Here in this thread we'll cover every phone except maybe those funny things with a wheel. Cellphones, DECT phones, satellite phones... Slightly outdated trunking radio phones...
Military radiophones. NASA/ISS "phones". Skype-like apps... 

So, what sort of a phone have you had/do you have? Brand?

this recently i also hve battery isssues at my android phone.

it just drain the battery so fast like there is no tommorow.

the solution is simply underclock the cpu and gpu.

however,  underclock and overclock mobile devices is not as easy as desktop.


need aweek to figure it.

Undervolting reduces energy usage; underclocking might counterintuitively increase it. When calculations take longer, it takes longer for the CPU to go back to a low-energy state.

As far as battery on Android goes, the main thing is to reduce or eliminate the amount of services that autosyncs and such.

it is 8 cores,  even at 800mhz and gpu at 300mhz. 
it doesnt show any lagging issues. which mean it processing well.

i dont find the right tools to undervolts mobilephone processors yet.

and for sure,  the background services already optimized.

but it will need more than background  services optimization  to cut the  battery  usage.


 need  to limit cpu  and gpu frequency.

inthe extreme level,  perhaps limit the number of cores uses.

nor using hibernation apps to disable all background services  and limit the frequency tothe lowest.

Meet Meizu Pro 5 Ubuntu Edition. It's a smartphone with Ubuntu on it. The review says that despite Unity's approach to touchscreeny interface, it's still not handy enough. There's no opsys optimisation, so that minimised apps would tone down their processes to spare the battery. And camera seems to perform worse under Ubuntu. For these and other reasons, this edition doesn't compare well with Meizu Pro 5 Android which is flawless.

Now I have Galaxy Note 4. Tough decision, but if it is the last smartphone in my life, then not too tough. Some notes.

- It came with Android 6 preinstalled. Seems that the occasional multiple-window-like interface is mainly an Android 6 feature. It's a significant gain for multitasking, even though it doesn't apply to all apps. It applies to multimedia and office and to the main browsers, so that's good enough.
- My much-craved MHL doesn't work (because of Android 6 "improvements"?). I am not frustrating myself by trying too much.

cont'd

- In earlier Android models, IIRC, it was possible to wipe aside individual items in the list of available updates and then update all without those items. Not possible anymore in Android 6. In Android 6, if you want to exclude some apps from updates, you have to update everything else individually.

I assume you mean in the Play store? I don't recall being able to do that (but I don't think I've had a reason to try), but that's pretty much half-separate from Android. Specifically, what I mean is that even older Android phones will be updated with the latest Google Play stuff.

Possibly Play store, yes. Whatever it is that pops open when you push the update notification on the taskbar. I used to like to go over the list and swipe things aside. Now I will try to desactivate some apps and see if they will still beg for updates.

Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is off production. It explodes too much.

It's not the first device to flop this badly, but it's probably the first in having necessitated specific warnings on flights. "We have agreed with Samsung that their devices should not be charged on our airplane." This probably applied only to passengers in the business class, but I heard it too on my last international trip that included a bunch of flights.

More here and elsewhere http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/business/samsung-galaxy-note-fires.html

Galaxy Note 4 remains the best among Galaxy Notes. Samsung has moved on to Galaxy Tabs, I suppose.

I hate idiots speaking about their cellphones. Better girls speaking about dolls.

Don't you hate ereaders more than phones?

Start a thread about dolls. I would certainly participate.

Incidentally, the very first smartphone ever - Sony Ericsson P800 - also did that by means of a hardware wheel button on its side. It's rather convenient to scroll a webpage this way by swiping along the edge of the phone.

In the end, some half an hour ago, I placed the order for M5 back, because there's no better option. I would like a smaller phone, but no good ones are available. Z3 Compact would have been perfect and I regret that I could not get it.

I have used a good number of phones over the decade, and those two (the P800 and my current Z3 Compact) are the two I have been genuinely happy with, and the Z3C the point at where I've accepted the passing of the feature phones, and decided I could live with Android (The opposite, the worst and most expensive phone I've ever bought in my life was HTC Diamond; Windows mobile, say no more).

Good battery life and a phone that isn't ugly (like iPhone, say no more) are bonuses. As it was when I accidentally dropped the phone in boiling water (countryside farm, say no more) and the phone worked fine when cooled down and dried (one of the flaps had opened so it wasn't watertight).

(The opposite, the worst and most expensive phone I've ever bought in my life was HTC Diamond; Windows mobile, say no more).

Huh, I thought my wife's HTC Diamond 2 was a terrific device. On top of which, using it to transfer some old settings a couple of years ago was a fantastic experience. None of that proprietary Android lock-in nonsense. Simple export to file or bluetooth through a microSD that you could just take in and out. Love Windows Mobile.^[1] Love resistive touch. Could you expand a little on what you disliked about it specifically?

¹ Compared to Android, yes, even present-day Android although ZenUI on my Zenfone 2 and CyanogenMod are both bearable.↵

Primarily, Windows Mobile. Now I don't mind Windows, this is written on a Windows 2-in-1, but early Windows Mobile was one of the worst system I have ever used (the worst systems were all experimental/internal/hush systems we made browser for at Opera that oughtn't be released in the wild, and for the most part weren't).

I have rarely come across an operating system so at odds with what I would use the device for, it made easy things hard, hard things unattainable, and everything slow and painful. Stupidly I thought "can't be that bad" when co-workers complained about Windows Mobile. It could.

For hardware, battery was the worst. I had three that I swapped. The screen I don't remember, but around Diamond 1 resistive screens were the norm anyway. Camera was sub-par. The whole thing was slow.

I still have it. It was my most expensive phone I ever bought with my own money, but I turned it into a guest phone as soon as I got a replacement phone. In total it has been used maybe two months, so should still be usable (battery willing).

Well, I admit I never tried to use Windows Mobile for stuff like calendar sync or anything, but I thought it certainly made some things very easy that Android makes very hard and the system felt snappy. (Again, the HTC Touch Diamond 2, not 1.) But wouldn't that have been with Windows Mobile 6 or so back in '08-ish?

I have used a good number of phones over the decade, and those two (the P800 and my current Z3 Compact) are the two I have been genuinely happy with, and the Z3C the point at where I've accepted the passing of the feature phones, and decided I could live with Android

I personally never was too happy with P800. It was big and bulky. I tried to use it as my main phone for a while, but it just wasn't portable enough. To put it another way, I didn't have appropriate pockets for it at the time. But I liked the software inside and how it worked. It had wonderful potential and some ingenious details (such as resistive screen and multi-directional scrollwheel) that have gone lost in further evolution of smartphones.

My happiest phones throughout the years have been Nokia 5110, Ericsson w200, and LG Optimus P500. The current Galaxy Note 4 is a more ambivalent case again. You have to love the ability to do multiple windows that approaches true multitasking. It's a formidable photography tool. But it has no pretensions to shock-proofness and resistance to liquids like Xperias have, so it suffers as an actual mobile phone when you cannot answer it in rain or snow.

Good battery life and a phone that isn't ugly (like iPhone, say no more) are bonuses. As it was when I accidentally dropped the phone in boiling water (countryside farm, say no more) and the phone worked fine when cooled down and dried (one of the flaps had opened so it wasn't watertight).

Durability is an important aspect that deserves special attention. Almost as important as fixability (exchangeability of components). Of course everybody would prefer a product that never breaks and never drowns, but it's more realistic to find a product that is fixable in case it breaks.

This test shows that Galaxy Note 7 is actually quite good, apart from occasional explosions.

The modular design of early PCs and phones where you could replace a part for a better one, or for one that is working, is largely gone. Screws are expensive and big, cheaper and faster to glue.

Though now miniaturisation has reached the level that this design is getting possible again, perhaps with some non-adhesive forms of joinery.

Possible, yes, but down the drain.

With Galaxy S8, Samsung has added a "desktop experience" to the external monitor, so the phone can replace a netbook now. Unless there is a catch that I am not catching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DKu_-thYLM&t=54

This probably amused me more than it should've. Posting it here 'cause Fb is one of those major battery hogs on many users' phones (not mine).

btw, this will allow users to pick which of your attachments from that page to share from the share-dialog box (if that feature is still supported, idk, i'm a fb-dev not a fb-user). (emphasis mine)

With Galaxy S8, Samsung has added a "desktop experience" to the external monitor, so the phone can replace a netbook now.

You have to buy a $150 dock.

I'm not super happy with my S8+. The wrap around screen is useless, I've turned all the related features off, as they are way too easy to accidentally activate. Perhaps of note also, I cracked the corner of mine rather quickly. Wrap around screen means don't drop it. My Note 4 survived much worse... I'm tempted to go back to it. With a custom rom i'm almost sure I can make up for the performance difference. Actually using the S8+ to its full potential tanks battery life.

With Galaxy S8, Samsung has added a "desktop experience" to the external monitor, so the phone can replace a netbook now.

You have to buy a $150 dock.

Thanks for doing it so we can learn from your experience

I'm not super happy with my S8+. The wrap around screen is useless, I've turned all the related features off, as they are way too easy to accidentally activate. Perhaps of note also, I cracked the corner of mine rather quickly. Wrap around screen means don't drop it.

Does "wrap around screen" mean something like "edge" popularised by some earlier Galaxies? The first time I saw it, I understood it would be a problem to hold such a thing in hand when you want to just hold it, not touch anything. This would imply imbalanced grip and this in turn would imply dropping the thing, so investing in some good cover is compulsory.

My Note 4 survived much worse... I'm tempted to go back to it. With a custom rom i'm almost sure I can make up for the performance difference. Actually using the S8+ to its full potential tanks battery life.

I heard that S8 (and probably + too) at first has some features turned off and when you turn them on, it warns about battery. That's as good as scaring users away. Who doesn't know that actually using the phone consumes the battery?

Thanks for doing it so we can learn from your experience

I didn't. But I did look into it after buying the phone. Grand total after all the peripherals; you could of had a nice notebook.

Does "wrap around screen" mean something like "edge" popularised by some earlier Galaxies? The first time I saw it, I understood it would be a problem to hold such a thing in hand when you want to just hold it, not touch anything. This would imply imbalanced grip and this in turn would imply dropping the thing, so investing in some good cover is compulsory.

Yes, the screen wraps around the edges. Absolutely useless. especially given you MUST get a protector case for it... Not so bad as you might think when holding it. Trying to use other apps only to activate an edge feature would be my gripe... That and slides right out of your pocket no problem.

I heard that S8 (and probably + too) at first has some features turned off and when you turn them on, it warns about battery.

To be fair all phones are throttled. It's actually nice to see a stock phone give you the option to use the device's potential. That being said, if we're going to go in that far, give me some control of the kernel values. (Things I'm used to with custom ROMs). Altering WiFi/Bluetooth ping rates and CPU thresholds would allow me to mitigate the battery drain at the higher performance marks (the ones they advertised mind you.).  

Oh yes, that's a very good point. It sort of slipped my mind because this was already happening with Mini-B (from 2000!) before the switch to Micro-B (from 2007), which is something that annoyed me slightly due to different connectors. It was understandable on account of the smaller size.

There's this on one hand


and this on the other



Clearly different things marked with the same symbol. The latter is the kind of cable that rules on mobile phones and tablets. However, there are small exceptions. For example Prestigio devices seem to come with something very very similar, but they are really different (from both) and connecting them to non-Prestigio chargers will quickly ruin the connection and the device cannot be charged anymore. 

I have noticed people express their annoyance at that the cable can be connected just one way while at different devices the holes are in different ways. That's a legitimate annoyance. I personally wish for a more solid connection too, so that it's easily felt that it's connected and then it stays there. It should not require any trial and error to see if it's really charging. Right now charger connections seem to have been purposely done to cause wear and tear. Everybody around me keeps borrowing chargers, but I never ask one from anyone - because who knows where it's been. Rather, I keep multiple chargers with me for my devices, plus one extra charger to give out when asked.

And I note that laptops still, in 2017, practically each have their own different charger per model for no purpose whatsoever other than let manufacturers earn a bit more by selling chargers.

Now for a something completely different: which is the best Android launcher? (i.e. skin/home screen)

There are a handful of manufacturers that have committed to an essentially stock build of Android - think Nokia and OnePlus. Others, like Motorola, stick close to that (with some Enhancements) and recently parent company Lenovo announced it will be switching to stock as well.

I'd say it's best to have a choice. In my old LG Optimus One P500 I soon switched to ADW Launcher available from the app store. It fit perfectly for my needs and I kept it as long as the phone lasted.

In Xperia M5 that I had for a brief while, I opted for the "simple" view of the home screen. For some weird reason this "simple" view provided quick access to everything relevant and nothing was left missing.

Whereas in Samsung Galaxy Note 4 I keep leafing through three screens with many widgets (time, weather, system stats and calendar), tons of foldered icons and I have not figured out how to rationalise this better. Young people I have seen, they do it even worse - they let messenger chatheads pop up on the screen in addition to everything else. I turn all such notifications off. I treat chat like snail mail: I will certainly at some point get to a point when I can and will reply, it might take a day, but I will surely get there - not before I get to that point though. 

There are some niceties in Galaxy Note 4 that I have not noticed elsewhere. For example you can uninstall apps in the apptray (the view that displays all the icons, where you usually open them, if they are not on the home screen). Most importantly, there is some sort of window-like multitasking: you can have two apps side by side and you can have any number of apps as floating windows which you can minimise to "appheads" (appheads is a term Apple has apparently stolen; here it suffices to say that Samsung Galaxy does the same thing).





Some of this functionality can be enabled on any Android with some apps (look for "multi window", "floating apps" and such), but in Samsung Galaxy (probably just the big ones, like the S line and Notes) it's available out of the box and works quite smoothly.

One of the things CyanogenMod used to do but doesn't anymore is locking rotation modes. Now (at least in cm13/Android 6) it's back to the default Android idiocy of either auto-rotate of rotate. You can work around that with Tap 'n' Turn. It's a great app and the devs are really responsive to bug reports/suggestions, but I still don't understand that Android doesn't do self-evident stuff like that by itself. Is wanting to lock the device in landscape mode occasionally really such a niche thing?