Android without google?
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@blakeyrat said in Android without google?:
@gąska WAR OF THE ANECDOTES!
Well, you started it. You have only yourself to blame.
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@doctorjones I notice they host a lot of Google apps... which Google certainly didn't give them permission to distribute.
Not that I mind, I mean I don't think it's wrong, but I'm surprised they can get away with it so openly.
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I constantly have to police my Android notifications screen. The list of apps that think it's okay to send me notifications at 2 AM is way too long.
And Google Music Play whatever (seriously, why is Play in the name of every single Google app?) sucks. Stupid thing crashes out every 20 minutes, which is really annoying on long highway motorcycle trips where I'm unable to do anything with my phone without pulling off the road first.
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@anonymous234 CyanogenMod also distributes the Gapps package -- my impression is you can redistribute them in binary form, you just can't preinstall them and give the impression a non-Google distribution is approved by Google, if that makes sense. There has to be a manual step.
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@mott555 said in Android without google?:
why is Play in the name of every single Google app?
It's not. (Examples from my tablet: Chrome, Maps, Calendar, Slides.)
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@mott555 said in Android without google?:
The list of apps that think it's okay to send me notifications at 2 AM is way too long.
Turn on quite hours and be done with it
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@mott555 said in Android without google?:
I constantly have to police my Android notifications screen. The list of apps that think it's okay to send me notifications at 2 AM is way too long.
I rarely get unwanted notifications; applications that show them either get uninstalled or get their ability to show notifications taken away.
@mott555 said in Android without google?:
And Google Music Play whatever (...) sucks.
I'm not a fan either. I haven't had the crashing problem you've had, but it's just not a very good music player. Google is slowly getting rid of it in favor of YouTube Music and various web-based bits (ex: their new podcast wrapper/PWA thing).
FWIW: I use the paid versions of MediaMonkey for local music files and Podkicker for podcasts.
@mott555 said in Android without google?:
(seriously, why is Play in the name of every single Google app?)
Because it's the branding for their store, and all of the apps that had/have had Play in the name relate to things you can buy from them.
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If whatever you ended up with allows the Microsoft Launcher, tell us how it is. My Icon is still holding on for now, but I'm looking at this as an inevitability at this point.
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@mott555 said in Android without google?:
I constantly have to police my Android notifications screen. The list of apps that think it's okay to send me notifications at 2 AM is way too long.
And Google Music Play whatever (seriously, why is Play in the name of every single Google app?) sucks. Stupid thing crashes out every 20 minutes, which is really annoying on long highway motorcycle trips where I'm unable to do anything with my phone without pulling off the road first.
The thing that annoys me the most is the stupid android volume limitation they put in for the euro laws.
If you want to go above the recommended volume, you must click OK on a dialog box.
Here's the problem though, sometimes you'll be there listening to music, and it suddenly (randomly) decides to lower the volume back below the euro acceptable levels. You have to unlock the screen and click the fucking dialog again to raise it back up to the volume you want.
This is very annoying whilst driving.
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@parody said in Android without google?:
Google is slowly getting rid of it in favor of YouTube Music and various web-based bits (ex: their new podcast wrapper/PWA thing).
Do not want, I generally have no data connection when I'm on the highway and 100 miles from the nearest city.
@doctorjones said in Android without google?:
The thing that annoys me the most is the stupid android volume limitation they put in for the euro laws.
If you want to go above the recommended volume, you must click OK on a dialog box.
Here's the problem though, sometimes you'll be there listening to music, and it suddenly (randomly) decides to lower the volume back below the euro acceptable levels. You have to unlock the screen and click the fucking dialog again to raise it back up to the volume you want.
This is very annoying whilst driving.Yup. Doubly so on a motorcycle because YOU LITERALLY CANNOT PHONE WHILE RIDING. I've kind of gotten to the point that I can fumble the volume keys through the fabric of my pocket, but it's not very reliable and doesn't work when the phone decides you're too loud (I use foam-tip in-ear monitors that seem to require a lot of power to even be heard, no they aren't too loud) and you need to click "OK I'm sure I want it louder"
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@doctorjones said in Android without google?:
Here's the problem though, sometimes you'll be there listening to music, and it suddenly (randomly) decides to lower the volume back below the euro acceptable levels.
Does your car not have a bluetooth antenna or AV/in on the stereo?
Or does the phone lower the volume even when it knows it's not the speaker? Because in the latter case: hahahaha fucking Europeans and their dumb-ass laws.
How does the phone "save you" when you're playing its volume at normal, but you have your car stereo speakers set to "literally deafening"? Does it use the mic, or does the EU just throw up their hands and give up?
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@blakeyrat I don't have bluetooth, so don't know if it works any better.
@blakeyrat said in Android without google?:
hahahaha fucking Europeans and their dumb-ass laws
This.
I wish there was a way to disable it without rooting the device.
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@magus said in Android without google?:
If whatever you ended up with allows the Microsoft Launcher, tell us how it is. My Icon is still holding on for now, but I'm looking at this as an inevitability at this point.
I was going to put this in Blakey's thread but as I'm still 300 posts behind here'll do.
Like him, I wanted to have the Windows Phone unread emails badge. I have a personal and business email address so on WP I had one tile for each of them.
I have a Huawei phone which has a few apps forcibly installed. They aren't too bad by themselves but they cause problems when combined with lazy devs.
I've spent the last few weeks trying to find a launcher that will provide some of the basic functionality that's built in to WP phones, with very limited success.
First I tried Launcher 10, which tries to copy WP. Looks pretty good but only grabs data from the default apps (thank you Huawei). Meaning that it will only grab pictures from Gallery and not Photos.
Tried Evie Launcher. Can't display the weather widget.
Tried Smart launcher. Can't display the GMail calendar schedule.
Tried Microsoft launcher. This one's the best so far but has its own problem. Namely, email. Once I had had MS launcher for a while I still couldn't get emails right, so I installed multiple clients, all connected to the same GMail account. It looked like this:
There are six email apps there, with various unread badges.
Here's another
Now I added a widget whose sole job is to display unread GMail emails.
Now here's the kicker. None of them except Outlook are actually displaying unread emails, but rather unread notifications. Clear the notifications and the badges disappear. I believe at the time of the screenshot I had three unread emails so none of them were correct. Outlook never shows more than 1.
While I was more than ready to write this off as yet another of Android's wonders, it actually turned out to be the fault of the launcher as the others display correctly.
Consequently, I'm still trying to get a home screen with weather, a big clock, unread emails, and my daily schedule. It seems to be a bridge too far.
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@coldandtired said in Android without google?:
I've spent the last few weeks trying to find a launcher that will provide some of the basic functionality that's built in to WP phones, with very limited success.
I hate to break this to you, but even once you find one and get it working, it won't count unread emails, it'll count emails you haven't cleared the notification for yet. Which is completely different.
@coldandtired said in Android without google?:
Now here's the kicker. None of them except Outlook are actually displaying unread emails, but rather unread notifications. Clear the notifications and the badges disappear.
Oh, you also learned this the hard way. Wouldn't it have been nice if some of those "Android Android rah rah rah!" people told you up-front that what you wanted to do is literally impossible because their OS is so poorly-made.
(Yes, your Mac put unread email counts in the menu bars in fucking 1997, but you can't do it on your Android phone in 2018. Were you under the illusion that technology progressed forward over time? Stupid.)
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@bulb said in Android without google?:
But if you don't use the applications, or don't use them with the account, they can only gather the list of installed applications and your approximate location, but not much else.
Funneling everything that happens on the phone through Google Services ensures that G can gather anything it wants.
@gąska said in Android without google?:
They also never did something the only Windows phone I've ever seen did on daily basis - crash during a phone call so bad it reboots itself.
BS. It's a really funny phenomenon with people's declarations about their phones. "My phone never does that", "This OS is just flawless, never ever had a problem with it", etc. If you pay attention to their phones however, you can see that every phone/OS has similar problems. Lags, hangs, random reboots, idiotic behaviors, unintuitive quirks - I've seen all of it multiple times on Windows Phone, Android and iOS. But ask their owners about it: "This is so strange, it happened for the first time! I'm so surprised!" and a day later they forget it completely.
@doctorjones said in Android without google?:
The thing that annoys me the most is the stupid android volume limitation they put in for the euro laws.
If you want to go above the recommended volume, you must click OK on a dialog box.
Here's the problem though, sometimes you'll be there listening to music, and it suddenly (randomly) decides to lower the volume back below the euro acceptable levels. You have to unlock the screen and click the fucking dialog again to raise it back up to the volume you want.
This is very annoying whilst driving.
Windows Phone does the same. Volume is scaled 0-30, if you go above 18, phone randomly lowers the volume and displays super useful dialog "do you know you can get hearing loss?"
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@mrl said in Android without google?:
Windows Phone does the same.
Well if it's a legal requirement, then duh?
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@blakeyrat said in Android without google?:
@mrl said in Android without google?:
Windows Phone does the same.
Well if it's a legal requirement, then duh?
Well sure, I wouldn't want my phone to BRAKE THE LAW!!
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@blakeyrat said in Android without google?:
@xaade said in Android without google?:
All I do is listen to audio books, get text messages / email, and use maps.
I don't know what it is I'm exactly missing out on here.Well to give just one example, my Android phone binged me on Saturday with an important notification. What was it?
"Give the best cellphone to dad or grads buy a Motorola blah blah"
Yeah it was a fucking commercial. I bought the phone, Motorola, I paid cash-money for it and I paid extra for the (supposed) "ad-free" version. Why did I get this ad! Why did Google send me ads! Why does Android send ad notifications!
That's something Windows Phone never did.
This reminds me, I should write an Amazon review making sure people know even the "ad-free" version sends ads.
Here's the question. What app sent the ad?
You say Windows Phone like it's some monolith. I guarantee you there's apps you could have installed that would have sent you advertisements in your notifications.
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@pie_flavor I didn't have to install apps in Windows Phone because it did shit out of the box.
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@blakeyrat said in Android without google?:
@pie_flavor I didn't have to install apps in Windows Phone because it did shit out of the box.
Nice dodge of the question. So what you're saying is it had tons of bloatware?
And what app sent the advertisement?
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@pie_flavor said in Android without google?:
And what app sent the advertisement?
I don't know? Who gives a shit.
Look, like I said in the other thread, I'm NEVER going to love this shitty-ass phone OS, so you're wasting your time trying to turn me into a Google fan. Go white-knight for them to someone else.
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@blakeyrat Me. 'Cause you're saying 'oh, an app I installed sent an advertisement! Wharrrgarbl!' Yes, shitty apps send you ads. That's why you don't install shitty apps. And the 'did shit out of the box' thing is fucking stupid. It didn't come with Discord, it didn't come with games, it didn't come with Mixcloud, it didn't come with a health and fitness app, it didn't come with Netflix, etc. Either you did install apps or you weren't using the phone to its fullest.
I'm not trying to make you love Android. I'm trying to tell you that you're being wrong and stupid.
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@pie_flavor The manufacturers that do that didn't make Windows Phones. Hewlett Packard Device Hub does not send notifications. HTC Flo doesn't send notifications. Lumia Extras doesn't send notifications.
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@twelvebaud Who said anything about manufacturers?
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@pie_flavor @blakeyrat did, when he said that the notification was to buy a Motorola phone, on his Motorola phone. Are you even reading the thread?
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@twelvebaud I am. And I have a Samsung phone, and I've gotten an ad for Samsung phones.
From Amazon. And now Amazon isn't allowed to send me notifications anymore.
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@pie_flavor said in Android without google?:
Me. 'Cause you're saying 'oh, an app I installed sent an advertisement! Wharrrgarbl!'
I didn't install the "Motorola promotes shit to you occasionally" app.
@pie_flavor said in Android without google?:
And the 'did shit out of the box' thing is fucking stupid. It didn't come with Discord, it didn't come with games, it didn't come with Mixcloud, it didn't come with a health and fitness app, it didn't come with Netflix, etc.
Ok; fine. It did basic stuff, like checking emails and showing an unread notification, out of the box. Or putting podcast icons right on the home screen, that was out of the box. Or being able to take-over my car's text message app so I could do texts using the far-better Siri voice recognition, that was out of the box. Etc.
None of those apps you listed are apps I give a shit about. The only app I use on it regularly are the web browser and Twitter both of which (trumpet_fanfare.mp3) Windows Phone had out of the box.
@pie_flavor said in Android without google?:
Either you did install apps or you weren't using the phone to its fullest.
I guess I'm not using my phone to its fullest by your definition. Boo hoo.
@pie_flavor said in Android without google?:
I'm not trying to make you love Android.
What are you trying to do intruding in all these threads and posting nothing except praise for these shitty broken phones?
@pie_flavor said in Android without google?:
I'm trying to tell you that you're being wrong and stupid.
Oh. Well this is DailyWTF, so of course I'm wrong and stupid, that's just a given.
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@blakeyrat said in Android without google?:
Oh. Well this is DailyWTF, so of course I'm wrong and stupid, that's just a given.
Whose fault is that?
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@heterodox They seem to have ALL the free apps in the play store, so it's not a Google thing.
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@blakeyrat I will say this about Android. AT&T's visual voicemail app on it is WAY funnier than anything on Windows Phone:
Not as useful, but funnier.
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@blakeyrat FWIW my Huawei phone with its stock launcher (iOS style, no app drawer but with the
possibility to hide what you don't want to see) displays unread notifications on the app icon. Which is a bit frustrating: someone likes stuff on Facebook? Am I invited to an event I couldn't care less about? Have I received a text message in a WhatsApp that I have explicitly silenced? It's all treated as unread notifications. In the first few cases I wouldn't mind receiving the regular notification but it's not so important that I want it to be persistent. In the latter case, I explicitly told the app I don't want to be notified but the very existence of something new in the app leads to a notification. I've got used to it but to me it's clutter and a useless distraction (I'll open the app just to clear the "unread" thingy near the icon, and end up seeing the stuff I really didn't want to see). Even if I could choose what kind of notifications I want to be displayed on the app icon, which ones I want to see as a traditional Android notification, and which ones as both, it gets fiddly.So yeah, maybe you are wrong.
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I don't give a shit about notifications. I don't want notifications for incoming emails at all. That's a stupid Google-ism. (75% of my incoming emails are not important, and 95% of them are not time-sensitive.) I've never asked for, nor have I ever desired, a count of notifications.
All I want is a simple badge saying how many unread emails are in the inbox.
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@blakeyrat said in Android without google?:
Oh, you also learned this the hard way. Wouldn't it have been nice if some of those "Android Android rah rah rah!" people told you up-front that what you wanted to do is literally impossible because their OS is so poorly-made.
But at least my phone keyboard can send me notifications full of advice now!
If you haven't got Oreo yet it has extra notification fun
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@mrl said in Android without google?:
Rooting and playing with custom roms is out of the question, btw.
You're fucked. Enjoy Google fucking you so hard up the ass you taste the cum.
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@mrl said in Android without google?:
a day later they forget it completely.
It's the phone radiation cooking their brains. </tinfoil_hat>
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@lorne-kates said in Android without google?:
@mrl said in Android without google?:
Rooting and playing with custom roms is out of the question, btw.
You're fucked. Enjoy Google fucking you so hard up the ass you taste the cum.
Lorne! Your tinfoil is too tight!
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@boomzilla said in Android without google?:
@lorne-kates said in Android without google?:
@mrl said in Android without google?:
Rooting and playing with custom roms is out of the question, btw.
You're fucked. Enjoy Google fucking you so hard up the ass you taste the cum.
Lorne! Your tinfoil is too tight!
Joke's on you. If the tinfoil was too tight it'd split and I'd be LESS paranoid.
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@mrl said in Android without google?:
@bulb said in Android without google?:
But if you don't use the applications, or don't use them with the account, they can only gather the list of installed applications and your approximate location, but not much else.
Funneling everything that happens on the phone through Google Services ensures that G can gather anything it wants.
Most things that happen on the phone are not funnelled through any Google services. The ones that connect to their online services obviously are, but I suppose you are going to use the Microsoft alternatives instead of those, and the search widget is hardcoded to Google and fixed in the default launcher, so you want a custom launcher that does not show that. And then some applications may opt in to use some online Google services for things like delivering notifications. But those that don't Google will know nothing about. It does not, and can not, control network communication from within applications they didn't write.
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@mrl Most important to me is the question if I can make sure that no stupid app - and the operating system itself - will download a few gigabytes of crap (also called "updates") while I do not have a free wifi connection. Doing that via the mobile phone connection can be very expensive.
Just remember that boy who by watching some youtube videos while on a ferry (and thus a phone connection via satellite) incurred a fee of a few thousand euros / dollars (don't find the article anywhere anymore...)
So, imagine I have to use such a connection for some purpose. How can I be sure that it will be only used for that specific purpose, and that some stupid app won't use that connection for its crappy purposes?
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@berniethebernie said in Android without google?:
@mrl Most important to me is the question if I can make sure that no stupid app - and the operating system itself - will download a few gigabytes of crap (also called "updates") while I do not have a free wifi connection. Doing that via the mobile phone connection can be very expensive.
Just remember that boy who by watching some youtube videos while on a ferry (and thus a phone connection via satellite) incurred a fee of a few thousand euros / dollars (don't find the article anywhere anymore...)
So, imagine I have to use such a connection for some purpose. How can I be sure that it will be only used for that specific purpose, and that some stupid app won't use that connection for its crappy purposes?
I have unlimited data transfer, so I don't care about that. But I do care about update downloads blocking access for other applications and doing updates 'in the background' killing device performance.
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@luhmann said in Android without google?:
Does that also apply to builtin google crap like gmail, calendar, etc?
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@mrl said in Android without google?:
Does that also apply to builtin google crap like gmail, calendar, etc?
And the Android OS proper?
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@mrl
That applies to all apps that are updated through the store. Since all official google stuff goes through that yes the Google apps will be limited to wifi. If however your Samcrap phone updates through the non-default channel you should look at those settings too.
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@luhmann it's not 100% reliable though, in my experience. What'll happen is that maybe the phone connects to a stray WiFi that I have previously connected to, then it continues downloading updates when back on mobile data. At least on mine it does, my Huawei phone has a "WiFi+" feature that automatically connects to WiFi when there is a strong enough signal.
Anyway really, if you are not overly concerned with the camera's postprocessing and stuff, there are/used to be phones that come out of the factory with an unlocked bootloader and are well supported by LineageOS (I think OnePlus phones, for instance). It's not totally effortless because you still have to flash your phone but it comes closest. AFAIK there is also a version of LineageOS that comes with a GPS replacement so that apps play nice(r) with it (because many apps expect GPS to be available). YMMV etc.
Otherwise there are a few of those privacy-oriented phones that try to address this but they're relatively expensive.
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@admiral_p said in Android without google?:
What'll happen is that maybe the phone connects to a stray WiFi that I have previously connected to, then it continues downloading updates when back on mobile data. At least on mine it does, my Huawei phone has a "WiFi+" feature that automatically connects to WiFi when there is a strong enough signal.
I don't put my phone in promiscuous mode by default, and I've disabled coupled networking as my (very cheap) plan definitely has a data cap. When there's wifi in range, there's very likely to be wifi in range for quite a while; that's how my life works out…
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@mrl said in Android without google?:
I have unlimited data transfer, so I don't care about that.
Even on satellite? I looked it up before my last vacation, and satellite counts as roaming in a special category where the only price plan is per megabyte, and they're €10 a piece.
My phone was on airplane mode the whole way.
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@pleegwat said in Android without google?:
@mrl said in Android without google?:
I have unlimited data transfer, so I don't care about that.
Even on satellite? I looked it up before my last vacation, and satellite counts as roaming in a special category where the only price plan is per megabyte, and they're €10 a piece.
My phone was on airplane mode the whole way.
I generally don't travel abroad.
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@doctorjones said in Android without google?:
@mott555 said in Android without google?:
I constantly have to police my Android notifications screen. The list of apps that think it's okay to send me notifications at 2 AM is way too long.
And Google Music Play whatever (seriously, why is Play in the name of every single Google app?) sucks. Stupid thing crashes out every 20 minutes, which is really annoying on long highway motorcycle trips where I'm unable to do anything with my phone without pulling off the road first.
The thing that annoys me the most is the stupid android volume limitation they put in for the euro laws.
If you want to go above the recommended volume, you must click OK on a dialog box.
Here's the problem though, sometimes you'll be there listening to music, and it suddenly (randomly) decides to lower the volume back below the euro acceptable levels. You have to unlock the screen and click the fucking dialog again to raise it back up to the volume you want.
This is very annoying whilst driving.
No, phone it's fine. You're plugged into a speaker
No, phone it's fine. You're plugged into an FM transmitter
No, phone it's fine. You're playing spoken word podcasts that need to be loud to be audibleFucking stupid feature
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