Unfortunately, they have minimal support for US frequencies. The US market is dominated by disgustingly expensive flagships, and severely compromised midrange and budget offerings.

I’d give my left nut for a premium plastic phone…

It’s sounding like an upgrade from Exynos 5300 to 5400, so I’m not expecting much.

I’m pretty sure they’re just treading water this year, and focusing on their in-house design for the Tensor G5 in 2025. Hopefully it doesn’t break Graphene support.

It is different, but it’s also logical, simple, and consistent. It handles average use cases very well, whereas KDE is more typical to Windows users, but can be cluttered and confusing because it seems to try to address every use case.

Red Hat fuckery aside, I still feel like Fedora is the best refined distro out of the box for the average user, and Gnome is the most consistent desktop. Immutability is perfect for grandparent types who don’t need much of any customization, so I’d strongly consider Silverblue. Just make it a habit to go upgrade releases every 6 months, you should be visiting more anyway ;)

Wish I had a choice, at work. Technically I can run Linux or MacOS, but I’d need to run a Windows VM for a few things anyway.

TLoU scratched a lot of the same itches, for me.

Unfortunately, the next Zenfone is looking to be quite a lot larger. I’ve been using Nexus and Pixel for years, and while my uses have always been rather simple, I’ve never had any serious issues aside from the LG bootloop on my Nexus 5x. Motorola phones get practically no updates, and unfortunately Xiaomi is a non-starter for those of us in the US.

That said, I’ve also been using Graphene, because I no longer tolerate the tracking and other productization of me. That’s not just a Google thing, nor limited to their phones, but they’re certainly one of the worst offenders. It’s ironic that their own phones offer some of the most freedom to remove them from our lives.

As someone who works for a very large company, on a team with around 500 people around the world, this is what concerns me. Our team will not be 500 people in a few years, and if it is, it’s because usage of our product has grown substantially. We are buying heavily into AI, and yet people are buying it when our leadership teams claim it will not impact jobs.

Will I be able to take a unit of 2 people down to 0 people? No, I’ve never seen a process where I could eliminate every human.

Socially speaking, this is also very concerning to me. I’m afraid that implementation of AI will be yet another thing that makes it difficult for smaller businesses to compete in a global marketplace. Yes, a tech-minded company can leverage a smaller head count into more capabilities, but this typically requires more expensive and limiting turnkey solutions, or major investment into developers of a customized solution.

Even if they are, it’s a drop in the bucket. And I imagine they’re less popular now than they were in the early days of Android, during the height of Cyanogen Mod, and others.

I say this as a Graphene user.

That’s unfortunate, Maps is near the top of the list of Google code I want nowhere near my phone. But now that the first domino has fallen, I’m sure folks are working on some de-googling.

I would love if the EU finds a way to force standardization of screen casting.

Does Android Auto in Graphene still require Google Maps to be installed, or is there a shim? If not, I wouldn’t be surprised if Calyx writes one, once they implement whatever black magic Graphene devs came up with to make AA work.

As a related example, Calyx has a Google Photos shim, so you can use other galleries with gcam. I just added Calyx’s f-droid repository, and use that with my Graphene install.

For now, I’m happy using my Mazda CX-5’s built in navigation with bluetooth audio. It’s nice enough to tile both side by side, and it’s less fiddly than AA. But my next car might not be as favorable, so I’m glad to have AA as an option.

Here here. After years of Nexuses and Pixels, I flirted with the iPhone for a couple of years. I finally grabbed a Pixel 5 earlier last year, and eventually a Pixel 8 to run Graphene. No play services, and I’m getting 3-5 days of battery life for a phone that I don’t feel constantly attached to.

I don’t think it’s the noise cancelling, I think it’s that headset manufacturers think gamers all want big boomy bass. My Sennheiser Momentum 4 have noise cancelling, and aren’t boomy in the slightest.

I also don’t think that it’s the closed back, though closed back are certainly capable of better bass than open back. My Audeze Maxwell also do not have boomy bass, and the Momentums are also closed back.

All that said, I agree that the sound quality of most gaming headsets is a mess, and I also prefer open back headphones. I don’t want to deal with cables anymore, though, so I’m hopeful that we start getting some nice open back headphones and headsets.

I love my Audeze Maxwell. I use it to listen to music all day while I work, and jump on calls throughout the day. It has excellent sound quality, and a built in mic that works very well. When there’s background noise, I pop in the boom mic and that mic’s noise cancellation is great. It also provides a little better clarity.

There’s both a 2.4ghz wireless dongle (which I plug into my monitor), bluetooth (which I use with my phone using LDAC), USB, and 3.5mm connectivity.

The battery life is excellent. I charge it weekly, and I really don’t need to.

They offer an Xbox and Playstation version. The Xbox version comes with an Atmos license, the Playstation version supports Tempest 3D sound.

The sizing adjustments aren’t great, there’s no telescoping of the ear cups. It just has a sling with three adjustments, by popping it into three different sets of screw holes. It’s ok, but not great, and it’s not the kind of thing you want to move back and forth, say, if you wear hats sometimes, because those holes will wear out. You aren’t supposed to remove the screws.

It’s also closed back, which is not my preference. I don’t have background noise, I don’t care about isolation. I prefer the sound of open backs, and they also provide more spatial awareness if you want to place footsteps.

Also, being closed back, and having a not so great ear pad material, they get fairly toasty. There are third party ear pads that improve upon this, but you can only do so much with a closed back can.

Don’t worry, you can essentially get the same shit CPU in the US by buying a Pixel.

I’ll go ahead and pre-dial 911.

It doesn’t for me? I run it on Graphene without google play services. You just have to turn off battery optimization, but it’s very reasonable in its battery usage. I’ve been off battery for 18 hours, and am at 81% on my Pixel 8. Signal is at less than 1% of battery use, and it still will be in a few days when I’m ready to charge, unless I use it significantly on my phone. But I mostly use it from my laptop, and just get notifications on my phone, so probably not.

In contrast, K9 Mail is at around 3%, it’s running at battery optimized, and I haven’t opened it at all.

We don’t even have it on desktop, yet. I wouldn’t use them as much as I do at work, where I use them to actively manage dynamic workflows. But it sure would be nice to be able to collapse some shopping tabs I typically have open, into one pinned tab group, or researching various projects.

Once they do it, I sure hope they put some more thought into how pinned tab groups should behave. They should either be to the left of all pinned tabs, or between pinned tabs and unpinned tabs. It drives me crazy in Edge, how new tabs tend to open to the left of my pinned tab groups.

Actually, I exclusively use Firefox Focus on my phone, so I don’t really care there. But I do wish they’d get out of this half-assed support for tabs, there. Just let me create new tabs without long pressing links. Maybe put a limit on number of tabs to 3 or 5. I’d also love to have a “send to desktop” option, without having to go to regular Firefox and tab sync.