**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.)

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.

Personally paid for Niagara launcher as I find that to be the far superior launcher to any other I've tried. My second one is Symfonium, the most feature rich and well developed audio player. What are yours?

I'm looking for a (preferably) open source or foss android app that can tune into web radio stations. There are plenty of apps for mainstream radio stations, but what about an app that allows you to connect to some awesome Internet radio stations? I remember the old shoutcast stuff. I dunno if this stuff is dead or thriving? Thank you.

> When Google Messages finally gets its in-development backup tool, the app should include a heads-up about remaining storage space.

> After first being spotted in development in July of 2023, the Gboard beta is beginning to roll out an “Undo” button...

> Google Wallet could soon get new features like a search bar and an account switcher, as discovered in the latest Google Wallet v24.52 update.

> An in-development change to the Google Calendar app on Android reveals how Google could simplify event creation with multiple calendars.

> Google redesigned Keep for Android to make note creation a two-step process. Google Keep is readying “Create text notes with a single tap...

> Following the announcement in December, Google is widely rolling out QR code sharing in Quick Share on Android...

Not sure if this is the correct place to post, but I just wanna kinda rant a bit. I'm not the only one that hates this, right? An app can just do a "This App Does Not Allow Screenshots"? Like... wtf? Like, its my phone, and some app can just decide to disable a fuction of my phone. It's my phone and if I wanna take a screenshot, I'm taking a screenshot. I don't care about whatever "security" the app developer wants. Imagine if every online shopping app whether fast food or amazon, just used this to block you from taking a screenshot so you can't save the records in case of a dispute. Which android developer thought it was a good idea to let an app disable a function on your phone. Even iPhone doesn't have this stupid concept. Sorry for the rant. Anyone wanna share your stories? (P.S. I have a cheap secondary phone to take photos of the screen. "This App Does Not Allow Screenshots" my ass lmao, I'm taking the screenshot whether the app wants it or not.

> Google’s work on making Gemini a good assistant continues today with the ability to place calls and send messages without unlocking...

Battery on my Android Tablet died, so I upgraded it with 18650 replaceable batteries. Tutorial with pics

I recently found out that a locked device (aka a carrier lock) is actually locked in two very different ways. 1) the sim lock, which prevents you from using a sim card from a different carrier. This usually has some sort of policy regarding how and when to unlock the device (for Verizon it is if the device goes for 60 days without connecting to the Verizon network, might also need to be fully paid off as well) 2) Bootloader lock, this locks the bootloader and therefore disables any way of flashing anything (rom, root, etc) This is not something that will automatically be unlocked as far as I can tell and only the carrier can modify it. Most carriers seem to have the basic decency to unlock the device if you request it from their support, but be warned that there is no guarantee. What is guaranteed, is that Verizon will tell you to fuck right off and will never unlock your device. The point of this post is to bring awareness to this issue, it is on me that I didn't properly research this and just assumed that carrier lock means just a sim lock, but this sucked. I bought a pixel 8 which was sim-unlocked but sadly, as I discovered, its bootloader was locked and the "oem unlock" option was grayed-out. This is because it was a Verizon model that was out of the network but still, a Verizon model... As of right now there are no known exploits against this device / Android version, and so, there is no known way to bypass this. I literally argued, begged, and threatened Verizon. And their official stand is that they don't allow bootloader unlocks, they don't have the ability to do them (A lie) and that it will degrade my experience (Idiots) So I started doing anything I could think of. I tried old exploits that were patched (unsurprisingly they failed), I tried sideloading other versions of stock android (worked but didn't affect the bootloader), I even setup mitm wifi hotspot that has a transparent tls inspection (see PolarProxy) but it seems that the OS does not trust any "user" CAs and so it tries to connect to android.googleapis.com, sees that the CA is not a system CA and aborts the bootloader check, which keeps it grayed-out. My idea was to spoof a valid response but apparently Android has good security practices (who knew) Short of reversing the OS/Bootloader, it seems there is nothing to do. So this is my warning to you, don't buy carrier models, but if you do, make sure the oem unlock option works, but if you don't, absolutely never buy a Verizon model. ETA: I bought second-hand under the impression that it was an unlocked device, I thought that by checking sim compatibility I verified that it was, I was wrong.

What are some cool but underrated Android Features on Android that most people don’t know about? those little things that make life easier but don’t get talked about much. I feel like there’s so much hidden stuff in Android that we miss out on.

> The Android 15 QPR2 beta hints that Google will bring back icon shape customization, a feature it cut from Android 12.

A small project to help out anyone trying to keep their old devices functional. I wrote a script to scrape pages of some popular alternative OS projects (such as postmarketOS and LineageOS), and put them into a single list. I'll try to automate and keep this up-to-date. Any additional OS suggestions and comments are welcome!

> As previewed at I/O 2024 in May, the Gemini overlay on Android is widely rolling out its “Ask about this PDF” integration.

> While it started off rough, Google seems to have made the right improvements over the past few months on Android's Find My Device network.

> The first Android 16 developer preview adds an Audio Sharing feature that lets other people listen to your phone’s media along with you.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/22088398 > Following the announcement on Wednesday, the new real-time Scam Detection is rolling out to the Phone by Google app beta on Pixel.

My top android apps are : 1.Local send for file transfer 2.Bitwarden for password manager 3. Antennapod for my podcast 4.Seal for YouTube download 5.Boost for lemmy 6.Rimusic for YouTube music 7. Poweramp for local music on my phone 8.Lichess for chess 9.protonvpn for vpn 10.fairmail for email

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/22174477 > A source within Google has told Android Authority that Google plans to basically turn Chrome OS into Android.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/22174481 > A new feature called "Screen time reminders" is now available on Google Pixel devices as well as other Android phones.

There's literally an app does let's you *wipe* your phone for a period of not unlocking your phone (Its called "Wasted" available on Fdroid), so there *has* to be one that could do a reboot (without the wipe), right? 🤔 (If not, can anyone of you try to make one? I'm kinda jealous of Apple having that feature built in to iPhones. 😓)

I connected to airport's Wi-Fi and this symbol popped up on the corner of the Wi-Fi symbol?

Hi everyone, So, LG is notorious for deleting files the moment their hardware is past support... anything to prevent you from retaining a device when you can be pressed to have to replace it. I have an older device and I have tracked down exactly what is wrong and how to fix it. Some folks have stated it's bricked, but much research has revealed that this is untrue. I need the stock firmware, but LG's site download links are all dead. The device is the LG US730 (LG "Splendor"). The file I need is: `US73011b_03.S11b_03.P15107` If anyone has this or a previous version, I would so greatly appreciate it! I have spent many hours trying to track down the file from a mirror, an archive, a fan site, a site that has firmware backup files.... no luck anywhere. I figured it can't hurt to post a request just in case someone has it. Thanks for reading, and if you can help, I would be in your debt and happily return the favor if you ever need anything that I have.

I'm saying this because now i see a lot Google related posts. My(this one) account is new . but I'm here for a some time now.

> Google Chrome for Android can finally open PDF files on its own without needing a third-party app, and you can try this feature now.

Hello everyone! I'm coming to you guys for help finding an Android phone for my girlfriend. She currently uses an iPhone but she wants an Android now. I plan to buy her one for Christmas but she has a few specific features she wants My budget: $700 Desired Features: - "relatively smaller" screen size - "decent" camera for everyday use - 3.5mm audio jack - MicroSD card reader - "If possible" extra security features/architecture Thanks for the help guys! ----