Google Android catch-all

Yeah love wyze for baby monitor. That would be a fun use of my old phone.

If I end up with a bunch of old tablets over the years I'd like to set one up in every room for various uses related to that room.

After a month of using the Asus ROG Phone 2 I've gotten in a good battery rhythm. I was charging every day and a half from almost zero to 100. Now what I do is put it on charge in the morning when I am getting ready and that gives me more than enough battery to get through the day. This morning I unplugged at 85% and I am about to head home and I'm at 47%. Today has been a typical use case. All day podcasting, Bluetooth always on, some YouTube, and a bit of low stress gaming.

At this point my only real complaint with this phone is that the camera is just bad. Like...bad. 2014 phone camera bad. That's not a deal breaker for me because I never take pictures, but it is saying a lot when I think the camera is bad.

Does it run the standard Android camera app?

No I think it uses a proprietary app.

Try to get the stock Android camera app. Half of the quality on the pixel phones is software. Maybe it will help.

I just thought I'd pass along that my opinion has only strengthened with time: if you're not buying phones as a status symbol, if you don't buy The Very Best Chipset, no matter how little that actually gives you, the Pixel 3a is a remarkably good phone. It's reasonably priced, snappy as heck, has an excellent screen, and offers a superb camera. Its battery life is good and it charges very rapidly. And it has a damn headphone jack, which I use all the time and am very upset about losing in most flagship devices. (the headphone jack was probably the single biggest reason I settled on the 3a.)

It's probably not the best pick for gaming, but for almost anything else, it's an exceptional product that's priced reasonably. It's easy to buy unlocked and works pretty much anywhere in the world.

I see an awful lot of people on dev forums obsessing over the latest and greatest chipsets, but that just seems silly to me. You don't actually get anything from those chipsets, really, at least not that I can see.

The only real problem I see with the 3a is that they're having trouble getting LineageOS working correctly with it; the new Android 10 is apparently a lot less open in its design, and things are getting challenging on that front. If you'd like extended support for your phone, past when Google decides to drop it, there may be better options.

Of course, by the time they do drop it, hopefully the Lineage team will have figured it out. It's really sweet hardware, and it would be a shame to throw it away in three years.

Yeah, I really considered the Pixel 3a and probably would have gone with the 3a xl if the service provider I went with had carried it but I ended up getting a Galaxy A70 and I'm pretty happy with it.

More storage, thinner top & bottom bezels, the big screen and the microSD card slot won me over. The camera's not as good and the software updates won't be as timely but it does what I need.

I never really considered a high end phone; cell service is expensive enough in Canada as it is.

My only big complaint is it's too wide for me to comfortably use one handed but I have small hands.

I'm having a weird issue since updating to Android 10 on my Galaxy S10. If I pause the Pocket Casts app via a bluetooth connected device then resume over the same device it will start another app that I was playing previously. e.g. audiobook app. Any ideas?

EvilDead wrote:

I'm having a weird issue since updating to Android 10 on my Galaxy S10. If I pause the Pocket Casts app via a bluetooth connected device then resume over the same device it will start another app that I was playing previously. e.g. audiobook app. Any ideas?

Maybe try unpairing and re-pairing the BT device, if you didn't do that since installing 10?

It happens on all my bluetooth devices. I don't think it's the device but more likely it has something to do with the way Android controlling "resume audio" priority from the system level. If I kill all other audio apps it works normally.

Edit: After doing some more investigating it looks like Smart Audiobook player takes priority over every app. Now I'm just baffled.

Edit: Holy crap. Re-installing SAB player fixed the issue. Updating to android 10 must have corrupted the permissions or something.

EvilDead wrote:

It happens on all my bluetooth devices. I don't think it's the device but more likely it has something to do with the way Android controlling "resume audio" priority from the system level. If I kill all other audio apps it works normally.

Edit: After doing some more investigating it looks like Smart Audiobook player takes priority over every app. Now I'm just baffled.

Edit: Holy crap. Re-installing SAB player fixed the issue. Updating to android 10 must have corrupted the permissions or something.

I think I had a similar issue with a previous update.

Also, my Note10 no longer supports Parallel Spaces, anyone know of a similar app that is currently supported on Android 10? I've email the developer with no success.

Hobbes2099 wrote:

Also, my Note10 no longer supports Parallel Spaces, anyone know of a similar app that is currently supported on Android 10? I've email the developer with no success.

Samsung devices have Samsung Knox which does the same thing, no? Otherwise, give Island a shot:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...

Anyone use Greenify? If so how you like it?

Greenify saves you battery life by effectively and systematically pushing apps into a sort of “hibernation” mode—an idle state that keeps them from running in the background and draining your battery.

“But that sounds like a task killer,” you may say, and “you told us not to use task killers!” That’s true, but Greenify is a little different. Not only will it stop an app from running, using Android’s built-in “Force Stop” mechanism, but it will also prevent that app from starting up again until you start it. It isn’t a blanket feature, either—instead of just closing everything, you must first pick and choose the apps that you’d like to hibernate. So contrary to the traditional “close everything” concept, you choose the list of apps you’d like to close, and everything else stays running as it always has.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Anyone use Greenify? If so how you like it?

Greenify saves you battery life by effectively and systematically pushing apps into a sort of “hibernation” mode—an idle state that keeps them from running in the background and draining your battery.

“But that sounds like a task killer,” you may say, and “you told us not to use task killers!” That’s true, but Greenify is a little different. Not only will it stop an app from running, using Android’s built-in “Force Stop” mechanism, but it will also prevent that app from starting up again until you start it. It isn’t a blanket feature, either—instead of just closing everything, you must first pick and choose the apps that you’d like to hibernate. So contrary to the traditional “close everything” concept, you choose the list of apps you’d like to close, and everything else stays running as it always has.

I used it waaaay back when I had an HTC phone. Samsung uses the same mechanism (built in to their flavor of Android). I use it sparingly to tame certain apps which have no good reason to be active all the time - or when I don't need notifications from them on my phone.

So Samsung is having a deal where I can get $600 trade in credit for my S10 towards an S20. Would take the cost down to $400. Pretty good discount.

Samsung, however, has not been helpful with Verizon compatibility explanations. I'm aware that an unlocked S20 won't work with Verizon's 5G network. What I can't tell is if an unlocked S20 will work as good as my S10 on Verizon.

EvilDead wrote:

So Samsung is having a deal where I can get $600 trade in credit for my S10 towards an S20. Would take the cost down to $400. Pretty good discount.

Samsung, however, has not been helpful with Verizon compatibility explanations. I'm aware that an unlocked S20 won't work with Verizon's 5G network. What I can't tell is if an unlocked S20 will work as good as my S10 on Verizon.

It's been a while since I looked at mobile tech, so I had to brush up. Looking at the specs for the S20, it looks like it doesn't support the mmWave band, which is the only one Verizon is using for their 5G. It's the fastest, but shortest range and the most susceptible to interference. Phones will fall back to LTE, and the S20 lists all the 4G LTE bands Verizon uses.

I went by the following:
https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s20-10081.php

and

https://www.signalbooster.com/pages/what-is-4g-lte-frequency-band-of-verizon-at-t-t-mobile-sprint

If there are any variations on the S20, you may want to look up the exact model and double-check.

deftly wrote:
EvilDead wrote:

So Samsung is having a deal where I can get $600 trade in credit for my S10 towards an S20. Would take the cost down to $400. Pretty good discount.

Samsung, however, has not been helpful with Verizon compatibility explanations. I'm aware that an unlocked S20 won't work with Verizon's 5G network. What I can't tell is if an unlocked S20 will work as good as my S10 on Verizon.

It's been a while since I looked at mobile tech, so I had to brush up. Looking at the specs for the S20, it looks like it doesn't support the mmWave band, which is the only one Verizon is using for their 5G. It's the fastest, but shortest range and the most susceptible to interference. Phones will fall back to LTE, and the S20 lists all the 4G LTE bands Verizon uses.

I went by the following:
https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s20-10081.php

and

https://www.signalbooster.com/pages/what-is-4g-lte-frequency-band-of-verizon-at-t-t-mobile-sprint

If there are any variations on the S20, you may want to look up the exact model and double-check.

the s20 plus and ultra do support mmWave I believe.

Ok thanks, I don't have a problem with LTE. So, as I understand it, as long as the model supports the following I'm good to go?

Verizon Wireless LTE Frequencies and Bands:
700 MHz Band 13
1700/2100 MHz Band 4
1900 MHz Band 2

The whole 5G thing makes me want to put off buying a phone for a while. I've got a Samsung s8+, and I'm not aware of any reason I "need" to upgrade soon.

Hah, I wouldn't even consider it but they are giving me way more than market value for my S10. On top of that I get points back from Samsung and work perks.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

The whole 5G thing makes me want to put off buying a phone for a while. I've got a Samsung s8+, and I'm not aware of any reason I "need" to upgrade soon.

same phone, same feeling. I feel like I'd only upgrade if the phone dies and can't be repaired.

5G isn't very meaningful. You'll just hit your data cap faster.

edit: the new frequencies on T-Mobile are actually important; they increase TM's building penetration a great deal, and should allow it to work in many places where it didn't before. But that's not the 5G part, that's the penetrating power of the 600 and 700MHz spectrum chunks they won at auction.

On the whole, 5G is about 10% more efficient than 4G on the same band. It's about 20% more efficient if they shut 4G off and make it 5G-only. Verizon's mmWave spectrum is high bandwidth, but absolutely terrible, in that anything will block it, including your hands, so they have to sprinkle antennas all around the phone body. If you don't have perfect line of sight between at least one antenna and the tower, it basically won't work at all.

They've deployed it in stadiums, and so far, they haven't managed to cover even one whole stadium with 5G. Partial coverage is the best they've been able to do.

If they can't cover a complete stadium, after multiple attempts, expecting it to be very useful in real life is probably not very realistic. You may occasionally get blazing-fast downloads, and it probably won't matter very much, because everything is tuned around the expectations of 4G.

Being able to exceed your data cap in 10 minutes of sustained use instead of a half-hour is probably not that compelling.

Malor wrote:

5G isn't very meaningful. You'll just hit your data cap faster.

I really, really wish people would stop trotting that one out. They said the same thing about 4G/LTE when it was first rolling out. 5G is impractical right now, but the part about hitting your data cap faster is the single dumbest point anyone could try to make about why it's impractical.

4G is already way faster than is actually useful on a phone. 3G was really fine. 4G in theory lets you stream HD, but then many providers choke that so that you only get SD anyway.

5G? 5G might potentially burn bytes faster sometimes, but when on earth are you bandwidth-constrained on 4G?

If you were on a computer, sure. But on a phone? With maybe 50 gigs of available total storage?

@Malor:

As a hotspot

Malor wrote:

3G was really fine.

What the sh*t are you smoking? That there is some rose colored glasses talking.

Malor wrote:

5G might potentially burn bytes faster sometimes, but when on earth are you bandwidth-constrained on 4G?

I agree in this regard. 5G seems like something I'm not worried about yet but especially because no one is locked into phones for two entire years anymore.

But that's me.

There is an interesting point to be made here about whether it's more useful to roll out 5G right now or to improve 4G coverage and throughput. I think it is true that 4G is currently plenty for mobile computing when you can get a quality connection.

That being said, until now connection speeds have always lagged behind the amount of data we'd like to send, and if we have momentarily surmounted that issue, I predict that we will find ways to utilize faster speeds in short order.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

That being said, until now connection speeds have always lagged behind the amount of data we'd like to send, and if we have momentarily surmounted that issue, I predict that we will find ways to utilize faster speeds in short order.

I read this as I work from home over a VPN while downloading 60GB of video games in the background.