Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh)
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@blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):
Now it's basically just a phone and text machine and occasional camera, and I barely ever touch it.
Add "occasional games" to that list and it is my phone. But that also described my previous, non-Android phones. When I sit in front of a computer all day I've never understood the desire to spend time using a phone instead.
I do use it for casual games when I have a few minutes with nothing to do and no book handy (e.g. when waiting for a cup of tea to brew before returning to my desk at work). The key there is to get a game that you can start and stop with no mental state needing to be kept in between; I like Word Cookies for this.
But... despite being much more advanced than my previous phones, I agree the UI is awful in many ways. Here are the things that perennially annoy me the most:
- You can't set a custom SMS notification tone for a contact, only for a conversation. If you delete the conversation, the setting is lost. I worked this out eventually after the first few times I cleared out the conversation that consists of the alert system at work sending me messages when things break, and the subsequent alert tones changing from "wake me up from deep sleep" to "unobtrusive ding".
- Compounding the previous issue, when you want to delete nearly all the messages from a conversation, you'd think you could long-press one message to get into the message selection screen, press the "select all" button, unselect one or two messages, and then press "Delete". Hahahaha no. Well, it does work, if you have no more than around 40-odd messages selected. If you have more than that selected (regardless of whether it was via "select all" or by manually selecting them one at a time), instead of deleting the selected messages it deletes the one or two most recent messages in the conversation - even if they weren't selected. So when my alert list gets too long I have to go and manually select thirty or so messages at a time and delete them, repeating until I get the list below 40-odd, then I can do the rest quickly. I assume this is something screwy on my phone / OS version / whatever, but who knows.
- After one update, I wanted to make a new notification tone from an MP3. The phone popped up a dialog box saying (in essence) "There's a new app that can do this now. Do you want to use the original app or the new one?" The new one had a name that made it sound like it was specifically tailored for this, so I chose that one and (stupidly, in retrospect) chose the "don't ask me again" option. Unfortunately, the new app apparently can't see any of my music files whatsoever. Or anything at all. When it launches, I get a near full screen dialog asking me to select a file, with nothing but empty space in the selection area, and "OK" (disabled, presumably until I select something from the list) and "Cancel" buttons at the bottom.
- I usually keep data turned off, so as not to waste large amounts of time and my data cap downloading video ads every time I play a game. Whenever I turn it on because I need to use it for something, Gmail and the Play Store hog all the bandwidth for a few minutes, even though they (generally) are not visibly running and they're almost certainly not the reason I turned data on.
- And of course all the apps that I can't uninstall and take up heaps of space (and update time / data) for no benefit. Of course, this is on the manufacturer, not Android itself.
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@scarlet_manuka said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):
so I chose that one and (stupidly, in retrospect) chose the "don't ask me again" option
Settings, apps and notifications, find the app you set to use, select open by default and the interaction should be there to turn off
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@jaloopa It doesn't show up in the app list. Sorry, I should have noted that. I guess it's some sort of internal component.
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@scarlet_manuka There should be a menu option to show system apps. You may have to turn on developer options first (tap the build number seven times in the 'About' menu).
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@pie_flavor Thanks! It turned out not to be a system app in the end; it was "Google Play Music". But in the "choose an app to do this" dialog it calls itself "Choose music track". So no wonder I didn't recognise it in the app list.
So I reset the defaults on that and was finally able to create a new ringtone for my work alerts using the Music app instead, hooray!
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edit goddamit fbmac
@blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):Thinking about grabbing this Moto G Plus unlocked phone on Amazon:
Is it good? Is it crummy? Will I hate it?
Rules:
- No iPhone unless you make a REALLY good case for it
For ~$200, no worries about that. You'd be looking at a refurb 5s or 6. It's a fine enough phone, it does what it needs to do. You just have to put up with Apple's iOS.
- No Samsung
Agreed. They broke their last straw over my camel's back with my last phone + laptop. They're on my "do not buy" list.
- As close to stock Android as you can get (aka. no crapware installed)
- Unlocked so I can just slide my ATT SIM in it and go, no fuss, no having to drive to ATT store
- Wireless charging would be a nice-to-have, but I'm not sure any phones in this price range have it
My current phone, CAT S60, is stock-with-no-crapware. Unlocked with dual sim. No wireless charging, which is a bit of a bummer. Rootable fairly easily.
- $200-ish price range
Urr... let me check... dang, nope. ~$600CAD, which is what... $450. Sorry. But if your price range changes, I can recco this one.
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@lorne-kates Dood I've had it for like 9 months.
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@lorne-kates Yeah, since Blakey no longer needs advice on buying a phone this thread has basically morphed into the "commiserate with Blakey about bad Android UI" thread.
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everyone knows to buy apple and enjoy privacy.
