Fucking Cell Phones

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Mongrel
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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby Mongrel » Fri Oct 01, 2021 11:16 am

Or even a plain-old user-replaceable one, as a limited few phones still allow.
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mharr
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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby mharr » Fri Oct 01, 2021 10:01 pm

Aye, that's dying by inches - technically most batteries still are, for a given value of 'user-replacable', but knowing what's compatible and where to buy and having the tools and experience to not mangle anything in the process is a whole thing. DIY is fine if you're up for a new hobby.

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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby Mongrel » Sat Oct 23, 2021 7:11 pm

Anybody got any experience with Motorola?

Still dragging my ass because Pixels around here are looking expensive at first glance. Only one my Carrier has is a pre-order for the Pixel 6 at $800 or $30/mo, 2 years, which is more than double what I'm willing to shell out for my minimal cell use. But there's a carrier deal as well as a Costco deal on a couple of Motorolas.

Carrier has the Moto 5 Power at $5/mo, 2 years, and Costco has the Moto 5 Play for $140 up front, unlocked. I'm generally not a fan of payment plans, but the Carrier's got a $100 discount for the Blackberry thing, so that's looking more attractive (numbers I quoted are post-discount).

Everything else my carrier has is Samsung, iphones, and one of the three-letter Chinese also-ran brands. Makes shopping a tough toss-up because they have the $100 off (and waiving the $50 connection fee. $50... WTF! Fuck you guys!), but their selection is tiny and shit.
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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby Niku » Sun Oct 24, 2021 2:44 pm

My wife uses the Moto Power and has had pretty much zero complaints about it; the battery life is pretty impressive on it.
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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby Mongrel » Sun Oct 24, 2021 5:38 pm

Niku wrote:the battery life is pretty impressive on it.


Yeah I noted that bit in reviews and that's always something I like to see.

BTW, I saw that Motorola cameras are crap. I don't expect my phone to replace our actual DSLR and it's hard to imagine that a new Moto Power wouldn't automatically be an upgrade in terms of a 7-year old phone camera anyway, so I have pretty low standards there, but has she noticed that pictures are especially bad or anything?
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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby Niku » Mon Oct 25, 2021 9:33 am

It's definitely not up to the flagship iPhone/Samsung standards, but it's lightyears above what the LG she upgraded from was packing. I wouldn't expect much but it points and shoots well enough.
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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby Mongrel » Mon Oct 25, 2021 10:20 am

Probably just go with that then. Thanks man.
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Thad
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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby Thad » Thu Feb 10, 2022 12:17 pm

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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby Thad » Tue Mar 08, 2022 12:28 pm

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From 1923.

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nosimpleway
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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby nosimpleway » Tue Mar 08, 2022 1:07 pm

Running for the train, haha, as though the very idea of mass transit in the USA wouldn't be so thoroughly discredited by then

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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby Yoji » Tue Mar 08, 2022 1:48 pm

Also cute how they assumed phones would still sound like phones.

Phone: OOGA-CHAKA OOGA-CHAKA OOGA OOGA--
Dude: Hello? What's going- wait, it's spreading to his lungs??
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nosimpleway
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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby nosimpleway » Tue Mar 08, 2022 2:04 pm

To shreds, you say...

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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby Yoji » Thu Mar 24, 2022 2:37 pm

Is this the right thread to talk about phone apps? Because my wife could use an ID card wallet, and I've got questions.

The last time we went to the aquarium, we both forgot our membership cards. We were able to sort it out with a phone number lookup, but a couple weeks later she forgot her membership card for the zoo. It's becoming enough of a pattern that she was wondering if there was an app for just safely storing those on a phone instead.

I can see there's a few different ones to choose from, but I can't help but feel that the whole idea just isn't safe. Are there any decent ones around? Or should I not even touch that and stop being so scatterebrained?
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Silversong
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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby Silversong » Sun Apr 24, 2022 2:22 pm

I've been with Republic Wireless for years now. I only pay $20 a month for 1 gb data which is fine because it's basically always running off wifi.
Got a notice they're changing how the service works and, depending what phone you have, MMS texts might only go over data.
If I need to increase my plan because of this, I want to change services. Anyone have one to recommend?

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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby Niku » Sun Apr 24, 2022 5:52 pm

I've been good with Visible; prepaid $25 a month for unlimited data off of Verizon's network, though it starts at $40 until you jump through the hoop of joining a "party" which is basically a family plan that isn't tied to any particular family. Easy enough to just search up the reddit for it and join some randos or I can figure out how to invite on the one my wife and I are on.

Good service where we are and have never had any outages or surprises, but haven't looked into it any potential other shadiness on account of being Verizon and all.
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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby Silversong » Mon May 09, 2022 11:03 am

I ended up switching to Ting Mobile, because that's what my partner was using and it seems to work everywhere we go. $25 a month for 5GB of 5G, if I go over there's no cost increase it just switches to 2G. No need for a family plan.

I don't know if this is typical of having switched providers without changing phones, but looks like I have to reset to factory defaults to get MMS texting to work. ;___; the thought is stressing me out so I'm putting it off a while.

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Thad
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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby Thad » Sun Jul 24, 2022 2:16 pm

Anybody know a good Android program for copying entire SMS/MMS conversations?

The main ones I'm looking at right now are SMS Backup+ and Textra. Anybody have any experience with those or similar apps?

Alternately, is there a simple way to do it with ADB or just straight-up copying files?

I'm just looking for something that will allow me to copy an entire text conversation and then read it on another device. Ideally something that's OS-agnostic on the desktop side, though if you've got a recommendation for Windows- or Mac-specific software, feel free to share that too; I've got a Mac and a couple Windows machines I can use if I have to.

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Thad
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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby Thad » Mon Jul 25, 2022 1:55 pm

I wound up going with Textra. Kind of annoying how it won't work unless you set it as your primary SMS client, but it's fairly straightforward and will let you choose things like whether or not to include attachments.

Expects you to use the Share interface to put the file somewhere else, though. Because accessing the local filesystem is for olds.

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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby Thad » Mon Jul 10, 2023 7:30 pm

Fairphone 4—the repairable, sustainable smartphone—is coming to the US

Available through Murena for $630-$700. A little rich for my blood but I might just start saving up. If it costs twice as much as my last phone but also lasts twice as long, then it's a wash, but that doesn't matter much unless I can afford to buy it in the first place.

Murena makes /e/, an Android-based OS that I haven't used but which looks pretty much like how I set up my phone already, but with worse icons and a cloud-services push that makes me a little nervous because that's the kind of thing that took Cyanogenmod down. (But it's just Nextcloud, so there shouldn't be any reason I can't just point it to my local Nextcloud server, which, again, is what I already do on my phone anyway.) IIRC it was started by the same guy who created Mandrake, the first Linux distro that really took a serious stab at usability; I wouldn't exactly call it a success but it was an important step toward modern desktop Linux. It walked so Ubuntu could run.

Anyway, I've always been curious about the Fairphone and I certainly appreciate the ethos. I'm glad to see it's available in the US now, and I'll be keeping an eye on it.

But in the meantime I'm going to explore the cheaper route of seeing if I can find somewhere that can replace the increasingly dodgy USB port on my Pixel 3a.

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Mongrel
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Re: Fucking Cell Phones

Postby Mongrel » Mon Jul 10, 2023 7:58 pm

That reminds me that not only am I still on the G Power Niku recommended (I asked about it and Niku said his wife was satisfied with it), but it's still in pristine condition, looking and working pretty much the same as I did in the first month or so I got it. The USB is still absolutely solid, because even after two years and the phone long since having been paid off, it still also retains pretty much the same level of charge capacity, so I'm still only charging it maybe 1.5 times a week.

I'm not a heavy cell phone user, but even so that's all been very nice, so thanks for the recommendation Niku & wife.
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