spam and scam callers & messages, I'm using the exact same number I had previously and the exact same apps installed I had previously also, I believe there is spyware/trojanware preinstalled on this phone which is causing this issue.