So I just ordered an unlocked Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G. I had a new phone on the brain anyway and I kept reading it’s one of the best ever. I do love this Note 10+ but it’ll be nice to go a little smaller.
Gladguy
3455
Dude… weren’t you on the Essential train? The “stock Android is best Android” train? And you’re moving to Samsung of all vendors?
Fun story, the brand new Android 12 update dropping on US carriers contains an awesome bug where the screen refresh rate drops to 60Hz the moment your hand leaves the screen in normal (read: non-game) apps. Which has the delightful effect of making scrolling long lists (tap, drag, lift, move, re-tap, re-drag, etc.) look super hella janky and laggy as it constantly wobbles between beautiful 120Hz and otherwise-fine-but-bad-in-direct-side-by-side-comparison 60Hz.
Makes selecting basic shit like minutes in my alarm clock app crazy annoying, too.
Samsung says they’re working on a fix, but, it’s a release onto US carrier networks, so I assume that means we get this corrected sometime in mid-June -.-
I got two Samsung tablets recently and I think I may have been better off getting a fucking ipad
The leftmost “home screen” is some hardwired bullshit Samsung watch tv app
The interface to move icons around is maddening
Once in a while some gesture activates another stupid bloat ware app I have no idea what it does, it’s got pink letters
The screen saver locks in some sort of weird gamerboost software
It activates apps in some sort of mini mode using up 25% of screen
Is there some fucking guide somewhere on using Samsungs?
Pretty horrible for a $500-600 tablet
Can you not install some vanilla ROM on it and get rid of all that bloat? You should definitely be able to replace the launcher easily though.
Yeah, sounds like you need to switch the launcher out. Millions of guides and such out there for that.
The lockscreen thing might require some additional unfucking, though.
I’ve had a Note 10+ for a while now and it’s honestly been the best Android phone I’ve ever had. If you switch to Nova Launcher you barely notice Samsung’s Android enhancements. Apparently the S21 Ultra is even better!
Ugghhh hopefully it’s gets here sooner than that.
I was on the Essential train - mostly because I loved the size. Big boys since - One Plus 7 Pro, Pixel 6 Pro.
Didn’t know I could do that. I will research thank you.
Stop talking about the Essential phone. It’s making me sad. I miss it so. I broke mine and went with a PIxel 3 for a replacement, and now I’m surveying the market wondering why nobody makes nice android phones like the PH-1 these days.
I don’t have any of their fancier priced tablets, but I’ve never had a phone or tablet from Samsung where you couldn’t disable or customize any of the similar features that were in there. So that does strike me as a bit odd.
I too am sad the Essential didn’t take off. It was such a wonderful phone.
Weird, I have a Galaxy Tab A7 and have none of those issues you mentioned.
My S21 phone has the watch tv app thing if I swipe left on my home screen, but I never swipe left and forget it’s even there.
Editer
3467
Thanks. Y’all are making me feel better about the Pixel 5 that’s IT-locked to Android 11.
Not sure where to turn first for help but maybe QT3 has the answer or can direct me.
I just bought a Pixel 6. After receiving a bad SIM card I finally got it working tonight with a new card. The phone calls out, I receive calls and the internet works fine. Emails on my two accounts come through no problem, one is a gmail and my local carry Telus moved to Google a couple of years ago but I kept my email. Google Assist and the Play Store do not work. Play Store comes up with no results and Google Assist shows the word I type or say but returns “something went wrong please try again”. I bought this at Best Buy do they have people who can help? I can’t see it being a carrier issue. The phone does show up when I go into my google account.
Help.
EDIT: I changed the account on the play store and it started working. Assist isn’t working but I’m not sure where I change that account setting. I rather use the other account because thats where most of activity is.
jsnell
3469
The latter one is basically a Google Workspace account, not a normal consumer Google account. Workspace accounts are not supported at all for some of their services, and for most of them the Workspace domain admin can control whether they’re allowed or not.
I think Assistant is supported on Workspace as of this year, so there actually is a good chance that it is a carrier issue. I.e Telus hasn’t enabled the use of Assistant on a domain level.
Thanks for the help. After further investigation I got Google Assist to work as Telus had a way to link my account. I just have to change accounts in the Play Store to make that work. If I was a 8 year old kid I could have figured all that out in 10 minutes not the 2 hours it took me :)
My 5a with 5G is supposedly here as of Friday evening. Psyched!
Errr, about that: It was reported delivered by OnTrac at 12:17 PST, but nowhere to be seen. I had to call the delivery company, get in touch with Google Store chat, the whole nine yards, and finally when I was on the chat with the Google Store I popped my head out again and there it was on the front porch more than an hour later. Either it was delivered to a very nearby address and somebody just walked it over or the dude/dudette was notified and came back grabbed it from where they’d mis-delivered it. Or said delivery person reported it delivered ahead of time for some Taylorism/“metrics” related reason.
Anyway, setting it up now. it’s a bit smaller than the old 3a XL in total size but the viewable vertical area is bigger, though the horizontal seems just a hair smaller.
BTW, it still seems to have Android 11 installed, and two button navigation seems absent in the settings? When did that happen?
OK, signing up to Google Fi on the Pixel 5a with 5G with a three month free trial, and it asks what number I want to use, so I give it my current cell number with T-Mobile. It explicitly tells me at that point that this doesn’t start the number porting process, that “that’ll happen when you’re ready.”
So a couple of screens further along, they’re asking for literally every detail of my T-Mobile account in the Google Fi app to start the porting process (which I want to wait a bit to start). I haven’t moved the SIM card over to the new phone yet. I see the LTE bars and it says I’m connected to Fi, but when someone calls me it still only rings my old phone.
I’m super confused. The phone somehow can connect to Google Fi without a SIM card?
Recent Pixels can use the built-in eSIM to access certain carriers.
https://support.google.com/fi/answer/7540641?hl=en#zippy=
