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    Home Unlabelled Android What should I buy Thursday (May 13 2021) - Your weekly device inquiry thread!

    Android What should I buy Thursday (May 13 2021) - Your weekly device inquiry thread!

    May 14, 2021

    Android What should I buy Thursday (May 13 2021) - Your weekly device inquiry thread!

    What should I buy Thursday (May 13 2021) - Your weekly device inquiry thread!

    Posted: 13 May 2021 05:00 AM PDT

    Credits to the team at /r/PickAnAndroidForMe for compiling this information:

    Note 1. Join us at /r/MoronicMondayAndroid, a sub serving as a repository for our retired weekly threads. Just pick any thread and Ctrl-F your way to wisdom!

    Note 2. Join our IRC, and Telegram chat-rooms! Please see our wiki for instructions.

    submitted by /u/curated_android
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    Full Res Press Images of Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro - Jon Prosser

    Posted: 13 May 2021 11:22 AM PDT

    A curated list of awesome open source Android applications

    Posted: 13 May 2021 05:50 PM PDT

    Google Pixel 6 Design Leak

    Posted: 13 May 2021 11:52 AM PDT

    Official Windows 10 Galaxy Buds Client

    Posted: 13 May 2021 06:41 AM PDT

    Google Assistant tests a funky colorful design alongside one-click shortcuts

    Posted: 13 May 2021 08:59 AM PDT

    PSA: Your devices might be vulnerable to 'frag' attacks over WiFi

    Posted: 13 May 2021 08:25 AM PDT

    Pixel users - things you'll hate about OneUI

    Posted: 13 May 2021 04:48 PM PDT

    So straight off - I know I'm pedantic. This review is for other people like me who are considering making the switch from Pixel / Andoid One to Samsung's OneUI. Spoiler: If you're a OneUI fan, this review isn'[t for you. This is for people considering making the jump from 'vanilla' Android, who are wary of Samsung's design ethos.

    For me, the added features of OneUI are less valuable than the missing features, and don't make up for the design inconsistencies that will drive you crazy if you have any interest in visual design.

    So like many, I keep reading that OneUI has matured. It certainly seems that way from reviews and feedback in the community. In the screenshots, those of us interested in design are still going to notice some pretty nast faux-pas, but the community will assure you that you can tweak and change almost everything to your taste. This prospect intrigued me enough to give it a shot.

    I'm here to disagree. Whilst you can change a lot of things, I'd describe the UI as 'inconsistent, confused, and very rigidly Samsung'.

    ​

    • The UI has obnoxiously large border-radius on most elements. You can reduce this a little with some Good Lock modules, but it's still way over the top. This isn't a deal-breaker on its own, but...

    ​

    • It's like the icon designers don't work with the UI designers. Whilst the UI is made up of geometric rectangles and severe border-radius, the design language for the iconography just doesn't match. It feels incredibly inconsistent, with very fine lines and no border radius in the status bar icons, circular icons in the quick settings, and awful 'squircle' shapes scattered throughout the UI which are completely at odds with the otherwise geometric elements. You can't easily change any of these, as I'll describe below.

    ​

    • The most offensive, and hardest to address are the hideous squircle icons. In fact you can't really change them much at all. This is something that's trivial in other OEM skins, but not in OneUI. This is an absolute deal-breaker for me as they drive me crazy. I tried several approaches here to get these abominations off my device:
      • You can't use your own icon packs like every other launcher uses, and the Samsung Theme Store isn't even worth looking at: most icon sets on there are very low quality, and none of them will re-style third-party apps. They only alter the 10 or so Samsung system apps. The rest remain ugly squircles. If I'm stuck with squircles, I'd rather have consistent squircles.
      • If you use a custom launcher like Nova,youc an apply your own icon pack to the homescreen, but the squircles still exist through the rest of the UI like in share menus, and it starts to feel even mroe inconsistent. You also lose the nice app-closing animations if you use a third party launcher, and the whole experience starts to feel very unsophisticated.
      • Samsung have intentionally crippled Android's inbuilt icon shape masks that allow users to customise their icons on pretty much any other device. You can force some shapes via ADB, but circle is missing, and none of them will apply to Samsung app icons - only third party icons.
      • There is a third party tool called #hex_ that lets you build or import a more granular theme from their community, using some hacky switcheroo method to trick the Galaxy Theme Store into applying a custom theme. This sounds like what I need, but currently it has been broken for weeks due to Samsung's May sercurity update. It seems Samsung are really trying their best to shut this stuff down.

    ​

    • Having a mixture of Google's 'Product Sans' font, and Samsung's 'Not Quite Product Sans' font is going to drive you crazy if you have an eye for fonts and consistency. Often they'll appear in the same view, and it is uncomfortable to look at for a typography fan. Samsung tout that you can customise fonts, but actually, you can only choose from their very limited list. Again, there is a hacky switcheroo trick you can use to trick your phone into accepting a third party font, but the letter spacing is all wrong, the weights get messed up because it only accepts a single TTF, and as soon as you alter theme or font, it gets lost and you have to set it all up again. It doesn't feel like a good solution.

    ​

    • It is not possible to change status bar icon styles as you can on Pixel, and the Samsung icons are very fiddly looking, with small, thin lines and no border-radius. They look completely out of place against the otherwise bold, rounded UI.

    ​

    • Preinstalled bloat like Facebook, some of which you need ADB to remove, makes the device feel non-premium and quite sinister. My first impression is that I don't trust my device because of the notoriously untrustworthy partner apps they've sneaked in.

    ​

    • Raise to wake works sometimes.

    ​

    • Face unlock works sometimes.

    ​

    • The gesture for Samsung Pay seems to be the same as the Home gesture. You never know which you're going to get by swiping up.

    ​

    • Not having Android 10's power menu, with shortcuts to your Google Pay cards and smart home controls is inconvenient. These items are behind several clicks with OneUI which seems slower than just jumping into the corresponding apps.

    ​

    • Thankfully, Samsung now lets you change default apps more, and even includes some of Google's apps by default. However some things are still hard-linked to Samsung's apps, rather than using intents. this amounts to lots of small inconveniences which add up to an overall inconvenient-feeling experience.
      • Example: The camera viewfinder's thumbnail opens the Samsung gallery app, and there is no way to change this to your preferred gallery, even if you set another gallery (ie. Google Photos) to default in the system. This is annoying, as if like me, you take 20 photos of your kids/pets and want to quickly review and discard most of them, you find yourself having to jump in and out of the various apps to ensure that any you delete are also deleted from Google Photos in the cloud. This would all be all just seamless if Samsung had used intents properly on the gallery.
      • Example 2: You can set another camera (Gcam) to launch on double-pressing the power button. But it won't work if the device is locked, whichd efeats the point of a quick camera launcher entirely.

    ​

    • Samsung includes it's 'Smart View' in place of Chromecast throught the system (gallery, quick settings etc). This no longer works with Chromecast, so it's pretty much limited to Samsung's TVs. THis one's just an annoyance really, but the UI seems full of these links for things that I can't user in place of useful standards.

    This isn't to detract from the things that Samsung does let you tweak, and there are a lot. Most of which are done well. But it's just feels that whilst you can change 100 unimportant little things, the big glaring things are not customisable. Most noticeably, Samsung's poor UI decisions, which could easily be customised if OneUI was as flexible as even the Pixel, which is largely touted on this sub to be lacking in customisability.

    Overall, if the thing you like about the Pixel is consistency and polish, you're still not going to like OneUI. If you prefer tonnes of fancy features and don't really get hung up on design / polish, you're going to appreciate OneUI.

    submitted by /u/getmoneygetpaid
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    The Google Now launcher is still accessible in the Google app

    Posted: 13 May 2021 08:03 AM PDT

    https://imgur.com/gallery/qaJEaot

    I was able to access it using an activity launcher app and enabling both of the Google Now tabs.

    submitted by /u/Wacko1805
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    ZTE's Axon 30 Ultra is coming to the US, the UK, and Europe this month

    Posted: 13 May 2021 09:52 AM PDT

    Am I the only person that uses the browser for everything on android?

    Posted: 13 May 2021 07:03 PM PDT

    I browse most apps like twitter, reddit, youtube etc... on android through the brave browser which is my browser of choice, the apps do scale it so it fits your phone's screen and it makes it easier and more reliable but i hate that they take so many features from you, like advanced youtube settings and stuff, you do lose some optimization, websites not loading that fast, but for me it feels easier and more familiar to use.

    I just wanna know if other people also do that lol.

    Edit: I forgot to mention I only get notifications and answer comments from youtube through the actual app but after I get the notification I hop on brave to check it out.

    submitted by /u/jbr1ght
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    Xiaomi Multi Coil Wireless Charger released

    Posted: 13 May 2021 06:47 AM PDT

    https://www.mi.com/buy/detail?product_id=13911

    If you aren't familiar, they did what Apple couldn't do with the AirPower. It can charge 3 devices at the same time, 20W each. 19 charging coils.

    599 yuan (~90 USD) and includes a 120W brick

    Temperature tests show that devices don't exceed 37 degrees

    submitted by /u/FragmentedChicken
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    New Pixel 3 for $160 on Woot!

    Posted: 13 May 2021 07:56 PM PDT

    It's only for the next two hours, so act fast! It's not amazing, but if you're on a budget and want a decent unlocked Android, it's not a bad deal at all. It is bootlocked though, so no custom roms for those that are into that. Just thought I'd share!

    submitted by /u/TheFlyingCrate
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