Be Excellent To Each Other

Any good moto 360 tutorials?

Is the Samsung Galaxy A3/A5 a good upgrade path for the S3 Mini considering there is no S6 Mini? Has to be Samsung apparently, so don't go suggesting Nexus or HTC phones please.

Welcome to the Internet. You must be new here. Also you should get a Motorola.

The Shield acquitted itself admirably on my trip away, it will indeed push on for around four and a half hours of gaming, although arguably more impressively for media playback the battery only dropped 24% whilst watching the entirety of a three hour film.

Obviously I didn't want to break it, but at the same time with it only costing £150 I didn't have to be too precious about it either, and was quite happy to just chuck it into my hand luggage.

Wifi seems to be everywhere these days so a game of Hearthstone was never that far away.

Looks to me like the Samsung Galaxy S7 will be my next phone when my contract comes up in July (and MT always send out a 'special invitation' sort of thing to renew a couple of months early, probably 'cause it's worth their while to get you locked in for another two years).

I know the S7 isn't officially announced yet (due later this month I understand), but it's all basically been leaked anyway, and by all accounts will be an incremental improvement on the S6, rather than anything mega-radical - and get this, they're putting in USB-C and leaving wireless charging on it, who'd have thought such voodoo was desirable, or even possible? *

Rumours abound that Samsung are also massively curtailing all the horrible Samsung shit that they put on their phones, which would in a stroke eliminate by far and away my biggest problem with them. I mean, vanilla Android is so good, so why fuck with it?

The phone is scheduled to be launched in March, it always takes MT a couple of months to get new handsets in, so by the time I get my SPECIAL INVITATION around May, they should be in stock over here.

It's all just so perfect.


* Obviously if this turns out to be incorrect and there's no wireless charging I will have to look elsewhere.

They've got an announcement event booked for the 21st so only a week away.

Sure, but I'm guessing not much cost, or weight, or thickness. Certainly in the cost department the markup on these 'premium' handsets is so astronomical I'm calling stingey buggers on a company that takes it out 'for our benefit' 'cause it makes the phone 0.2mm thinner or some such thing.

I know I'm totally in the minority here when it comes to wireless charging, but I think it's space-aged fabulous wizardry and I want my next phone to have it.

Yes, you are "guessing", whereas I actually know. But please, do keep at it. As long as no-one is taking you seriously there's no harm.

Is it some sort of mega TOP SECRET thing then? Feel free to enlighten the plebs.

Confidential enough that I don't feel like risking my job for e-peen.

I had wireless charging in my previous Nokia. Yes I see benefits, but it charged on a plate (as opposed to a mat) and the number of times it failed to charge overnight due to not sitting correctly, giving battery issues the following day, was enough to make me move to cable charge it instead.

How does wireless charging work? My watch has it. Is it magnets and a spinny bit of iron?

Well in the absence of any evidence beyond secret numbers that you claim to have in your head, I'll go with the physical evidence of my Nexus 5 which is (1) Light (2) Thin and (3) A midrange handset price-wise - and it manages to have a physical USB connector and wireless charging built into it. It was also released nearly two and a half years ago and I can't imagine the technology has got mysteriously heavier or pricier since then.

So when you talk about 'everything costs money and adds weight and thicknes' - I'll go with 'Not really that much, on all counts'. Unless my Nexus 5 has dropped through a timewarp from the future.



I can only reply with the comment that my Nexus 5 has never done anything like that. I honestly can't remember the last time it had a wire jammed into it.

We had no idea, could you possibly tell us some more about what you think?

This is entirely my point. It's alien technology or magic, no human being can totally understand except to realise its awesomeness and bow down accordingly.

It's like electricity, but through space.

Either that or inductive charging, but scientists don't know everything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_charging

Yeah, that's how I'd have done it. Jolly good.

Nexus 6P owners: I've just bought one on a whim, have I made a terrible mistake? Obviously the lack of wireless charging is a crime against nature but anything to watch out for apart from that? I'm hoping for a better camera (coming from the N6) is it fair to be optimistic there? Also, any case or screen protector recommendations? I almost hate myself for asking that but, whatever.

I've got one, it's a nice bit of kit.

The camera is indeed better.

I had a quick play with Gaywood's at the cottage, it was lovely; but a bit bigger than what I'd like if I remember correctly.

Grim... Prefers larger ones though.

Yes, yes.

Awesome. I seem to remember the Doc posting a link to an incredibly positive evaluation of the camera, but they say that every time a new Nexus is released and yet they still always sucked compared to Samsung et al in real world use. So I am hoping they've cracked it this time. Ooh, also: fingerprint scanner! I had totally forgotten about that.

I was an early adopter of 'phablets' and prefer bigger wherever possible so that's not a concern. Indeed the N6 I'm coming from is allegedly bigger (though I couldn't see any real difference when comparing them side by side).

The camera is legitimately good, and the benchmark you mention (DXOMark) has never rated a Nexus highly before. The fingerprint scanner is great too. I'm typing this on my 6P; I think it's my favourite phone ever.

High praise indeed! For context, have you ever used any major manufacturer Android phone as your daily driver? I got the impression you'd started using Android devices 'properly' at the time of your move to Google and, at that point, why pay for anything when the Nexii are free! Not that that devalues your opinion in the slightest, I'm honestly just curious here.

No, I haven't. Which I'd vaguely like to fix at some point but haven't gotten around to.

Eh, I can't really advise it. I gave a lot of business to Samsung in the early years when they were genuinely turning out some incredible kit (the S2 remains a high technological water mark in so many ways) but their dogged fucking attachment to the increasingly awful Touchwiz, plus the better-but-still-shitty design of their handsets, drove me away; and keeps me away.

HTC followed a similar trajectory in that their earlier Android devices were brilliant (to this day no phone has felt as good in my hand as the HTC Desire) but their quality control went to shit and I now couldn't give a fuck about what they do. Which isn't to say that the One isn't a nice bit of kit, but they've just churned out minor iterations of it for the last few years and their Sense skin is still pretty ugly in my opinion.

Um, all of which is a load of unsolicited and self-important rambling. Shit, sorry Beex.

Comedy shock opinion: one of the nicest Android devices I've had a fiddle with recently was the Blackberry one with the sliding physical keyboard. It's a really nice thing in every respect! Not that anyone will ever give a shit. Poor Blackberry.

Yes, the Priv is apparently nice. I've never seen one in the flesh.

If I was shopping for not-Nexus Android, I'd look at Motorola, Sony, and Huawei.

I've always quite fancied a Sony. They seem to keep churning out really solid handsets with brilliant cameras and yet no one seems to give a shit. Its weird.

The z5 is superb.

I am put off slightly by the fuck-awful James Bond tie-in ad that I seem to have seen a million fucking times.

I was seriously eyeing up a Z5 compact before I decided to just get a Nexus 5 on the cheap.

Beware Sony! I came from a Nokia and was underwhelmed by the z3. Also the rear screen has broken so regularly that I've just duct taped it up, rendering the camera useless. I miss my Nokia.

S7 and S7 Edge now confirmed, seem to follow the leaks pretty closely.

Apparently you can drop them in water again, which is handy, as I love to do that with my phones.

Expandable storage, super camera, wireless charging (the charging mode of champions), erm, other stuff etc etc.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35625058

Prices look worryingly high from UK phone suppliers so I'm dreading to even think what MT will charge for the bloody thing.

Ultimately I need something to replace my Nexus 5 as it'll be two years old in July and they don't last forever (and the way MT's pricing works means you really need to be getting a new handset), and the S7 looks like it ticks the most boxes.

How Samsung manage to get all that incredibly bulky, heavy, expensive, wireless charging tech into a slender device that costs the same as other high end phones and has the same form factor, I'll never know.

Balls. That looks well good (if somewhat small).

I'll probably get an S7 come Sept.

Edit: or that phone Doc G had at the cottage. That was well weapon.

Blimey, they support Vulkan. That's pretty impressive for a phone.

The one with the Edge screen is 5.5". And there'll doubtless be an even larger Note variant based on the same hardware along at some point.

That was the Nexus 6P.

Indeed. But they took the SD card away from the Note 4 (5? Dunno. Think it was 4) which is stupid.

£639 for a SIM-free 32 GB S7 Edge, compared to £449 for a Nexus 6P. Hey it's almost like features like wireless charging makes something cost more....How about if it makes the phone 30% cheaper?

The S7 doesn't have USB-C.

The S5/Note 3 have SD card slots. The S6/Note 5 have no SD card slot. The S7 has an SD card slot. Can you fill in the blank for the Note 6? (Disclaimer: I have no insider knowledge.)

The Edge screen is pointless and expensive for no reason though. Also Samsung have dicked around with their standard line-up recently in that the Note 5 was never released in the UK and instead (sort of) we got the S6 Edge+. That 'only' had a 5.7" screen though so with the S7 Edge already being 5.5" will they even both with a + or Note model this time around?

It's pointless and expensive for the reason of looking really cool. Why don't you want to look cool?

Fair point, like I said I'm not privvy to seekrit plans so I have no idea. The S7 has no pen, though, and I'd be surprised if we didn't see a phone that offered that.

Re: SD cards, take a look at the graphs of NAND flash speed in this review, mentally put "SD card" as a line somewhere off the bottom of the chart, and wonder about why you might be better off without them: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9146/the- ... e-review/7

tl;dr: on modern phones, the internal flash is like an SSD, but the external SD card performs like spinning rust.

It wouldn't be that surprising, no Note 5 being released in the UK means we've already had a year where no stylus enabled phone came out in the UK from them. Why the hell that was and whether they'll reverse that decision this time around though God only knows.

It depends what you use it for though. I would only every use an SD card to load up with mp3s so it's not like I'd be adding a bottleneck to general performance or anything. If it meant some slight lag between one song finishing and the next one starting I'd take it. I've had to buy 64GB Nexus phones recently whereas I'd be perfectly satisfied with the smallest capacity plus SD card dedicated to music so it's cost me a non-trivial sum for no real benefit.

Basically what Bamba said. I want to load it up with TV and movies, so I'm not overly concerned it it takes a few tenths more to spin up.

For that particular use case I actually wouldn't be too bothered either if I'm honest as a USB drive and OTG cable does the job; that's what I do for watching stuff on my tablet whenever I'm on holiday. Music's a bit different though because I don't want to have something permanently connected to my phone in my pocket when I'm out and about.

I think, to a Fermi estimate level of accuracy, that there are zero Android users that want to manage storage split across two buckets.

This is doubly true of music, as cloud streaming is eating that.