Android Saturday APPreciation (Sep 04 2021) - Your weekly app recommendation/request thread! |
- Saturday APPreciation (Sep 04 2021) - Your weekly app recommendation/request thread!
- German government: smartphones to receive updates for seven years | Bundesregierung: Smartphones sollen sieben Jahre lang Updates erhalten
- Is the Galaxy Fold 3 really Hydrophobic?! - Waterproof Teardown!
- FOSS Android Apps - A collection of Open Source Android apps
- (Long) Thoughts after Week 1 with the Z Fold 3
- Asus ROG Phone 5s Pro review
- After seeing videos of flooding in New York, I think water resistance should be a universal feature.
| Saturday APPreciation (Sep 04 2021) - Your weekly app recommendation/request thread! Posted: 04 Sep 2021 05:00 AM PDT Note 1. Check out our apps wiki for previous threads and apps curated by the reddit Android community! Download the official /r/Android App Store based on our wiki! Note 2. Check MoronicMondayAndroid, which serves as a repository for our retired weekly threads. Just pick any thread and Ctrl-F your way to wisdom! Note 3. Join our IRC and Telegram chat-rooms! Please see our wiki for instructions. This weekly Saturday thread is for: Rules: 1) If you are a developer, you may promote your own app ONLY under the bolded, distinguished moderator comment. Users: if you think someone is trying to bypass this rule by promoting their app in the general thread, click the report button so we can take a look! [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 04 Sep 2021 05:44 AM PDT
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| Is the Galaxy Fold 3 really Hydrophobic?! - Waterproof Teardown! Posted: 04 Sep 2021 05:48 PM PDT
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| FOSS Android Apps - A collection of Open Source Android apps Posted: 04 Sep 2021 05:29 PM PDT | ||
| (Long) Thoughts after Week 1 with the Z Fold 3 Posted: 04 Sep 2021 01:39 PM PDT I'm a long-time tech enthusiast and power user, and I'm frequently an early adopter. My phone is such an essential tool, however, that I held off on trying a Fold until the third generation because I didn't feel like the technology was fully mature yet. Reading the reviews of the Fold 3 convinced me that the it was time to give the new form factor a try, and my impressions after the first week have borne that out. This post is intended for people who have a similar user profile, and are on the fence, or who just got their new Fold and want some tips. As with everything on Reddit, your mileage may vary. My User Profile My previous phone was the Note 20 Ultra, which I loved for everything except its curved screen. I read a lot of text, and the curved screen messes with margins. It is also incredibly hard to protect. I hate curved screens, and I think they are Samsung's worst "innovation." My job requires me to work with a lot of large PDF's and image files, reviewing complicated case files, large spreadsheets, and reading complex academic documents. Most of the heavy lifting is done on a laptop or a tablet, but being able to quickly annotate something on my phone or review it there is extremely handy. I also use my phone for: SMS/WhastsApp/Signal, Zoom, reading several news sites, Twitter/Instagram/Reddit, Duolingo, various Weather and Travel apps, YouTube/Music, Maps/Navigation, web browsing, and Kindle (when I'm not using my Oasis). I'm not a heavy S-Pen user, except when annotating a PDF. I do enjoy PC gaming, but I've never found my phone to be a great gaming device. General Impressions of the Fold 3 Like most folks, my first impression of the Fold 3 was one of awe. It really does feel like the future, and it's hard to imaging going back to a candybar phone after using the Fold 3 for a few days. The build quality is outstanding. The phone feels solid without being too heavy, and the hinge is a masterpiece of design. Both screens are absolutely gorgeous. I use the front screen more than I anticipated, and it's much better for one-handed typing than the Note 20u was. If you read a lot of text, or spend a lot of time using SMS or similar messaging services, the front screen is great. For looking at images (e.g. Instagram), it gives roughly the same experience as viewing them on my Active 2 watch. It gets the job done, but that's about it. The main screen is a thing of beauty. Text is crisp and sharp, images have great color depth, and it feels like glass under my fingertip. Unless I am in bright sunlight, if I'm looking at an image or a video (or anything that's not a solid bar of color), the crease disappears completely when I'm looking at it dead-on. Otherwise, it's there, but easy to ignore. The same with the behind-the-screen camera. If I look for it, I can't miss it, but I usually forget about it. The screen doesn't just look good. All of that added real estate is just fantastic for working with documents or images. I think the display ratio and screen size is pretty much perfect. Multitasking works so well that I found myself wondering how I ever lived without it. The ability to have my Gmail and Calendar side-by-side, or WhatsApp and a browser, or a Word Doc and the calculator, open at the same time is extraordinarily helpful. Sound is astonishingly good, for telephony, music, and gaming. Clarity is excellent, even at high volume, and the speakers can get quite loud. The mics are also excellent. A confirmed with a colleague that they could not tell, at all, that I was on speakerphone. The cameras definitely feel like a step back, but not a huge one. I've still gotten some excellent photos. The shutter doesn't seem as fast as on the Ultra, but even low-light shots still look quite good. The under-screen camera is more than fine for videoconferencing. The fingerprint reader is the fastest I have ever used. I often forget that it's taking the time to read my fingerprint when I unlock the phone. Regarding gaming, the Fold 3 is making me rethink my hesitancy about playing on phones. I love strategy games and RPG's, and the Fold is perfect for them. Civilization 6 and Slay the Spire are must-have games, in my opinion. They look amazing and there's just the right amount of screen real estate to fully enjoy the games without compromises. In most positions, the Fold 3 is much more comfortable in my hand(s) than I expected, especially with a case on it. The one exception is when I'm lying on my back in bed, reading one-handed. There never seems to be a comfortable place to put my thumb. My Kindle wins out here, unequivocally. Sitting upright or standing (where the weight of Fold 3 goes back into my hand instead of forward on my thumb), the form factor of the Fold 3 is extremely comfortable - closed or open. I've found battery life to be excellent, but that is with some caveats. Letting it charge to only 85% left me with battery anxiety, so I charge to 100. In addition, I use the 60 Hz refresh rate, and I aggressively turn off notifications and background battery usage for apps. I do this manually, one at a time, in the Apps section of Settings. With moderate to heavy use, I'm ending the day at 25% battery. My Suggestions Here are the things that I have found useful to know/do. Again, your mileage may vary, and I'm sure someone in the comments will tell me how wrong I am. The best piece of advice I've gotten from this subreddit was to try the Niagara launcher. I spent a lot of time getting it configured to my liking, and now I'm completely sold. I purchased the lifetime license (you have to dig for that option). The launcher has both left thumb (Favorites and Folders) and right thumb (All Apps) scrolling options, which means - if you set up the Favorites thoughtfully - that you can quickly access any app with either thumb. This is extremely helpful with the screen open, and the interface is identical when using the front screen. Highly recommended. Secondly, setting up the Edge panel is essential to efficient multi-tasking. I didn't see this talked about enough here (maybe because everyone else already knew it). Not only should you put the apps you intend to use for multitasking on the panel, you can also save app layouts there. Just tap the handle between the windows and choose the option to send a shortcut to the Edge. This is a massive time saver. I spent way too much time experimenting with web browsers. I'm a big fan of the Atlantic, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, but I prefer just using the web to using a proprietary app. I tried Chrome, Firefox, Brave, and the Samsung browser. Hands down, the Samsung browser won. It looks great on both screens, and transitions naturally between them. The ad blocking also works quite well. I just wish I could import my bookmarks from Firefox. Keyboard-wise, I know that a lot of folks like the split Samsung keyboard, but I really didn't want to give up Gboard (where I primarily swipe type). Thankfully, I've had zero issues with Gboard. It's extremely fast (swiping) on the front screen. On the main screen, I either use it in the default, massive (but still very fast) layout for dual-thumb typing, or I use the option to shrink it to a moveable, floating keyboard that I swipe with one finger. I do recommend fiddling with the lab settings. Instagram, for instance, looks much better if you set it for Full Screen instead of Default under "Customize Aspect Ratios." I also found that using a light theme rather than a dark one looks better on virtually everything because the crease seems more pronounced on a dark theme. Finally, cases are a pain for this phone. It feels fragile without one, but the choices are: either turning it into a brick with something that protects the hinge, or leaving the hinge exposed and using adhesive to hold a multi-panel case to the phone body. In addition, any lip raised enough to protect the front screen is going to make swiping from the bottom a challenge. I wish a press-and-hold on the side button could be set to take you to Home for this reason. I went with the Evo Tint from Tech21, based on recommendations here. It seems to offer good protection, while keeping the profile relatively slim. I also went with the Whitestone front screen protector, which I had a phone shop install for me because I kept getting bubbles and dust. I have the Aramid and one of the Spigens on order. I'd like to try the Incipio Grip too. Conclusion Setting up a Fold 3 takes a little bit longer than a typical new phone. It's an entirely different form factor, and it takes some experimentation to adapt to new ways of using a phone as both a candybar and a mini-tablet. It's worth taking the time to play with the new features, especially multi-tasking. If you don't, you'll just replicate old habits and not take full advantage of what the Fold 3 can do. In terms of hardware and design, the Fold 3 exceeded my expectations. It's a huge leap forward compared to a candybar phone, and I have no regrets about my purchase (which was heavily subsidized by coupons, old tech turn-ins, and the military discount). [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 04 Sep 2021 06:28 AM PDT
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| After seeing videos of flooding in New York, I think water resistance should be a universal feature. Posted: 05 Sep 2021 12:46 AM PDT Water resistance is usually seen as a feature only available on high-end premium smartphones, but I think communication between our loved ones is more essential than ever, especially in the middle of a hurricane. I want the feature to come to more entry-level smartphones, not just for everyone here in North America, but for everyone in third world countries where storms and flooding are almost routine to them. No one should ever have to pay a premium to ensure peace of mind when it comes to communicating with loved ones. I've seen too many movie scenes of calls getting dropped due to liquid damage, and I'm tired of that being the norm. [link] [comments] |
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