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    Home Unlabelled Android Sunday Rant/Rage (Jun 13 2021) - Your weekly complaint thread!

    Android Sunday Rant/Rage (Jun 13 2021) - Your weekly complaint thread!

    June 13, 2021

    Android Sunday Rant/Rage (Jun 13 2021) - Your weekly complaint thread!

    Sunday Rant/Rage (Jun 13 2021) - Your weekly complaint thread!

    Posted: 13 Jun 2021 05:00 AM PDT

    Note 1. [Join our IRC, and Telegram chat-rooms]Please see our wiki for instructions.

    This weekly Sunday thread is for you to let off some steam and speak out about whatever complaint you might have about:

    • Your device.

    • Your carrier.

    • Your device's manufacturer.

    • An app

    • Any other company

    Rules

    1) Please do not target any individuals or try to name/shame any individual. If you hate Google/Samsung/HTC etc. for one thing that is fine, but do not be rude to an individual app developer.

    2) If you have a suggestion to solve another user's issue, please leave a comment but be sure it's constructive! We do not want any flame-wars.

    3) Be respectful of other's opinions. Even if you feel that somebody is "wrong" you don't have to go out of your way to prove them wrong. Disagree politely, and move on.

    submitted by /u/curated_android
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    [MKBHD] Top 5 Android 12 Features: Huge Redesign!

    Posted: 13 Jun 2021 06:07 AM PDT

    Exclusive: Suspension of production of 'Galaxy S21 FE' ahead of Samsung's release... Due to lack of AP supply shortage

    Posted: 12 Jun 2021 11:19 PM PDT

    Andrei F. on twitter [regarding the 200Watt charging]: The issue with these statements is exactly the same as the OPP0 fast charging drama last year, they don't specify the actual charge rate for that 800cycle 80% figure. They make you think it's at 20OW but they don't specifically state this.

    Posted: 13 Jun 2021 07:33 AM PDT

    Japan to Start Antitrust Probe on Apple, Google, Nikkei Says

    Posted: 12 Jun 2021 05:27 PM PDT

    Samsung Says No Decision on Halting Production of Budget Phone

    Posted: 13 Jun 2021 08:34 AM PDT

    Galaxy S21 FE Unpacked Event to be postponed for 1–2 months (Rumour)

    Posted: 13 Jun 2021 08:42 AM PDT

    My comprehensive review of the Mi 11 Ultra on ATT and TMO CN ROM after 3 weeks of use

    Posted: 13 Jun 2021 06:10 AM PDT

    So I am writing this review mainly because when I bought this phone, I could not find a lot of information about certain important features. So after using Mi11 Ultra for 3 weeks, I decided to write my own review to address these points.

    How does it work on ATT and T-Mobile?

    I happen to have both ATT and T-Mobile sims, I tested out both sims on my phone. The CN ROM I have has dual sim capability which works perfectly and personal hotspot works as well. The actual 5G and call coverage on both ATT and TMO is excellent, basically no issues whatsoever in my area which is Central Florida.

    How fast does it charge?

    It charges stupidly fast, almost unbelievably fast if you are coming from any iPhone or Samsung. It is probably one of the best and least advertised features of this phone which nobody talks about. My last phone was a Note 20 Ultra and Mi11 Ultra smokes it in charging time. If you are not used to Xiaomi phones, you will definitely be caught off guard the first time you plug it in to charge. First time I plugged it in at 4%, it was at like 50% maybe 15 min later. Absolutely wicked. Contrary to what a lot of people said, in my experience, the phone does not get hot at all and the battery life is actually the best of any phone I have owned which is surprising. I have never had to charge it more than once a day, but even a full charge is basically 30 minutes which is nothing.

    How good is the camera?

    Couple of specific points I should make here before getting to the camera, tangentially related. On Samsung phones, one of the things I hated most was the shitty Photos/Gallery app on Samsung, it looks cheaply designed and the video player rarely worked on my Note 20 Ultra. The Xiaomi Photo/Gallery app is much better to use than what Samsung has. The one thing I miss from Samsung is the option to share photos by link sharing, I used this feature all the time and I admit I do miss it. I also miss the SD card. It is not a huge deal because instead of a SD card, I just carry a 512GB USB C drive now when I travel and transfer photos from the phone to the USB C drive using files app. I am surprised more people don't do this actually as it is both easier and faster than using an SD card. The main advantage of an SD card on phones that have it is that you can shoot directly onto it, but often that has certain limitations like no 4k60 which you can only do on local storage (transfer to USB later). One thing which is slightly bothersome is that Xiaomi uses USB 2.0 instead of USB 3 which is a bit surprising. I am not sure if photo transfer rate is actually any slower but just something to keep in mind.

    Onto the actual camera. Yes it totally lives up to the hype. It takes great photos. I love the look of the camera module on the back, it looks really slick, and if you have the black color, the phone looks very sleek, people on the street have asked me what phone is that, looks so alien, etc. One of the reasons I specifically upgraded from Note 20 Ultra was because I wanted another high end phone that had 5x zoom. A lot of people bought the S21 Ultra, but most of those people probably didn't buy it for the camera because the 3x zoom is too little and 10x zoom is too much. I loved the Note 20 Ultra because 5x zoom is just the right amount to zoom in. One thing which really bothered me about Note 20 Ultra was the fact that it had 4k60 but you could not use the telephoto lens to shoot 4k60 using the 5x optical zoom lens. If you wanted to use 5x zoom, you had to settle for 4k30 which is significantly worse. After doing some research, it came to my discovery that actually no smartphone was capable of doing 4k60 on the optical zoom lens and it was an extremely rare feature even on most conventional cameras. Then somehow I stumbled across a YouTube video that had video samples from Mi11 Ultra and one of the samples used the telephoto lens to record 4k60 with 5x optical zoom. Much to my surprise, when I set up the phone, I discovered that Mi11 Ultra does actually have the option to use 4k60 at 5x optical zoom, something I have never seen on any other phone including my Note 20 Ultra. Allegedly the only other phone that has the ability to do 4k60 with optical zoom is the S21 Ultra but it is probably still worse than the Mi11 Ultra as S21 Ultra's options are either 3x or 10x zoom which are too little or too much for video. 5x zoom is the sweet spot and currently Mi11 Ultra to my knowledge is the only phone currently that can shoot 5x optical zoom at 4k60. No other device has this feature. So this is a criminally underrated feature which I didn't see advertised anywhere, arguably I bought the Mi11 Ultra for this feature alone. I should also mention that you can shoot 4k60 with the Ultrawide camera as well, although I use 4k60 at 5x optical zoom the most. For the people who think I am obsessing over 4k60 at 5x optical zoom too much, I will provide some context. I do a lot of plane spotting, and for plane spotting, you need a camera with good zoom and high FPS for fast moving planes taking off and landing. In most cases, you need both zoom and high FPS at the same time. Samsung and other phones made you compromise by picking either zoom or high FPS but did not allow both at the same time. The thing I love about this phone is that you don't have to pick, you can use 5x optical zoom lens and shoot 4k60 at the same time which is a dream come true for plane spotters like me. The other camera feature which got way more attention was the rear display. As many people have already said, you can use it as a viewfinder live preview when looking at the rear which is pretty cool. Xiaomi have said it will also be extended to video previews in a feature software update. In practice, I don't really use it for selfies, what I actually use it for is when taking pictures of family, they can see a live preview of themselves in real time which they like. Very cool. On a related note, for all the people who saw Flossy Carters video where the Google Messages notification pops up on the rear display, this only works on the Global model for some reason. Might be a bug on CN ROM, not sure if they removed it or something. The rear display only stays on for like 15 or 30 seconds, I wish there was an option to keep it always on. Maybe the video preview, notifications, and always on will be added to rear display in a future update. The camera does have some shutter lag, typical of Android in general, although it seems identical to shutter lag on Samsung if you are familiar with that. The battery does not drain much when taking photos or videos contrary to what other people have said. But even if it did, a full charge is like 30 min so hardly an issue. Xiaomi even sells a 100W car charger which is amazing if you're taking photos while traveling, plug it in the car, and you will be at 40% in like 15 min or less.

    Is MIUI buggy?

    A little bit, but it is extremely exaggerated by YouTubers to an almost ridiculous degree. MIUI is not more buggy than any other OS, at least on CN ROM. Global ROM may be a different story, but probably not.

    Does it come with a free charger?

    Yes, if you order from Giztop, you get a free 67W charger as a gift, which is basically because Giztop buys from Xiaomi and Xiaomi gives a free 67W charger if you ask for it. Giztop is not the one giving you a free charger, it is actually Xiaomi giving it for free and Giztop just passes it on to you. Xiaomi even throws in a free clear case in every box no questions asked. Apple, Samsung, take notes. I also highly recommend buying the 100W Xiaomi car charger, it is one of the most useful things you will buy if you have a phone that can use it. If you travel, you should also invest in a laptop power bank. There is Chinese company called RAVpower that makes powerbanks with 80-100W AC outlets which actually allow you to charge Mi11 Ultra at full 67W unlike typical 18W Belkin powerbanks which are slow by comparison. RAVpower is running a great sale right now that gives like $50 off on $150 laptop powerbanks right now. Pretty good if you ask me. Mi11 Ultra also comes with a screen protector already applied out of the box and it is a good one so don't take it off as Android screens tend to scratch easily, something I learned the hard way with my Note 20. I bought this case:

    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B093VF421Z?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details

    What other cool features does it have?

    Mi11 Ultra like Xiaomi phones in general has an IR blaster which is basically unheard of on iPhones and most recent Samsung phones like Note 20 or S21 don't have it either. It is amazing for when you go to hotels and can't find the remote. Mi Remote is built in and works great. If for some reason it doesn't work, you can change the mode of the IR blaster to work with different kinds of TVs or appliances.

    You can clone apps with a MIUI feature called dual apps if an app only supports logging into one account at a time. This is one of the coolest features on any OS, superseded by another even cooler feature on MIUI called second space which allows you to log in to different user profile just by using a different fingerprint. Great for handing your phone to your kids without worrying about them screwing up your email and sending a nasty message to the boss.

    By far the coolest showoff feature on Xiaomi is super wallpapers, if you want to show someone how cool Xiaomi is, use a super wallpaper of Mars or Saturn and it will wow them. It never gets old, sometimes I pick the phone up just to see the planets bounce around, it is even cooler than it looks and the fingerprint/face unlock is obscenely fast. Xiaomi is so smooth it is wicked.

    Customization on MIUI is unrivalled on Android and puts Samsung to shame. Even the rear display can be customized, and MIUI is so fun to use, I love all the little animations. Certain things like MIUI Control Center are ripped off straight from iOS but their implementation on MIUI is actually better than on iPhone as you can lock the screen and take a screenshot from MIUI control center which I use all the time. Probably one of the things I hated the most about Samsung and loved the most about iPhone is that notifications system on Samsung was trash compared to iOS. I never was able to get lockscreen or even regular notifications working in a usable way on Samsung and believed it was because of some faulty Android framework. Amazingly, MIUI notifications work like iOS which is lightyears better than anything on Android. Lockscreen notifications actually work. The trick on MIUI for notifications is to go into the Apps section and toggle "Autostart" and toggle "Important" under notification grouping, then notifications will work just like on iOS. I don't see either of these options on my Note 20 Ultra so I think MIUI has some special notifications settings built in to override the Android system so that notifications work better. It seems that Samsung and other Android phones rely on the developer to decide what kind of notifications to display, MIUI gives you the option to override it and force any app to display all notifications. If you are Android user who misses how notifications work on iOS, Xiaomi is for you. I think MIUI is the closest thing to a perfect OS there is. Best of Android, best of iOS.

    Some people flash their phone to Xiaomi.eu, I personally have not done it as CN ROM works fine for me, but if you want to do it, you can. Some people say that unlocking the bootloader breaks banking apps although I don't know as I haven't done it. If you buy CN ROM and want a language other than English, you may have to flash xiaomi.eu as English is the only non-Chinese language built into CN ROM. Global model supports other languages natively.

    Does it have Google Play?

    Since I bough the phone from Giztop, it came with Google Play store built in. In fact the phone was already set up completely when I opened the box which was really weird. Upon some research, I discovered that this is because the CN ROM setup is mostly in Chinese, so they are actually doing you a favor as you will not understand a lick of Chinese and otherwise will not be able to set the phone up. There is not much bloatware and whatever extra apps there are can easily be removed. Annoying features like the search function in Chinese from swipe down on Home Screen can easily be swapped or disabled with more useful features in their place like app drawer from the settings. One annoying thing is that built in web browser in MIUI CN ROM does not have the ability to disable Chinese text or use Google search in MIUI browser even if the rest of the OS is in English. Literally every app except the Browser in MIUI works in English. However, this is basically a non-issue as the first thing I did on MIUI is install Samsung browser which is lightyears better than any other Android browser and works perfectly with Google search and has no problems at all on MIUI. Set it as your default browser and forget about the other one.

    Should I buy it?

    Yes.

    I have basically no complaints with this phone other than the fact that being in the US means you are on your own as far as the "warranty" goes.

    On an unrelated note, apparently, because Xiaomi does not sell in the US, Apple patents do not apply to them. So while on most Android phones like Samsung and OnePlus, apps don't bounce when you scroll to the bottom of a screen, on Xiaomi it bounces just like on iPhone even though Apple has infamously patented it. This is either because Apple is afraid to sue Xiaomi or because US cannot enforce patents on domestic China market. This is also how Xiaomi can get away with copying the best features straight from iOS onto MIUI like Control Center and iOS notifications layout. Incidentally, it makes MIUI the best Android experience by far as it feels less like Android and more like a hybrid of the best from Android and the best from iOS and the disadvantages of neither.

    Feel free to ask any questions!

    submitted by /u/sonicruiser
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    Hands-on with Privacy Dashboard, one of Android 12's best new features

    Posted: 12 Jun 2021 11:39 AM PDT

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    Posted: 12 Jun 2021 08:21 AM PDT
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