Google Android catch-all

EverythingsTentative wrote:

I got an LG V60 ThinQ 5G™ because it was practically free and it came with the dual screen case. I thought the dual screen would be a bit gimmicky but it's actually really useful. Would recommend so far.

I was interested in those, but figured it wouldn't work in a car mount without removing it from the case/second screen every time.

MannishBoy wrote:
EverythingsTentative wrote:

I got an LG V60 ThinQ 5G™ because it was practically free and it came with the dual screen case. I thought the dual screen would be a bit gimmicky but it's actually really useful. Would recommend so far.

I was interested in those, but figured it wouldn't work in a car mount without removing it from the case/second screen every time.

If it is a magnet mount and you have the space it should work but it would probably have to be put on sideways.

When I first got it I was bummed because out of the box you can only dual screen like 5 or 6 apps and I thought what's the point then, but you can download an app that lets your force everything into wide screen. Using it like a DS has made games a lot better to play. Simply not having your fingers cover the screen you are looking at is huge. If the reading app you use allows you to put the text into two columns, you can have one column on each screen.

Not a magnet, I use the iOttie clip in mounts. I use wireless charging too much to stick a piece of metal on the back of my phone.

MannishBoy wrote:

Not a magnet, I use the iOttie clip in mounts. I use wireless charging too much to stick a piece of metal on the back of my phone.

I have a metal on the back of my phone and that doesn't mess with wireless charging at all. I place a magnet on a charger so I can just stick it onto the phone while using it on the go.

I will be moving on from The Pixel line on Wednesday when my OnePlus 8 Pro gets delivered. I am pretty bummed that Google has not gotten much better with their phones since I've had my 2XL. I think it's going to be a pretty significant upgrade.

The Pixel 3a is an excellent phone. I'm not a heavy user, but it's fast, flexible, and has an outstanding camera. I've seen people mention it being on sale for $280, which is a stupid good price for something as powerful as it is.

It sounds like most of the other Pixels are really ho-hum, way overpriced for what you get, but the 3a is dynamite.

Malor wrote:

The Pixel 3a is an excellent phone. I'm not a heavy user, but it's fast, flexible, and has an outstanding camera. I've seen people mention it being on sale for $280, which is a stupid good price for something as powerful as it is.

It sounds like most of the other Pixels are really ho-hum, way overpriced for what you get, but the 3a is dynamite.

My mom has one and it's been a champ for her! It's just too underpowered for me and the screen is not what I'm looking for. I call it the Mac Air of phones. Perfect for the day to day but not the power users.

I love my Pixel 3. The cameras are outstanding and not having bloat-ware is great.

I'm confused by 'underpowered', because it's really pretty fast. Are you running something that actually needs a ton of CPU power in your hand? Sure, it has smaller numbers than other phones, but when dealing with humans, a faster CPU usually just means the phone waits for you faster. It seems to have oodles of horsepower for anything short of mining bitcoins or running Unreal. (edit: or emulation. If you wanted to emulate games, you could probably do better.)

Also curious what's wrong with the screen. Are you wanting to go 120Hz? That would be pretty appealing, one of the only things I'd really like to upgrade.

edit: although, if were buying today, I'd be looking real hard at the $400 iPhone. I'd definitely prefer a less surveillance-oriented ecosystem.

Yep, I have the 3a and my wife has that new iPhone SE. Both of us are extremely happy with our chosen OS, good cameras, and smaller form factor. Neither of us want to carry a tablet in our pockets.

Malor wrote:

The Pixel 3a is an excellent phone. I'm not a heavy user, but it's fast, flexible, and has an outstanding camera. I've seen people mention it being on sale for $280, which is a stupid good price for something as powerful as it is.

It sounds like most of the other Pixels are really ho-hum, way overpriced for what you get, but the 3a is dynamite.

The 3a is one of the worse phones I ever had. I had problems getting notifications. The ringer would randomly decided to go silent. The battery drain was terrible. Jumping through hoops to use basic phone functions has me hating this phone.

Huh, I wonder if there's something wrong with it? I get excellent battery life, although I do turn off Location Services. I do it because I don't like leaking the info to apps, but I've found that the battery drains much faster when they're on, so there's a second reason to disable them now. And, again, I'm not a real heavy user. The battery lasts a couple days when I'm actively using the phone, and about a week when it's sitting mostly idle.

I haven't had the other issues. Well, I turned the ringer off once by mistake, but that was my fault, not the phone's. And I do know that I missed one SMS message. Fortunately, it wasn't very important.

Battery life on phones is mostly subject to usage and signal strength. Being in a weak signal area with some background data usage going will drain a battery pretty darn fast, even with it in your pocket.

Yeah especially with WFH now and not using maps for work traffic, I sometimes charge every other day on my 3a.

Verge had some good coverage on the Pixel line recently on their podcast.

The jist was considering how long Google has been doing their own phones. They kinda suck at it. Or at least they really are not going toe to toe with Apple and Samsung for flagships.

I have a normal Pixel 3 and it's definitely getting beat up but it's still holding together. The only thing I'm really set on now is the cleaner pure Google experience with less bloat.

I'm going to stretch this Pixel 3 out to minium 2 years (if I can) and see how long I can tolerate it further. Get away from early cycle expensive purchase and try to buy a year old model next time. Just fed up with the prices at this point where I feel like the upgrades are getting marginal.

jowner wrote:

Verge had some good coverage on the Pixel line recently on their podcast.

The jist was considering how long Google has been doing their own phones. They kinda suck at it. Or at least they really are not going toe to toe with Apple and Samsung for flagships.

I have a normal Pixel 3 and it's definitely getting beat up but it's still holding together. The only thing I'm really set on now is the cleaner pure Google experience with less bloat.

I'm going to stretch this Pixel 3 out to minium 2 years (if I can) and see how long I can tolerate it further. Get away from early cycle expensive purchase and try to buy a year old model next time. Just fed up with the prices at this point where I feel like the upgrades are getting marginal.

FWIW, I got my pixel 3 back in Dec 2018 and I can't see myself getting a new phone anytime soon. My initial complaint was battery life, but one of the updates a while back made it so a charge lasts around 4 days (obviously, I don't really use it for much other than phone calls & text messages, and the occasional web browsing when I'm not at work or home).

Battery life is the only real complaint I have about my Pixel 3. It's a year and a half old, and if I'm using it moderately, I wind up needing to charge mid-afternoon. That feels shorter than it should be, but I haven't found anything pointing at a particular app or anything that's draining it. Seems like it just sucks battery like crazy with the screen on and at 50% brightness.

If/when I replace this one, I'm actually looking at the Moto G Power. It's cheap as hell, and has a battery nearly twice as big as the Pixel 3. I could be down for that.

Chaz wrote:

Battery life is the only real complaint I have about my Pixel 3. It's a year and a half old, and if I'm using it moderately, I wind up needing to charge mid-afternoon. That feels shorter than it should be, but I haven't found anything pointing at a particular app or anything that's draining it. Seems like it just sucks battery like crazy with the screen on and at 50% brightness.

If/when I replace this one, I'm actually looking at the Moto G Power. It's cheap as hell, and has a battery nearly twice as big as the Pixel 3. I could be down for that.

That definitely seems like less battery power than you should get. I'm using Google Fi as my "carrier", might make a difference since it's using more than one services towers so there's more likely for one to be in range at any given time.

Location Services seem to burn a fair bit of battery. If you can get along without those, that might help.

I only use my phone lightly, so I'm not really a good benchmark, but that does seem very short to me. I get about a week between charges if it just sits idle, and it doesn't seem to burn battery very quickly when I do use it.

I think I read good things about the Moto Gs, but I wasn't shopping at the time and didn't pay close attention.

My house is in a really low signal area, so even though I'm on Google Fi, my cell strength is usually barely registering. It's a good thing Fi does the wifi calling thing, or we'd be forced to either switch to Verizon or get a landline.

I did try turning off location services, but discovered that when you do that, every single time you do a search in Bing, it throws a popup wanting you to turn them back on. Which, yeah, I could stop using Bing, but I need those sweet, sweet rewards points.

I have my normal temperature take on the Oppo r9s, too late to be useful to 99% of people because it's 2.5yrs old and I don't know if it's offered new any more.

Pros:

- the glass will not break. I have dropped it so many times, on to concrete, even without the case (and the case I have is plastic and not fancy). Every time I pick it up, I think surely this is the time I'll turn it over to a cracked face, but no.

- Sounds good with headphones plugged in, apparently they're a company that a previously made headphones.

- Battery life excellent, better than my previous Nexus 5 (great phone, RIP). This has a con attached though.

- big decent screen. A bit too big for me but whatever

- I like being able to take a screenshot with a three finger swipe

- works, hasn't broken

- mid price, when I bought it it was the cheapest plan I could get, the outright cost was a lot less than $999

Cons:

Apps would stop working when the screen was off and at other times. I'd set off for a run on runkeeper, and it would always stop recording after 5 minutes. I had trouble with some "Virtual job interview" app (pre-recorded questions and answers) that I think cost me through to the next round, apparently my answers to the questions were getting cut off prematurely.

It took me far too long to work out that the phone was killing apps all the time to save battery, beyond the normal battery optimisation settings. I worked it out trying to get the covid19 contact teaching app here to work.

And, now that I've turned it off for that, it pops up with a notification constantly saying "an app in the background has abnormal power consumption". I know buddy, I turned it on. Burn that charge.

- Blocks NFC chips or whatever. I can't just tap my phone with my public transport card in it on the reader, even if there's no case or pocket or anything between the the card and the reader. Weird.

- can't use it as a USB passthrough wifi dongle. Nexus 5 could do this. It does have wireless hotpot though.

- can't change the resolution on the native camera app. What a pain.

- can only swipe left from home page

- can't use it in place of a debit card

- the fingerprint scanner doesn't work with my bank app

Overall I think I got lucky with this phone. I was worried when I had to go with the cheapest plan one I would get a PoS, but I totally didn't.

Pixel 4A out now. Pixel 4A 5G, and Pixel 5 coming this fall.

There's a review of the 4A linked in there. Still has the awesome camera of 3 and 4, and 128gb storage and 6gb RAM. Looks like it beats the iPhone SE on everything except CPU. $100 cheaper for the same storage or $50 cheaper than the 64gb.

And still has headphone jack.

The 3a has been excellent, and the 4a appears to be a little bit better, having 50% more RAM and twice the storage for $50 less.

Unless you're a big mobile gamer, that seems like the Android phone to buy.

I wouldn't bother with the 5G. That's all marketing. You might get slightly (slightly) improved data transfers, but your caps won't change, so all that will mean is that you can burn your whole month's worth of data in 2 hours instead of 2.5. Worse, the phone will burn a lot more power to do the same thing. They're pushing it as the Next Big Thing, and for the most part, it's garbage.

Yeah I did a check to see that I have 5G coverage on Google Fi here. But then saw $150 difference... not worth it.

Feels like my 3A is solid still, with camera and battery life. But I did have to start moving images and video off device and storing in Photos only because 64GB is just not enough space. Not sure that 128 is worth a trade in upgrade at this point. But if they have any kind of sale around the holidays this year, I might be tempted.

Yeah I did a check to see that I have 5G coverage on Google Fi here. But then saw $150 difference... not worth it.

Even if you did, it means very little. On lower frequencies, which is basically everyone-but-Verizon, you get maybe a 20% boost on throughput on a pure-5G network. If it's a mixed 4G/5G signal, the gain is more like 10%.

Verizon is pushing their 'mmWave' bullsh*t, which really does deliver ridiculous amounts of bandwidth. However, you need physical line-of-sight to an antenna. Even your hand will block the signal, so manufacturers have to scatter antennas all over the phone body, and you've literally got to have a bare spot with an antenna with a straight visual shot to the broadcasting antenna. A window, a wall, anything in the way, and you've got no reception.

They're not even able to cover entire stadiums with mmWave, let alone cities. And rural areas will probably never see those signals. It is 98% marketing hyperbole and should be entirely ignored in your purchase decision.

Well, no, that's not right either. 5G is a misfeature, because current chips burn substantially more power than their 4G predecessors. At least for the moment, actively avoiding it is an excellent idea.

I put in a preorder for the 4a for my 10 yr old. *ugh*

If I like it then it might be time to bail on the premium Pixel devices with their premium feel and lack of premium specs. The 3XL I'm using now is fine, but damned if I don't miss the extra GBs of RAM and whatnot.

I agree about 5G overall. It's marketing for now, though the next phone I get may well take advantage.

Keep an eye on that 3XL battery - mine just expanded.

I think, for the first time in history, my cell phone is three years old and I feel no need whatsoever to "upgrade". It's a Samsung Galaxy s8+, which came out in April of 2017.

Not sure what feature or whatever would make me want to upgrade it right now, either. Y'all are discussing 5g, and if that were important, then yeah, I'd have upgraded already.

I've seen one concrete benefit to 5G so far--T-Mobile providing at home Internet access over it. Suddenly my Comcast costs dropped by about half.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

I think, for the first time in history, my cell phone is three years old and I feel no need whatsoever to "upgrade". It's a Samsung Galaxy s8+, which came out in April of 2017.

Not sure what feature or whatever would make me want to upgrade it right now, either. Y'all are discussing 5g, and if that were important, then yeah, I'd have upgraded already.

In another year or two, integrated 5G chipsets that don't suck horribly should be out. But right now, it comes on a separate chip (at least from Qualcomm) and sucks up a bunch more power, and you get almost nothing in exchange.