A few days ago my provider sends me an email saying "3G is going away, get a new phone". It sounded more like a solicitation than an actual warning but it does have me concerned. I'm not the type to get a new phone until my old one stops working, particularly because of budget concerns.
Am I really that close to my Moto Z3 Play becoming just a PDA?
Yes.
AT&T sent my mother this garbage piece of garbage to replace her very old but high-end Samsung. I need to deal with that and get her some half-decent Samsung that'll last her awhile.
Maybe that was for 2G service? AT&T retired 2G service 5 years ago, seems like the other carriers still have 2G service running until maybe 2022 though.
yeah, it looks like all of the big US carriers are phasing out 3G in early 2022. One thing to remember is that the first 3G networks were deployed in 2001, so the technology is over 20 years old now. Hell, LTE is 12 years old as well.
And part of shutting down 3G networks is that it gives the carriers the ability to take the frequencies those networks are operating on and re-farm them to other networks, adding capacity for LTE/5G deployments.
And lastly, despite the age of the networks, the carriers wouldn't be shutting them down if there were a statistically significant number of people still using them. It probably costs them more to maintain than the revenue they get from the few customers who still use it.
So, My Galaxy Watch Active 2's LCD was starting to go. around the 6-7 oclock position I could see what looked like the display separating from the glass around the edge of the LCD screen. It started about a month ago, and I swear some days it's not there, and some days I can't see the bottom couple of mm of the watchface.
I felt kinda bad because my significant other, who is not really a tech person at all, but knew I liked smartwatches, bought me that as a gift for my birthday in January 2020 as a replacement to a fitbit versa i was using (the motives were slightly self serving. She thought the versa looked bad and the Galaxy Watch Active looked a bit more like a "normal" watch).
I was originally planning on skipping the first gen of WearOS 3 watches because I've been worried about the transition, early review of the Galaxy Watch 4 were not as great as I was hoping they would be. But with a dying watch, a $50 sale and $100 trade in credit I got for trading in an old LG G watch circa 2014 (seriously, best buy Canada was giving a $100 credit for *any* working smartwatch) I now have a Galaxy Watch 4 44mm on my wrist.
I've literally had it for about 15 hours, so no long term reviews, but we're going to see. I like the hardware, my signifiant other is even impressed with it. She tells me that she thinks is looks even more like a regular watch than the Active 2. That surpirsed me since I thought they looked pretty similar. Maybe it's the lug design being a bit different.
But overall so far, I'm impressed. It's snappy, and functions mostly the same as the Watch Active 2 did. This really is a Samsung watch running on top of WearOS. The only learning curve coming from Tizen is that the two buttons are backwards compared to tizen (tizen had home as the bottom button, back as top. Watch 4 is reversed) and that getting to the apps screen is a swipe from the bottom. I never used apps on the Active 2 so it's not a huge deal. Watch Faces are also a bit of an issue. Tizen watch faces aren't there, there were a couple that i really liked that I can't use. But not the end of the world.
No verdict on battery life, obviously, but i'm really disappointed in charging speeds. No better than the previous samsung watches, in that it's going to take about 2.5 hours to go from dead to full. That's a tough thing to take in late 2021.
As long as battery life is ok, this is not a watch anyone who was afraid of upgrading from Tizen should be afraid of. At worst, it looks/feels exactly like a Tizen watch, with a new OS. We'll see about the rest.
After a few weeks I wiped my new Google Pixel 5a and reinstalled everything. Everything works except for text messaging.
I've done the cache and memory wipe. I've uninstalled and reinstalled Messages and I triple checked to make sure Messages was my default messaging ap thoughts?
I am in the business of saving lives.
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MichaelLCIn what furnace was thy brain?ChicagoRegistered Userregular
edited October 2021
Are you not getting them or not seeing a notification?
There's those bubble things that can mess up notifications, and check that chat features are on; Messeges, Settings dots, Chat features.
Are you not getting them or not seeing a notification?
There's those bubble things that can mess up notifications, and check that chat features are on; Messeges, Settings dots, Chat features.
After googling I found out that the Google Pixel 5a on Verizon has a unique problem with 4G LTE SIM cards. Apparently the 5a needs a 5G SIM card to receive text messages.
Pixels take fantastic pictures, but other flagship phones caught up to them a couple years ago. The thing with the pixels right now is that you can get that pixel camera in a $400 phone like the 5a. Other $400 phones won't take pictures that good, at least in low light.
Google has been riding the same physical camera hardware for so long that they stopped being able to make them better a couple years ago, erasing their huge camera lead at the high end. We'll see what the Pixel 6 can do.
Anyone ever have a thing where they have apps that are definitely installed but they don't show up in your app drawer?
I have a Galaxy S9 and I think it happened after an update but, for whatever reason, I have a few apps that no longer show up in my app drawer. I can open my app drawer and search for them and run them that way but they don't show up in the normal list.
The apps I've noticed missing so far are:
Pokemon Go
Geforce NOW
Steam Link
Find Device
When I do search for the app and it shows up at the top, if I do a long-press on it, it shows an option to "Locate App" and takes me to something called "My Games" which happens to only list those first 3. Now I don't know where this My Games thing is. It kind of looks like the Google Play Games app but when I open that, I don't get the same list.
Anyone know what's going on here or where My Games is?
Anyone ever have a thing where they have apps that are definitely installed but they don't show up in your app drawer?
I have a Galaxy S9 and I think it happened after an update but, for whatever reason, I have a few apps that no longer show up in my app drawer. I can open my app drawer and search for them and run them that way but they don't show up in the normal list.
The apps I've noticed missing so far are:
Pokemon Go
Geforce NOW
Steam Link
Find Device
When I do search for the app and it shows up at the top, if I do a long-press on it, it shows an option to "Locate App" and takes me to something called "My Games" which happens to only list those first 3. Now I don't know where this My Games thing is. It kind of looks like the Google Play Games app but when I open that, I don't get the same list.
Anyone know what's going on here or where My Games is?
look in your app drawer for a "Games" icon.
There are a few other things you can check. Samsung's OneUI has a "games launcher" app which aggregates games into it, and does have a setting where games can appear only there and not in the app drawer.
Last thing i can think of is another OneUI feature that can hide apps from the app drawer. when in the app drawer list of apps, there'll be a 3 dot menu on the right of the search bar, tap that, go to settings. look for an option called "hide apps" and see if those apps are hidden from the drawer.
Oh, so Android 12 was released to AOSP a few days ago, but won't be making it to Pixels for "a few weeks" yet. Which i think is a first for Google since the Pixel line became a thing.
But, you know, the Pixel line is just another skinned OEM version of Android at this point, so I guess we maybe shouldn't be surprised.
Oh, so Android 12 was released to AOSP a few days ago, but won't be making it to Pixels for "a few weeks" yet. Which i think is a first for Google since the Pixel line became a thing.
But, you know, the Pixel line is just another skinned OEM version of Android at this point, so I guess we maybe shouldn't be surprised.
I'm not sure I want to upgrade to Android 12 right away on my Pixel 5a. There might be compatibility issues and I just got used to how this works having used Android 9 for a while. Then again, the fucking Carmegeddon remake that I installed on my first smart phone on Android 4 STILL works and has been brought forward across 3 additional phones.
Has anyone had some strange behavior regarding Google related services on their Pixel phones? I'm a 4a and when I use FireFox to search for something in Google and click on anything it takes a good 10-20 seconds before the page loads. It happens often enough to be annoying. But if I use DuckDuckGo and search the same exact thing and click on the same link the page loads almost instantly.
I also noticed if I click a link in my Gmail account and it opens in that pseduo Google browser it takes 20-30 seconds before the page actually loads.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
Has anyone had some strange behavior regarding Google related services on their Pixel phones? I'm a 4a and when I use FireFox to search for something in Google and click on anything it takes a good 10-20 seconds before the page loads. It happens often enough to be annoying. But if I use DuckDuckGo and search the same exact thing and click on the same link the page loads almost instantly.
I also noticed if I click a link in my Gmail account and it opens in that pseduo Google browser it takes 20-30 seconds before the page actually loads.
Just curious, does this behavior happen on both wifi and cellular?
Has anyone had some strange behavior regarding Google related services on their Pixel phones? I'm a 4a and when I use FireFox to search for something in Google and click on anything it takes a good 10-20 seconds before the page loads. It happens often enough to be annoying. But if I use DuckDuckGo and search the same exact thing and click on the same link the page loads almost instantly.
I also noticed if I click a link in my Gmail account and it opens in that pseduo Google browser it takes 20-30 seconds before the page actually loads.
Just curious, does this behavior happen on both wifi and cellular?
I'm almost never on cellular data so I'm not sure if it happens on both. But when the issue arises again I'll give it a try.
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ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
Has anyone had some strange behavior regarding Google related services on their Pixel phones? I'm a 4a and when I use FireFox to search for something in Google and click on anything it takes a good 10-20 seconds before the page loads. It happens often enough to be annoying. But if I use DuckDuckGo and search the same exact thing and click on the same link the page loads almost instantly.
I also noticed if I click a link in my Gmail account and it opens in that pseduo Google browser it takes 20-30 seconds before the page actually loads.
Just curious, does this behavior happen on both wifi and cellular?
I'm almost never on cellular data so I'm not sure if it happens on both. But when the issue arises again I'll give it a try.
Did you change wifi routers at home recently? I found that my router's feature for automatically detecting whether a device should be on the 2.4G or the 5G band is terrible with mobile devices. Presumably it runs some routine based on signal strength and bandwidth requirements and picks which of the two wifi signals (with the same name) to put you on, but with my phone it seemed it was running that routine with almost every single query adding like a 10 second delay to even basic browsing actions.
I turned that feature off and separated the 2.4G and 5G networks and never ran into that problem again.
I am having trouble with the youtube app on a new phone. On my old galaxy 7, the app looks the same, but I'm able to bring up the pause/play button in the player window by tapping in it. In the newer pixel 4a, tapping skips straight to a hold action, like an instantaneous press-and-hold, activating drag to scrub through the video timeline, skipping the normal tap function. I can't get the pause button to show up. Sometimes it shows up if I tap furiously with 2 or 3 fingers, but not often. I can't seem to find any useful explanations of the YouTube app controls through searches so I thought I'd ask here if that's normal and what I'm doing wrong if so.
E: nevermind, either the system update or the associated restart fixed it. Weird.
Has anyone had some strange behavior regarding Google related services on their Pixel phones? I'm a 4a and when I use FireFox to search for something in Google and click on anything it takes a good 10-20 seconds before the page loads. It happens often enough to be annoying. But if I use DuckDuckGo and search the same exact thing and click on the same link the page loads almost instantly.
I also noticed if I click a link in my Gmail account and it opens in that pseduo Google browser it takes 20-30 seconds before the page actually loads.
Just curious, does this behavior happen on both wifi and cellular?
I'm almost never on cellular data so I'm not sure if it happens on both. But when the issue arises again I'll give it a try.
Did you change wifi routers at home recently? I found that my router's feature for automatically detecting whether a device should be on the 2.4G or the 5G band is terrible with mobile devices. Presumably it runs some routine based on signal strength and bandwidth requirements and picks which of the two wifi signals (with the same name) to put you on, but with my phone it seemed it was running that routine with almost every single query adding like a 10 second delay to even basic browsing actions.
I turned that feature off and separated the 2.4G and 5G networks and never ran into that problem again.
Unfortunately not. I have Google Fi and Google Wifi so you'd think they'd all work correctly! haha
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
every so often I just get a little reminder of how much I've loved my OnePlus 6T. I hear they aren't as respected these days as they've converged more with the big manufacturers, and I don't know if I'd buy another one, but I still love this one.
Three years old now;
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ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
So while traveling a couple weeks ago I discovered that sometimes when my brand new Galaxy S21 loses its mobile data connection that it couldn't reconnect on its own without me resetting it manually via airplane-mode. I wondered how long it would sit in its disconnected state then, and learned the answer: apparently forever. I lost mobile data sometime yesterday afternoon, didn't notice because I was on WiFi the rest of the day, and this morning when I noticed I reset it and got text messages, a voicemail, and a bunch of other pending mobile data notifications.
Super cool problem I have never experienced with a previous product.
So while traveling a couple weeks ago I discovered that sometimes when my brand new Galaxy S21 loses its mobile data connection that it couldn't reconnect on its own without me resetting it manually via airplane-mode. I wondered how long it would sit in its disconnected state then, and learned the answer: apparently forever. I lost mobile data sometime yesterday afternoon, didn't notice because I was on WiFi the rest of the day, and this morning when I noticed I reset it and got text messages, a voicemail, and a bunch of other pending mobile data notifications.
Super cool problem I have never experienced with a previous product.
Maybe wifi+ is broken, have you tried disabling it?
I think I remember it causing problems before
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ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
I don't think I know what WiFi+ is? Googling it makes it appear to be Huawei technology?
I'm on Fi, but I had that problem on my Pixel 3XL last month when I was traveling internationally, it wouldnt migrate from one carrier to another so as I was driving around the country it would drop signal and keep looking for whoever it was previously connected to. I just chalked it up to international/roaming connectivity issues.
I've yet to have the issue state side, but coverage is both TMO and Sprint have pretty decent coverage in my area and now that they're the same company maybe the network switching is even less of an issue.
Ear3nd1lEärendil the Mariner, father of ElrondRegistered Userregular
Does anyone know how to change the AoD clock format in Android 12? I like the default one that comes with it, but my wife and daughter don't and want to change it.
So looks like the Pixel 6 leaks are appearing with retailers accidentally posting official promotional features list.
Probably the most interesting is the new photography AI features the custom SoC Google has done. The ability to remove photobombers from shots and unblur faces in photos will be really interesting to see and if pulled off well will really be impressive.
Everything else is very much flagship 2021 specs which is right now very welcome and exciting to see a real powerhouse pixel device.
Colour me optimistic for the launch event.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
I'm just hoping for better battery life at this point.
Posts
Yes.
AT&T sent my mother this garbage piece of garbage to replace her very old but high-end Samsung. I need to deal with that and get her some half-decent Samsung that'll last her awhile.
And part of shutting down 3G networks is that it gives the carriers the ability to take the frequencies those networks are operating on and re-farm them to other networks, adding capacity for LTE/5G deployments.
And lastly, despite the age of the networks, the carriers wouldn't be shutting them down if there were a statistically significant number of people still using them. It probably costs them more to maintain than the revenue they get from the few customers who still use it.
Thanks, Bill
Steam | XBL
I felt kinda bad because my significant other, who is not really a tech person at all, but knew I liked smartwatches, bought me that as a gift for my birthday in January 2020 as a replacement to a fitbit versa i was using (the motives were slightly self serving. She thought the versa looked bad and the Galaxy Watch Active looked a bit more like a "normal" watch).
I was originally planning on skipping the first gen of WearOS 3 watches because I've been worried about the transition, early review of the Galaxy Watch 4 were not as great as I was hoping they would be. But with a dying watch, a $50 sale and $100 trade in credit I got for trading in an old LG G watch circa 2014 (seriously, best buy Canada was giving a $100 credit for *any* working smartwatch) I now have a Galaxy Watch 4 44mm on my wrist.
I've literally had it for about 15 hours, so no long term reviews, but we're going to see. I like the hardware, my signifiant other is even impressed with it. She tells me that she thinks is looks even more like a regular watch than the Active 2. That surpirsed me since I thought they looked pretty similar. Maybe it's the lug design being a bit different.
But overall so far, I'm impressed. It's snappy, and functions mostly the same as the Watch Active 2 did. This really is a Samsung watch running on top of WearOS. The only learning curve coming from Tizen is that the two buttons are backwards compared to tizen (tizen had home as the bottom button, back as top. Watch 4 is reversed) and that getting to the apps screen is a swipe from the bottom. I never used apps on the Active 2 so it's not a huge deal. Watch Faces are also a bit of an issue. Tizen watch faces aren't there, there were a couple that i really liked that I can't use. But not the end of the world.
No verdict on battery life, obviously, but i'm really disappointed in charging speeds. No better than the previous samsung watches, in that it's going to take about 2.5 hours to go from dead to full. That's a tough thing to take in late 2021.
As long as battery life is ok, this is not a watch anyone who was afraid of upgrading from Tizen should be afraid of. At worst, it looks/feels exactly like a Tizen watch, with a new OS. We'll see about the rest.
I've done the cache and memory wipe. I've uninstalled and reinstalled Messages and I triple checked to make sure Messages was my default messaging ap thoughts?
There's those bubble things that can mess up notifications, and check that chat features are on; Messeges, Settings dots, Chat features.
After googling I found out that the Google Pixel 5a on Verizon has a unique problem with 4G LTE SIM cards. Apparently the 5a needs a 5G SIM card to receive text messages.
So, got a new SIM card and everything works.
Steam: betsuni7
God damn. I thought the Pixel had the monopoly on great pictures.
Google has been riding the same physical camera hardware for so long that they stopped being able to make them better a couple years ago, erasing their huge camera lead at the high end. We'll see what the Pixel 6 can do.
I have a Galaxy S9 and I think it happened after an update but, for whatever reason, I have a few apps that no longer show up in my app drawer. I can open my app drawer and search for them and run them that way but they don't show up in the normal list.
The apps I've noticed missing so far are:
When I do search for the app and it shows up at the top, if I do a long-press on it, it shows an option to "Locate App" and takes me to something called "My Games" which happens to only list those first 3. Now I don't know where this My Games thing is. It kind of looks like the Google Play Games app but when I open that, I don't get the same list.
Anyone know what's going on here or where My Games is?
SteamID: edgruberman GOG Galaxy: EdGruberman
look in your app drawer for a "Games" icon.
There are a few other things you can check. Samsung's OneUI has a "games launcher" app which aggregates games into it, and does have a setting where games can appear only there and not in the app drawer.
Last thing i can think of is another OneUI feature that can hide apps from the app drawer. when in the app drawer list of apps, there'll be a 3 dot menu on the right of the search bar, tap that, go to settings. look for an option called "hide apps" and see if those apps are hidden from the drawer.
But, you know, the Pixel line is just another skinned OEM version of Android at this point, so I guess we maybe shouldn't be surprised.
I'm not sure I want to upgrade to Android 12 right away on my Pixel 5a. There might be compatibility issues and I just got used to how this works having used Android 9 for a while. Then again, the fucking Carmegeddon remake that I installed on my first smart phone on Android 4 STILL works and has been brought forward across 3 additional phones.
I also noticed if I click a link in my Gmail account and it opens in that pseduo Google browser it takes 20-30 seconds before the page actually loads.
Just curious, does this behavior happen on both wifi and cellular?
I've seen it on both.
I'm almost never on cellular data so I'm not sure if it happens on both. But when the issue arises again I'll give it a try.
Did you change wifi routers at home recently? I found that my router's feature for automatically detecting whether a device should be on the 2.4G or the 5G band is terrible with mobile devices. Presumably it runs some routine based on signal strength and bandwidth requirements and picks which of the two wifi signals (with the same name) to put you on, but with my phone it seemed it was running that routine with almost every single query adding like a 10 second delay to even basic browsing actions.
I turned that feature off and separated the 2.4G and 5G networks and never ran into that problem again.
E: nevermind, either the system update or the associated restart fixed it. Weird.
Unfortunately not. I have Google Fi and Google Wifi so you'd think they'd all work correctly! haha
Three years old now;
Super cool problem I have never experienced with a previous product.
Maybe wifi+ is broken, have you tried disabling it?
I think I remember it causing problems before
I've yet to have the issue state side, but coverage is both TMO and Sprint have pretty decent coverage in my area and now that they're the same company maybe the network switching is even less of an issue.
Probably the most interesting is the new photography AI features the custom SoC Google has done. The ability to remove photobombers from shots and unblur faces in photos will be really interesting to see and if pulled off well will really be impressive.
Everything else is very much flagship 2021 specs which is right now very welcome and exciting to see a real powerhouse pixel device.
Colour me optimistic for the launch event.
The leaks show the 6 at 4600 mAh which is roughly similar to the Xperia 1 mk3, while the 6 pro is at 5000 mAh which is the same as the S21 Ultra.
While we don’t know what the chipset or the software will do for battery management, at least the specs on paper are competitive this time.