Has it come down to changes like this to be noteworthy, or what kind of news article is this? I kind of want my minute back reading this.

Good question. I’ve also been looking for some good open-source solution to live stream the camera. Using some proper standard ao I can easily use it. Seems most webcam live streaming apps either include proprietary parts, or are unmaintained for several years now. I usually look at what’s available in the F-Droid store. But seems we’re out of luck. There is “Remote Video Camera” which can transfer video between two phones. But that’s pretty much it. If you want to integrate it into other software, search on Github or Google and maybe include in the search query, the protocol or software you want to connect it to.

You can’t really compare that to Linux. Android has entirely additional layers and APIs to deal with connected standby, doing background stuff etc. All of that is missing in Linux. I own a PinePhone which is running Linux. And you either have that running and drawing like a Watt constantly. Or it goes to sleep. But that means no chat notifications, no email checking in the background and no nothing until the phone wakes again. Except for the baseband, which will wake the CPU and the operating system if a call or SMS comes in. But that’s pretty much it. Keeping TCP connections open or applications listening, requires good parts of the phone to stay awake.

Android on the other hand does a lot of stuff that sends apps to sleep, wakes them up again, sends most of the hardware to sleep, offer specialized API to do all of that selectively…

And as far as I remember K-9 has a few methods implemented. It will fall back on periodic polling. So you’ll get your emails no matter what. But it’ll try to just keep a connection alive in the background and bypass GCM entirely. I also have it running 24/7 and even a VOIP phone app which is also okay with just a connection open in the background. I’m not sure about TCP timeouts etc. But as far as I remember that’s exactly how you do it as a developer if you don’t use a push provider like GCM. It uses additional battery, though.

But the baseband needs to wake and deal with an incoming packet. And something needs to decide what to do with it. So if you have like 10 connections open, waking the phone at different intervals, that’ll drain some battery. If you stick to one push provider, that can bundle packets and can decide server-side if it’s going to wait for a few seconds or do it right now and now the phone will do it in a coordinated fashion. GCM does this. I’m just not sure if UniversalPush has something like that implemented… Regardless, keeping connections listening can’t do any of that.

Reportedly, GCM uses lots of clever trickery to bundle messages, decide to delay them or do whatever with it. And I’m sure they put in lots of effort to squeeze every last bit out of it. And handle lots of different situations. But I havent kept up with the Android internals, I might be wrong. Last time I checked GCM was ahead of their competition. But the question is whether this is some theoretical benefit which manifests in a few seconds of more battery per day, or whether this has a substantial impact… I hope someone else with a bit more knowledge can chime in… I’m still not sure why my old phone and my new one from a few weeks ago report vastly different numbers on that…

(Edit: And I think there is more going on. Like server-side stuff to prioritize when to wake a device etc. I don’t think it includes evil magic. Other than having 99.99% of apps be part of their ecosystem. So if you’re using any proprietary app on that phone, you’re going to need it. And at that point installing a second service alongside will just be an additional burden. So you either have a de-googled phone and need an alternative provider anyway… Or you have GCM anyway and the additional service will be on top…)

I’m using ntfy.sh that would be UniversalPush. But there are others as well… Gotify.net, NextPush…

I don’t know what you mean by “worse”. Obviously, if you’re using UniversalPush in addition to Google Cloud messaging, you’ll have two services draining the battery. But from my experience, ntfy.sh itself consumes something between 3% and 9% of my battery. I’ve still to investigate some more.

I think I used the commandline, either via Termux or ADB and did touch .nomedia inside of the correct directory.

As a word of caution: AI is a buzzword. Currently it gets slapped onto all kinds of things. Also to old things that are now marketed as AI. It might still be the exact same product as 5 years ago. Or they came up with a new feature. Both happens.

I’d like Google Lens and Translate to work locally without sending anything to Google. And it’d be nice if it were to translate speech directly. I think that’d be a useful AI feature. Or translating Japanese websites. I don’t really care for face-unlock or if I can ask my phone to set a timer in natural language…

Tablet: Read magazines and watch TV shows. You might be fine if you own a large phone, though.

I also like the Pixels and own a 4a. You’re right, but I’d advise against buying it, due to it being end of life. You won’t get proper security updates anymore. It dropped out of official support, and even some big aftermarket OS dropped support. So even the tinkerers amongst us should think twice before buying it.

I think OP be better off re-evaluating the requirements. They could get some USB-C headphones and buy a device with 256GB of storage. And that’d allow several decent and modern Android phones. Otherwise it’s just complicated to find a proper phone these days and it likely includes paying extra and making other tradeoffs, when you could simply buy a pair of new headphones.

I got a Pixel 8a. That’s slightly bigger, doesn’t have headphone or sd-card but seems to be a nice device.

Yeah, your original post didn’t include your reasoning. I wasn’t sure if you were going for something like this or talking about the occasional Maps or GMail post, or just didn’t know who’s behind Android.

I think this isn’t a community like the political ones where you argue and get banned. I think you can talk openly here. Best, include some reasons why you think something, and I think people will understand. A lot of us are in the same boat.

These topics are closely related, as Android is a Google product. They develop Android. And they’re regularly leading the way with new developments. Good and bad. I think that’s why you see a mix of Android and Google news here.

Btw, there are like 10+ different camera apps on F-Droid that are Free Software.

I read about some PCBs that let you repurpose old laptop screens but I’m pretty sure that’s more complicated with phones and tablets. These have tiny and very specialized electronics. Oftentimes not built in a modular way. And people tend to break them, give them away or dispose of them. I don’t see people repurposing these devices.

And it’d be hard to bypass the boot time and Android experience. Sometimes you can flash a custom ROM like LineageOS. Though, that’s still Android. Other operating systems aren’t really a thing within that ecosystem.

I like to flash LineageOS and then use extra phones/tablets as a kitchen radio or TV or as a TAN generator.

You could also install Termux and install Linux software. Like a webserver or something like that.

If you don’t know what it is, I’d say click “Desactivar”. You can later on re-enable it if you find something is missing. But certainly a good idea to check whether it’s bloatware or spyware, maybe someone knows more. You can also check how much data usage an app caused, see if it sends lots of data somewhere.

If you google Ulephone and alarm clock, you’ll find some more people complaining. It’s likely something the manufacturer did to save battery. I’d say the preinstalled (native) alarm clock app is most likely to work, maybe they tested their own apps. Everything else is likely to be nuked on inactivity during the night.

Wasn’t MediaTek abusing the GPL and bad for custom roms, meaning no aftermarket support possible for those devices?

Good idea. I think GrapheneOS won’t work with that as they’re focused on the Google Pixel devices. But you could have a look at the LineageOS compatibility list. Just the manufacturer is a bit unspecific. But you can look up the exact model in that list.

I can’t really comment on all of the other Android variants. There are so much of them and I’m not up to date anymore.

Before getting your hopes up: Check if your specific phone model is supported by any of them. On lots of phones you can’t change the software and you’re stuck with the manufacurer’s version.

Yes. You can open a website in Firefox and choose “Add to home screen” from the menu. That’ll do something very similar to what native alpha does.

Depends on the circle of people you’re talking to… I’m not buying any phone without custom ROM support. And haven’t done so in ages. I know several other people who’ve used LineageOS, GrapheneOS or Calyx at some point. I wouldn’t say it’s normal, but definitely not a unicorn encounter either. Just embrace it. You’re a hacker now. Maybe this is a good thing. (Most certainly.)

I feel I should also say, times changed. Back in the day it was either impossible to run a Custom ROM because of some locked bootloader. Or it’d run perfectly smooth. Sometimes you’d be running a ROM of some 15 yo because that’s the last person supporting that device. Today some things have changed. Security works differently. Lots of people use things like NFC payment that doesn’t work that well without stock. More and more stuff has moved into the proprietary Google services. Cameras have become super complicated and AI enhanced. Running a Custom ROM feels very different from what it was 8 years ago. If you own one of the well-supported devices anyways. Because that was always an issue.