Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh)


  • :belt_onion:

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    Again, and I cannot emphasize this enough, a feature that ships BY DEFAULT on all Android's competitors.

    neat


  • Considered Harmful

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    @hungrier But I don't want those features. Have I asked for ANY of them? I just want an unread mark.

    Again, and I cannot emphasize this enough, a feature that ships BY DEFAULT on all Android's competitors.

    Even Samsung, for all their shit, manages to include an unread counter for app icons in TouchWiz.



  • @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    @heterodox Ok well I don't know how to take screenshots on this thing, so you'll just have to trust me: the only icon size it has is 2x2.

    Press Volume Down + Power at the same time (may have to hold it a bit).

    You can resize the "Widgets for GMail" label widgets to 1x1 after you create them; they just have the default set to 2x2 for whatever reason. (You get the resize controls by pressing and holding the widget until it changes to edit mode.)


  • Considered Harmful

    @parody said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    @heterodox Ok well I don't know how to take screenshots on this thing, so you'll just have to trust me: the only icon size it has is 2x2.

    Press Volume Down + Power at the same time (may have to hold it a bit).

    You can resize the "Widgets for GMail" label widgets to 1x1 after you create them; they just have the default set to 2x2 for whatever reason. (You get the resize controls by pressing and holding the widget until it changes to edit mode.)

    I know Home + Power as the screenshot combination, and Volume Down + Power as the 'hold to boot into the bootloader' combination.



  • @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    @e4tmyl33t Yet another thing making the notifications area useless. This morning I had a "notification" from a video game saying "did you get your free log in bonus today?"

    Yeah, I have a high proportion of my games set to "block all notifications from this app" for precisely this reason. Games are there for my enjoyment, not to pester me; I'll decide when to play them tyvm.


  • Considered Harmful

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    What I was hoping for is someone would come in here and say "oh hey, here's a 1x1 widget that does exactly what you wait, and gee isn't it shitty that the one Google provides does not, what were they thinking?"

    I use K9 mail because fuck Google. It does what you want.


  • Considered Harmful

    @laoc I use Google Inbox because it's probably better than whatever that is, and I can put an icon on my launcher that goes directly to the 'new reminder' screen.



  • @pie_flavor said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    I know Home + Power as the screenshot combination, and Volume Down + Power as the 'hold to boot into the bootloader' combination.

    Oddly enough, what a device does at boot time doesn't have to be the same as what it does while running the OS. (Ctrl-Alt-Delete, anyone? :)

    My phone (a Nexus 5 on stock Android 6.0.x) doesn't have a physical Home button. I took a screenshot with Volume Down + Power right before posting; that should work on most devices using 4.0.x or higher (Ice Cream Sandwich and up). Poking around the Web, Home + Power seems to be a Samsung thing. Also awkward.



  • @parody said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    (Ctrl-Alt-Delete, anyone? :)

    (Smiley in my end parans, anyone?) (Dumbest meme in internet forums, anyone?) (Can't you just give an example without asking, anyone?) (Seriously, typing that makes me want to punch you in the face, anyone?) ANYONE?!?!? ANYONE?!?!?!?!?!??!?!



  • @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    (Dumbest meme in internet forums, anyone?)

    Hey, I've been annoying people with smilies and parenthetical expressions long before Internet forums were a big thing! ;)

    It's an anachronism nowadays what with your auto-conversion to pictures and sticker-based phone keyboards and new chat apps every year that I never bother to use, but it's one that's stuck with me.

    Speaking of anachronisms....

    ObTopic: It does suck that the GMail application doesn't come with visual unread counters. I do a lot of sorting and now that I primarily read email on my phone it's a lot easier to forget to check the things that are being sorted out of my Inbox. :P



  • @parody

    @parody said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    It's an anachronism nowadays

    I wish, I see it 20 times a day from forum posters who think they're "clever". Sometimes I just explode and need to yell STOP FUCKING DOING THAT, IT'S NOT CLEVER IT'S STUPID! IT DOESN'T EVEN MADE SENSE! WHAT ARE YOU OFFERING US A CONTROL ALT DELETE? HOW DO YOU OFFER SOMEONE A KEYBOARD SHORTCUT!

    If you had also typed coughexamplecough then I might have actually murdered you.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat I'd recommend the Wileyfox Swift 2X. It runs on LineageOS (which is the successor to cyanogenmod), so it's very near to stock Android.

    It's very good value for money. For £219.99 you get a 5.2" full HD display with gorilla glass. You get USB-C with quick charge. The battery is 3010mAh. It's also got a 16MP samsung camera, fingerprint recognition, and a pretty beefy processor.

    I've been using one since January as a replacement for my Nexus 5, and it's a massive improvement.

    My only gripe is that it doesn't support 5ghz wifi. It's the best value for money phone that I've ever bought, and I'd happily buy it again.



    1. I bought the phone days ago
    2. I specifically didn't want USB-C because I already have like 30,000 micro USB cables and every place I need to charge my phone there's one. I don't want to buy new cables, mine work fine.

    It's been a year and a half! Change the SIM card size! Change the cables! CHANGE EVERYTHING! WE MUST ACHIEVE MAXIMUM CUSTOMER ANNOYANCE!

    1. Stock Android is the source of everything I'm complaining about on this phone, because apparently stock Android is about 7-8 years behind all its competitors, including Samsung-customized Android! WTF!
    2. None of my money is in goddamned Euros.

    EDIT:

    1. "Wileyfox"? Seriously? I mean "Moto" is stupid as fuck, but I'd rather have that printed on the back of my phone than "Wileyfox" and their moronic satan-goat logo. (Is that supposed to look like a fox? Because it looks like a satan-goat.)

    EDIT EDIT:

    1. Sorry UK, I am currently on you, apparently:

    0_1508333921961_277fddd0-bb43-4f8c-9a7e-68591353941f-image.png

    "We can't even compose a simple sentence in English, but please buy an incredibly sophisticated pocket computer from us!"

    No matter how many times I click "Go to United States Store" that goddamned dialog won't go away. I guess because I haven't moved off the UK yet? I didn't even know the UK was my toilet, but it all makes sense now...

    1. On top of all of this, the goddamned phone isn't even in stock, I couldn't buy it even if I wanted to.

    Your suggestion is bad and you should feel bad.



  • What do you use for podcasts in Android? There's no podcast app.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @blakeyrat That's another case of downloading a third party app I'm afraid. And in my experience, most are a bit crap including the paid ones. I've settled on DoggCatcher because its bad interface seemed amazing after trying several awful ones that had glowing recommendations.



  • @jaloopa said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    That's another case of downloading a third party app I'm afraid.

    For PODCASTS?!

    You guys have got to be fucking with me.

    Does Android have ANY features in common with iPhone and Windows Phone? I guess "is a phone"? Jesus.


  • sekret PM club

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    @jaloopa said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    That's another case of downloading a third party app I'm afraid.

    For PODCASTS?!

    You guys have got to be fucking with me.

    Does Android have ANY features in common with iPhone and Windows Phone? I guess "is a phone"? Jesus.

    Google Play Music has a podcasts section, though I'm unsure if you can subscribe to ones that aren't published through their store...

    Just swipe in from the left in the Play Music app and the option for Podcasts should be there.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @e4tmyl33t said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    Google Play Music has a podcasts section

    Not that I can see.

    I bet it's a US only thing


  • sekret PM club

    @jaloopa Huh. Odd. That came out a year ago...

    Try going into the Settings area of the app and hitting the Refresh option...I see a couple notes from people when it was launched that they needed to do that to get the option to show.

    Edit: Huh. According to The Google themselves, it's only available in US/Canada. Wonder why...



  • @e4tmyl33t said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    Just swipe in from the left in the Play Music app

    How the fuck are you supposed to discover stuff like that?

    Ok I found the podcast I want, now how do I put its icon on the home screen? Let me guess: I fucking can't, because it would be convenient to access it without having to go to all apps, click play music, swipe from left, click podcasts, click "my podcasts", etc until my fingers are raw.

    "Open a podcast in one click?! What do you think this is, literally any other cellphone OS on Earth!?"


  • kills Dumbledore

    @e4tmyl33t said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    Try going into the Settings area of the app and hitting the Refresh option

    I would be astounded if that worked on the phone I bought 10 days ago...


  • kills Dumbledore

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    How the fuck are you supposed to discover stuff like that?

    You can also tap the hamburger in the top right.

    It's a standard gesture in Android. Not that discoverable, but I'd argue no worse than a lot of the stuff in iOS


  • sekret PM club

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    How the fuck are you supposed to discover stuff like that?

    That's a common Google app thing nowadays, swiping in from the left while on the main screen of the app will drag in a menu. (Note that that doesn't work in the Player portion, swiping left/right on there will change tracks in the current playlist). Tapping the hamburger menu in the top search bar also seems to do the same thing, but I'm just used to the left-swipe.

    I'll agree that without some sort of tutorial when you first launch the app it's unintuitive.

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    Ok I found the podcast I want, now how do I put its icon on the home screen? Let me guess: I fucking can't, because it would be convenient to access it without having to go to all apps, click play music, swipe from left, click podcasts, click "my podcasts", etc until my fingers are raw.

    The best I can see here is that Play Music has a "playlist" 1x1 icon widget you can add to a homescreen, so you can either create a playlist of them or see if it does that automatically when you subscribe and then select that playlist as the widget target.



  • @jaloopa said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    You can also tap the hamburger in the top right.

    Google Play Music doesn't have one. It does have one on the top left, which may be what you meant to type, or may mean Google just randomly sorts the widgets because they want to inflict maximum suffering on users.

    Speaking of suffering, how the fuck long are the THUMBS at Google? This isn't one of those gigantic 7" phones, but it's still impossible for me to reach widgets on the TOP of the screen without holding it in two hands. It's like they want me to drop it.

    (Guess what Windows Phone did? It put the important widgets AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SCREEN, you know where a normal non-X-Men human being could access them.)



  • @e4tmyl33t said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    The best I can see here is that Play Music has a "playlist" 1x1 icon widget you can add to a homescreen, so you can either create a playlist of them or see if it does that automatically when you subscribe and then select that playlist as the widget target.

    Yah I tried that, it says "choose a playlist" but then has no options. It only works with music playlists, because of course it does. Why would something on this phone be useful to me.

    "Sorry guy honking at me at the stop light, it takes roughly 47,000 swipes and clicks to get to my goddamned podcast so I can hit the play button."

    I am angry at how bad Android is at everything. I mean, it's a Google product so I expected bad, but this is just amazing. Amazing! They can't even copy features all their competitors have! At this point being a shallow rip-off of iOS would be ten times better than what they're doing!


  • kills Dumbledore

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    "Sorry guy honking at me at the stop light, it takes roughly 47,000 swipes and clicks to get to my goddamned podcast so I can hit the play button."

    If you're only going to be listening to one podcast feed, there's a widget that has what's current;y playing with play/next/previous buttons.

    Probably no good if you want more than one podcast though. You might want to look into other apps instead


  • sekret PM club

    @blakeyrat Ah. I had an inkling that that was the case, but as I don't listen to podcasts I couldn't test on-hand.

    I'd probably say you're better off researching if any of the dedicated podcast apps (like Stitcher) have that functionality.



  • @e4tmyl33t Why should I have to download a third-party app to give me all this shit that other OSes do by default?

    How are Android developers and fans now extremely embarrassed about the awful state of their OS?

    This really does boggle my mind. How was it released in this state? How is it version 7, and lacks features Windows Phone had at launch 8 years ago? Has anybody at Google ever done even the slightest smidgen of competitive research ever?

    EDIT: do you guys remember this stupid lame joke?

    0_1508337575866_fake-funny-message-boxes-windows.png

    Except Android is ACTUALLY LIKE THAT.

    The basic features are only available from shoddy third-party apps that show you ads, constantly nag you to rate them on the store, etc. It does nothing out of the box.


  • :belt_onion:

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    How the fuck are you supposed to discover stuff like that?

    Every phone OS is guilty of this, to be fair. When I first got an iPhone, I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to even find an overdue reminder it was showing on the Reminders app's badge count or how to get it to go the fuck away. Had to enlist the help of someone who uses iPhone exclusively; turns out when you open Reminders, it shows not Reminders but Tasks (why); you tap the word Tasks (which gives no indication whatsoever that it's a chooser) then select Reminders. Then you swipe left on the reminder (which again gives you no indication whatsoever that you can do that) to reveal the More and Delete buttons. What the fuck?! There's no Delete button if you tap the reminder then the information icon or even if you tap More; either of those would be an intuitive place for it.

    But then, after you've learned it once it becomes second nature. 🤷♂ Gotta be honest, a lot of your complaints about Android read as "It's not Windows Phone". So it's not. And I get how annoying the period of adjustment is; I really do. But it is what it is. You get upset about such things. As I've said, I can't. Different OSes have different paradigms, due to design constraints, incompetence (of course that's a factor), patents, or what have you. No one on these forums (that I know of) can answer "Why is it this way" since we don't work for Google. All we can do is explain how it does work and railing at us is going to make us less inclined to help.



  • @heterodox said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    Gotta be honest, a lot of your complaints about Android read as "It's not Windows Phone".

    I don't care that it's not, I care that it's worse.

    iOS is also "not Windows Phone", but iOS is as good as Windows Phone, and I'm genuinely regretting not getting an iPhone.

    @heterodox said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    Different OSes have different paradigms, due to design constraints, incompetence (of course that's a factor), patents, or what have you.

    We already know there's no constraint preventing Google from adding unread badges (third-party companies using Google's APIs have done it). We already know there's not constraint preventing you from adding a podcast icon to the home screen, if it can add a playlist icon.

    We already know there's no patent protection for either of those because both Windows Phone and iOS do them.

    The only thing left is incompetence.

    That seems to be the exact thing I'm complaining about.

    But what really surprises me is: nobody else is. So it makes me feel like I'm taking crazy-pills here.

    0_1508337856671_58b60830d26ef5b1f63fd4edb732fe5c220cba41465f207836d5bf861c5ece40.jpg

    Surely I can't be the first person ever who's noticed all these deficiencies in this shitty OS? Why is everyone acting like I am?



  • @heterodox said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    All we can do is explain how it does work and railing at us is going to make us less inclined to help.

    Assuming you weren't lying when you said you didn't work for Google, why do you think I'm "railing" at you?

    Do you work for Google or not?

    Anyway, look: I spent $200 on a bad product. Yes I'm angry. If you spent money on Android, you should be angry too. That's the normal reasonable response to spending a lot of money on a bad product. If it were a good product, I would not be angry.

    Oh and BTW, if just once someone in this forum had told me, "BTW Samsung phones are popular because they fix like dozens of the shitty missing features in stock Android" instead of recommending stock Android to me, it would have saved a lot of pain all-around.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    unread badges

    When I see these in iOS, I don't like them. I also don't like the way notifications on the lockscreen don't persist in the same way as on Android, and that it doesn't show you any visual indication that you have notifications (they're not really notifications if they don't notify you, are they?)

    From my perspective, things like that add up to making iOS look like a worse OS than Android.



  • @jaloopa said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    When I see these in iOS, I don't like them. I also don't like the way notifications on the lockscreen don't persist in the same way as on Android, and that it doesn't show you any visual indication that you have notifications (they're not really notifications if they don't notify you, are they?)

    Fine; but as I've said several times: I don't want to be notified of new emails. I do want to see how many unread emails are in each mailbox at a glance.

    I never wanted notifications of new emails in either OS. I'm not sure why Apple and Google think I (or anybody) did, that seems more annoying and useless than helpful. (Nobody's sitting hunched over their phone waiting for that next spam email from 1-800-pet-food. IMs, yes. Dating sites, yes. Emails? No.)

    If the OS provided both notifications and unread badges, then I could turn off the notifications and have my badges and be happy. But somehow Google thinks you don't need unread badges if you have notification, because they got the problem exactly backwards. (Oh and BTW when I say "someone at Google" I'm obviously referring to heterodox, or at least that seems to be how he's reading all these posts.)


  • kills Dumbledore

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    Fine; but as I've said several times: I don't want to be notified of new emails. I do want to see how many unread emails are in each mailbox at a glance.

    Yeah, fair enough. That use case hadn't occurred to me before reading this thread.

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    Nobody's sitting hunched over their phone waiting for that next spam email from 1-800-pet-food

    Inbox prevents that by categorising emails and letting you only get notifications for the ones you care about.



  • @jaloopa said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    Inbox prevents that by categorising emails and letting you only get notifications for the ones you care about.

    I don't want notifications of new emails. Ever. I don't know how to make that more clear.

    Really what it comes down to is I'm just asking for the mobile version of Gmail to do the same shit the browser version has done for 10 years. I've built all my habits and workflows around Google's product, and now they've made a new version of the product that doesn't have ANY of the features I built my habits and workflows around.

    Does Google just personally hate me? Do they want me to suffer? It sure feels like it.


  • sekret PM club

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    Why should I have to download a third-party app to give me all this shit that other OSes do by default?

    Everything's done by an app in Android-land. Whether it's an app loaded by the manufacturer, one of the Google apps (if the phone has that, because there are phones that don't get them because they don't have the agreement with Google about use of them), or a third-party app, it's all apps. The OS, at its core, doesn't have a music player. Or an email app. Or a messaging app. Those are all decided upon when the manufacturer decides how they want to bake their particular flavor of Android, or when a user decides they want an app that does things differently (or something that their phone doesn't currently do).

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    This really does boggle my mind. How was it released in this state? How is it version 7, and lacks features Windows Phone had at launch 8 years ago? Has anybody at Google ever done even the slightest smidgen of competitive research ever?

    Google's philosophy seems to be "We'll make our versions, but if someone out there wants to come along and make something that does them in a different workflow or to do things that ours doesn't, more power to them". Unfortunately...

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    The basic features are only available from shoddy third-party apps that show you ads, constantly nag you to rate them on the store, etc.

    This largely ends up as the result. There are four major app categories:

    • Free and shite (heavy ads, interstitials, heavy feature lockdown)
    • Paid and shite (No ads, but still badly designed)
    • Free and not shite (Few and far between, ad use is likely present but doesn't interfere with use and is unobtrusive)
    • Paid and not shite (More common, since if you're paying them they have more impetus to make an app that doesn't suck as badly).

    Unfortunately a large proportion of the apps on the Play Store fall into categories 1 and 2 unless they're made by a big corporate (Twitter, Facebook, etc.). This is also likely due to the fact that iOS "vets" all the apps that go into their App Store, while Google really just demands you get a publisher account and don't be a dick by releasing malware.


  • :belt_onion:

    @jaloopa said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    @blakeyrat That's another case of downloading a third party app I'm afraid. And in my experience, most are a bit crap including the paid ones.

    BeyondPod is pretty good, I've been using the free version for several years and it has all the features I want. YMMV.

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    We already know there's no constraint preventing Google from adding unread badges (third-party companies using Google's APIs have done it).

    They didn't use Google's APIs, they forked the OS and added their own APIs.

    We already know there's no patent protection for either of those because both Windows Phone and iOS do them.

    Apple does appear to have a patent: http://www.google.com/patents/US8135392. I was pretty sure I'd seen a Google patent describing push notification with badge counts but I've found it again and looks like it actually belongs to Fiberlink; don't know how I misread that. I don't know why Windows Phone isn't affected by the Apple patent, but I'm not an intellectual property rights lawyer and you shouldn't act like you are either. "'We' already know there's no patent protection" indeed.

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    Do you work for Google or not?

    I do not.

    If you spent money on Android, you should be angry too.

    No. I've already told you I can't get worked up about such things. I reserve my energy for the battles that are actually important. We have different ideas of what those are.

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    Does Google just personally hate me? Do they want me to suffer? It sure feels like it.

    I assume this is hyperbole; otherwise maybe you should actually be looking into crazy pills. :P


  • kills Dumbledore

    @heterodox said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    BeyondPod is pretty good, I've been using the free version for several years and it has all the features I want. YMMV.

    I think BeyondPod was one of the first ones I tried. I don't remember what issues I had with it now, but I didn't get on with it.

    This was all 5+ years ago, so they've all probably changed a lot since then



  • @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    How the fuck are you supposed to discover stuff like that?

    It's just an alternative action to activate the hamburger menu.



  • @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    @e4tmyl33t said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    The best I can see here is that Play Music has a "playlist" 1x1 icon widget you can add to a homescreen, so you can either create a playlist of them or see if it does that automatically when you subscribe and then select that playlist as the widget target.

    Yah I tried that, it says "choose a playlist" but then has no options. It only works with music playlists, because of course it does. Why would something on this phone be useful to me.

    "Sorry guy honking at me at the stop light, it takes roughly 47,000 swipes and clicks to get to my goddamned podcast so I can hit the play button."

    You realize you could also say "Ok, Google. Play <blah>" where <blah> is your podcast right?


  • sekret PM club

    @jazzyjosh Depends on whether his phone has Active Listening or not. If not, he'd still need to press a button to activate the Search Assistant.



  • @e4tmyl33t said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    Everything's done by an app in Android-land.

    Well fine whatever you pedant. Maybe everything's done by app in Windows Phone 8, too. I don't fucking know. Whether it has that feature because its built-in, or it has that feature because it ships with an app that does it by default, the end-result is: it has that feature.

    I just want the feature. I don't care if it's an "app" or "widget" or "froozlebrang." Implementation-details do not interest me.

    @heterodox said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    They didn't use Google's APIs, they forked the OS and added their own APIs.

    The two mentioned upthread Notifyer and ... something else I can no longer remember the name of do not fork the OS and add their own APIs. The OS already has a widget that lets you scribble on the home screen and already has API access to gmail mailboxes and notifications; there's nothing missing that prevents someone from writing a decent tool that does this. Just nobody has.

    I think you're talking about that home screen replacement Nova something. I never even tried that one.

    @heterodox said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    Apple does appear to have a patent: http://www.google.com/patents/US8135392. I was pretty sure I'd seen a Google patent describing push notification with badge counts but I've found it again and looks like it actually belongs to Fiberlink; don't know how I misread that. I don't know why Windows Phone isn't affected by the Apple patent, but I'm not an intellectual property rights lawyer and you shouldn't act like you are either. "'We' already know there's no patent protection" indeed.

    Fine; I'll rephrase: since both Apple and Microsoft had the feature, there's nothing preventing Google from having it, by licensing it or bribing someone or doing whatever the hell Microsoft did to get it. Whatever. I'm not a pedant like you are.

    @heterodox said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    I assume this is hyperbole; otherwise maybe you should actually be looking into crazy pills.

    If Google's so shitty at software development, they're shitting all over me on accident, that's actually worse I think.



  • @jazzyjosh said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    You realize you could also say "Ok, Google. Play <blah>" where <blah> is your podcast right?

    I couldn't, no, because I turned that off.



  • @jazzyjosh said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    It's just an alternative action to activate the hamburger menu.

    Yeah I figured that out after I played with it a bit. Weird shortcut.


  • sekret PM club

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    Well fine whatever you pedant. Maybe everything's done by app in Windows Phone 8, too. I don't fucking know. Whether it has that feature because its built-in, or it has that feature because it ships with an app that does it by default, the end-result is: it has that feature.
    I just want the feature. I don't care if it's an "app" or "widget" or "froozlebrang." Implementation-details do not interest me.

    But that's the point. With iOS, you know that every iOS device will have iTunes and that iTunes will behave the same way regardless if it's on the same iOS version.

    Android manufacturers don't have to adhere to that. Jimbob can build a phone, slap AOSP (the core Android OS) on it, install 15 apps he wrote himself to do things like email and media playback, and it's just as much an "Android" device as one made by Samsung or HTC. It won't have GMail, it won't have Play Music, but it's still Android. That's what I was getting at.



  • @e4tmyl33t said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    Android manufacturers don't have to adhere to that. Jimbob can build a phone, slap AOSP (the core Android OS) on it, install 15 apps he wrote himself to do things like email and media playback, and it's just as much an "Android" device as one made by Samsung or HTC. It won't have GMail, it won't have Play Music, but it's still Android. That's what I was getting at.

    Ok; but you'd think Google would:

    1. Ensure the default distribution of it wasn't shitty and at least pretended to be competitive with other phones (again, I don't care if they ship "widgets" or "apps" or "froozlebrands" or whatever I typed, just that they ship features), and
    2. Would care that people like me are getting a really shitty impression of their shitty brand.

    But I guess when a company's run by aliens with 8" long thumbs, you can't expect rational thought.



  • @e4tmyl33t said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    @jazzyjosh Depends on whether his phone has Active Listening or not. If not, he'd still need to press a button to activate the Search Assistant.

    It also assumes the Assistant works for you at all. (It doesn't seem to like me.)

    Google Play Music is pretty bad as a music playing app. For the last couple years they've put all of their focus on their streaming music service and haven't done much of anything for local or even online library playing.

    I use Mediamonkey Pro for music, partially because I use it on Windows already. It's decent for local playing, but there are features you might expect a phone app to have (podcast downloading, for example) for which it wants to have a computer sharing via WiFi to do the heavy lifting. Mine aren't, so I just treat my phone like any other MP3 player.

    For Podcasts I use Podkicker Pro, which I was using before GPM went downhill and MM made an Android app. It's decent.



  • @parody Do any of these podcast apps people are recommending allow me to put an icon of a podcast (not the app-- but a particular podcast) on the home screen and start playing it with one click?



  • @blakeyrat Podkicker doesn't; it just has this really horrible card-flipping widget. Don't know for anything else.

    I open the app and pick what I want to hear from the list if the notification player isn't showing.


  • :belt_onion:

    @blakeyrat said in Recommend to me a cellphone (running Android I guess, sigh):

    @parody Do any of these podcast apps people are recommending allow me to put an icon of a podcast (not the app-- but a particular podcast) on the home screen and start playing it with one click?

    BeyondPod has a 4x1 widget that can be made 1x1 but what's displayed is just a play button, not the icon of the podcast. 4x1: (icon, title) (rewind) (play) (fast forward); 3x1: (play) (title) (fast forward), 2x1: (rewind) (play) (fast forward), 1x1: (play).

    I can post screenshots when I'm not where I am right now but I surmise you won't be interested if the 1x1 is a play button and not the podcast icon.


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