3634

I’m out of winter hibernation mode now, so I went for a walk again for the first time since October, so I took out the Pixel Buds.

Man, I’m amazed that they’re so comfortable! Plus it’s supposed to be single tap for pause, double tap for skip forward and triple tap for skip backward, according to the little tutorial. Double and triple tap work just fine on the Apple iTunes app I’m using for music. But the single tap to pause and resume doesn’t seem to work at all.

Aaaaaaapple!!! Raises fist toward the sky.

3635

My experience is the single tap has to make contact a little longer to register. It’s almost a hold and release.

3636

So funny thing happened, I left my phone on the armrest of the couch and when I came back from dinner I found it on the floor and the always on display was working! So I’m wondering if I dropped it before and that screwed up the sensor which would keep it on (apparently it will turn off if it’s in your pocket) and then a second drop fixed it. Very weird. Anyways I’m glad it’s working. I don’t know how we did it in the past without always on displays.

3637

Percussive repair ftw!

3638

Thanks for the feedback about the watch @AK_Icebear !

Haven’t really fiddled much with GPS functionality, but good to know that there is a workaround.
Otherwise I’m still getting used to the features and how they work. Had some wonkiness where the watch wasn’t syncing with the phone app, but a reboot helped out there. Quick question: on the “TicHealth” summary screen there is the option of setting an emoji in the middle of the screen, is that just cosmetic? Or does is factor into the stress analysis or other data?

On an unrelated note, does anyone have any insight as to how “risky” is it to continue using a phone thats not getting updates anymore?

I just realized that Google will be stop updating my Pixel 3A from May onwards since its apparently reached its End of Life. The phone itself is still functioning fine and I hadn’t really considered replacing it yet…

3639

No idea, as I switched to Google Fit very quickly.

3640

However, it seems like Google is getting things back on track in time for the upcoming Pixel 6A. As noted by Droid Life , the next budget Pixel recently passed through the FCC. There’s not of note in the actual filings (other than confirmation that at least one SKU of the 6A will support millimeter-wave 5G), but the timing of the FCC documentation suggests that the phone isn’t far off. The 5A popped up at the FCC in July before its launch a month later. And what do you know: Google’s virtual I/O 2022 conference kicks off on May 12th.

3641

Don’t bury the lede here. This means the real big news is that we are only 3 years and 1 month from when Google stops supporting/patching the Pixel 6A!

3642

I’m so glad to no longer be in the business of working with Google APIs or Google-supported OSS packages.

Six months isn’t “long-term support,” you pricks.

3643

image

3644

Why do you think Pixel 6A will have a shorter support lifespan than the Pixel 6?

3645

Really sad how far OnePlus has fallen. Had they stuck to their original design philosophy I probably would have stuck with OnePlus forever. As it stands, my OnePlus 7 Pro will be the last phone I buy from them.

From that review the only thing they still do well is the fast charging and that’s just not worth all the other compromises for me. They’ve fucked up the price, cameras, and software. So very sad.

3646

I’m trying to get my mother an unlocked Galaxy S8 new, not refurbished. Or perhaps a newer model that is still the smaller sub-6" diagonal. She’s on Consumer Cellular (mobile for blue-hairs) which seems to work fine and they allow unlocked phones to be brought into their network. I see some S8s on Amazon but most are refurbs. Is there a better place or is Amazon pretty safe for buying older unlocked phones? I’m in the US so is there anything I should be looking for regarding an unlocked android?

3647

Security researchers said they uncovered a vulnerability that could have allowed hackers to commandeer millions of Android devices equipped with mobile chipsets made by Qualcomm and MediaTek.
The vulnerability resided in ALAC—short for Apple Lossless Audio Codec and also known as Apple Lossless—which is an audio format introduced by Apple in 2004 to deliver lossless audio over the Internet. While Apple has updated its proprietary version of the decoder to fix security vulnerabilities over the years, an open-source version used by Qualcomm and MediaTek had not been updated since 2011.
Together, Qualcomm and MediaTek supply mobile chipsets for an estimated 95 percent of US Android devices.

3648

I hate that they keep changing things for seemingly no reason. I guess long pressing the power button is now the google assistant.

I couldn’t find a way to restart my phone, so I googled how to do it. Apparently it’s power button and the up volume button. Wow, this is tough. Most of the time I just get the google assistance and raise my volume to the max. Sometimes I can get the emergency/shutdown/restart screen to come for a second but then google assistant comes up before my hand is free from pressing the power and up-volume button. I finally got it and managed to restart my phone. Phew!

3649

That sounds like a device manufacturer thing, not an Android thing. Long press still brings up restart on my Pixel.

Edit: Actually, in settings, under System/Gestures, you can customise what the long press does. There’s an option for Assistant.

3650

I had to hard-reset after some catastrophic crash the other day. Holding power + volume-down for 5 seconds still does the trick on my Pixel 5A 5G, think that’s been the deal for every Android I’ve owned.

3651

Ah ok, so gestures is where they hide this stuff. Thank you.

(I’ve just been going with whatever is default for the Pixel 6 Pro, and it keeps changing).

3652

I’m sure the finger printer reader on the front of my Pixel 6 Pro works about 99 percent of the time if I was objective about it. But the times it doesn’t work are so annoying, that’s all that sticks out in my mind, and it still happens so often and at the worst times, like when I’m driving and I really need it to not have me input my long ass unlock code. Grrrrr. I really miss the back finger print reader that worked 99.999999 percent of the time.

3653

I thought I’d hate the under-screen reader on the Pixel 6, but it actually works way more reliably than the dedicated sensors on my previous phone or the iPad. It basically never fails, which is a first [0]. So the only real downside is that there’s no tactile feedback on if the position is right. I wonder if there would be some way to use haptics to guide the thumb to the right spot.

[0] My fingerprints are not an easy read. My iPad can remember them for a couple of days, and then starts failing. When I last renewed my passport, they needed two prints for the biometrics. It took 30 tries over 9 different fingers before they got two usable ones.