kirk781

joined 2 years ago
[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Nothing's original phones and it's sub brand CMF was not focused on US market at all and could only be bought via developer programmer there. It was more geared towards India and the prices matched the specifications there.

IIRC, Nothing's original phones were made in southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu and it's previous top tier phone was less than half this price here in India. But with this one, they jumped the gun and made a harrowing decision.

They still have a good array of products in form of Cmf phones (I was close to buying one until I saw it lacked a 3.5mm jack) and earbuds for lower end of the market but they really are being over optimistic here.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 2 weeks ago

Google is pushing towards WFF (Watch Face Format) styles. The new Wear OS 5 watches, IIRC, (not the upgraded ones) didn't even support Facer or Watchmaker initially.

The Watch faces published on Play Store, majority of them, are now in WFF format which translates to improved battery life as well.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

How did your 4a perform after it got the battery maintenance update? I remember folks saying the battery life went down to only couple of hours of continuous usage and even charging speeds were finicky.

Edit: I read in another comment by you that you had a 6a as well. That is still under official software support right? Is it even usable after update?

 

After 4a and 6a, now is the time for 7a to shine!

Though, is it still in early beta and apparently very few models seem to be affected and there isn't any word of system update to nuke the battery life on this model. But it goes to show that Google is treating the A series really badly.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Well, according to Google, you could be. Link

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 3 weeks ago

I am almost sure he meant it as just kidding as well but I couldn't oversee Vim in an emacs post :p

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Is jk a subtle reference to Vim navigation!!

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 weeks ago

I remember using Cent OS (dual booting it alongside Debian) multiple years back. I think it had more or less feature parity with RHEL then and meant for personal use case unlike RHEL.

Too bad it was discontinued. I think the closest fork of it is Rocky Linux.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 month ago

Not necessarily. Pixel phones are still very good at photography and crucially, will get 7 years of software upgrades. I would be surprised if this phone hits anywhere close. 165Hz IMO is overkill (heck, many argue 144 Hz on Motorola models is high enough as well).

That being said, the 80 W fast charging does blow away the Pixel (but then many entry level phones as well. The Pixel Pro has 27 W still right?) and raw benchmarks would be higher as well.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Tokyo to Osaka services don't go upto 500 kph. IIRC, the maximum operating speed for that section is 320 kph. Whilst in testing, Maglev trains have breached 500 ( and even 600 kph) barrier, commercially they don't run as of now. (I don't think apart from Shanghai, Maglev runs anywhere and even that topped off at 431 kph).

Traditional bullet trains in Japan exhibited record speeds of ~450 kph in the past but of course, operationally, they aren't run that high.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Huh, that shouldn't happen. Whilst Samsung gatekeep certain features for its models only (like ECG for instance though one can bypass it by sideloading the SHM Monitor app from XDA), basic features do work fine with most models. I have a non Samsung device as well.

The watch getting too hot is a problem. I have seen it slowing down it's charging speed (if not outright refusing to charge) in summers here.

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 month ago

Yes, Garmin is quite good. I only use my Galaxy Watch for basic health and sleep tracking (I know they are paywalling some stuff, but stuff like sleep or heart rate is bare minimum thing) and the odd music streaming.

Garmin definitely would give better milege in that case.

25
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de to c/android@lemmy.world
 

This is a relatively old review when the TicWatch was new. This watch easily outperforms the Galaxy Ultra and even Oneplus 2R and musters in 4/5 days of battery life (looks sadly at my GW 6).

Some did report its app being not as good as S Health or Google's implementation. However it's main Achilles heel is the update problem. Pixel Watches, IIRC, get 3 years and Galaxy Watches get 4 years ; but TicWatches are lucky to get one major Wear OS upgrade and that too, delayed. Which is a Shame because the hardware here easily equals last gen Galaxy/Pixel Watches and in terms of battery life, will stand for many years to come.

In my country, Wear OS forms a tiny share of the market and Samsung has the biggest pie of it (it doesn't help that watches aren't considered for trade in here, so if and when I do upgrade to a new watch, my current watch becomes e waste and I pay full price). I did consider the TicWatch but seeing it's relatively poor software support went with Samsung. However, damn if I said that I love Samsung's battery life or charging implementation. The WPC mechanism wastes so much heat and throttles itself to heck in hot temperatures.

 

Title will translate to Job and reflects the unemployment crisis pervading newly independent India.

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Lock screen and ads (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de to c/android@lemmy.world
 

This link about Glance made me think about this.

Majority of folks here might not be aware of this company. Their software usually ships on low end phones mainly in the Indian/South Asian market. They do seemed to have pivoted to the US as well but I am not sure if overseas models also see this scourge. As of right now, if one's phone has this, they will basically see a new glorified wallpaper with news/text each time they unlock their phone. And if you read the article, they wish to go even furthur. It can technically be switched off though often it's buried deeper than Dante' s last layer of hell.

Do overseas(read:other Asian markets/European/American and so on) also have any local equivalent to this scourge from my country? Are ads plastered on lock screens on entry level phones common anywhere else in the Android world?

 

This is an old article I stumbled upon when browsing archives of this site. But it's quite in depth and covers the history of this somewhat politically charged topic.

 

Filled with some images as well, I wasn't expecting Verge to do a deep dive on Vietnam of all things

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submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de to c/android@lemmy.world
 

This is a regional release from the brand apparently for Nigerian market only which explains the fact that despite having decent specs( things like 90W charging, 8 GB RAM and 144 Hz high PWM dimming display), it is a 4G phone only.

Though it is gimmicky in some respects. It has a SpO2 sensor apparently built into the back but skips out on basic things like micro SD or 3.5 mm jack (but hey, they do give free USB C headphones; now I can switch from Sennheiser's IE 600 to an upgraded variant :p).

 

It is a half baked review, IMO. The author says that despite having 45 W charging, the phone takes 75 mins to charge. Samsung really slows down it's charging speeds post 80%, so testing from 0 to 100 is not a good criterion at all.

Plus, he forgets to mention that Samsung skips on a microSD card for A56 which was present on A55. Though in Samsung's favor, they are offering 6 OS upgrades and I doubt any other OEM except Google matches it.

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