221–230 of 700 posts
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When 6-year-olds use Samsung as a synonym for Android, you know that Samsung's marketing is crushing it. Which is a shame considering how poor their overall software quality is.
I'm sorry but how a 6 years old know anything about phone brands?
I never understood why Samsung phones were constantly receiving praise by tech reviewers while LG got crapped on. Samsung always wanted to do things their way -- different (shitty) UI, Samsung versions of all the core Google apps (but worse), reorganizing preferences for no reason, the stupid bottom button placement, non-remappable Bixby button, aggressively killing apps for power management and breaking widgets, etc…
LG G6 is my favorite phone ever. I like it physically, it’s waterproof, it has a headphone jack, it has a fingerprint reader, it has NFC, it does NOT have a notched camera, and Spigen made an awesome inexpensive case for it. And I bought mine for $360 CAD (about $240 USD) at the end of its cycle. That’s hard to beat. Samsung makes crappier, more expensive phones IMO. It’s a sad day for the phone ecosystem :-(
I'd like to get a new case, just for variety's sake, but they're bound to be worse -- so I don't.
At this point there are basically no non-Chinese mobile phone makers aside from Samsung and Apple. And even those devices are still manufactured in China, right?
Here's a list: Apple – American Samsung Mobile – South Korean Nokia Mobile – Finnish Google Pixel – American Sony Mobile – Japanese LG – South Korean BLU Products – American Lava – Indian Sharp – Japanese Fairphone – Dutch Philips Mobile – Dutch Yotaphone – Russian BQ – Spanish Acer – Taiwanese Asus – Taiwanese HTC – Taiwanese Essential Products – American Cherry Mobile – Philippino DoCoMo – Japanese Panasonic Mobile…
I wasn't able to track down the country of origin for many of them, but at least Fairphone is open about it, and 75% of its components are manufactured in China[1].
Apple devices are still mostly produced in China, with some smaller scale operations in India[2].
I would like to see Fairphone levels of transparency from all manufacturers, but until then it's safe to assume that any electronics are partially sourced from countries with existing manufacturing facilities and cheap labor such as China. It's a cost cutting measure that makes it unfeasible to move production elsewhere, even for giants like Apple, and downright impossible for smaller companies.
[1]: https://www.fairphone.com/en/impact/source-map-transparency/
[2]: https://fortune.com/2019/06/13/apple-iphone-china-production...
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Google Apps aren't gold standard. I own a Samsung phone I have replaced launcher (MS launcher) /SMS (SMS organizer). Contacts and Phone app maybe Samsung's but they never troubled me. Only Settings search is unexplicably slow which annoys sometimes. In terms of hardware/updates Samsung is good enough. Only Chinese phones may give better value for money but they come with too many software quirks, which I don't like.
OnePlus has decent value and while being Chinese it doesn't have a lot of quirks and is geared towards western markets. Motorola also has some decent phones in the budget category. Pixel a series are also great value. I got a Samsung last generation and gave Samsung ecosystem a go (smart watch, buds, TV). They do great hardware but they should just leave software alone - tizen os is a major PITA on TV and Watch (lack…
As someone who now has a Pixel, newer Samsung devices come across as far more full-featured (I think this might be objectively true?) with a more consistent and pleasant UI (IMO) than stock Android. I don't use it because of bootloader/ROM support, but if that didn't exist I'd probably prefer the device that takes stock Android and adds some polish and thoughtful features along with better quality hardware.
There's a reason why Google has often integrated Samsung features into stock Android with a delay of a year or two. Obviously, the reverse is true and Samsung benefits from Google development, but I think that's already a given when Samsung advertises an update to a new Android version. OneUI also seems to avoid the general slowdowns of older Samsung UI experiences such as TouchWiz.
Given LG's success in the TV biz with WebOS, I'm surprised they never made a port of the OS for their mobile line.
This is actually very very bad. Google's lack of focus/vision w.r.t Pixel all but guarantees that Samsung can eat up the whole high end android phone market. Samsung's desire to stuff so much garbage unto their phones that they are molasses-slow even with the fastest mobile SoCs available to them all but guarantees that for most users, android will remain a huge mess. As an android user, this saddens me.
I dunno. I think Google's new focus on the mid range is where it is at. Got a Pixel 4a 5G and it's a great phone (after the major missteps of the 3 and 4 with their hopeless battery life). To me, I don't see what I'm missing going up from the 4a to a high end Samsung at twice the cost. Maybe a 90Hz display and a slightly faster CPU/GPU, which seem very marginal. I think if Google doubles down on its mid range strateg…
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LG V20 is a fantastic phone. It feels so much better than every other device I've ever owned. Space-age frame with such core ruggedness, great screen, great for it's day camera, sd card, sweet audio. And! And! Someone managed to unlock the bootloader. So there's a variety of decent roms one can run on it. All aging now, a little bit too old at this point, but this 2016 device was swinging mightily until it became utt…
OnePlus ships phones with unlockable bootloaders. They're great! However, when you unlock your bootloader, you lose access to things that demand devices be trusted by Google. So Netflix no longer even shows up in the Play Store, you can no longer use NFC pay, etc. And ROMs are not what they used to be (though the update process being lighter and quicker is a nice change). It's too bad, but I get why it is the way it…
> The Xperia X line came with amazing built-in noise-cancellation, which only required a special purpose made $20 NC31E earphone with a 5-pole connector.
> The performance of this combo to my surprise was amazing! It matched WH-1000XM4 and Bose QC20 in home-office environments. Not having to carry around yet another earphone that needs charging was radical.
> Sadly, the whole line failed, and the feature was removed in the following series.
> People think that "survival" is proof of aesthetic and functional superiority (we've seen this in all sorts of things - from programming languages/OSs to philosophies to races to religions).
> It is not.
I never understood why Samsung phones were constantly receiving praise by tech reviewers while LG got crapped on. Samsung always wanted to do things their way -- different (shitty) UI, Samsung versions of all the core Google apps (but worse), reorganizing preferences for no reason, the stupid bottom button placement, non-remappable Bixby button, aggressively killing apps for power management and breaking widgets, etc…
Because using stock Android is like the phone version of year of Linux Desktop. It is so ugly from UI/UX perspective, that almost everyone ends up installing a theme anyway. Then Google only does the minimum in features, and their software is crap. For many years, if you wanted proper music software, Samsung phones with their custom real time audio SDK were the only option on Android ecosystem. Same applies to the qu…