- There is a lot of discussion around manufacturers not offering more than 2-3 software upgrades, and claims of users "not wanting or caring about them." However users might care more if manufacturers didn't make updates painful and annoying. Samsung recently is an example of this for me.
- Termux no longer updated on Google Play
- Google Assistant's new Do Nothing mode does just that
- Xiaomi Mi 11 Hands-on: Gorgeous Screen and Chart-Busting Performance
- Oneplus Nord N10 and N100 release in US
- Smartphone Durability Awards 2020! - JerryRigEverything
- The best android scanner app for 2021 in my opinion
| Posted: 05 Jan 2021 02:01 PM PST A lot of Android manufacturers claim or community members claim average users don't care about software updates, or even want them. Which may be true but the reason why I think is important and under discussed. Some recent updates by Samsung have made me realize this. I find it frustrating to get updates as the rational for the update is often times not clearly explained. The often times just add more bloat than they do useful features as manufacturers try to force feed you things they've decided are most recently aligned to their goals. With updates being anywhere from duds to frustratingly adding apps and software you don't want I can see why most users wouldn't care for, or actively avoid installing updates. If manufacturers wanted people to install updates, take part in new system versions, and use more of their proprietary apps they need to do a lot better at contextualizing updates, explaining their benefits, and if you don't like the supposed new benefits of additional software's let you more easily opt out. As an anecdote I'll go through what I've experienced with Samsung in the last week or two... In the late spring or early summer I purchased a Samsung A50 from a reseller. I had a V30+ which I really liked and was still functioning relatively well but I wanted to try something new, and a crack in it's screen was getting worse. I liked the A50. It had some bloatware but it was easily uninstalled or disabled pretty quickly. No worse than setting up Windows or some other operating systems for the first time. Certainly better than some Android phones I've had over the years which felt like progress in the right direction. The last week or so has been a frustrating mess from Samsung though. First even knowing I had suppressed Samsung Pay as much as possible and had not thought of it since I got the phone a weird white bar appeared at the bottom of my home screen. Swipe up to find it's a Samsung Pay shortcut they've inserted. Which I never turned on or asked for as I don't use Samsung Pay. Trying to give some credence to maybe myself being dumb and having pressed something or a pocket dial incident of sorts I tried to nuke the app back to the Stone Age. Uninstall all updates, disabled notifications, disallow all permissions, ect. Swipe up is still present. I finally cave and update it to try and disable it (after reinstalling the most recent updates) from within the app. However the only way to reach the setting screen where you can reportedly disable this is by accepting the terms of service, and then signing into either your Samsung account or 'Sign In With Google'. You cannot see that you have to create an account until after you accept the agreements either. A few days after being annoyed by this but giving up fighting it for the time being it has since disappeared. Which makes me wonder if it's some A/B test, or poor quality control in what's enabled or disabled as a part of background updates. Additionally they processed a system update with a long list of changes a day or two after this. This update either added, or re-enabled two new apps. AR Zone, and "Tips." Neither of which can be removed or disabled. AR Zone can be "hidden from the app list" which is now another contextual menu buried within the app settings away from the place you traditionally disable an app you don't wish to use. Neither of these apps are mentioned anywhere in the change log of new software they show you after update. No explanation of what they are, or what they do, and they aren't easily hidden away or removed. They just exists and are in the way now. In the end from a user experience perspective this is all very poor and I can see why it would drive people away from upgrading or wanting to upgrade software. I understand why companies want to push their latest and greatest services, why A/B testing is beneficial but that has to be more carefully balanced. If there is no relenting on the end of developers and manufacturers with how aggressively they shove this stuff down your throat either through background updates that make it look like ghost did it, visible updates with bad patch notes, or just poor QA control where the update brings back things you previously disabled it doesn't do a lot to make users trust that updates can be interesting, beneficial, or practical in their day to day lives. [link] [comments] | ||
| Termux no longer updated on Google Play Posted: 05 Jan 2021 11:32 AM PST | ||
| Google Assistant's new Do Nothing mode does just that Posted: 05 Jan 2021 08:36 PM PST
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| Xiaomi Mi 11 Hands-on: Gorgeous Screen and Chart-Busting Performance Posted: 06 Jan 2021 12:47 AM PST
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| Oneplus Nord N10 and N100 release in US Posted: 05 Jan 2021 10:23 AM PST
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| Smartphone Durability Awards 2020! - JerryRigEverything Posted: 05 Jan 2021 07:24 AM PST
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| The best android scanner app for 2021 in my opinion Posted: 04 Jan 2021 11:41 PM PST Hi everyone, good morning from France o/ I spent 2 hours yesterday testing android apps from these two links : - https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/elxi9x/reviews_best_document_scanner_apps_for_android/ They are a bit outdated (1 year ago) so I decided to give it a shot. I won't go far in my explanation but what I was looking for was : - Free or small one time purchase (NO SUBSCRIPTION) - Automatic Google Drive Sync - Very good color and B/W quality for printing handwritten notes as a student - Batch scan with the ability (like Camscanner) to resize images fast and to change the filter easily - Fast to boot - Good autocrop feature I decided not to care about OCR but the tools I chose are quite good from what I heard in Reddit and the comment section. Here is my TOP 3 with my phone (Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite with a pretty bad camera) - Notebloc (or ClearScan which is basically the same app, take the one with the lowest price) - SwiftScan (former Scanbot) - GeniusScan Why ? Notebloc is basically Camscanner for free with amazing image quality and Google Drive Sync. 3.59€ wasn't much, I don't have anything else to say, it is amazing and most importantly : Fast to scan, resize and change the filter. Swiftscan offered good image quality while being quite slow before. Now I don't have a good image quality since the few last updates, but I know it's related to my phone and the support is going to help about that. Same quality as far as I tested it out (used it for the last 2 years) but it is slower in scanning, resizing and especially in changing filter. It might be related to my phone, but if my phone can be that fast in Notebloc, it means it should be the same for everyone as my phone is not a standard in speed. Finally we have GeniusScan. I'll have to admit, I like the fact that this is a French company developping it. But I took it for his precise autocrop and his quality. But it wasn't as good as the other two even if he was fast, but in the end we do want great filter quality and pdf quality, so I decided not to put him before. That's it, if you want to make your own opinion about that, you can check the two links I dropped at the beginning of this post. TL : DR : Notebloc : Good quality and amazingly fast SwiftScan : Good quality but now has problems with my phones and some other, slower because of optimization andbecause of the way features are implemented GeniusScan : Amazingly fast with good autocrop but can't compete with scan quality of the other two Have a wonderful day, stay safe everyone o/ [link] [comments] |
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