Sooooo, I'm in the market to escape this godforsaken hellscape that is iPhone. Who wants to tell me about decent Android brands to research? Windows phones can come too if they've improved, since my first Nokia smartphone was super shitty.
My iPhone has been doing this Thing lately where it won't actually charge whenever it randomly feels like fucking me over, even though it registers as charging.
I enjoy the samsung galaxy series quite a bit? I recently upgraded to an S10E, which is actually phone-sized instead of being ridic big (like it's still a smart phone but)
I believe you can delete some of it, but it doesn't really bother me enough for me to bother. the only thing I'd probably want to delete is flipboard, and because it's a news app you can't delete it
okay I need to heat to work, but yeah most android phones are actually pretty decent. looking up consumer reviews can be helpful, and of course the more indepth look you have here.
fingerprint sensor on the power button can be a blessing or a curse, sometimes I just want to look at my phone's screen for a new notif and it accidentally unlocks lol
My only complaint right now is how it likes to insist on auto cutting off Bluetooth while I'm driving if the battery starts getting low at all, but I'm led to believe that's just an android thing now. It didn't used to do that but then an update "improved" it.
my last one lasted four years before it slowed down to the point i finally got a new one. this one i have rn i believe is going on three years? its an s7 edge
The moto gs def worth a look. ^^b Many family have them and been very happy with them. I only retired mine recently cause it was the very 1st model and getting bit sluggish as apps getting updated beyond it's cpu/ram oomph but it's like 5-6 years old so. lol It did well. XD
I've had this four years and the only thing that doesn't work is because I broke the charging port because I was messing with it trying to fix a cord I was using. It takes a wireless charge just fine.
Also perpetually resets itself to sleep after 15 seconds, which is how I usually leave it anyway, but I do change that in some circumstances and it changes itself back, which I think happened as part of the same update.
also, another vote for Galaxy. I can actually use my Samsung Tab A as a phone - it's a 7" tablet. but it's only 8GB, and you want a 16GB or better. my 2018 J3 is a 16GB, and it even fits RC on it.
that said, my J3 just updated to Android 9 (Pie) and if you haven't caught my venting in Discord, I hate it. 8 was best for me. THAT SAID, don't let 9 put
you off like it did me; a lot of my hatred for it is because the UI is so... bubbly. I like having everything small and neat and condensed, and this just has far, far too much whitespace for me... but I'd imagine that it might help people with visual problems.
I'm going to give it a week to impress me, and then if it hasn't, I'm going to see about downgrading it back to Oreo (OS .
Bixby is utter trash; I had to try using it to set up a giant TV for a job recently and it was the most infuriating thing. however, I found out that while you can't actually disable or uninstall it, you can at least kill its self-
-granted permissions on a J3 and tell it to STFU, which I did, and I haven't seen it again. (I'm also using Nova Launcher, so if it's sprawled itself across the home screen or something, I wouldn't know.)
to note: my J3 does not have a physical Bixby button.
said J3 is also the size of an iPhone 10, more or less, and only costs $150 new, total.
so when you go into the store, please do poke at the J3s, see if you like what you see, knowing you can increase the font sizes and stuff. also maybe consider poking at the Galaxy Tab line, as another "oh, what's this? would this be too big and clunky?" potential option?
(I also have an Alcatel Tetra, but that's an AT&T Prepaid model I'm just using on wifi to mess around with, because it was $25. would not recommend as a serious phone; its battery life is shit. the J3's is pretty great, though, as is the Tab's. both last all day long for me, and you know how heavily I use them.... XD)
I have an S8 and my last phone was a S5, before that an S3. my work phone is an LG and I've had a few of those as well, they were tanks back when physical keyboards were a thing and are great WHEN that work but seconding the above about appliances being superior to smart phones. I lost 3 of an older model in 2 weeks.
my current LG I got as a glorified digital camera it's years old and has a better camera than my current galaxy but it's only 8g so fits literally nothing apps wise
as someone else with vision problems and the S8+ I would suggest a Note or Tab instead depending on how bad your vision is. I'm currently using a magnifier on my phone and different apps require different angles so it can kind of give you motion sickness after awhile. you might not be as blind as me though lmao
also +1 Bixby. I hit the button constantly aiming for the low volume, especially frustrating when I'm trying to screen cap things. it also gets triggered very easily in landscape mode lately but that might be pressure from the stand my magnifier has
I've been super happy with the pixel 2, and I was pretty ok with Samsung Galaxy stuff before then until the prices and the bloatware got to be too much.
And whichever you end up getting, FBReader is the best eReader app I've found for text to speech with the TTS+ plugin. The plug in is a separate app installation but it just adds the option in the main app. Android app architecture is weird, whatever.
i have a Moto g5+ I think? it might just be a g5....but I really like this phone and my main complaint with it is that, now that I've had it for a couple years, it inexplicably resets my wallpaper to the default whenever I open tge camera
Most people use the stock reading apps or proprietary ones like Kindle if they use eReader apps at all, so yeah third party ones are pretty obscure as a whole. Also FYI FBReader is blessedly unrelated to Facebook, it just happens to share initials.
.... Maybe I should clarify that this is for like, you have ebook files or pdfs, and you want to put them on your phone for reading. Not a general screen reader, but not a "this app has its own walled garden library and bookstore, and good luck getting anything else into or out of our ecosystem" which is how a lot of eReader apps are.
I had a phone would randomly delete my wallpaper when it got older. not sure if the camera use is what triggered it, I think it was just lack of use. like it changed overnight?
yeah it made me mad because my wallpaper was a pic of my dog that I didn't have anymore so I'd have to constantly hunt it down on my phone to reset it. until eventually it just stopped letting me change it back at all.
the battery may actually have reduced capacity, and as it's getting to what had been 25%, it's suddenly realizing it's actually lower than it'd thought.
It's not AS hot as it's been lately, so IDK if it's temperature-based. Either way, I made this plurk at an opportune time, research may be a LITTLE more time sensitive than I'd initially thought.
I'm glad to hear it's dead TBH, mine was real weird. It wouldn't let me update at ALL, either via wi-fi or literally plugging that shit into my computer or anything. Nobody could figure out why, but it made stuff randomly stop working.
hey, nothing wrong with having a spare device! ....goodness knows my own collecting habits started because my only tiny droid died one day and I had no other device to serve as a phone until I bought one on the spot one day. that's how I got my old J3. I don't regret it, just the timing and cost then and there.
Last time I tried to change out my battery, they couldn't get it out, and had to replace the whole phone. That's the only reason I lasted with Apple for so long TBH.
I mean, the guys at the stores are supposed to be ABLE to do it? But apparently if they don't come out easily enough, they're at risk of just EXPLODING if they try to force it.
...did they tell you "risk of exploding" to try to reassure you that you shouldn't do it yourself/make themselves seem like totally the better way to go about doing it? because that's A Thing. ....not so much the explosions, as techs talking themselves up....
to be fair, it's definitely not something for the average user to attempt. glass is fragile, and the screens are actually really easily broken - it just doesn't happen as often as it could, because phones are relatively hard behind the glass and keep it rigid. but if you're taking the phone's layers apart, you're more likely to bend something than not.
I would not trust my friend Ian to do it. ever. and he runs a game store. (I joke that we don't trust him with a screwdriver unless it's merely to change out some double-A batteries, but there's a reason for that.)
They told me that was the reason they had to replace the whole phone, since they couldn't get the battery out. vv Which TBH, I don't care if they're lying or not. If it's true, then fuck Apple for endangering their workers. If it's not true, then fuck Apple for pretending that battery changes are a thing that's possible, and for making it impossible
some phones simply don't have user-changeable batteries, for one reason or another. couldn't get the design to work with it and still be slim and nice? planned obsolescence? deliberately wanting their high-end devices to seem incomprehensible to the average user, to maintain an air of mystique? /shrug
however you slice it, it means, for like 99% of users, that their best bet is to take that fragile device in to a service center where they can take it apart without damaging delicate components, do a soldering job, and then hand it back knowing it's been done right and not damaged anything.
if they were okay with their higher-end heavily-advertised flagship models being designed like their lower-end ones, they'd make the batteries replaceable.
I was able to change my battery on my old Windows smartphone myself effortlessly, back in the day, the back popped right off. For some reason though, that thing just REFUSED to accept updates, at all, period. Even the service people had no idea what was wrong with the software.
"budget model" (imho!) normally equates to "I don't care to have it be some glamor shot snooty PROP, I just want something with reasonably good specs that WORKS and even my sister might be able to do basic service tasks on." (she is not a techie person, unlike me.)
Yeah, my mom has a Galaxy, and it's slick as hell? And she's super into photography and stuff like that, so I'm sure it's good for her. But TBH I don't give a shit about that, and I don't want to pay like $700 more to be able to do that stuff.
but that's when I'm looking at stuff like the J3s. "budget model" in other senses often means stuff like "they make it with last year's/year before last's parts, then undersell it, because they'll still turn a profit in prepaid costs." aka the little Alcatel Tetras I have.
the flagship models are the ones you over-pay for, to have the Latest Greatest Shiniest Newest Things What Look Super Impressive.... until the next new thing comes out eight months later.
$300 isn't bad, for a phone. And I generally take pretty good care of mine, even my shitty iphones have lasted like 3 years before the batteries started crapping out each time, and those are only DESIGNED to last for a year, maybe two.
in some ways, they rely on people buying into the fashion of wanting to show off to other people, plain and simple. you have the latest iThing or Galaxy, on the day it drops? oooh, you're soooo cooool. ....and about three hundred bucks lighter than you could've been if you'd waited a while, somehow, I'm sure of it.
But I admit that I also have only had a smartphone for one year and it is this non-galaxy samsung and thus do not have a lot of experience with anything else
also, as far as cases go, I'm very happy with spending about $0.80 on ebay for a clear, soft tpu skin for my devices - it gives them a nicely grippy surface and protects from scuffs and stuff. I don't need some huge bulky Otterbox type case, when the tiny little skin will keep me from dropping it in the first place, lol
(my old J3 is the J320 - the 2016 model of J3. my current one is the J337, which means the 2018 model. I can't remember what the 2017's number is off the top of my head....)
16GB is, imho, the right "low end" for capacity. I got sick of my J320 only having 8GB - so, functionally about 3GB - which was what started its downfall.
I've got... Discord, Plurk, Asus's browser (I really like it, no lie) and their file manager... VLC, RadioParadise, my few games, eBay... Youtube came with it....
I don't bother with playlists often - either I play whole albums, or I play a folder full of songs I've collected, so that's... kind of a playlist in its own right, I guess?
and downloading m4a files off Youtube does not lend itself well to everything being neatly tagged and all. ....so most music apps can kiss my butt, since they rely on scanning the droid for files, then organizing them by tags from within the files. which vlc can do too! but it doesn't have to, you can browse the file system.
huh. i don't bother keeping music on my phone unless i plan to use it for a ringtone. i download it to my computer but i just use the online version through amazon otherwise. saves SO MUCH on space.
I have a subscription to google play music which has a locker feature: I can upload up to 50k songs from my desktop and it'll be available to play in the app/browser
I listen to RadioParadise, and when I find a song on it that just speaks to me, I go into Dentex's Youtube Downloader, find it on youtube there, and then snag the audio stream, to save it to a folder on my SD card. so I have a slowly-growing folder full of random favorites that sometimes, I just open up VLC to queue up, and set to repeat-all & randomize.
RadioParadise is a streaming service - with a caching function of up to roughly 7 hours for the live stream, and 12-hour chunks for random later listening.
I highly rec RadioParadise to everyone, btw: it's not like Pandora or Spotify where you pick things, it's just one station that a DJ curates, and they play everything from Vivaldi to Talking Heads. through them, I've discovered Younger Brother, Caro Emerald, and a huge list of others.
that said, my J3 just updated to Android 9 (Pie) and if you haven't caught my venting in Discord, I hate it. 8 was best for me. THAT SAID, don't let 9 put
Bixby is utter trash; I had to try using it to set up a giant TV for a job recently and it was the most infuriating thing. however, I found out that while you can't actually disable or uninstall it, you can at least kill its self-
to note: my J3 does not have a physical Bixby button.
said J3 is also the size of an iPhone 10, more or less, and only costs $150 new, total.
(I've had batteries do this to me before....)