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US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

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Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#691
post #137

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That's not so bad, swiping right works well. The _real_ pain is how bad ios autocompletion is, compared to Android's

Thankfully this is getting fixed in iOS 17. Users trying the beta are saying it's a dramatic improvement.

I had no idea ! This is great news, it’s a pain I learned to live with

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#692

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You've been able to build and install iOS apps on your own device without a paid developer account for years now.

Right but way fewer restrictions

Originally, it was "install the emulator on your device," and you said that would cost $8.33/mo, which was wrong. Where exactly are you moving the goalposts now?

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#693
post #664

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There's nothing bang for your buck about apple laptops. I can get a pc laptop for half the price and arguably better quality. It is true about phones though, especially when you consider how badly all the big brands except apple and Google add unremovable money making spam apps to their phones.

Surface laptops are priced pretty well on par with apple for a worse screen, quality, and battery life. Literally no other laptop provides a competitive battery life, screen or build even compared to the surface. I literally just bought a new laptop 3 months ago, and almost zero windows laptops were reasonably competitive with the MacBook for a dev. Could just be because I have a powerful gaming PC, but I definitely…

There's loads of nice "build" (just admit you want metal please) Windows laptops with nice screens. Asus ZenBook line for example. Can even get OLED.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#694

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No mate, people value themselves and get the best thing they can have. Smartphones are so essential now and used 24/7, don't cheap out on it. You don't cheap out on food either. Nothing to do with status. Not all about Apple either, there are nice premium Android phones as well. What are you doing, saving for a golden tombstone?

>You don't cheap out on food either Except many people do. Friend of mine is a chef and likes to quip that people will pour the most expensive oil into their car and the cheapest into their pan. The median American takes home like 35k a year, they're not saving anything for their tombstone, they're lucky if the house is paid off by that time. Yet you see a lot of people run around with the newest top line phone. That…

The house? 35k isn't enough to RENT a place of your own almost anywhere in the US, never mind a mortgage, and all the additional expenses that come with owning a home, like maintenance.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#695
post #513

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You must have gone without security or other OS updates then, which I would consider a deal breaker with a phone. Google only recently extended the Pixel OS support timeline to be on par with Android.

If you only buy devices with LineageOS support, you can continue to get updates for a very long time. I would not want to be at the mercy of the manufacturer for the software.

LineageOS is great, but they can’t fix security holes in device firmware, which includes the graphics libraries which are available to every app.

With LineageOS you get OS updates (great!) but are still vulnerable to exploits that target binary-only firmware.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#696

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People just like to think they're special "thinking out of the box" rebels because they use android when the equivalent android phone costs the same as an iphone. There's very little price difference between the models for the main brands (you can off course find cheaper alternatives with their own issues) but if you get an iphone and a samsung side by side odds are they're at the same price range. And as a professio…

There's nothing bang for your buck about apple laptops. I can get a pc laptop for half the price and arguably better quality. It is true about phones though, especially when you consider how badly all the big brands except apple and Google add unremovable money making spam apps to their phones.

Which PC laptop is half the price of, say, a MacBook Air and has better or even similar performance, battery life, input devices…? Keep in mind that you're talking about a $500-$600 price point here.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#697

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This. Dex is Samsung's killer feature - but noone seems to know about it!? It's especially relevant to developers. It's now common to see monitors that have an integrated usb hub - so no docking station needed. Just plug your phone in via one cable, it will charge, send video, and use keyboard+mouse. You can have a 4k60 desktop, and then run termux and almost achieve a desktop-equivalent development environment. Unfo…

Or I can get a proper workstation (which I already have because I need it for proper work) which will run circle around the dex. Have you tried to run Android Studio with a big project? You need some good computing power for indexing the code and building it.

That may be the case for your particular bloated use case but it works fine for many others.

You can also remote desktop to your main workstation when mobile. Moonlight offers a low-latency self-hosted gamestream similar to geforce now, but also works great for desktop usage.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#698
post #509

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> It's probably because you didn't really do any research into it. A $100 or less Pixel 4a released in 2020 will easily last 5+ years if you take care of it. I'm not optimizing for years alive in retirement; instead, it's years of active, healthy life. Similarly, I don't just care about years of software support in a phone - it's important how long the phone feels like it's still a snappy, responsive phone. I just do…

In addition to the Pixel 4a I also have an iPhone X and in 2023 you can really tell how sluggish the phone feels with iOS 16. I can only imagine how much worse it will feel with iOS 20.

iPhone X will not support any version of iOS past 16.

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#699
post #685

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Well, yeah, and I'd like a pony. The main issue is security updates. I'm guessing you weren't accessing things like a banking app with highly sensitive financial data on your 2005 Motorola.

> I'm guessing you weren't accessing things like a banking app with highly sensitive financial data For anyone who has done any serious threat modeling exercises would never ever do that from a 2023 phone (I'm fully aware many people do it regardless).w

So what phone do you recommend for someone who is looking for a new phone?

Re: US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

#700
post #169
post #126

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Google created RCS - it does exactly what you are requesting. But support for it is tepid - even Google Voice doesn't support it.

Also, it is just fake open-source, at the end of the day all your data goes through google’s servers, with optional encryption that will be decrypted when you talk to an old device — that’s security theater.

Doesn't the encryption support depend on the messaging app? Meaning old devices could easily just update (even auto-update) to a newer version of Messages that does support encryption?
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