TL;DR: Apple dominates the US smartphone market, but EU regulations may offer Android a chance for resurgence by enforcing messaging interoperability and standardizing hardware features.

cross-posted from !meta@lemdro.id

I am in the process of looking between repairing my phone or switching to a new one. And the no brainer evolution to the OnePlus 7 Pro I have is a Pixel phone. Pixel Phones are definitely not perfect, I know that the battery would fall faster than other phones but hey, that's ok, google chip in it, possibility to go GrapheneOs, all good.

But the A versions only having 128 GB, and needing to pay 100 extra Euro on the Normal and Pro phone for 256GB is ridiculous, and not allowing me to add a SD card for that! Is insane I restarted my phone in December fresh from zero, and in the last 9 months I used 163 GB of memory. 48GB of it is my music on Deezer, for which I pay to be able to download "HIFI" files which I am not willing to trade for using less space on my phone, I work in a place with no 4G, I've got a few playlist I switch between. The rest is 25 GB of Pictures, 7GB of games. 44GB of apps.

Now the answer to this is "Well now with your Pixel phone you can use the Google Cloud, Google Docs blablabla". Something insights by Google offering 3 month of Google one and 3 month of YouTube premium when you buy a Pixel phone. So much cloud that's soo cool! And you can just redownload things when you need it. Well I don't want to redownload my musics everyday when I listen to them, I don't want to trade and limit what I would call normal use. I know not everyone will resonate with this, but the carbon impact on bandwidth used from cloud in 4G is important.

Normalise SD cards, Normalise not using the Cloud as a solution for everything

Update 2 Days later

Hey, writting here because this post has brought a lot of people to talk about storage of data on phone, which is quite nice. I am writting here just because a lot of comments are repeating certain points and It wouldn't be useful answering to all of them if after their will be more comments saying the same thing.

I am not saying Cloud = Bad. It's great we have a place out there where we can Store Data in case anything happens. I simply wish either brand gave us more choice on data capacity, seeing a Pixel 7a only at 128 gb ain't cool, let me make a choice. Seing a Pixel & with 128gb or having to pay an extra 100€ for 256gb when a sd card is 30€ is not cool.

A personal server is in my plans, and it's one of the projects I'm the most impatient to have.

I understand that I have a different use of phones then the average, I simply want to be able to adapt the tools I use to my different use.

I have taken the step to take a look at the storage in my phone by curiosity and to look with a different eye my consomption of Storage, and have deleted 3gb of games, and 3gb of apps that where useless. I've also started looking into my photos and took out 3gb of photos I had which where useless. And I think there is more photos I'll delete, I am not done on that of course

My signal discussion are important to me, I am in a Long Distance Relationship, and discussions I have with my SO on Signal are the major part of my relationship, and I cherish them. I have set up signal so that it makes when charging at night a copy of my discussions, and when I have Sincthing, it loads the conv to a HDD Drive on my PC. That being said, in the floders I found bugged temp file from saves that did not end, for a total of 20 gb of Signal discussions (oof lol) which where deleted too. How ridiculus was it? Well in Storage>Files the weight of total files dropped from 20,68gb to 0,68gb

Anyway, I am now at 132gb :D! I'm not writting this because I am feeling attacked or to defend myself, just as a small update and because these are reocuring comment that's all, i'm still anwering here and there if you arrive a bit latter to the post, it's impressive from lemmy I feel to still be receiving comments and have a discussion that continues 2 day after a post. Usually on Reddit posts would die in 6 hours, and their where no dick's in the chat. I've read every single message, and answers other people did

Grayjay: https://grayjay.app

Cross posted from: https://lemmyf.uk/post/5106939

Ever since I switched back to Android after a couple years of using an iPhone SE, i have been missing the iOS feature to open "control center" (iOS term for quick shortcuts) using a swipe up gesture from the bottom of the screen.

This is a great feature that eliminates the need to reach for the top of the screen to pull down the notification shade to access toggles for commonn settings (wifi, cellular, BT, hotspot, torch, etc.). Since we live in an era of huge phones such a feature would have been extremely convenient. Unfortunately it's not implemented in Android.

But I accidentally stumbled upon an app called Neo Launcher that has implemented a similar functionality (kind of, since iPhone control center can be summoned no matter what app you're using, but this only works on home screen).

A dashboard pops up from the bottom of screen, where your thumb can easily reach, with a user-defined shortcut! Toggling wifi and other settings are much easier this way.

I'd highly recommend everyone to give this a try. Personally I've set double tap on screen as a shortcut for the dash.

The reason for Android's Notification system being better than iOS, is solely due to the ability to turn off individual aspects of an application's notifications.

Google, the poor multi-billion dollar scrappy startup that maintains Android, made a payment app that has one notification setting, "Google Pay". So all the ads, promotions, everything.

3rd party apps like PhonePe & Paytm have a better system.

How do you manage to maintain this OS?

@MishaalRahman @androidfaithful @android@lemdro.id @android@lemmy.world

Don't get me wrong. Apple removing audio jack was the biggest facepalm in smartphone history. And you can thank it for not being able to make an upgrade without sacrificing audio jack (and SD card too :/). But USB-C is getting standardized everywhere now (laptops, smartphones, etc.). What makes USB-C earphones not worth the switch?

tl;dr- s23 ultra with snapdragon 8 gen 2 performed much better under heavy load than the 3nm a17 pro on iphone 15 pm

which shows -

1. node size is useless as a17 pro was more inefficient
2. android apps are also optimised, sometimes better than iOS
3. bechmark scores are useless

Apparently not in Europe and Canada yet...

I'm someone with relatively small hands, plus I want my phone to be on the smaller side since I prefer to use my tablet/computer/tv to watch content. But this trend where many manufacturers tend to keep futures away from smaller phones to drive people to bigger phones is driving me crazy and really makes it hard for me to buy a new phone. I can understand not having everything like maybe a periscope lens or something else that is cost etc. but not to this level. Like take Samsung for example: S24 lacks uwb, 45w, a 1440p display, has a lower amount of ram and storage. Why? Why can't the s24 have faster charging or uwb? Why is there no 512 version and why does it have to start with 128gb storage? Is it not a flagship? It costs 949€ in my place! Why do I have to give 200€ more to get the s24+ just to get these simple features? I don't want a bigger phone! Google does the same! No uwb, no thermometer sensor, no telephoto lens. And don't get me started with all the software features google is keeping for the 8 pro like they don't have the same processor. Why? Are they cheap? No they are not. I'm just really annoyed by this cause I really don't want such a big phone.