Be Excellent To Each Other

Weirdly, the way to make money from mobile games is to land a few of those "whales" who spend thousands on Pay-to-win games.

Is there meaningful software support for that?

Well yes it's more complicated than that, but it's not like a gaming PC where there's money to be made by courting owners of high end systems that spend more on games. Although obv even on PC especially games like MMOs etc target mid range laptops and such.

Didn't get it for gaming really I just wanted something garish it seems.

However the spec of the phone will make sure it lasts me ages like my old Oppo did. I had that two years (find 7a) and actually downgraded to something else because it had held up so well.

Either way £270 for the spec I got is pretty much unbeatable. It does have custom cooling also (vapour chamber) and that is the reason why it's faster than the Razer 2. Simply as it can hold its clock for longer.

Yer man from Digital Foundry feels it makes a big difference in day to day operations at least:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digi ... e-2-review

Oh, yeah, it’s nice for that, yes; but that’s not games. I don’t know how many games will even attempt rendering above 60 Hz, and I don’t know how many will make a decent fist of it if they do.

Having compared the razer phone I have (by benchmarking it) I can safely say I can't tell any difference. Plus from what I read 60 is more than enough as most games show no difference.

A part of the reason why I didn't get either a new fully working razer phone or new razer phone 2 was actually the screen itself. It's completely exclusive to razer and you cannot buy a replacement either. Hence why I have one with a dead spot on the digitiser and why my friend's insurance company could not repair it.

With the Xiaomi it's a "basic" screen that they use in a couple of their other phones and thus is quite readily available.

Oh, totally; I wasn't attempting to imply anything about game performance. Just that higher refresh rates are 'nicer' for general use and those Razer gaming phones have that as a spec bullet point.

You can change the refresh from 60 - 90 - 120. Once you get to 60 it's very hard to tell the difference.

Most of the games I've seen running only run at 60 FPS though so there's an artificial lock going on somewhere.

Thus doesn't seem to suggest that

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/huawei-google-ban-uk-android

It really does. You won’t get major updates, but as those phones were granted licenses they will still receive security and app updates.

Its definitely not ideal, and it looks like there may be issues with new versions of Android going forward or Play Store improvements.

TBH I'm not massively fussed as long as my phone carries on working as it does now, and gets security updates, I can't remember the last time a new version of Android did anything that particularly interested me. (Or smartphones in general, for that matter.)

I've only had the P20 Pro since September so I'll be wanting to get another 15 months out of it, but I'll certainly be ditching Hoowoway after that if they're vulnerable to this sort of nonsense. In which case Trump's plan has worked, I suppose.

Won't the Americans also effectively block Google out of a massive market with all this as well, though? Or does being in China not generate revenue for them anyway?

I don't reckon Trump thinks that far ahead.

Google's share price dropped 2.5% yesterday though.

Google is pretty much blocked in China already I think

It is. Read an article today and it uses something else out there.

Apparently ARM are no longer allowed to supply Huawei.

Anyone want to buy a year old Honor 10?

I don't understand why I'm not seeing more news about this, honestly. People still seem more concerned about Google cutting them off than ARM...but surely without ARM it's pretty much impossible for Huawei to even make phones? With Google gone they can still use AOSP or even the Custom OS they're meant to be working on, but with ARM gone I would assume that means they can't make Kirin SoCs anymore... How can you make a modern Smartphone without ARM?

The expectation is that they can move forward with their own Kirins without needing the ARM licensing.

But they'll have to come up with their own OS at this point though, do you think this ban would stop them from utilising software like LineageOS or Cyanogen?

They've already said they were working on their own OS and this just accelerates that development. They're still free to use the open source version of Android so nothing stopping them using that as a base.

Well, we'll have to see what happens then!

Although they won't be able to ship it with an app store that includes the likes of Netflix, Spotify, Youtube, and many other hugely popular apps from US based companies.

I have my OnePlus 7 Pro. It's really very lovely indeed. The pop up front facing cam for facial recognition is amazing.

I saw one of these for the first time ever yesterday and it does indeed look lovely. It's not stock android though is it?

How is the mechanism? I always thought they would be fairly flimsy.

No, it runs a customised version of Android that they call OxygenOS; but each version is based on actual Android and it's fully compatible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OxygenOS

Really nice. Smooth and fast as hell. It connects to the accelerometer so if you drop the phone with it extended for the camera, it'll retract it. It's rated for half a million popouts, I believe.

New fangled technology... Where will it stop.

I'm due for an upgrade in August and the OnePlus 7 Pro is a definite contender at the minute... if only for the pop out camera.

TOYST

Mrs Hearthly's phone was playing up a bit so I got her a new one.

If you're after a COMPACT Android smartphone (she has quite small hands and can't be doing with big style modern smartphones), then I would recommend the Sony Xperia XZ2 Compact.

They're not cheap, but she likes Sony phones and has had good service out of them over the years.

Sony's take on Android is pleasant, and they don't put a load of crap on their phones either. Out of the box they're massively less offensive than a Samsung, for example. (PRO TIP - Skip the Sony account stuff when you're setting up the phone and ignore the dire warnings about what you'll miss out on, and just log in with your Google account as per usual.)

Ey up, this seems like a good place to ask about this so.

The GF's HTC U11s battery is on the way out so we're opting to get her a new phone rather than faffing about replacing the battery.

Anyone have any suggestions for a phone that will be used mainly for playing pokemon go, browsing twitter and listening to music?

Budget?

Fuck I knew I'd forgotten something; the cheaper the better but it's flexible really depending on how long the phone's gonna last her.

So, anything between £1 and £1500 then?

Alright, fair point lets go £1-£700; anything more and she'd die.

OnePlus 7 Pro, probably.

If you've got the budget for it, which it seems like you do, then the OnePlus 7 is probably a good shout at £500-£550:

https://www.oneplus.com/uk/oneplus-7

The Pro version is hilariously highly specced but a big jump in price at £650-£800:

https://www.oneplus.com/uk/7pro?from=head#/

If you really want to tighten your belt then the Moto G7 Plus is, I think, still considered one of the better budget handsets at around £270:

https://www.carphonewarehouse.com/motor ... ealType=sf

And for an inbetween price you've got the new mid-range Google phone, the Pixel 3a for £400:

https://www.carphonewarehouse.com/googl ... ealType=sf

There's also an XL variant of that with a bigger screen for £470:

https://www.carphonewarehouse.com/googl ... ealType=sf

It also depends what sort of things she cares about. So you're almost certainly giving up your headphone socket on most of those, but some manufacturers have kept it if she really wants that (Samsung are the biggest example). Some handsets are better for battery life and others bring a particularly good camera to the table (e.g. the Pixel phones). Depends what you need innit?

Noice, I hadn't considered the One Plus range. Sticking in the Chinese Market, any in the Xiaomi range worth taking a look at?

I'll definitely be showing her the One Plus 7 & Pro; she may go for one of those.

I've been pleased with the Mi 8 Plus so far, but I had to really change a lot of settings to get it how I wanted. The MIUI layer on top of Android is heavily geared towards conserving battery life, so by default, barely anything runs in the background and not much comes through in the way of notifications. From a hardware point of view, I can't fault it so far, but I wish it was vanilla Android running. I don't know how indicative it is of the rest of the Xiaomi range, but worth being prepared for a lot of messing around with the settings.

Excellent thanks folks; will take these suggestions away and see what she's after!

You definitely want something with a massive battery for Pokemon Go, as it’s a battery killer.

I have been looking at these since my Hooweaywaywy is essentially now a ticking Chinese Hacker time bomb and I'm also capable of the mental contortion to justify getting rid of it due to SECURITY CONCERNS.

Top of the list is the OnePlus 7 Pro.

I could probably get a decent little wedge for selling the P20 Pro on too.

How does the 'inscreen fingerprint unlock' thingy work, how do you actually put it back in your pocket without unlocking it?

Because it's under the screen, it can be higher on the screen. As a result it's not in a place where I have fingers when putting it in my pocket, so it's never accidentally unlocked. It also seems to be pretty smart at recognising an actual finger rather than just 'something nearby'

Middle of the day, and yet another critical update for the Garmin/Hoowwayeyey software that can't even wait until I get home.

This is far from the first time it's done this.

Good thing I don't really need to know the time RIGHT NOW.

The sooner I jettison this Chinese spyware phone, the better.

You could probably just look on the phone you’re taking the picture with, Hearthly.