FWIW there's usually a deductible you have to pay when you file an insurance claim with most policies. I was looking at the details for Fi last week but it also applies to the device protection I'm paying Verizon for. Asurion backs both of them.
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
Is anyone using/planning on picking up a Sony Xperia 5 IV (that name's....not great)?
I'm a T-Mobile customer, and my LG G8 is starting to get a little long in the tooth. I don't think I'd get one in 2022, but by 2023 I'd expect the price drop would be appreciable.
The Xperia phones, at least in the US, are even more niche than LG's offerings were, so it's not easy to get a lot of firsthand feedback. It has a lot of features I think I'd like--comprehensive cameras, a physical camera shutter button, a headphone jack (no Quad DAC, but eh, those days are over), Qi charging, etc.
Is anyone using/planning on picking up a Sony Xperia 5 IV (that name's....not great)?
I'm a T-Mobile customer, and my LG G8 is starting to get a little long in the tooth. I don't think I'd get one in 2022, but by 2023 I'd expect the price drop would be appreciable.
The Xperia phones, at least in the US, are even more niche than LG's offerings were, so it's not easy to get a lot of firsthand feedback. It has a lot of features I think I'd like--comprehensive cameras, a physical camera shutter button, a headphone jack (no Quad DAC, but eh, those days are over), Qi charging, etc.
your best bet is probably to go look at the youtube reviews of the devices.
The common thread with the Sony phones is that they are extremely expensive for what you get, and don't make sense for "normal" end users. The camera system is good on paper but the point and shoot mode does not produce good photos compared to the competition. You pretty much have to go into manual mode and adjust your ISO/shutter/aperture settings every time to get the best shot. If you just want to take the phone out of your pocket, open the camera app, hit the shutter button and get a good photo, the xperia phones are not for you. they are for Sony Alpha camera shooters as a secondary device.
I find the sony phones really hard to recommend to the average person.
Is anyone using/planning on picking up a Sony Xperia 5 IV (that name's....not great)?
I'm a T-Mobile customer, and my LG G8 is starting to get a little long in the tooth. I don't think I'd get one in 2022, but by 2023 I'd expect the price drop would be appreciable.
The Xperia phones, at least in the US, are even more niche than LG's offerings were, so it's not easy to get a lot of firsthand feedback. It has a lot of features I think I'd like--comprehensive cameras, a physical camera shutter button, a headphone jack (no Quad DAC, but eh, those days are over), Qi charging, etc.
your best bet is probably to go look at the youtube reviews of the devices.
The common thread with the Sony phones is that they are extremely expensive for what you get, and don't make sense for "normal" end users. The camera system is good on paper but the point and shoot mode does not produce good photos compared to the competition. You pretty much have to go into manual mode and adjust your ISO/shutter/aperture settings every time to get the best shot. If you just want to take the phone out of your pocket, open the camera app, hit the shutter button and get a good photo, the xperia phones are not for you. they are for Sony Alpha camera shooters as a secondary device.
I find the sony phones really hard to recommend to the average person.
Considering I take more photos with a Canon DSLR*, where I make full use of manual controls, than my phone, that's actually not an unattractive prospect in of itself. That's actually a reason why I don't find the AI processing with Google or Samsung's camera offerings as interesting; I would absolutely prefer to do it myself (then again, I'm not the kind to take a phone out of my pocket and snap a photo because x--if I take a photo with my camera, it's because I either need to remember something, upon which I don't care about quality, or because I need to take a photo and cannot use my 6DM2, in which case the settings are a plus. The actual Youtube reviews from the likes of Juan Bagnell, Mr. Mobile, etc., suggest that it is a completely competent, or even good, manual camera for its size (though maybe not its price point), and I'm not a point-and-shoot photographer (to the annoyance of my friends).
It's really the rest of the phone--like the fact it is aimed more at shooting video, and not photography, or that it's a Sony phone with the Sony tax, and there's a reason why they're never less popular than LG was before they left the market--that gives me pause. The technical breakdown looks very good on paper, it's everything else I'm worried about.
Plus, at the current price point, I could just buy a V60, and a dual-screen case, and save a lot of money. On the other hand, the Xperia would be smaller.
It's a tough time to get into a Sony android handset for the first time.
*And not a Sony mirrorless, which would be a good argument for the Xperia since you can use it as an external monitor.
This isn't exactly android, though I have to imagine it is in some way related to the Messages update (which I don't have, and don't know how to get, as the play store says I'm up to date and I don't have it);
For both my wife and I, the past few days, the messages web app (messages.google.com) no longer updates with incoming texts and has to be manually reloaded to have them show up.
We still get texts as normal on our phones, but the website refuses to update. We didn't change anything in any settings, we aren't on the same phone account or anything, and googling this problem isn't seeming to show up anything so I'm confused. It doesn't seem to matter what network we're on, as it happens any any location, no restarting computers does anything.
I have a vague recollection of something similar happening several years ago, but with hangouts, long before they shut that down, but it resolved itself after a few days. Not sure what's going on, but if there's something we are supposed to do with the messages update and haven't, it'd be great to know.
EDIT: "Enable chat features" is disabled because the website has never worked with them enabled (nor does anything really, on google fi, you just can't use that feature)
EDIT: "Enable chat features" is disabled because the website has never worked with them enabled (nor does anything really, on google fi, you just can't use that feature)
This support article seems to imply that that chat features should work on Fi. It looks like there are some settings for syncing messages in the Google Fi settings that conflict with chat features so that might be why they've never worked for you.
Disclaimer: not a Fi customer, but looking into it. And Messages for web hasn't given me any issues.
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
Yeah I did that yesterday and it took forever, and for about an hour it would actually update, but then stopped again.
I'm hoping it just has something to do with whatever they're doing with messages with the updates and will sort itself out before long, because I rely on the web app a lot.
Also yes Fi works with the chat features in Messages, but it actually doesn't link to it in the same way that non-Fi users do. It's just integrated, but you actually have to turn off the feature in the settings for it to work correctly with Fi. It's goofy and I have no idea why, but it's always worked that way since they forced us off Hangouts. I tried to turn it on in case the messages update changed that, but all it did was make it impossible to sign into the web app so...?
My phone just updated and now the notifications are huge, with a ton of wasted white space for rounded edges. Is there any way to compact them back into the smaller, boxier UI?
Ugh, I'm trying to set up a refurbished replacement phone, and it's a massive pain. The factory settings have it at Android 10, but my old device was updated to Android 11. It looks like all of my app information failed to copy over, possibly due to that difference. It's particularly annoying since I'm still using an older version of Firefox that seems to no longer have Sync compatibility, so unless I can find another way to copy my old profile over I'm going to lose all of my history.
I'm really wishing now that I sprung for getting a newer version of the phone for $50, rather than a refurbished version of my current one for what turned out to be a copay of $40. Heck, I'm increasingly tempted to just do that anyway.
edit: Bleh, it looks like most of what mattered did end up being copied over. The big thing that didn't was my Firefox profile. I would set up a sync, but I've been fighting switching to Fenix and it looks like at some point sync broke for Fennec. I might be able to get around it by finally giving up and letting it upgrade to Fennic, but that's a one-way path since there would be no way to sync that data back even if I reinstalled version 68.
I really don't want to have to give in on this, but I might finally have to. I had been waiting in the hope that they'd come to their senses and add back in the ability to actually have the browser close all the tabs when I close it. There's no sign of that happening any time soon, unfortunately.
I had been waiting in the hope that they'd come to their senses and add back in the ability to actually have the browser close all the tabs when I close it.
Have you tried Settings -> Delete browsing data on quit and only selecting the open tabs option?
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
I had been waiting in the hope that they'd come to their senses and add back in the ability to actually have the browser close all the tabs when I close it.
Have you tried Settings -> Delete browsing data on quit and only selecting the open tabs option?
That requires you to specifically press a "quit" command in a menu, rather than resetting the data like every other app does when you swipe them closed. I don't care if it secretly stays alive and just pretends it's restarting from scratch when I open it again. I just want that easy blank slate by default.
Fennec had this option. The Android version of Edge has this option now. The developers of Fenix just decided to be pointlessly regressive about it, and mimic how Safari works for some reason instead.
Bleh. I'm on the verge of shipping away my current phone, so I finally accepted the Firefox update on the Play Store that I had been blocking for years, in the hopes that I could at least use it to sync my history to my replacement phone. It just clobbered everything instead.
Fennec is just so much better than Fenix in so many ways. It's so old now that I can't justify installing it on a new phone, but I really wish I had gotten to at least hold onto it to the very end on the phone I'm about to wipe and send away.
You know what? I still have the APK, I think I'll reinstall it, just because I can.
Bleh. I'm on the verge of shipping away my current phone, so I finally accepted the Firefox update on the Play Store that I had been blocking for years, in the hopes that I could at least use it to sync my history to my replacement phone. It just clobbered everything instead.
Fennec is just so much better than Fenix in so many ways. It's so old now that I can't justify installing it on a new phone, but I really wish I had gotten to at least hold onto it to the very end on the phone I'm about to wipe and send away.
You know what? I still have the APK, I think I'll reinstall it, just because I can.
Fenix is such a trashfire that I just don't browse the internet on my phone anymore. I tried to keep Fennec around but even with the proper settings set in the play store it still auto-updated and wiped my setup.
Bleh. I'm on the verge of shipping away my current phone, so I finally accepted the Firefox update on the Play Store that I had been blocking for years, in the hopes that I could at least use it to sync my history to my replacement phone. It just clobbered everything instead.
Fennec is just so much better than Fenix in so many ways. It's so old now that I can't justify installing it on a new phone, but I really wish I had gotten to at least hold onto it to the very end on the phone I'm about to wipe and send away.
You know what? I still have the APK, I think I'll reinstall it, just because I can.
Fenix is such a trashfire that I just don't browse the internet on my phone anymore. I tried to keep Fennec around but even with the proper settings set in the play store it still auto-updated and wiped my setup.
I've tried messing around with Edge, which has some sane behaviors like actually having the option to close all the tabs when you close the app. I think I could get used to the interface, but unfortunately the built-in adblocker really isn't up to par compared to what Firefox can do.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Until other browsers support uBlock Origin I have no interest in using them regardless of how much Mozilla tries to fuck up the Firefox UX.
huh I have zero complaints with the current version of android firefox, what are y'all's issues with it?
I have 3 major issues:
1. It doesn't have addon support. I have an array of site specific addons that drastically improve my internet quality of life (a tumblr addon that "de-algorithms" tumbler so it only shows posts from people I actually follow, addons for twitter and pinterest that let me use the sites without an account, an addon for reddit, and addon for youtube), and maybe most importatly, tampermonkey so I can install userscripts like anti-adblock-killer that bypasses/disables the JS that tries to detect if you are using and adblocker.
2. There is a ton of built in functionality that was present in Fennec that is missing from Fenix. Big things for me are actual tabs (on my tablet in particular) and reader mode (reader mode does exist in Fenix, but I find that it doesn't show up as an option for a lot of sites where it does on desktop and it did on Fennec). There's also a ton of settings and customization options that exist in Fennec that don't exist anymore, and the settings that are there in Fenix feel almost spiteful in how they work. Moving the URL bar back to the top of the screen is a good example of this. It's nice to have the option to have it at the bottom of the screen on my phone, but on my tablet that is basically the worst place it could be. If you enable the setting to move it back to the top, it does move, but only the URL bar. Hitting the 'tab' button expands the list of tabs... at the bottom of the screen, and that's where the new tab button ends up too. In Fennec, pretty much every desktop app setting existed in the mobile UI. This let me configure my mobile apps the same as my desktop apps, and the behavior across devices was identical. That was a really nice UI experience that isn't possible anymore.
3. Performance/bugs. I didn't really have any issues with Fennec, but Fenix regularly just stops loading pages. I can click a link and android will switch to Firefox and Firefox will open a new tab with the URL filled and act like it is going to load a page, but nothing happens. Reloading does nothing. Clicking the link opens another stuck page. The only way to fix it is to force quit and restart the app, where it will start loading pages again for a day and then stop. Sync doesn't seem to work consistently (my desktop apps won't be aware of browser tabs on mobile and vise versa, when that worked without issues before). There are other issues too.
Really the lack of addons alone is enough to ruin it for me. I don't 'surf the web' as such on my phone and tablet; I primarily used mobile browsing to visit my 'usual haunts' like reddit, and to read news articles and blog posts and the like. The lack of QoL addons for the sites I frequent ruins that experience, and the lack of userscripts ruins the experience of reading news sites. Reader mode not working consistently really hurt the 'reading experience' on my tablet and phone. So much so that I literally don't browse the web on my phone anymore; I'll just wait until I can get to my desktop or laptop and browse there now.
Edit: Apparently the reader view differences are because I have an addon on desktop/had an addon in Fennec that forces the option to be available on all pages.
ah, I wasn't aware of the addon drought since the only one I really use, ublock origin, does exist for the mobile app. I haven't run into that loading bug that you have, I do occasionally have loading problems but not nearly as often as it sounds like you do.
I have probably 7-10 add-ons on desktop and only 3 on mobile Firefox. Reddit: I use the Boost app. I have an account for Twitter and use the shitty stock app. I don't use Tumblr
I also don't use a FF account to share tabs.
That all being said, I do like the stock mobile FF experience but I hate that every time I gripe about pull-to-refresh, I'm told to just install the nightly Beta.
huh I have zero complaints with the current version of android firefox, what are y'all's issues with it?
Why do "Collections" and "Shortcuts" exist? Instead of Collections, wouldn't it be better to just let people use their Bookmarks via the same UI instead of creating a whole new thing that is Android-only and which doesn't sync between devices? (Note that even Mozilla doesn't explain a good reason for the distinction on their own website: "How are Collections different from bookmarks? They’re really not so different, but you could think of Collections as more front-and-center tab organization around a theme." Shortcuts aren't Android-specific but they fulfill the same purpose as Bookmarks and they similarly clutter the Android UI, where display space is at a huge premium. (And good luck finding any explanation about what Shortcuts are supposed to be.)
Per above, try to use your Bookmarks. Count how many clicks it takes and how clunky the UI is.
Why can't I use the Add-Ons I want? If you have an issue with compatibility then just put a flag on the existing Add-Ons store that allows those creators to flag whether it's Android compatible (or Android-specific) or not.
Why can't I access about:config or even just extended functionality like setting typeface/font options, etc.?
I'm sure there are a lot of technical reasons why Firefox for Android exists as it does in the first place. But I'm pretty sure that the stuff I outlined above has nothing to do with technology and more to do with (bad) UI-driven or business-driven decisions.
For example, I'm fairly certain that Shortcuts exist because Mozilla wanted a way to put recommendations/ads in a more "seamless" way, so they coupled it with functionality that is essentially the same as Bookmarks so that people have a place where they can look for links they use regularly while also being shown Sponsored links. In reality, they would've been better off just having mandatory, dedicated Sponsored links at the top of every blank home screen/tab and calling it a day (if you don't want the Sponsored links to show up then just use a different home screen). The way they implemented it now is just confusing and significantly hurts adoption.
The addon situation is exceptionally shitty because it used to be that mobile and desktop shared the same addon api, so 90% of addons for desktop would just work for mobile with no extra effort from the addon devs. They nixed that with Fenix and addons have to be built with a much less capable api, so addon devs have to put in a bunch of extra effort to support mobile, and then to add insult to injury, even if they do that you can't install them on mobile because only addons approved by firefox are 'compatible with mobile'.
That's some real horseshit and I really wish Vivaldi was somehow gecko based and not chromium because if it was I'd switch in an instant and never look back.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
The addon situation is exceptionally shitty because it used to be that mobile and desktop shared the same addon api, so 90% of addons for desktop would just work for mobile with no extra effort from the addon devs. They nixed that with Fenix and addons have to be built with a much less capable api, so addon devs have to put in a bunch of extra effort to support mobile, and then to add insult to injury, even if they do that you can't install them on mobile because only addons approved by firefox are 'compatible with mobile'.
That's some real horseshit and I really wish Vivaldi was somehow gecko based and not chromium because if it was I'd switch in an instant and never look back.
Per my earlier response, I have a nagging suspicion that the Add-On situation is driven by Mozilla's reliance on Google funding (which Google provides in order to fend off antitrust regulators). There are a lot of Add-Ons in Firefox not for Android which break tricks that Google and advertisers use to track what people are doing even if they aren't using Chrome, such as ClearURLs and Redirect AMP to HTML. And, unlike uBlock Origin, which also protects you against certain types of attacks or malicious content, they have no meaningful use cases other than to break said functionality.
The addon situation is exceptionally shitty because it used to be that mobile and desktop shared the same addon api, so 90% of addons for desktop would just work for mobile with no extra effort from the addon devs. They nixed that with Fenix and addons have to be built with a much less capable api, so addon devs have to put in a bunch of extra effort to support mobile, and then to add insult to injury, even if they do that you can't install them on mobile because only addons approved by firefox are 'compatible with mobile'.
That's some real horseshit and I really wish Vivaldi was somehow gecko based and not chromium because if it was I'd switch in an instant and never look back.
Per my earlier response, I have a nagging suspicion that the Add-On situation is driven by Mozilla's reliance on Google funding (which Google provides in order to fend off antitrust regulators). There are a lot of Add-Ons in Firefox not for Android which break tricks that Google and advertisers use to track what people are doing even if they aren't using Chrome, such as ClearURLs and Redirect AMP to HTML. And, unlike uBlock Origin, which also protects you against certain types of attacks or malicious content, they have no meaningful use cases other than to break said functionality.
Another significant nuisance in the Fenix UI that somehow hasn't been fixed yet is how it handles the homepage shortcuts. If you're done with the contents of a tab, click on the url bar to switch to another website, and then click on a shortcut, it will open up the page in a new tab, forcing you to then go into the tab switcher to kill the old tab that you no longer want. The url bar itself is smart enough to recognize what way the homepage was opened and act accordingly, so the fact that the shortcuts located on the same view aren't is kind of mind-boggling. I used them a ton in Fennec, but now that I'm on Fenix I'm considering just removing them so I don't get baited into taking what are actually longcuts.
The addon situation is exceptionally shitty because it used to be that mobile and desktop shared the same addon api, so 90% of addons for desktop would just work for mobile with no extra effort from the addon devs. They nixed that with Fenix and addons have to be built with a much less capable api, so addon devs have to put in a bunch of extra effort to support mobile, and then to add insult to injury, even if they do that you can't install them on mobile because only addons approved by firefox are 'compatible with mobile'.
That's some real horseshit and I really wish Vivaldi was somehow gecko based and not chromium because if it was I'd switch in an instant and never look back.
Per my earlier response, I have a nagging suspicion that the Add-On situation is driven by Mozilla's reliance on Google funding (which Google provides in order to fend off antitrust regulators). There are a lot of Add-Ons in Firefox not for Android which break tricks that Google and advertisers use to track what people are doing even if they aren't using Chrome, such as ClearURLs and Redirect AMP to HTML. And, unlike uBlock Origin, which also protects you against certain types of attacks or malicious content, they have no meaningful use cases other than to break said functionality.
It's interesting to see what happens when Firefox doesn't choose to play nicely. When Windows 10 first came out, online searches through Windows 10's search bar were sent to the user's default browser but were directed towards Bing, with there being no means of changing the search engine through Windows' settings. Soon after Windows 10 became available, Firefox implemented a system to detect whether incoming requests were sent through Windows' search, and redirect them to whether search engine the user set as their default within Firefox. Microsoft's response was to yank those searches away from the default browser, creating a new protocol that was designed only to be implemented by Edge.
There was actually nothing special about that protocol, and there was nothing stopping other browsers from declaring that they were capable of implementing it themselves. None of them chose to do so, but there were a few smaller tools that (completely accurately!) declared themselves capable of handling those requests, doing so by just repackaging them as requests to the default browser and sending them back out.
When Windows 11 came out, Firefox finally stated that they were implementing support for that protocol. Almost immediately, Microsoft moved the protocol into a protected state where the user's choice of the handler was ignored, breaking all of the existing tools that were designed to reroute requests.
Firefox is fully capable of scaring the shit out of other companies simply by acting in their users' interests. I'm kind of afraid to find out what Google would do to the internet if Firefox starting doing things like redirecting AMP links.
Fenix is also doing that thing where it just randomly makes suggestions from your history disappear if you enter too many characters into the search field.
I hate this browser so much, but there are no other options that aren't somehow worse.
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MichaelLCIn what furnace was thy brain?ChicagoRegistered Userregular
Is this the Firefox fuming zone?
Because I hate how it handles logins and password, both in browser and especially with apps. With Chrome it was just there ready to go. FF I have to press on username field, unlock, search for it.
I use Bitwarden and haven't touched Chrome in years but I tap a username field and Gboard shows a strip that either has my login for the site or asks me to unlock my password manager, after which it appears in that strip.
Maybe it's just my paranoia but I don't like the login fields to be auto-filled, even on desktop. With Bitwarden Ctrl+Shift+L will fill your login info so that followed by Enter doesn't cost much time.
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
The pixel 3 was really the best one they ever did and it's been slowly sliding backwards since then. I'm tempted to jump ship to galaxy because my roommates' photos are just as good with even better quality video so, at this point the main reason I got into pixels isn't even their strongest point anymore
Like I started playing Marvel Snap and it just devours my pixel 6's battery it's insane
So, OnePlus has announced that its 2023 flagship phones will get 4 Android version updates. Guessing the Nord line won't, but the standard OnePlus phones will.
Now Samsung and OnePlus are promising longer/more robust Android support than Google does.
Google *really* needs to step up there. It isn't a good look that the company that makes Android has a shorter support timeframe on its phones than some of the OEM's.
Yeah now that I have a much better paying job than I did a year ago, I may jump from Pixel 4a to whatever Galaxy has waterproofing, a decent screen, and solid battery life
The Pixel 4a is not the absolute worst smartphone I've ever owned, but it's the worst one I've owned since that point around 2015 where smartphones all got more or less standardized in format and quality expectations
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I'm a T-Mobile customer, and my LG G8 is starting to get a little long in the tooth. I don't think I'd get one in 2022, but by 2023 I'd expect the price drop would be appreciable.
The Xperia phones, at least in the US, are even more niche than LG's offerings were, so it's not easy to get a lot of firsthand feedback. It has a lot of features I think I'd like--comprehensive cameras, a physical camera shutter button, a headphone jack (no Quad DAC, but eh, those days are over), Qi charging, etc.
your best bet is probably to go look at the youtube reviews of the devices.
The common thread with the Sony phones is that they are extremely expensive for what you get, and don't make sense for "normal" end users. The camera system is good on paper but the point and shoot mode does not produce good photos compared to the competition. You pretty much have to go into manual mode and adjust your ISO/shutter/aperture settings every time to get the best shot. If you just want to take the phone out of your pocket, open the camera app, hit the shutter button and get a good photo, the xperia phones are not for you. they are for Sony Alpha camera shooters as a secondary device.
I find the sony phones really hard to recommend to the average person.
Considering I take more photos with a Canon DSLR*, where I make full use of manual controls, than my phone, that's actually not an unattractive prospect in of itself. That's actually a reason why I don't find the AI processing with Google or Samsung's camera offerings as interesting; I would absolutely prefer to do it myself (then again, I'm not the kind to take a phone out of my pocket and snap a photo because x--if I take a photo with my camera, it's because I either need to remember something, upon which I don't care about quality, or because I need to take a photo and cannot use my 6DM2, in which case the settings are a plus. The actual Youtube reviews from the likes of Juan Bagnell, Mr. Mobile, etc., suggest that it is a completely competent, or even good, manual camera for its size (though maybe not its price point), and I'm not a point-and-shoot photographer (to the annoyance of my friends).
It's really the rest of the phone--like the fact it is aimed more at shooting video, and not photography, or that it's a Sony phone with the Sony tax, and there's a reason why they're never less popular than LG was before they left the market--that gives me pause. The technical breakdown looks very good on paper, it's everything else I'm worried about.
Plus, at the current price point, I could just buy a V60, and a dual-screen case, and save a lot of money. On the other hand, the Xperia would be smaller.
It's a tough time to get into a Sony android handset for the first time.
*And not a Sony mirrorless, which would be a good argument for the Xperia since you can use it as an external monitor.
For both my wife and I, the past few days, the messages web app (messages.google.com) no longer updates with incoming texts and has to be manually reloaded to have them show up.
We still get texts as normal on our phones, but the website refuses to update. We didn't change anything in any settings, we aren't on the same phone account or anything, and googling this problem isn't seeming to show up anything so I'm confused. It doesn't seem to matter what network we're on, as it happens any any location, no restarting computers does anything.
I have a vague recollection of something similar happening several years ago, but with hangouts, long before they shut that down, but it resolved itself after a few days. Not sure what's going on, but if there's something we are supposed to do with the messages update and haven't, it'd be great to know.
EDIT: "Enable chat features" is disabled because the website has never worked with them enabled (nor does anything really, on google fi, you just can't use that feature)
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Disclaimer: not a Fi customer, but looking into it. And Messages for web hasn't given me any issues.
I'm hoping it just has something to do with whatever they're doing with messages with the updates and will sort itself out before long, because I rely on the web app a lot.
Also yes Fi works with the chat features in Messages, but it actually doesn't link to it in the same way that non-Fi users do. It's just integrated, but you actually have to turn off the feature in the settings for it to work correctly with Fi. It's goofy and I have no idea why, but it's always worked that way since they forced us off Hangouts. I tried to turn it on in case the messages update changed that, but all it did was make it impossible to sign into the web app so...?
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
I'm really wishing now that I sprung for getting a newer version of the phone for $50, rather than a refurbished version of my current one for what turned out to be a copay of $40. Heck, I'm increasingly tempted to just do that anyway.
edit: Bleh, it looks like most of what mattered did end up being copied over. The big thing that didn't was my Firefox profile. I would set up a sync, but I've been fighting switching to Fenix and it looks like at some point sync broke for Fennec. I might be able to get around it by finally giving up and letting it upgrade to Fennic, but that's a one-way path since there would be no way to sync that data back even if I reinstalled version 68.
I really don't want to have to give in on this, but I might finally have to. I had been waiting in the hope that they'd come to their senses and add back in the ability to actually have the browser close all the tabs when I close it. There's no sign of that happening any time soon, unfortunately.
That requires you to specifically press a "quit" command in a menu, rather than resetting the data like every other app does when you swipe them closed. I don't care if it secretly stays alive and just pretends it's restarting from scratch when I open it again. I just want that easy blank slate by default.
Fennec had this option. The Android version of Edge has this option now. The developers of Fenix just decided to be pointlessly regressive about it, and mimic how Safari works for some reason instead.
Fennec is just so much better than Fenix in so many ways. It's so old now that I can't justify installing it on a new phone, but I really wish I had gotten to at least hold onto it to the very end on the phone I'm about to wipe and send away.
You know what? I still have the APK, I think I'll reinstall it, just because I can.
Fenix is such a trashfire that I just don't browse the internet on my phone anymore. I tried to keep Fennec around but even with the proper settings set in the play store it still auto-updated and wiped my setup.
I've tried messing around with Edge, which has some sane behaviors like actually having the option to close all the tabs when you close the app. I think I could get used to the interface, but unfortunately the built-in adblocker really isn't up to par compared to what Firefox can do.
I have 3 major issues:
1. It doesn't have addon support. I have an array of site specific addons that drastically improve my internet quality of life (a tumblr addon that "de-algorithms" tumbler so it only shows posts from people I actually follow, addons for twitter and pinterest that let me use the sites without an account, an addon for reddit, and addon for youtube), and maybe most importatly, tampermonkey so I can install userscripts like anti-adblock-killer that bypasses/disables the JS that tries to detect if you are using and adblocker.
2. There is a ton of built in functionality that was present in Fennec that is missing from Fenix. Big things for me are actual tabs (on my tablet in particular) and reader mode (reader mode does exist in Fenix, but I find that it doesn't show up as an option for a lot of sites where it does on desktop and it did on Fennec). There's also a ton of settings and customization options that exist in Fennec that don't exist anymore, and the settings that are there in Fenix feel almost spiteful in how they work. Moving the URL bar back to the top of the screen is a good example of this. It's nice to have the option to have it at the bottom of the screen on my phone, but on my tablet that is basically the worst place it could be. If you enable the setting to move it back to the top, it does move, but only the URL bar. Hitting the 'tab' button expands the list of tabs... at the bottom of the screen, and that's where the new tab button ends up too. In Fennec, pretty much every desktop app setting existed in the mobile UI. This let me configure my mobile apps the same as my desktop apps, and the behavior across devices was identical. That was a really nice UI experience that isn't possible anymore.
3. Performance/bugs. I didn't really have any issues with Fennec, but Fenix regularly just stops loading pages. I can click a link and android will switch to Firefox and Firefox will open a new tab with the URL filled and act like it is going to load a page, but nothing happens. Reloading does nothing. Clicking the link opens another stuck page. The only way to fix it is to force quit and restart the app, where it will start loading pages again for a day and then stop. Sync doesn't seem to work consistently (my desktop apps won't be aware of browser tabs on mobile and vise versa, when that worked without issues before). There are other issues too.
Really the lack of addons alone is enough to ruin it for me. I don't 'surf the web' as such on my phone and tablet; I primarily used mobile browsing to visit my 'usual haunts' like reddit, and to read news articles and blog posts and the like. The lack of QoL addons for the sites I frequent ruins that experience, and the lack of userscripts ruins the experience of reading news sites. Reader mode not working consistently really hurt the 'reading experience' on my tablet and phone. So much so that I literally don't browse the web on my phone anymore; I'll just wait until I can get to my desktop or laptop and browse there now.
Edit: Apparently the reader view differences are because I have an addon on desktop/had an addon in Fennec that forces the option to be available on all pages.
I also don't use a FF account to share tabs.
That all being said, I do like the stock mobile FF experience but I hate that every time I gripe about pull-to-refresh, I'm told to just install the nightly Beta.
I'm sure there are a lot of technical reasons why Firefox for Android exists as it does in the first place. But I'm pretty sure that the stuff I outlined above has nothing to do with technology and more to do with (bad) UI-driven or business-driven decisions.
For example, I'm fairly certain that Shortcuts exist because Mozilla wanted a way to put recommendations/ads in a more "seamless" way, so they coupled it with functionality that is essentially the same as Bookmarks so that people have a place where they can look for links they use regularly while also being shown Sponsored links. In reality, they would've been better off just having mandatory, dedicated Sponsored links at the top of every blank home screen/tab and calling it a day (if you don't want the Sponsored links to show up then just use a different home screen). The way they implemented it now is just confusing and significantly hurts adoption.
That's some real horseshit and I really wish Vivaldi was somehow gecko based and not chromium because if it was I'd switch in an instant and never look back.
Per my earlier response, I have a nagging suspicion that the Add-On situation is driven by Mozilla's reliance on Google funding (which Google provides in order to fend off antitrust regulators). There are a lot of Add-Ons in Firefox not for Android which break tricks that Google and advertisers use to track what people are doing even if they aren't using Chrome, such as ClearURLs and Redirect AMP to HTML. And, unlike uBlock Origin, which also protects you against certain types of attacks or malicious content, they have no meaningful use cases other than to break said functionality.
The internet was a mistake.
Only the Beta "channel" version. And that's my complaint.
It only happens when you're already at the top of the page, keep trying to scroll up once you're at the top and it refreshes.
Not having it would be less of a pain point if the refresh button itself wasn't hidden behind a menu...
It's interesting to see what happens when Firefox doesn't choose to play nicely. When Windows 10 first came out, online searches through Windows 10's search bar were sent to the user's default browser but were directed towards Bing, with there being no means of changing the search engine through Windows' settings. Soon after Windows 10 became available, Firefox implemented a system to detect whether incoming requests were sent through Windows' search, and redirect them to whether search engine the user set as their default within Firefox. Microsoft's response was to yank those searches away from the default browser, creating a new protocol that was designed only to be implemented by Edge.
There was actually nothing special about that protocol, and there was nothing stopping other browsers from declaring that they were capable of implementing it themselves. None of them chose to do so, but there were a few smaller tools that (completely accurately!) declared themselves capable of handling those requests, doing so by just repackaging them as requests to the default browser and sending them back out.
When Windows 11 came out, Firefox finally stated that they were implementing support for that protocol. Almost immediately, Microsoft moved the protocol into a protected state where the user's choice of the handler was ignored, breaking all of the existing tools that were designed to reroute requests.
Firefox is fully capable of scaring the shit out of other companies simply by acting in their users' interests. I'm kind of afraid to find out what Google would do to the internet if Firefox starting doing things like redirecting AMP links.
I hate this browser so much, but there are no other options that aren't somehow worse.
Because I hate how it handles logins and password, both in browser and especially with apps. With Chrome it was just there ready to go. FF I have to press on username field, unlock, search for it.
Am I doing it wrong?
Maybe it's just my paranoia but I don't like the login fields to be auto-filled, even on desktop. With Bitwarden Ctrl+Shift+L will fill your login info so that followed by Enter doesn't cost much time.
Wife not so hot on the 7 so far (hasn't turned it on), mostly because it's such a change from her 3XL. which like, yeah.
But I get it. Should have left pics of the 7 laying around the house first.
My 6a is still on is way.
Like I started playing Marvel Snap and it just devours my pixel 6's battery it's insane
Now Samsung and OnePlus are promising longer/more robust Android support than Google does.
Google *really* needs to step up there. It isn't a good look that the company that makes Android has a shorter support timeframe on its phones than some of the OEM's.
The Pixel 4a is not the absolute worst smartphone I've ever owned, but it's the worst one I've owned since that point around 2015 where smartphones all got more or less standardized in format and quality expectations