As evidenced by recent topics, most people are unhappy with the direction the smartphone industry has taken in recent years. As more unnecessary features and sacrifices are made with each passing generation of handsets, what components are essential in your ideal smartphone? Create one in the comments.

Here is mine, in no particular order:

• Optimized Stock Android
• Gesture-based navigation (think iPhone X)
• Removable matte black plastic back
• 2:1 Aspect ratio, 5.6" diagonal AMOLED display
• Dual front-facing speakers in top and bottom bezel
• Dual front facing cameras (Wide Angle and Standard)
• Bezel-less sides
• Dual back cameras, with OIS (Wide Angle and Standard)
• USB-C
• 3700 mAh removable battery with Fast Charging+Qi
• Snapdragon 855
• Apple-esque Face Unlock
• ~$750 price tag

Last month my dad had a stroke. Miraculously he didn't lose much functionality at all, though he does have some minor cognitive issues that we're working on in rehab - mainly memory. Accordingly, we want to find some games he can play on his tablet to help keep his mind active and focus his attention. But the mobile game market is hard for me to navigate and sort through for what I'm looking for.

I need games that're about a dollar or less and don't have in-app purchases. Basically games you could give to your kid and trust that they're not gonna be psychologically manipulated into wanting to empty your bank card or something like that.

Brain teasers and simple puzzles are ideal for sharpening his mind but any game that's good clean straightforward fun will work. I don't think he's going to be able to handle anything with a whole lot of moving parts like an RTS right now, for instance.

I can't afford to spend much on this and I don't know what kinds of games will interest him most so I want to give him a lot of choices. I've already looked through a couple of the other mobile game rec threads on here and I'm checking out the games listed there, but I was hoping you all could help me think of some stuff more geared to my situation. Any pointers even just on where to go looking or what to google would be appreciated. Cheers!

Edit:

Thank you all for being so supportive! I've added a bunch of the games you recommended, and I also found a couple nice lists that I thought I'd add here for anyone else interested.

Short List of Totally Free Games

10 Completely Free Mobile Games

Stay awesome tildes!

I am generally dissatisfied with my phone options today. I want a phone that meets these requirements:

• microSD card slot
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• Unlockable bootloader without having to ask the manufacturer (i.e. fastboot oem unlock)
• Either LineageOS support or Android 8+
• Screen smaller than 6" (preferably smaller than 5.5")

I'd also prefer not to have a notch but it's not a dealbreaker. I don't really care much about having the thinnest phone, or the biggest screen, etc. I'd much prefer having more control over my device and the way I use it.

Does such a phone exist, or do I have my standards too high? I haven't seen a phone like this that came out 2017 or later.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the future of software and where native apps and the web will reconcile and I had the idea that what if "the next OS" had a OSS federated app store that people and organizations could host themselves, but the system still used the app store model that pull app/program listings from all the installations online? This could apply to mobile or desktop computing, or even any of the other platforms (see windows store system compatibility).

Hi fellow Tildes Beta users!

I primarily do my browsing on an iPad or my iPhone. Currently I'm using Chrome.

Until an app is made, what do you all find the best way to browse Tildes is? The formatting is a little wonky for me, which is perfectly understandable. It's not exactly a deal breaker, but it would be a lot easier having a more optimized experience.

I doubt I'm alone, so what're y'alls preferences?

For those unaware the Librem 5 is an upcoming Linux smartphone developped by Purism that seems to be doing everything right. Frankly I think this might be humanity's last chance to have a Libre mobile option before the Google/Apple duopoly gets too far ahead.

I really, really want to back the thing but after going through the exchange rate, duties and customs I think it works out to nearly 900CAD which I just can't afford right now, though I might end up pulling the trigger anyway. Call it 400$ for a phone and 400$ to support a worthy cause, eh?

I don't play mobile games very often but every now and then I want to load up something a bit more substantial than your average mobile game without having to log hours like Fallout Shelter. I played something called (I think) Pixel dungeon in the past that was a sort of roguelike and I enjoyed that. What do you guys play and recommend?

For those unaware, the Bloons TD series consists of tower defense games where you place monkeys along a track to pop balloons. It's called TD and not Tower Defense because a scumbag company decided to trademark the name of an entire genre, but that's beside the point.

Since the series's debut as a flash game over a decade ago, the games have evolved to contain a wealth of strategic complexity. Aside from the towers having different attack rates and ranges, there are different types of damage (e.g. popping, fire, explosion) that make each tower unique. Additionally, the balloons occasionally have resistances to certain types of damage. This forces you to be creative with your tower placement, and opens each game up to an incredible depth and variation. This helps keep the game fresh and exciting, as you try out different strategies.

...Or at least, it would do that if it weren't for the arbitrary roadblocks the game puts in place. Presumably in order to ease new players into the mechanics, you're forced to unlock everything through gameplay. This doesn't just include new towers, tracks, and game modes -- you're forced to unlock every single upgrade for every single tower. You unlock these by using the towers to earn them XP.

In theory this wouldn't be so bad. You could argue that it makes you learn the strengths and weaknesses of the towers before you can upgrade them. But why is that learning forced on me by the game? Why can't I learn at my own pace? I care so much because the game's pace is hellishly slow. You will certainly have to spend time grinding in order to unlock everything.

If that sounds ridiculous, it's because it is. I should not have to grind in my mobile tower defense game. I've been playing for two days now, and I'm still incredibly far from being able to play without restrictions. I'm mentally preparing myself for the long haul on this, but I can easily see this alienating new players, or those who just want to experience all the game has to offer.

It really is ridiculous when my own attempts to win the rounds are foiled because the game won't let me have the upgrade I need.

The other major problem I have with the game are its in-app purchases. Ninja Kiwi, the developer, seems to adhere to the despicable model of charging $5 up-front and also charging for things in-game. The game tempts me every time I look at the menu of which upgrades I've unlocked. "Don't you want to use this tower now, instead of many hours from now? Why not pay $5 to unlock all of its upgrades instantly?"

There are in-app purchases for different amounts of Monkey Money (which let you continue to play a failed game) that range from $2 to $55. Double Cash mode, which in previous games was unlocked through playing, now costs $19.

There are good points to this game. The graphics are 3D, which is quite different than the older games, and they look good. They're not an outstanding visual pleasure, but they also aren't irritating or ugly. The word I'd use is serviceable. I preferred the cartoony graphics of Bloons TD 5, but I can see myself getting used to these.

The music is also adequate. Different tracks may have different music, but the repetition may have you cringing as you grind, grind, grind away for hours at unlocking everything. At 20 tracks, there is certainly enough variety to help alleviate some of the drag, but you also have to remember that the more difficult tracks are likely impossible to beat if you still don't have access to every tower's upgrades.

So there you have it. I give Bloons TD 6 three rubbery balloon-husks out of five while shedding a single disappointed tear, because all the fun is locked away behind hours of grinding.

Or you could pay real money to skip all that and actually have fun. Ninja Kiwi, you've broken my heart.

I'm really enjoying the mobile interface, if there is one improvement I would like to see be made is the ability to quickly swipe through on a touch interface and collapse comment threads that I want to skip. I'm using a larger phone, and have pretty big fingers, so I'm constantly hitting the username and accidentally begin reading their post history. Maybe I just have poor hand eye coordination, but the collapse button is small and really close to the edge of the screen.

This could easily be remedied in a couple ways, by either adding a couple more spaces between the button and username, or by making the button rectangular instead of square.

I had this game on my phone for awhile but only just started last night. So far I think it's neat what kinds of landmarks can be pokestops, like a little fountain by a restaurant or a very old building. It also reminds me of those pokewalker things from long ago, the ones that counted your steps. It also kills me when a church is a gym.

Now I'm not walking everywhere or buying plane tickets trying to do this but it's pretty pleasant so far. What are your thoughts, Tildes?

Edit: I took my first gym at a quaint little church and the Nidorino I left there came back about 6 hours later. There's more people playing this than I realized, also more churches lol.

I've been using ~ on mobile to try it out, and although it's great, there's one major inconvenience.

If I'm reading through a long comment, I want to instintively collapse it so it won't distract me. But on mobile, I have to scroll a long way up to do that. It's even worse with comment chains.

Can we have a collapse button at the bottom as well? Or a swipe, like on the Reddit app? Or do we have to wait for the development of the app before mobile users get good UI?

I basically wanted a full screen, standalone version of the website on mobile but unfortunately Firefox's homescreen shortcuts simply open a new tab, header and all.

I found Anker on the Play Store which works perfectly. I wasn't able to find anything on F-Droid but I'm sure forking one of those Facebook wrappers would be rather trivial if anyone's up to it.

For the app icon you can get ~'s favicon here.

Was on my bathroom break and figured might as well try tildes on my phone.
Using iPhone 8+ and tried on firefox for iphone and safari.

Was pleasantly surprised how clean and fast it feels, everything was very responsive. It's well adapted to my phone screen size. The UI is clean and simple, it feels very familiar, gives the same feeling as tildes on desktop while keeping everything on a smaller screen. It's something that reddit never got right, the closest thing we had was reddit compact mode, but it wasn't nearly as good.

hey all,

if you're like me, or like most folks nowadays, you'd rather browse the web on your phone over dragging around an entire desk, tower, and monitor everywhere (that's the other alternative right???). but!! tildes doesn't have a mobile app, and probably won't until APIs happen and some kind soul builds a third party one.

tildes, if you haven't noticed, is pretty minimal and runs like greased lightning on mobile browsers. but if you go that route you don't get full screen or home screen shortcuts or any of that stuff!

this is where i tried using Hermit to decent results. it's basically a wrapper for webpages that turns it into more of an app-like experience. if tildes ever adds RSS feeds for comment notifications, it'll support that too. unfortunately it's only on android but i'm sure iOS has something similar.

maybe one day tildes will be a PWA and we won't have to worry about any of that! but for now, I think hermit works nicely. hopefully it helps someone else too!

are you doing something else that works just as well? better? on iOS? please share!