What is the benefit of an ultrasonic sensor over an optical one? Is the former even quicker to respond to input/touch?

I think the article mentions it. AOL tried to block it and this to and fro went 21 times before finally coming to a stop. MSN and Yahoo later signed a deal, I think, so that the former will work with latter’s contacts properly.

Err, this payment doesn’t block ads. It only switches off personalised ads. So, the user is still seeing ads, just not targeted ones. So the site is getting both user’s money plus ad money. And technically, I am not sure how privacy preserving this is because you will still need to create an account which technically leaves you vulnerable to tracking.

My first smartphone was their cheap Lumia 520. Yes, it had its limitations (it couldn’t natively playback mkv files and no VLC support was there yet; only one paid app offered this basic thing) but the polycarbonate back was good, the battery lived decent enough despite being small and the OS was very smooth.

True, even Samsung budgets still have the 3.5 mm jack. I guess Motorola really wishes folks to purchase their wireless options.

Pixel 9 isn’t aimed at Pixel 8 or even 7 users. These 2 phones are still very much in software support period and have a decent hardware so as not to upgrade per year. Pixel 9 is aimed at gaining either new users or upgrading very old Pixel users.

Still, two problems persist, the phone still somewhat gets hot and charging is still on the slower side. Even Samsung has jumped on 45 W bandwagon, not to mention Chinese OEMs which can recharge more than twice as fast.

Huawei has a custom OS but it does most of the stuff including all health/sleep tracking features and music playback. Sure, their app ecosystem sucks but honestly, even Wear OS is pitiable(when compared to something mature like Watch OS).

Silicon Carbon battery, IIRC, can pack higher energy densities than comparative Li-on batteries, though it is not a very significant difference as of now.

The 45mm GW3 had 340mAh battery, which was a downgrade from 472mAh battery on the original Galaxy Watch. The review at GSM Arena mentioned that the 45mm variant of the original Galaxy Watch yielded 2.5 days under moderate use. Samsung’s quoted time is/was longer though that might be under ideal conditions.

I personally used only 4 and 6. Whilst the latter has a bigger battery owing to the larger size and plows through almost 2 days with AOD on(hardly any notifications or continuous Hr though), the 40mm GW 4 barely crawled a day for me.

My first purchase GW4 40mm was very hastily done. I mainly wanted a watch that could stream music independently and was under the assumption that only Wear OS watches were capable of that(on the Android side). Couple that with the high initial cost of Garmin, and I overlooked it. But it is a mess if you have to put a watch on a charging Puck for 2 hrs daily(that only had 5W wireless charging).

Unless Wear OS really changes it’s direction in the next few years(and I hope my relatively newer GW 6 Atleast lasts for 3 years), I would be looking for a Garmin as well.

Yes, Wear OS is still behind Apple’s Watch OS, which essentially is the market leader(despite their watches sometimes having even shorter battery life).

The original Pixel Watch barely lasted for a day for most users with AOD on. Atleast, the newer ones come in different size options(the larger one has a bigger battery) plus LTPO display. Still it is only a 2 day watch; not anywhere close to Fitbit or Garmin.

And Samsung’s implementation sucks even more. The insistence on using wireless charging baffles me considering that it loses so much power as heat. Rival devices like Oneplus and even Pixel Watch charge faster(in other territory, Huawei’s watch uses silicon carbon battery, lasts thrice as long and charges twice as fast).

Not to mention, in summers, the wireless Puck heats up more than a Pixel and throttles itself to the point where one has to point a fan in that direction.

I have a question from this article not directly linked to this phone though. In the charging section, they have compared multiple phones and how much they charge in 30 minutes. The top slot is occupied by a Samsung phone with 45W charging support and 4900 mAh battery. However, Motorola and Xiaomi both have almost similar battery capacity and still charge slightly slower despite boasting significantly more (67W) charging support. What is the reason for this discrepancy?

How else are they gonna sell you their Galaxy Buds? Except for entry level Samsung phones, they don’t exist in this company 's lineup.

Amongst other manufacturers, Sony offers it but makes fewer devices per year and offers bad software support. Even companies like Motorola and Nothing prefer folks buy their MotoBuds and Nothing Ear respectively.

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Yes, Samsung tends to load a lot of apps, sometimes almost duplicate variants of Google apps that do the same task.

Yes, I was referring to HTC Thunderbolt from the article. My current phone itself has relatively low battery life and it annoys me. One would have needed to charge the Thunderbolt phone probably twice a day

Not all phones listed are equally bad though. Nokia Pureview suffered from bad camera quality but I can live with that. What probably is unlivable is exceptionally short battery life, like on the HTC one. Still, an interesting opinion piece, if nothing else.

I have YouTube Premium though not the Family variant and Google won’t just fix their app. It is way behind NewPipe or YouTube ReVanced. No, I don’t need shorts. No I don’t need constant nudges to join groups of YouTubers by paying after I just paid you money, Google!

What I want is system wide quality setting (what exactly does High or Data Saver mean; would it kill you to give 480p, 720p or 1080p as options) or Sponserblock integration (okay, this thing is probably never gonna happen but still). YouTube 's app is a stinking pile of shit. I just use YouTube Music from them and will cancel/not renew my plan after it lapses.

I’ll find a Sun article for this :p.

Yes, Amarok is also active again though it’s UI is reasonably different from Clementine now.