Previously: [Submission Statement Edition](https://lemmy.world/post/3297922) Haven't done these in a while, so let's get started. 1. Since we haven't really heard any feedback one way or the other, *rule 8 is now official*. To be fair, we've had a lot less microblog posts than I expected (only one Twitter/X post in the last month even after I waited longer than the initial 1-2 weeks expected, and that was a crosspost.) - Again, the rules are always a work in progress, feel free to give your two cents here whenever you like. 2. As you guys know, PipedLinkBot went completely insane 2 days ago and looks like it's temporarily shut down. So, I'd like to use this opportunity to explain why I banned the bot pretty much immediately after our community reopened. (And gloat a bit, of course) - Even though I do agree with the principle of using open source, privacy focused frontend instead of using Youtube directly, I have a real problem with using a bot to respond every time somebody posts a Youtube link. It feels like spam, and it doesn't feel like it serves any utility besides pushing an agenda (even though many people here would agree with it). Most people have seen it around here enough to use pipedvideo if they wanted it to use it already. - I think it's always been a rage inducing part of the reddit experience that you see you received a response to your comment, but only have it been a bot smugly correcting your grammar or tell you all your letters are in order or something useless like that. So, for this place, I would like to make sure that everyone you talk to here is a real person as much as possible, because people inspire people to be greater, but bots don't.

**The Fairphone 4**, as nominated by [@[email protected]](https://lemmy.world/u/be_gt)! As promised, you will be receiving 1 Lemmy Silver, and of course, bragging rights.  But, we also have an honorary Golden Lemmy award, which goes to... **Every Android device that is not the Samsung Galaxy S22+**, as nominated by [@[email protected]](https://discuss.online/u/OpenStars)! You get 1 Lemmy Silver (and bragging rights) too!  That's it for this year's Golden Lemmy, folks! (Nomination thread is [here](https://lemmy.world/post/10291122) for future references.)

I've just started using PlainApp, and I am extremely impressed! Corporate software (like Google or Apple) provides nice usability by integrating your phone into your desktop and other devices. That convenience comes at the price of real privacy and freedom. Android users can access their phones using an app like Microsoft's Phone Link or Google's Messages, while iPhone users can use Apple's iMessage or a 3rd party app. All of these apps require accounts and share your phone's private data over the Internet. Linux users also have options like KDE Connect, Zorin Connect, GS Connect, etc. Most of these are environment specific, and often not well optimized for battery life, or have limited features. Part of the reason that I removed Google from my phone and my life is to protect my privacy and secure my data. The process is not without growing pains. Since deGoogling, can't say the number of times that I get a link, file, etc. sent to my phone that I wish to access on the desktop. There are workarounds of course, but they can be tedious and sometimes complicated. Now it's easy! PlainApp is an open source app that allows you to access your messages, files, calls, and has a ton of other features and capabilities. It works over your local network and uses strong encryption (according to their [website](https://docs.plain.icu/) it's TLS + AES-GCM-256, while the [readme](https://github.com/ismartcoding/plain-app) says it's TLS + XChaCha20-Poly1305). Since your data is encrypted and never leaves your network, you can trust that it is safe. The interface is beautiful and so easy to navigate. Setup was a breeze, and leaves you with a local web app that does everything. Because it's a web interface, it works on any device with a browser. Now I can send and receive SMS messages, share contacts, mirror my phone screen, easily view and share media, without touching my phone (or copying a message into an email, sending it to myself, then opening the email on the computer or some such nonsense. I'd recommend it! [Get it on F-Droid](https://f-droid.org/packages/com.ismartcoding.plain/) [Source code](https://github.com/ismartcoding/plain-app)

Hi all! I'd like to replace my old S10e, which was my ideal phone format, with a middle range (inexpensive) phone, in that size if possible. Extra points for a decent fingerprint reader (I'd like to avoid in-screen ones if possible), and perhaps unlockable bootloader. I'm currently on a Pixel fold 9, for the GrapheneOS part, and I've been keeping the s10e as my trusty work phone, keeping the work profile. Sadly the lack of android updates is now being noticed by the security team and they *suggested* i should move on soon. Since I already have a massive personal phone, I'd like to keep it small for the work one. Any ideas?

I read a lot of good reviews and videos about GOS: high security and privacy. There are also other complaints which i can only know through random social media comments: app compatibilities, weird workflow (profiles), My problem is that in my country, Pixels are very expensive even the refurbished models: the old Pixel 6 is like $500, refurbished one is $300. At that price, I could just go for a low end Android phone. Is there a way to experience GOS like on an emulator? I want to try it out before buying a brand new phone to install.

Good morning everyone, I have a phone with LineageOS right now, with a lot of apps installed and configured. I want to test out CarbonROM. However, if I don't like it, I want to be able to re-install Lineage and keep all the configuration that I have now. How can I do this? Thank you! ^^

Been looking for recovery/Kernel Files for over 3 hours, they're all dead. I tried the Internet Archive and started crying from frustration! PLEASE! HELP ME FIND THE FILES! I found a ROM download, resurrection remix (my favorite ROM) but NO kernels or recovery... All the links are dead!!! Thanks !!!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/611442 > [Comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45208925)

So I have an update to [my post](https://lemmy.ca/post/50595694) from a couple of weeks ago. I did a few full charging sessions and they all showed estimated capacity around 4700mAh:    Then yesterday I found this curious setting, after updating to Android 16 QPR1:   I turned it off, did a full charge session and I got this estimate:  And that result looks to be right back to the normal cycle degradation line:  I'll do a few more full charge sessions but we have a tentative culprit. Google seems to have introduced a battery capacity cap under this setting, presumably to extend the cycle life of the battery.

Edit: For what it’s worth, you can give Google [feedback](https://developer.android.com/developer-verification) to stop this nonsense. Scroll down to **Get Ready** section and click on **Share your feedback**. You can use the following text as an example. > Android’s strength has always been in being both secure and open. Restricting sideloading goes against this principle and does little to protect users. The existing toggle and clear warnings are already enough to inform users of the risks. > Meanwhile, the Play Store itself continues to be the main source of Android malware. In 2023 alone, malicious apps on Google Play were downloaded over 600 million times. More recently, 77 infected apps with 19 million installs and 200+ other malicious apps with nearly 8 million installs slipped past Play Protect. These numbers make it clear where the real problem lies. > If Google truly wants to protect users, the focus should be on strengthening Play Store defenses. Android’s openness is not the threat; malware inside the official store is. Please prioritize fixing that instead of undermining one of Android’s core values. I’m considering leaving Apple for Android for a very long time now. On my shortlist I have the Fairphone Gen 6 and the OnePlus 13. Other options are not possible. I don’t want Google or Samsung hardware, or any other manufacturers that make it difficult to unlock your bootloader. One of the reasons is the freedom to install any app I want on my device, because it’s my device. But with the news about Google forcing developers to share their personal credentials it makes it difficult for me to go to Android. Basically Google is trying to kill sideloading. Should I even move to Android now or is Android with the limitation just like iOS?

Hello! Im looking to get a new phone since my old OnePlus 9s battery is real bad. I was thinking about a new Pixel 10/Pixel 10 Pro and pray the Graphene devs manage to get Graphene running on it, although i read that the base Pixel 10 is way less equipped than the 10 Pro. What are your thoughts here? Worth mentioning that work is paying for it. Unsure how willing boss'll be to get the Pro but only time will tell. Im looking for alternatives in the case that the Pro is a no-go. Also just generally curious about the status of Graphene and the 10 series, heard there were some challenges but dont know how bad its looking?

Sad to read, but not at all surprising. I remember how much damage control Kevin was doing back when the sale to Branch happened. I hope he has learned something about trusting the word and contracts from entities like Branch from the whole thing.

There are lots of good FOSS options. I would strongly recommend [checking this site for the trackers in an app](https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/) if you're at all concerned about privacy. Links to each app's exodus privacy report is also at the end of the table linked above. FYI, Nova has been owned by a data mining company for many years and it is worth moving away from even if you think it is good enough now and doesn't need updates.

Google is planning a significant UI overhaul, and it could start materializing with a future Android 16 quarterly release

> After testing got underway in January, Gboard is now widely rolling out Undo and Redo buttons/shortcuts on Android...

I don't have a google account and don't want one and really prefer to not upload my contacts to someone else's server as a matter of principle. I have a personal nextcloud server so could use that if it helps, but it's not clear that it does. I tried exporting the old contacts as a .vcf file and importing the .vcf to the new phone, and that MOSTLY worked, but it seems to have lost the labels on the phone numbers. E.g. my entry for XYZ Bank had separate phone numbers for payments, credit card, and so on. Those got transferred to the new phone as home, mobile, work. I.e. .vcf doesn't seem to handle custom labels. Is there some kind of workaround? The vcf scheme seems like about the best, except for the issue of losing the contact labels. To complicate matters a bit, I've been using the new phone for a couple weeks now, so I have added or edited some contacts on it. That means if I do another transfer, I'd prefer to not wipe out the contacts database on the new phone, though if that is unavoidable I guess I can survive. Old phone is Android 7 and new phone is Android 13 if that matters. I haven't examined the .vcf file in an editor but I guess I should try that. Thanks for any advice.

I've been proudly using Lineage OS with microg on my phone for a while now, and while it wasn't ideal, it was good for my daily use. Now that i'm traveling, however, i really miss some important features, like a properly working geolocation service (i'm using the Mozilla one and it's slow and buggy), and a proper navigator, sad to say that google maps works just too well for certain things like buses or trains. Magic earth was okay till i moved with car, i could get a position on google maps and then get there with my car and the navigator was working good, however when i need to move by foot or transports is terrible, it takes 10 minutes to find your position approximatively, only working with mobile data, and it doesn't follow you when you move.. So i found myself in some unhappy situations where i would need to rely on someone else's phone to not get lost in a city or to call an uber to my right location. I also got lost when i needed to move only by walking. Of course you can get wherever you want with older methods, like asking to people or signs, but sometimes you just need quick solutions that are reliable. Is there any real way to use gmaps unonimously except that with the containerized version that graphebe offers? I do not really want to buy a Pixel and give google more money.

cross-posted from: https://lemdro.id/post/907800 >Here is the English translation > > > In June, ASUS announced to employees through an internal letter that it would carry out an organizational reorganization, and although ASUS repeatedly stressed that it was not going to lay off employees, in July it cut the staff of the PC department, affecting the employees in Taiwan and Suzhou, China. However, ASUS's layoffs have not slowed down, and now an informed source revealed to the "Science and Technology News" that "this afternoon, some units in the commercial sector were called downstairs one after another, and the units including engineers and procurement were directly cut in half." > > > > According to the initial ASUS internal letter, the commercial computer team planned and went to the mobile phone product department; People familiar with the matter pointed out that some talents have just been merged into mobile phone units, but they have been laid off; Originally, ASUS stated that after the organizational reorganization, the human resources association had internal matchmaking vacancies, but in fact, human resources did not want to match for these employees, and had to find internal vacancies by themselves. > > > As for why some employees were merged into mobile phone units, but then laid off? The person familiar with the matter pointed out that the Asus mobile phone has two series, ROG and Zenfone, but now the latest Zenfone 10 will be the last generation of this series, and the Zenfone team will be merged into other departments in the future, or directly into the ROG team. > > > It is understood that this wave of commercial sector employees who were laid off by ASUS will be until next month. > > Here is more context > [ASUS layoffs, commercial team/smartphone division merger, esports consolidation and personal computer team](https://finance.technews.tw/2023/06/14/asus-9/) > > Best case is that they mean the Zenfone line is dead and the rog still lives. But even then that still hurts.

About a week ago, I tried to download one of their games but for some reason, every single game/app they ever released is completely missing from the Google Play Store. I can't even download them through my library. I tried sending them an email but they never responded. Both their social media and their website seem to be abandoned and mention nothing about their sudden disappearance. I don't think I've ever seen a developer just completely disappear like that, does anyone know what happened to them? Also, because it's relevant to a recent movement* and I feel like mentioning it, the game I was trying to download was Lophis Roguelike:Card RPG game. I bought this game a few years ago but it didn't work on my tablet, so I added it to my backlog of android games, thinking that I could eventually try it on a different device. Seeing that this game is no longer officially available, this is a game that I payed for but never got to actually play. *The movement I'm referring to is [stopkillinggames](https://www.stopkillinggames.com/).

I realise I can have a shopping list, but sometimes I want to have some items as a binary option, yes or no.

[LibreTube](https://github.com/libre-tube/LibreTube) - uses [Piped](https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped) as video source by default. Subscriptions and playlists can be created, all without actually interacting with YouTube. [Clipious](https://github.com/lamarios/clipious) - uses [Invidious](https://github.com/iv-org/invidious) as the video source. Also allows for subscribing and accounts. Lesser known client [NewPipe](https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe) - Gets the source directly from YT. Allows for subscribing and creating playlists Additionally, there's also [ReVanced](https://revanced.app/) that lets you patch the regular YT app to include useful features.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18404498 >As we wait for Collections to widely launch, Google is rolling out “local recommendations” for the Play Store. >You’ll see a “Want to see local recommendations in Google Play?” prompt. Google explains how “Play can use your device location to recommend apps, offers, and other local content that are relevant in your area.”

> Google Messages has addressed slowdowns, failures, and other issues with receiving media in Android’s RCS app.

After i got my Fairphone back from the repaircenter (they thought there was something wrong with it), they told me it was an intended design. However, i see other people mention they don't have it.

> After rolling out at the end of last month, Google Messages now lets you turn off the Gemini button on Android...

> Android's QR code scanner could soon get a UI refresh that makes some buttons more accessible and brings a new animation.

~~I accidentally removed a MicroSD card from an Android device running Android 12 while it was being ejected. This happened because it took longer than usual (less than a few seconds), and I pulled it out without looking at the notification. Now, when I insert the MicroSD card into any Android device, it tells me to format it to use it, as a problem has occurred. It also gives me the option to format it and extend the internal storage. The third option is to skip both and do it later, which keeps the SD card unreadable by the system. The MicroSD card contains a lot of data that's important to me, and unfortunately, I had no backup, as I always considered my MicroSD as an external storage medium for such data. I would really appreciate any help on how I can resolve this issue and make the SD card data accessible again by Android. Thank you for reading! 🥲~~ **Edit:** Don't ask me why or how. But I put the SD Card into a phone running Android 14, and booted it. The SD Card could be actually read by the phone after it finished booting. I turned the phone off again, pulled the SD card out and put it back into it's original running Android 12 and magically it works again! My theory is that the Android 14 recognized and automatically fixed what was wrong and this made the card readable again to older Android versions. Thanks to everyone who commented!

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/124934 > ## Feedback and criticism is welcome and encouraged! > > This is a small jetpack compose app that I'm currently making for android devices to browse... federated link agregators (Lemmy, kbin etc.). > > I promise I'm not *just* bandwagon-ing. However, I thought that the current situation could make for a good excuse to learn android development/mobile design (something I've never actually done before). > > Some notes: > - This application **will** be open source. I think it's just a bit too early to share it right now. [^1] > - Some icons are placeholders, e.g. "upvote" and "downvote" are upload and download at the minute. > - Some of the padding and card-style is inconsistent in the mockups I've shared here. > - There are quite a few "language-choice" issues. Most notably the vague term "Mods" on the profile page (this refers to the communities the profile moderates). I plan to adjust this through development (and as the mainstream fediverse establishes itself). > - I'm doing this for selfish reasons like "fun" and "education", so there aren't any guarantees for a fully working... anything... > - If I was to do this for altruistic reasons, I'd contribute to [Jerboa](https://github.com/dessalines/jerboa) which seems to be undergoing a lot of development from what I can tell on GitHub, > > [^1]: If you're on the tildeverse, I've already open-sourced it to tildegit. I'm also tracking my progress over there: https://tildegit.org/delph.seiji/lemulink.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/35022759

> After the Google One VPN shutdown in late June, the "Dark Web reports" function is coming to all Google Account holders from late July 2024.

I recently got a small keychain device for free as a cheap promotional item. It looks like one of these: https://powerstick.com/powertag/ It asks that you install this app: [Spot 2.0 Bluetooth Finder](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.powerstick.spot2&hl=en_CA) Some concerns right away: - It requires an account - It said that my password was too long - It seems that these apps will need 24/7 access to location in order to work properly, so I'm not comfortable making an account on some app I've never heard of **So my questions:** Q1: If someone is given a similar device, is there a FOSS app that they can use it with? So far I've found: - BLE Radar ([FDroid](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/f.cking.software/), [GitHub](https://github.com/Semper-Viventem/MetaRadar)). It looks promising and I haven't played with all the custom profiles yet. While I was able to connect the device and see it on a map, I don't see an option to ring the device from the app. Since it's a key ring, I imagine most people would use it to find their keys in their home, for which the speaker would be helpful. - iTracing2 ([FDroid](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.sylvek.itracing2/), [GitHub](https://github.com/sylvek/itracing2)). This one is very minimalistic, and while I could get it connected, it seems to only work in the `device > phone` direction, where you can press a button on the keychain to initiate an action on the phone (ex. ring the phone) Q2: If someone wanted to get a good quality version of this, which brands do you recommend? Ideally it would be accurate and be compatible with some FOSS app(s). I remember seeing Chipolo mentioned in some other thread here, but I don't know if they meet those requirements

Would be nice to see what Android apps you use for self-help 😁

> YouTube has gotten around to fixing some visual bugs with the in-app miniplayer on Android. The redesign was introduced back in October.