What should I buy Thursday (Dec 22 2016) - Your weekly device inquiry thread! |
- What should I buy Thursday (Dec 22 2016) - Your weekly device inquiry thread!
- Google will launch two flagship AW 2.0 smartwatches early next year
- Barnes & Noble’s New $50 Nook Android Tablet Ships with Malware
- Roller Coaster Tycoon Classic now available on Android
- The Most (and Least) Repairable Phones We Took Apart in 2016. LG G5 is most, and Samsung Galaxy S7 / Edge is the least.
- Google Play Music 50% Off Any Album (Redeem by January 28th, 2017)
- Google Pixel speaker issue ends in refund | Pocketnow
- Tasker v4.9 is out with Non-Root Programmable Firewall, Multi-Window Automation, S-Pen Recognition, and More
- How to use Android 2.3 Gingerbread in 2017
- Feeling flat, musicians? Google Home can play you a key - just ask it
- MKBHD - Smartphone Awards 2016
- ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ keyboard. Read the reviews, made my day!
- OnePlus rolls out OxygenOS 3.5.5 (MM) OTA for the OnePlus 2 which enables VoLTE support
- Russian APT group Fancy Bear tracked Ukrainian artillery units with an Android malware implant
- Google looking into Pixel's double tap to wake feature issue
- Five new LG mid-range smartphones for CES 2017
- ZTE Max 2 gets Marshmallow update
- Enpass password manager is currently on sale for 50% off.
- Nexus 9
- Oneplus 3T review, one month later!
- Damir Franc's Lenovo Vibe P2 (5.5' 1080p, Snap625, 5100mah) Final In-Depth Video Review
- Original Samsung Galaxy A5 is getting Android 7.0 Nougat update in January
- PSA: Make sure you keep an active session to Android Device Manager if you use two-factor auth on your Google Account
| What should I buy Thursday (Dec 22 2016) - Your weekly device inquiry thread! Posted: 22 Dec 2016 03:07 AM PST 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 Discord, IRC, and Telegram chat-rooms! Please see our wiki for instructions. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Google will launch two flagship AW 2.0 smartwatches early next year Posted: 22 Dec 2016 10:29 AM PST
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| Barnes & Noble’s New $50 Nook Android Tablet Ships with Malware Posted: 22 Dec 2016 02:08 PM PST | ||
| Roller Coaster Tycoon Classic now available on Android Posted: 21 Dec 2016 10:33 PM PST
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| Posted: 22 Dec 2016 09:29 AM PST
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| Google Play Music 50% Off Any Album (Redeem by January 28th, 2017) Posted: 22 Dec 2016 09:55 AM PST
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| Google Pixel speaker issue ends in refund | Pocketnow Posted: 22 Dec 2016 02:57 PM PST
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| Posted: 22 Dec 2016 06:00 PM PST
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| How to use Android 2.3 Gingerbread in 2017 Posted: 22 Dec 2016 02:25 PM PST tl;dr: don't do such a thing The device is LG Optimums Net (Link, P690). It's the phone from the fall of 2011 that makes it, at the time of writing, > 5 yo. Amazingly, it still works fine. When the phone was released, the infamous Google Play Services (or GMS, as Google likes to call them) were in its infancy. Google Play was still called Google Market. Devices w/ ½GB RAM were slick & fast. If you do the "factory reset" on the phone, then turn on its 3G & sign-in into the Google cloud, your phone will become completely unusable within ½ an hour. The culprit of course is in the memory limit: internally, the persistent memory of the phone is divided into several chunks. In the days of Android 2.3 a partition size of ~160 MB (/data, dedicated to 3rd-party apps), was considered good enough by the majority of phone manufactures. How & why does that partition fill up? For example, the phone comes w/ a pre-installed Youtube app. Back then (2011) in was fashionable to install the default apps in the /system partition that is mounted as read-only when the phone boots up. Thus, unless the device is rooted, the user is unable to modify the original app. From time to time, Google makes a new version of the Youtube app & when the phone decides to update the old version, it doesn't delete the original pre-installed version, but installs a new .apk into the aforementioned /data partition. W/ the default settings, this process goes on automatically. Firstly, the phone updates Google Play as its most important app. It's not really the most important, but Google guys think it is. Unless the user has unchecked "Background data" & "Auto-sync" in "Accounts & sync" settings menu, a lesser known pre-installed Google Services Framework app (that is responsible for all the evil updates) quietly soils the /data partition. Second, GMS gets updated. The reason it's the 2nd in the queue, because Google Play doesn't need it to function. Google guys have entertained the idea that GMS should be the great patron of the developers, & that the redress of all grievances must chiefly proceed from it. In the good old days of Android 2.3 that wasn't the case yet, but nowadays no self-respected app from Google works w/o a fresh version of GMS installed. If you're on a slow cellular connection, you can get a feel of this exciting process by looking into the /cache partition, where file downloaded.apk appears. After dealing w/ GMS, Google Play may stop if you're not on the wifi connection. This may be the last chance to see the phone in a semi-working state. After you agree to update the rest of the apps (Youtube, Google Maps), say goodbye to your cosy device, for in several minutes it's going to kick about the lack of free space & GMS is going to heat itself to a point when pressing Home button will take 3-5 seconds to return to the home screen. An old trick of procuring the phone from such a suicidal act, was to split the external SD card into 2 partitions, to install Link2SD app & to move some files from /data partition to the 2nd partition of the SD card. (The root is required.) In the days of GMS-everywhere the trick helps only so much: you do get some free internal space back, but lose the ability to use the phone beyond such complex activities as sending SMS or switching its screen on & off. GMS contains > 300 services inside. On P690 it oft aborts & fills /data/system/dropbox & /data/tombstones dirs w/ lengthy stack traces. The battery goes down the toilet, the phone frequently hangs (sometimes even reboots itself) & in general feels rather sluggish. Naïve advices like don't help, for the evil Google Services Framework updates GMS behind your back again. What is the most frustrating is that it does it via 3G too: if you have a limited mobile data plan, you may happily discover sometime afterwards that all your megabytes were eaten by the precious updates. If you delete Google Services Framework you will throw the baby w/ the bathwater, for GMail, Calendar & Contacts use it for syncing. I don't see a point of having a phone w/o such basic capabilities. The only remedy seems to be to uninstall GMS. The device will indeed return to its normal state; Google Play will still work perfectly well, GMail & Google Maps will continue to work too, although Youtube won't, but at this point you don't care about Youtube any more. It you're lucky it'll be that way for several hours until Google Services Framework will download (& install) GMS behind your back again. There is a popular app called DisableService that gives you the chance to control which services in Google Services Framework should be active. Presumably, if you turn off SystemUpdateService, no stinky GMS should be downloaded any longer. Alas, Google Play turns SystemUpdateService on behind your back. So this is what I've ended up w/: there is no GMS or Google Play on the device & SystemUpdateService is disabled. The ancient phone feels slick & fast again! I don't use any fancy messengers thus I can't tell if any of them require GMS. My most used apps are:
The process of installing new apps became more tedious. Occasionally I search through the web version of Google Play on a laptop, then use Evozi to get the apk. I'm not sure how reputable they are, for Android 2.3 has a bug in the apk installation process that prevents it to properly check the file signature (i.e. I can download infected rubbish & the phone won't mind to install it despite the bogus signature). [link] [comments]  | ||
| Feeling flat, musicians? Google Home can play you a key - just ask it Posted: 22 Dec 2016 08:32 AM PST
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| MKBHD - Smartphone Awards 2016 Posted: 22 Dec 2016 07:36 PM PST
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| ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ keyboard. Read the reviews, made my day! Posted: 22 Dec 2016 06:40 PM PST
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| OnePlus rolls out OxygenOS 3.5.5 (MM) OTA for the OnePlus 2 which enables VoLTE support Posted: 22 Dec 2016 04:15 AM PST
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| Russian APT group Fancy Bear tracked Ukrainian artillery units with an Android malware implant Posted: 22 Dec 2016 05:55 AM PST
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| Google looking into Pixel's double tap to wake feature issue Posted: 22 Dec 2016 02:03 AM PST
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| Five new LG mid-range smartphones for CES 2017 Posted: 22 Dec 2016 10:24 AM PST
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| ZTE Max 2 gets Marshmallow update Posted: 22 Dec 2016 02:49 PM PST
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| Enpass password manager is currently on sale for 50% off. Posted: 22 Dec 2016 04:05 PM PST
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| Posted: 22 Dec 2016 10:38 AM PST I bought a nexus9 on swappa for my husband for Christmas, and played around with it a little bit yesterday. I got a great deal on it so I wasn't too concerned if the quality wasn't fantastic, and after reading a lot of reviews and what people have to say about it I was not expecting much. However, it's a delightful little tablet at a great price point! Might have to get one myself. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Oneplus 3T review, one month later! Posted: 22 Dec 2016 06:13 PM PST
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| Damir Franc's Lenovo Vibe P2 (5.5' 1080p, Snap625, 5100mah) Final In-Depth Video Review Posted: 22 Dec 2016 12:30 PM PST
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| Original Samsung Galaxy A5 is getting Android 7.0 Nougat update in January Posted: 22 Dec 2016 06:28 PM PST
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| Posted: 22 Dec 2016 07:08 PM PST I tend to lose stuff around the house. Keys, wallet, phone, etc. Tonight I misplaced my phone. Could be under a pillow, in the couch.. on the countertop maybe. Dunno, but I can't find it. I tried calling it, but I left it on mute. No dice. Okay, I'll use Android Device Manager and force it to sound the alarm. I go to the site, and it prompts me to sign in. Since I have 2FA on my account... It texts me a code that I have to enter to complete the login. Of course, I can't get the code since I can't find my phone. The entire purpose of me logging into Device Manager is to find my phone and the login process requires I have my phone present! In my current situation, this is a minor annoyance. I'll tear my house apart finding the phone and I'll eventually find it. However, if I had actually lost the phone or had it gotten stolen, I'd be in a tight spot since I can't log into Android Device Manager to GPS track or remote wipe the phone. So, my tip of the day is: If you use 2FA on your Google Account and plan on using Android Device Manager, log periodically and make sure you keep an active session: https://www.google.com/android/devicemanager [link] [comments]  |
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