Let's give it a try - Weekly discussion thread - discuss whatever you want about Android!

102 comments

I'm frustrated with the lack of sdcard options in upper midrange smartphones.
If you get a midrange smartphone you either compromise on processor, ram, storage or a combination of other.
I want a good quality smartphone which has 45w of minimum fast charging, UFS 3.1 256GB of minimum. 12GB ram, snapdragon 7+gen 2, or dimensity 8300 at minimum. And provides an sdcard option.
Is it that hard for brands to do that?
Nothing phone 2 and 2a would've been decent. If they had an sdcard option. Alas, they skipped it for some reason..
- Nothing skipped on the SD card for no reason. Their cheaper CMF Phone ships with SD card support, though still not with a 3.5mm jack.
  
  still not with a 3.5mm jack.
  Damn
- Hello,
  Could you please maybe pin this thread to keep it visible for the rest of the week?
  
  Sure, done
- Sony Xperia 5V
  
  Sony does not sell smartphones in my region.
- My moto g84 has most of that I think. The only things that let it down are the mediocre camera and the speaker volume that jumps from just a little too quiet to rather loud. For $AU300 I'm quite happy.

I hate Xiaomi's bloatware so much
- I only buy Xiaomi phones because the bootloader is unlockable. The stock UI is eh.
  
  Good point indeed
- I have a Realme phone and it came with so much bloatware that I can't tell. Dozens and dozens of purely unwanted apps that I had to disable almost all of them to get a decent experience.
  
  Have you tried the Universal Android Debloater?
- Debloat with adb or shizuku?
  
  I thought about it but I have Android 10 , from what I understand, I'll have to redo it periodically... I also don't own a computer so far
- It's really getting in the way. I got a Xiaomi's as a backup phone recently because on paper the specs were good. Well, the phone is fast, but the UI...
  I got a Motorola next, probably going to resell the Xiaomi once I'm done migrating
  
  HyperOS?
  My phone runs MIUI 11 and I honestly found it very good , I had more problems with MIUI Battery optimization though , and battery draining to some extent
  It's probably the first and the last Xiaomi phone I'll ever buy though
- Is your device supported by DivestOS? https://divestos.org/pages/devices
  
  No It support Redmi Note 7 , I have Redmi 7
- Have you tried running xiaomi.eu ROMs?
  
  No , honestly I'm not thinking to install any MIUI related ROM even if it's better than the stock , because I want to try something new and different

Why don't 3rd launchers not support native gestures yet? Why does Google refuse to fix that?
- Because google like all things google does not bother. I mean why would they if things are going just as well. Not like you and I are going to switch to a rival OS without google services.
  
  And now with the US antitrust ruling against Google, they are sure to ignore more of these small things.
- I have a similar question, how is that 3rd party launchers users do not know or not care about this?
  I genuinely envy them lol.
  
  I'm not sure why other Android OEMs are unable to fix this issue.
  
  I'm one such user. I notice the less smooth animations and the lack of App opening animations with them daily.
  The reason I still use Smart Launcher is because of its amazing auto app categories, and smart search which is unrivaled by the system launcher.
  Not to mention the aesthetics and blurred widgets.
- Native gestures as in the gesture navigation system on Android?
  
  yes, they are buggy when using 3rd party launchers.

Is it me or is the Pixel 9 hype very low? I feel like nobody is expecting much from it
- Well, of course, google leaks everything months before so nobody cares now. Plus the google io was a big fiasco talking 2 hours about AI, completed skipped android 15 which is a pretty incremental release. As a result, everyone expects the same from this event too. Meaningless ai everywhere
  
  Thank you for your comment, didn't even follow the Google IO
- What's the hype going to be about? All phones are just black rectangular prisms now. The camera will be a little better, the battery life a little better, the processor slightly faster... But there's no huge leap in functionality and form factors aren't taking risks any more.
  It's previous phone release + .1
- I don't think I've seen any hype for any new phone releases for a while. And that's OK, the technology has matured a lot so there isn't that much to get hyped about anymore. The foldable phones are pretty cool, hoping that they become affordable in the next decade!
  
  I haven't seen a foldable phone that doesn't have an ugly crease in the screen after a while.
- No big features. Satellite emergency is nice, but that's it. Everything else is just a slow iteration on the last version. So it's fine, but nobody will upgrade early for it.
- Same old slow chipset, ugly design (personally), software locked features rather than hardware limits
- For myself, I have an 8Pro, so I'm in general not all that interested until at least the 10 and then knowing it would just be a one-upsmanship of AI bullshit really made me not pay attention to its release at all :-\

I don't update apps until they break. Never know when an update is going to enshittify an app. (Fing, etc.)
- I always update my apps. If an app gets shitty, I change the app cause the problem is not on the app, it's on the owners philosophy and this is what I wanna get rid of.
- I don't use most of Google apps and stock's bloatware , so I don't update it too For other apps , it depends on the update itself , if it brings good new things and bug fixes I update , otherwise I mostly ignore until the next update
- This is a valid recommendation (might not apply to all apps, such as bank or password apps) also because bugs can happen... But man I just hate seeing I have pending updates haha.
- Anyone have a Fing replacement from the likes of fdroid/neostore or otherwise that says fuck you to the new "requirement" that Fing is claiming hampered their app?
  
  I'm using Fing 10.3.0 - a version before it was enshittified. Not sure where I got the apk from.
- You should. I always keep mine updated.
- Unless it's some really obscure app it should be on APK mirror or a similar site, no?
  That way you can update your stuff (generally a good idea if it connects to a network) and if something is ruined you can downgrade back to an older APK pretty easily

Why none of chat apps have 1080p video call? Is it a Android issue to implement or battery concern?
- Good question, I have it too
- Google meet has but for some reason only between Samsung and pixel. I think. Maybe signal has too?
  
  Yes. It's a exclusive feature for Samsung and Pixel. Then why pre-installed on all phones.

For a short period of time, I thought about buying a Google Pixel phone to run Graphene OS on it , Google Pixel isn't available in the local market, so I'll have to buy it from abroad, and this comes with risks : not being able to benefit from the phone’s warranty , the extremely high costs of shipping the phone into the country, and the extremely high costs of making the device work on the local network legally As much as I would like to try Graphene OS, such risks are too crazy to take so I changed my mind or at least stopped thinking about it temporarily... who knows, maybe some local company will bring the brand to the local market one day due to competition with other local companies. The same competition introduced phones to the market that weren't previously there: Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Infinix, Tecno, etc.
- This risk seems high indeed, I wouldn't do it either
- Plus the Pixels with the Tensor chip suck. You pay a flagship price but the processor cannot even compete with 5 year old chips.
  
  That alone is actually an enough reason for me not to buy it if I knew that , I care a lot about device performance

I have an old asus zenfone 2 with the x86 processor. Has anyone tried turning it into a small server? It runs some whatever old android at this point, and I figure it could still run a thing or two.
- Running a server out of a phone would probably shorten the remaining lifespan

Swipe down to search (iPhone's spotlight)
- IMHO, Pixel Launcher (and Lawnchair and Kvaesitso) handle this pretty well with the app drawer... Basically just please automatically display the keyboard with one pull... Having to do another tap feels so.... Primitive.
  
  Spotlight supports contact search and more.
- My Pixel has a search bar at the bottom of my home screen that lets me search the web or for shit on my phone, so for me it's just tap 'n' go
  And it's a widget that works on my 3rd party launcher!

I really wish I had the option to completely disable the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi radio since there are so many networks and it clutters up the list when I'm looking at it. If I could just turn it off and do five gigahertz only, my network's list would shrink a lot and that would be a lot more helpful.
- How often do you look at the wifi list? It would be more useful if we could lock one SSID to one specific band (2.4/5/6 GHz). This could help for devices that frequently switch between bands
  
  Just name network-2.4, network-5 and network-6 if you want band locking.
- Or 5ghz if it is unstable for example. Maybe disable is hard but avoid would be nice
- It's a hack, but if your phone has dual band radios you can turn your hotspot on for one band, which will force your wifi client to only use the other band to look at networks.

To me , firefox and its android forks have nothing to offer other than ublock and extensions support in general, but only a few of these extensions are reviewed by Mozilla so if I needed another extension that is essential to my browsing but it's not reviewed... I'll have to ignore the voice in my mind that asks me " Are you sure the extension you installed can't see your password while you're typing it ? " ... But I'll give it another opportunity and try waterfox again

I love sideloading modded versions of apps with all paid features unlocked
- There's no payment methods or options in where I live , so I relied for a long time on modded apps , until I got to know FOSS softwares which mostly have free good alternatives , since that time, my reliance on modified programs has become almost non-existent
  
  I like modded apps
- Any recommendable and trustworthy sources for modded APKs? Installing modded apps from unknown sources always feels a bit sketchy...
  
  For android native apps (Java/kotlin) you can learn to mod the easy ones (that are not completely obfuscated) yourself. I do this with apktool_m.
  
  I'm guessing if I say one I'll get banned from here so idk if I'm allowed to say

I really don't know why big companies like Google are terrified to make options.
You made the quick settings show only 4 options immediately. Your research might show that 70% of people prefer it that why. Instead of leaving the 30% in the dust, why not just make it an option in settings? Or even have custom layouts?
Why not add more lock screen options? Why not add options for the navigation pill? Why not make "at a glance" an option?
Even iOS is catching up in terms of customization and at this point I'd say it's surpassed Android. I still prefer Android for many other reasons, but it has lost one of its main qualities.

MaterialYou apps are so nice looking but every time I use one of them it frustrate me so much when scrolling because scrolling is too slow compared to other apps

102 comments