Be Excellent To Each Other

I'd say that whats happened is that Google have shifted the Nexus and now Pixel line more into the full on luxury flagship direction, whereas manufacturers like Motorola, LG, OnePlus, Xiaomi and a bunch of others have gladly stepped up their offerings in the "great specs but reasonably priced" market.

Google had a business plan to break into the market, and they nailed it.

There's obviously a market for expensive phones so saying that they're too expensive seems nonsensical. It's like saying that shoes are "too expensive" because if you really want to you can pay thousands of pounds for some. Or cars, or just about anything.

Ding ding ding!

Who had "the third post"

I'm saying the Nexus 6P was too expensive.

The oneplus 3T is on my radar, but I'm not sure how the camera compares to some of the other options. I'm hoping it might get a bit cheaper when the 5 comes out.

GJ has a Nexus 5X, and I can't say it appeals, the 6P seems a bit big and I don't think I can justify the cost of a pixel.

The Xiaomi Mi 5 and the Huawei P9 have both been considered, but I've been put off both of them for reasons I can't remember.

There are a few nice Moto phones around, but they all seem to have something wrong with them.

Current front runner is the S7 Edge, but I'm trying to work out if Grace UX is as much of a shitshow as Touchwiz used to be, and the Galaxy S3 is the phone that caused me to dump my contract and go sim only, so Samsung need to do something good to win me back.

i really wanted an S7 when they came out, the specs etc looked really really good - I just couldn't afford one. Got very good reviews in the press too, IIRC.

Bear in mind you can install the vanilla Google launcher from the Play store so even if Samsung's newer skin annoys you you don't have to suffer it.

Since DocG mentioned this to me it's the first thing I do on any Android device (tablets as well as phones).

It's possibly worth mentioning that there were rumours there were going to stop offering it as an option but I haven't heard any confirmation of that or explanation as to why.

Edit: ah, sadly it's almost definitely a thing: http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/02/03 ... ing-weeks/

Wait what?

The Nova Launcher is a creditable replacement. Nice and configurable, but can be made to look and feel almost exactly like the GN launcher

Yeah, that's the one most people seem to go for. Before I got on the Nexus bandwagon it was the Apex launcher I used to use, though I can't remember why I picked that one specifically.

does putting a launcher over the top use up system power/capability?

Not to my knowledge, though I admit I've never looked into it. My Pixel C tablet has two launchers installed by Google themselves so I wouldn't they wouldn't have done that if there was any impact.

Some other recommendations here Joans:

http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Android/ ... sp?c=73784

It's not so much the launcher as the whole notification/toggles bit (I'm sure there's a proper name for it), although I'm not entirely sure what stock looks like anymore anyway.

Don't you have a Note something-or-other at the moment? I'd be interested to know why you're thinking of moving to the 3T?

I have a Nexus 6P. It's... Er... Expensive.

Do you have me on ignore?

Given that I just quoted you, no.

Sorry, I read all that a few days ago, then thought I remembered you having a note and wondered why you were going from Samsung to OnePlus. Then I posted, then re-read the rest of the thread, realised I was mistaken and couldn't be bothered to do anything about it.

Did you ever have a Note, or was that huge thing in your hands always the 6P (yes, I know, Title)?

I did indeed, I had a Note 3, and I loved it. It was also hugely expensive, but it performed well until the day I got rid of it.

I'm somewhat tempted to get a newer one, but I suspect the cost will put me off.

Exploding Kittens is 10p on Android today...

I've picked up a "very good" S7 Edge from music magpie. Condition-wise, I can't see much wrong with it and it even came in the proper box. I'll probably have more of an opinion on it when I get a new sim and can actually use it as a phone.

MaliCool

My lifelong ambition.

Bloody old news I know, but I've been enjoying Lara Croft GO immensely on my phone. One of the most enjoyable mobile games I've played in years. Lovely rigid sense of logic to it, and perfectly suited for playing on a phone.

So I was very pleased to discover Hitman GO and Deus Ex GO are also on sale on Android at the moment for 79 pennies each, which seems like a bargain to me.

Ooh, I enjoyed this a lot but on my old phone which really couldn't cope with the graphics. Now I've got a newer phone I think I'll re-download so I can finish it.

I think they're all currently free on Amazon Underground.

Ah, balls.

At fully £400 less than the comparable (for me) Pixel phone and £200 less than a similar S8 it looks like the OnePlus 5 will be my next phone:

https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/20/oneplus-5-review/

See, I was all over the OnePlus, but everyone on Reddit that has a OnePlus phone seems to say "I wouldn't have another one".

There's a few reasons, but customer support being dire seems to be the most common, along with OnePlus seeming to drop the older models as soon as a new one comes out - something their "never settle" motto seems to make fun of.

Still though - both those things happened to me with a Nexus phone, so meh.

Oh, wow. It's not quite as cheap as it used to be, is it?

I dropped and totally wrote off my Nexus 5, and now in trying to flash my old HTC One m7 with a newer custom rom, I appear to have softbricked that too. Hooray.

Yeah, as a OnePlus One owner I'm not having another. If anything bug-fixing and ongoing support for older models appeared to *get worse* after they dumped Cyanogen to do better at exactly that.

Helen dropped hers on gravel breaking the touchscreen completely. Got her a moto g5 asap looking as the best sub-200 model. She doesn't much like it unfortunately, but doesn't seem to want to take me up on my offer to have it and we'll get her another (the radio in mine hates WiFi and cell networks now).

So here's a thing, I bought my Chromebook back in September 2014. It's a basic Toshiba affair and only cost £200, but it's done solid service and continues to do so.

For a little while after I bought it, it updated itself reasonably regularly, but then it stopped. Even a manual 'check for updates' reported that it was up to date.

After a few months Gmail started nagging me that my version of Chrome was out of date and that I needed to use a supported browser (amusingly, offering a link to the Firefox site), yet a check for updates would have the Chromebook insisting it was up to date.

In the end I had to create a recovery USB key using the Google App, and rebuild the Chromebook with the latest version of Chrome OS using that.

This has happened several times over the last three years, in exactly the same pattern. Gmail eventually starts nagging me that Chrome is out of date, the Chromebook insists it's up to date, I create a new recovery USB drive, and rebuild it.

So last week we were away in the UK and I took my Chromebook with me, and we had wifi in the hotel.

The Chromebook updated itself twice during the week.

The difference? UK IP versus IOM IP.

I know we get a gimped Play Store here because Google treat us as 'Rest of the world', but I'm surprised that extends to devices not picking up updates that will of course include security fixes.

Might be worth setting up a VPN connection for the future. I know the software I use has UK servers available. Although I use it mainly for US servers and Netflix.

Chrome OS isn't Android. How are we supposed to have a coherence and continuity to the conversation if you're just going to post in random threads?

Almost as bad as people who post regularly in the movie thread then moan each movie doesn't have its own thread.

Jesus dude.

Why on earth doesn't 'set up this android device from another android device' copy texts? How can leaving out the fundamental device things be a thing that you would think is sane to do?

Is this still your fault, DocG? Get it fixed then go back in time so it works when I do it a week or two back.

I don't think it copies 8-tracks either

If my phone had an 8-track in it I would be outraged about that too.

Now I'm just a bit upset that phones don't have 8-tracks

What do you update on a clock?

'Now features 25 hours per day'.

We did that 3 years back. Only just got to IoM?

The clocks in my office genuinely have 6 'seconds' between every fifth number.

Time zones. Countries are fucking stupid so they fuck over technology all over the world by fucking with time zones every year at very short notice.

Oh the buttons and sliders on the alarm screen are a nice pastel shade of blue now, whereas before they were a sort of pinky red.

This is the sort of bold new direction I've been yearning for in Android for years, and I applaud this update to Clock.

Also pastels. Time zones and pastels.

Gotta future-proof that clock

I upgraded my phone to *sigh* Oreo yesterday and it's made close to zero difference, which I'm fine with. Well, except for one annoyance: there's now a notification settings permanently in the window blind telling me that I have two apps running in the background. Which I know about; mostly because they both also have their own permanent notifications making the Android system one utterly redundant and really annoying. I don't suppose anyone knows how to get it to fuck off? Apparently in previous versions of Oreo you could go into that settings and say you didn't want to be told about background apps but now that, and all the other associated switches, are disabled so you can't turn any of them off. Which is weird and annoying.