Having some issues with my phone at the moment and hoping people might be able to suggest solutions short of a full factory restore - phone is a Redmi Note 9 Pro.
For a while now, FB Messenger notifications aren't coming through reliably - sometimes they work fine, others it's like it doesn't actually get the update until I wake the phone up or open up the Messenger app.
More recently, when I get a call, the phone will start vibrating, but the screen won't wake itself up or display the number for a good 8-10 seconds. If I manually wake up the screen faster it still doesn't show me there is a call coming in for a while.
Anything I can try? I had been using Nova Launcher originally but cut that out in case it was causing issues.
Switch Friend Code: SW-3944-9431-0318
PSN / Xbox / NNID: Fodder185
This is a longshot question but it's driving me bonkers.
I have a Samsung S9.
Intermittently people have been complaining this year that I sound crackling and distorted when using my speaker function on calls.
This clears when I switch to normal phone. "Oh that's much better"
The weird thing is that most of the time it appears to be fine. And I've done multiple runs on the inbuilt voice recorder, and it sounds fine too, at multiple distances and angles.
The most common search is blocking of the microphone by dust, but that should also block the voice recorder.
Has anyone heard of these issues?
I can't wear headsets for prolonged periods due to ear trouble, and sometimes need to type and talk.
This is a longshot question but it's driving me bonkers.
I have a Samsung S9.
Intermittently people have been complaining this year that I sound crackling and distorted when using my speaker function on calls.
This clears when I switch to normal phone. "Oh that's much better"
The weird thing is that most of the time it appears to be fine. And I've done multiple runs on the inbuilt voice recorder, and it sounds fine too, at multiple distances and angles.
The most common search is blocking of the microphone by dust, but that should also block the voice recorder.
Has anyone heard of these issues?
I can't wear headsets for prolonged periods due to ear trouble, and sometimes need to type and talk.
I have an S9 and people have always complained about the speaker phone. I always assumed it was ambient noise but now you have me thinking maybe it was the phone itself. The normal phone and speaker phone use the same microphone, so it is probably some kind of noise reduction software built into the speakerphone aspect. At least that's my best guess.
Gamertag: KL Retribution
PSN:Furlion
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
I've had people complain about the voice quality on my work phone (S10e) pretty consistently over speaker phone.
interesting, I've not heard any complaints about my Galaxy S8's speakerphone, which I believe switches to a separate microphone on the top of the phone.
Not heard any complaints about speakerphone voice quality on my Note 10+ either. No idea if it uses the top mic as well as (or instead of) the bottom one, but it does use both speakers, and the background noise filter apparently still works too (hence my wondering about the mics, and no, I wasn't speakerphone-ing in public).
Seems like Google finally fixed that bug where the dropdown tray fully extended the first time you unlocked your phone. It was just annoying but nice to see it fixed.
So my experience with the Pixel 6 has been really good but the battery is a bit small. I'd say if I'm using my phone all day it lasts about 12-13 hours. Typically I wake up an hour before work and in that hour it nearly drops 10 percent by the time I actually get to work. The weird thing is, Battery Saver is super efficient, so I pretty much always have it on. I just tested it this morning and after an hour I've only used 2 percent of battery. I'm not sure what stuff Battery Saver is turning off to get that to happen, but it works fine with it on. With battery saver I can easily make it a whole day, about 16 hours and make it home with 30% battery.
So my experience with the Pixel 6 has been really good but the battery is a bit small. I'd say if I'm using my phone all day it lasts about 12-13 hours. Typically I wake up an hour before work and in that hour it nearly drops 10 percent by the time I actually get to work. The weird thing is, Battery Saver is super efficient, so I pretty much always have it on. I just tested it this morning and after an hour I've only used 2 percent of battery. I'm not sure what stuff Battery Saver is turning off to get that to happen, but it works fine with it on. With battery saver I can easily make it a whole day, about 16 hours and make it home with 30% battery.
Battery saver is different for every phone but generally things that the feature will do is limit CPU speed, reduce maximum screen brightness, and not let certain background tasks/apps to run. The last part is the biggest thing to keep battery longevity.
I personally don't use it on my Z Fold 3 unless the battery does get low because it tends to kill some apps and queue some notifications I want/need running normally. But it could very well be different on how aggressive it is on the Pixel line.
Typically I wake up an hour before work and in that hour it nearly drops 10 percent by the time I actually get to work.
How are you using the phone during that hour? If that is mostly idle drain I'd assume something bad is happening in the background (wakelocks) or signal issues.
One of the bigger issues I saw when reviews were starting to come out is noticeably different battery life between various reviewers and I recall some speculation that it could've been 5G related. If you want to test that you can change your preferred network type to LTE in the settings.
Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
Listening to music, watching YouTube, or reading manga. I hadn't considered the 5G thing, I'll try that out, but at home I'm on wifi
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
I've been having some weird Bluetooth issues lately that I'm not sure are caused by my phone, Android, or pocket casts. The breakdown goes:
- listen to podcast
- get a phone call
- end the call, the podcast continues playing.
All sounds normal and fine. But then I notice that the time played in my vehicle isn't moving, as if the podcast is paused. If I hit play, the podcast starts playing again while it's already playing. So if I get ten minutes further in the podcast, it will continue playing while also playing from the point that the phone call happened. I can force stop pocket casts, kill Bluetooth, but nothing fixes the problem until I reboot my phone
I've been having some weird Bluetooth issues lately that I'm not sure are caused by my phone, Android, or pocket casts. The breakdown goes:
- listen to podcast
- get a phone call
- end the call, the podcast continues playing.
All sounds normal and fine. But then I notice that the time played in my vehicle isn't moving, as if the podcast is paused. If I hit play, the podcast starts playing again while it's already playing. So if I get ten minutes further in the podcast, it will continue playing while also playing from the point that the phone call happened. I can force stop pocket casts, kill Bluetooth, but nothing fixes the problem until I reboot my phone
It's fucking weird.
Check the notifications settings in Pocket Casts, there are optoins to play over notifications, see what that is set and if fiddling with that will fix it.
Otherwise, as long as you're signed into pocket casts with an account so all of your settings sync, you can try uninstalling the app and re-installing it.
BlackBerry phones, once the height of mobile devices, are finally being shut off.
The company announced that services for the older devices will be brought to an end on 4 January. At that point, they will “no longer reliably function”, BlackBerry said, and will be unable to get data, texts or make phone calls, including to emergency numbers.
Over a decade ago I worked for a contractor that did a number of different things for two major wireless providers, one of them was general support calls, which I would do from time to time in between projects or whatever. For a while it felt like "My emails aren't coming through on my Blackberry" was half of the calls we got (reenable their device in the BIS, easy peasy), and "My Blackberry Storm won't turn on, and it says 'jvm error', is that bad?" were the other half (I hope you used the Blackberry Desktop Manager software to backup your phone lately, because everything is gone).
Some highlights of that era included getting to goof around with pre-release hardware (including the Motorola Droid, which was running this new 'Android' operating system that was kinda nice but was probably going nowhere), troubleshooting a famous pornstar's device over the phone - her work emails weren't coming through on her Blackberry... because she put her email address (basically hername@hername.com) on her website so her fans could email her, and as a result was getting roughly 10,000 emails a day, and the time some coworkers and I got accused of and grilled about 'corporate espionage':
There were some industry leaks that had gone out a while earlier and as a result the company's biggest partner was cracking down hardcore and threatening to rain fire and brimstone down upon any group that leaked information, so it was a tense time. There was also a setting within Outlook that could pop up a notification whenever you got an email, and it would just show the sender's name, and the subject of the email. IT saw that there were a lot of emails that were going back and forth among a very small group of employees that were blank, and had nonsense subjects like 'hc3' or 'mj5' or 'hsbsa5' and the company went apeshit. We were accused of sending "coded information" via email and I had to explain that a subject like 'hsbsa5' was actually 'h, sbs, a5' which translated to '(your shot was a) Hit, (you) Sank (my) Battleship, (my next move is) A5' because we were playing surreptitious games of Battleship via email while we were supposed to be working. I have never seen a man in a suit be so furious and relieved at the same time.
Anyway, Blackberry news kinda made me nostalgic for a minute there. Speaking of that era of cellular devices, this video and its followup
So I've been using Motorola since the original Droid came out 13 years ago (crap has it been that long, or was it 12?). Droid, Droid RAZR, x, z and z3. But since Lenovo took over they seem to have switched to a focus on budget devices.
My wife has the G play and it's fine but nothing special. My boss got the one ace and is not impressed. I'm slightly tempted by the RAZR, But I find myself for the first time since I was on a trio looking for something other than Motorola. Definitely want to stay android, but I've never been impressed with Samsung. I know Google got it a lot of Motorola stuff so I'm kind of leaning towards a pixel 6. Coworker has one and he thinks it's pretty good. I like the idea of a pure Android experience with all the other bloatware nonsense they can get put on by other manufacturers. The state of the Android phone industry is kind of sad right now with so many manufacturers having called the wayside.
I'm on verizon, but contemplating a swap to T-Mobile if that makes anything.
To be fair, when it comes to Android devices most of the bloatware is added to lower end phones as a way for the carrier and/or manufacturer to slightly subsidize their lower cost, so if you end up with something on the higher end its not really an issue. I have a Z Flip 3 and the dumb Samsung and carrier shit was uninstallable - This is good, because I don't have a Samsung fridge, and if I did I don't really know why the hell I would want it connected to my cellphone.
And I'll keep pointing out that there is no such thing as "stock" android anymore. Google puts things on Pixel devices that *only* pixel devices get. That makes Pixel phones no better or worse than any other OEM adding in customizations to Android. Whether you like those things Google adds is another question entirely.
It used to be that the Nexus/Pixel line was the baseline of what Android was, and other OEM's would build on top of that. Now the Pixel line is no different than any other phone, a customized experience by the OEM.
I personally haven't been impressed with the Pixel launcher and experience for several years now. But that's just my opinion, to each their own.
And yes, budget Android phones are budget in part because of that bloatware on them. High end, unlocked phones won't have nearly as much of it. They may have some app duplication on core apps that you must include as part of Google Services (i.e. two calendar apps on Samsung phones). While that is a form of bloatware, it isn't the same as candy crush or whatever the new hotness is. And in the vast majority of cases, most of those duplications can be uninstalled, or at least disabled and never seen again. And with high end phones mostly coming with 256GB o storage now, maybe some with 128, the amount of storage those disabled apps may take up is a rounding error in terms of total system storage. We should be long past worrying about that.
I tended towards the Nexus phones previously but my current phone is a Galaxy S9. My wife has upgraded from an S6 (I think) to a Pixel 5 and, while it's a pretty good phone, there are at least 2 things that we have been surprised to learn are Samsung improvements on the base Android.
separate volume settings for notifications and ringer
disconnecting from specific bluetooth devices from the notification shade
So while I've previously leaned towards the Google line of phones, Samsung, at least has made some improvements that aren't just bloatware. And to be honest, I don't really notice the bloatware stuff on my S9 and I even use the Samsung Health app to track my exercise. But fuck Bixby. That is not something I need.
ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
I've met a single Pixel 6 owner in person and he hated it. Without getting too much into specifics, he made the phone sound like a device in beta testing.
I have had my Galaxy S21 for 4-5 months now and I am pretty satisfied so far. It has its drawbacks but no deal-breakers and the hardware is rock solid. I liked Pixel 3's camera app better but the actual camera on the S21 is plenty good.
Google is a bad OEM, continued: after pulling the December update for the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro due to call disconnection issues, that update has now been pulled from download from the pixel image download sites.
And while Google released the January security update for the Pixel lines, the update for the Pixel 6 line is nowhere to be found. Google is only promising a new update with both the December and January stuff coming "by the end of the month"
I think we give google too much of a pass on how bad they are at making phones. Pixels have almost always had some kind of significant issue, and on the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro it inexplicably seems to be software.
yeah, and that's one thing I do want to be clear, every OEM has their issues, no one is perfect. I've personally never had a problem with Samsung, but that doesn't mean problems don't exist. If you (the royal you) are happy with a Google phone, that's great, and I hope you enjoy it.
I just personally feel that too many in the Android enthusiast community give google too much of a pass on their phones because they associate google with a "pure" android and that the Pixel line is the kind of Android software. I'm not saying anyone here does this, so please don't think that I am, but there are plenty of people in the Android community who basically gang up on anyone who might say a bad thing about a Pixel device, because how can you hate Google's phone? The reality is that Google is just a middling Android OEM where their biggest advantage is faster software updates than most other OEM's, and that's about it.
ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
I think there are a lot of great ideas in the Pixel but I've hear the "robot voice" complaint from a few people and that kind of shit is inexcusable to me. Maybe you don't use your phone to talk to people that much but the phone app should fucking work normally in the Year of Our Lord 2022.
I get the robot complaint when I use my Google voice app for calls on my moto, especially on wifi calls. Might be something deeper at Google than just the Pixel.
Posts
What?
The "complain on the Internet" power activated.
Steam: betsuni7
For a while now, FB Messenger notifications aren't coming through reliably - sometimes they work fine, others it's like it doesn't actually get the update until I wake the phone up or open up the Messenger app.
More recently, when I get a call, the phone will start vibrating, but the screen won't wake itself up or display the number for a good 8-10 seconds. If I manually wake up the screen faster it still doesn't show me there is a call coming in for a while.
Anything I can try? I had been using Nova Launcher originally but cut that out in case it was causing issues.
PSN / Xbox / NNID: Fodder185
Why is that a thing???
Edit: Okay I should have gone back literally a page, my mistake!
PSN / Xbox / NNID: Fodder185
Incredible, pikmin claims another :biggrin:
Steam | XBL
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/12/verizon-ignored-users-previous-opt-outs-in-latest-push-to-scan-web-browsing/
I have a Samsung S9.
Intermittently people have been complaining this year that I sound crackling and distorted when using my speaker function on calls.
This clears when I switch to normal phone. "Oh that's much better"
The weird thing is that most of the time it appears to be fine. And I've done multiple runs on the inbuilt voice recorder, and it sounds fine too, at multiple distances and angles.
The most common search is blocking of the microphone by dust, but that should also block the voice recorder.
Has anyone heard of these issues?
I can't wear headsets for prolonged periods due to ear trouble, and sometimes need to type and talk.
I have an S9 and people have always complained about the speaker phone. I always assumed it was ambient noise but now you have me thinking maybe it was the phone itself. The normal phone and speaker phone use the same microphone, so it is probably some kind of noise reduction software built into the speakerphone aspect. At least that's my best guess.
PSN:Furlion
Steam | XBL
Battery saver is different for every phone but generally things that the feature will do is limit CPU speed, reduce maximum screen brightness, and not let certain background tasks/apps to run. The last part is the biggest thing to keep battery longevity.
I personally don't use it on my Z Fold 3 unless the battery does get low because it tends to kill some apps and queue some notifications I want/need running normally. But it could very well be different on how aggressive it is on the Pixel line.
One of the bigger issues I saw when reviews were starting to come out is noticeably different battery life between various reviewers and I recall some speculation that it could've been 5G related. If you want to test that you can change your preferred network type to LTE in the settings.
- listen to podcast
- get a phone call
- end the call, the podcast continues playing.
All sounds normal and fine. But then I notice that the time played in my vehicle isn't moving, as if the podcast is paused. If I hit play, the podcast starts playing again while it's already playing. So if I get ten minutes further in the podcast, it will continue playing while also playing from the point that the phone call happened. I can force stop pocket casts, kill Bluetooth, but nothing fixes the problem until I reboot my phone
It's fucking weird.
Check the notifications settings in Pocket Casts, there are optoins to play over notifications, see what that is set and if fiddling with that will fix it.
Otherwise, as long as you're signed into pocket casts with an account so all of your settings sync, you can try uninstalling the app and re-installing it.
Steam | XBL
PSN:Furlion
Some highlights of that era included getting to goof around with pre-release hardware (including the Motorola Droid, which was running this new 'Android' operating system that was kinda nice but was probably going nowhere), troubleshooting a famous pornstar's device over the phone - her work emails weren't coming through on her Blackberry... because she put her email address (basically hername@hername.com) on her website so her fans could email her, and as a result was getting roughly 10,000 emails a day, and the time some coworkers and I got accused of and grilled about 'corporate espionage':
Anyway, Blackberry news kinda made me nostalgic for a minute there. Speaking of that era of cellular devices, this video and its followup
Steve Ballmer in 2014:
My wife has the G play and it's fine but nothing special. My boss got the one ace and is not impressed. I'm slightly tempted by the RAZR, But I find myself for the first time since I was on a trio looking for something other than Motorola. Definitely want to stay android, but I've never been impressed with Samsung. I know Google got it a lot of Motorola stuff so I'm kind of leaning towards a pixel 6. Coworker has one and he thinks it's pretty good. I like the idea of a pure Android experience with all the other bloatware nonsense they can get put on by other manufacturers. The state of the Android phone industry is kind of sad right now with so many manufacturers having called the wayside.
I'm on verizon, but contemplating a swap to T-Mobile if that makes anything.
Steam ID: Good Life
It used to be that the Nexus/Pixel line was the baseline of what Android was, and other OEM's would build on top of that. Now the Pixel line is no different than any other phone, a customized experience by the OEM.
I personally haven't been impressed with the Pixel launcher and experience for several years now. But that's just my opinion, to each their own.
And yes, budget Android phones are budget in part because of that bloatware on them. High end, unlocked phones won't have nearly as much of it. They may have some app duplication on core apps that you must include as part of Google Services (i.e. two calendar apps on Samsung phones). While that is a form of bloatware, it isn't the same as candy crush or whatever the new hotness is. And in the vast majority of cases, most of those duplications can be uninstalled, or at least disabled and never seen again. And with high end phones mostly coming with 256GB o storage now, maybe some with 128, the amount of storage those disabled apps may take up is a rounding error in terms of total system storage. We should be long past worrying about that.
- separate volume settings for notifications and ringer
- disconnecting from specific bluetooth devices from the notification shade
So while I've previously leaned towards the Google line of phones, Samsung, at least has made some improvements that aren't just bloatware. And to be honest, I don't really notice the bloatware stuff on my S9 and I even use the Samsung Health app to track my exercise. But fuck Bixby. That is not something I need.SteamID: edgruberman GOG Galaxy: EdGruberman
I have had my Galaxy S21 for 4-5 months now and I am pretty satisfied so far. It has its drawbacks but no deal-breakers and the hardware is rock solid. I liked Pixel 3's camera app better but the actual camera on the S21 is plenty good.
And while Google released the January security update for the Pixel lines, the update for the Pixel 6 line is nowhere to be found. Google is only promising a new update with both the December and January stuff coming "by the end of the month"
I think we give google too much of a pass on how bad they are at making phones. Pixels have almost always had some kind of significant issue, and on the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro it inexplicably seems to be software.
I just personally feel that too many in the Android enthusiast community give google too much of a pass on their phones because they associate google with a "pure" android and that the Pixel line is the kind of Android software. I'm not saying anyone here does this, so please don't think that I am, but there are plenty of people in the Android community who basically gang up on anyone who might say a bad thing about a Pixel device, because how can you hate Google's phone? The reality is that Google is just a middling Android OEM where their biggest advantage is faster software updates than most other OEM's, and that's about it.
Steam ID: Good Life