So this may be weird, I just got a new set of pixel buds pro 2 and they work great, except if I'm not playing audio on my phone they frequently disconnect and reconnect from my bluetooth - I can tell because I can hear the tones. But if I'm playing a podcast or YouTube video, no issue. Phone is a Pixel 7a and it doesn't do this with my old A buds, my car, etc. haven't tried pairing the buds to anything else yet.

I've updated firmware, restarted everything, checked settings, turned off the adaptive sound, with no change. Help?

Title kinda gives the gist of it all.

I have been wondering about a way to have a "full" desktop with just XR glasses, a phone, bluetooth keyboard, and an internet connection.

Not sure if this is easily doable, or if Windows VMs would be so expensive to make it pointless. Maybe something like WINE or w/e the not 20 year outdated current thing is to run Windows software.

The main use would be to run 1-2 browsers and trading software.

Just curious if this is a foolish idea or not.

While not the same website, this reddit thread from several years ago is the only thing coming up on Google for me and everyone in there has had the same thing happen to them: the Screen Time settings in iOS showing some website being up 24/7

It should be noted I don't have Verizon, have never been to verizon.com, and don't even use Safari as my browser. I have -0- idea how in the world this is showing up, and so it automatically makes me assume my phone has been hacked somehow (but try to remind myself that tech is also just wonky).

I set the screen time limit to 1 minute, and it has not showed up again as an app that has even been used. This is on a iPhone XS on iOS 15.4.1

Does anyone have any idea what this means or why this would happen?

My phone, Samsung Galaxy S20, has finally started having some screen issues and made me start looking seriously at a new phone. I felt like I got great use out of this phone after 5 years, and I anticipate trying to get a similar or (hopefully) longer life span from my next phone.

Ideally I'd like to keep this phone going for another year, currently the screen issue is more annoying than actually preventing me from using the phone. The OLED can no longer properly display black colors and when the screen goes to sub 10% brightness it adds a yellow tinge to the screen, and using my blue light filter only makes it worse. This has led me to use my phone less at night or when it's dark, since it's like having a dim flashlight shining in my eyes.

A bit of a startling realization, was that I've been putting off building a new computer since I moved over here due to the expense, but I'd happily drop more than I'd be willing to spend on that new computer on a new phone since I use it everyday throughout the day.

This made me wonder how often others replace their phones.

Are there any criteria you look for when picking new phones?
Are you a brand loyalist, or do you shop around?
Do you do camera comparisons between phones/models?
Or simply, how do you choose your phone?

I usually have a decently thick and protective case on my iPhone 15 Pro. But occasionally I use it without the case to see how it’s “intended” to be used. To be honest it doesn’t seem very usable. I constantly find my palm or fingers activate the screen on the lower right edge - which is surprising as MacBook touch pads have excellent palm rejection. I would have expected the same attention to detail and quality on the company’s flagship product.

Maybe I’m just not used to it and I’m “holding it wrong”.

My iPhone 14 Pro has been at 84% battery health for almost a year now. Anecdotally the battery lasts significantly less time than it did previously, even when it was already at 84% health. I think it may just be a stale calculation, and my actual battery health is significantly lower. If I can get it to show as less than 80%, I can get AppleCare to replace it. Does anyone here know how to get the iPhone to recalculate this value?

I have Coconut batter on the Mac, and it can check the battery health for an iPhone attached with a cable. It uses a different formula, so it gives me a health of 87%. However it also shows history for when I have run it in the past, and when I tested it almost 100 charge cycles ago, it also read 87%. I don't know how any battery can go almost 100 charge cycles with zero degradation (537 to 617 cycles, so it's not like it's a fresh battery).

This topic is a part conversation starter, part request for help in finding.

For those that are attempting to keep up with the many weird and sometimes interesting products both announced and teased recently in the field of AR/XR glasses- what are your thoughts?

Examples, off the top of my head, include a number of devices revealed at CES 2024. The Asus AirVision M1- a pair of full-HD display-in-glasses form, similar in many ways to the Xreal lineup. The new Xreal Air 2 Ultra and Xreal One line. Snapdragon's new XR2+ Gen 2 chip for high efficiency portable computing and a successor to the chip used in the Meta Quest 3 headset. The Halliday glasses, which forego any form of waveguide or combining optic and opt to project directly into the eye using a monocular microled projector. And older devices, such as the "open source" Brilliant Labs glasses which have been previous discussed on Tildes.

Personally, I'm disappointed in most (if not all) of these options, but that might largely be because the industry and I have very different ideas of what smart glasses should be. The industry is focusing heavily on social media features- cameras, filters, translation- and even more heavily on AI. Why anybody would want an LLM strapped to their face I do not know. I feel that the goal of full augmented reality (rendering tips and visuals over the real-world) is a noble one, but also not one I am particularly interested in. My ideal device would be purely a heads-up display with a long battery life. The ability to cast notifications and information to a reasonably pretty display, but the freedom to decide what. No cameras, no data collection, no overcomplications- does anyone know of any options that fulfill these criteria?

Discuss.

Hello friends, and thank you in advance for any help on this topic.

I am looking for an android keyboard that does not have emoji, stickers or gifs, but also has long press options for special characters like dashes, slashes and colons etc.

Searching online for variants of "no emoji keyboard," only floods my results with the opposite and it's beyond frustrating!

I realize that the answer is likely right under my nose and I'm just missing it for whatever reason.

I would glady pay money for such an option if only I could find one.

I'm sorry if this question is silly or posted in the wrong thread, but I'm at my wits end.

Again, thank you for any help or redirection to my query!

Cheers!

I find myself very bored at work. I have nothing on my plate to do, and I have exhausted everything I can think of doing on my phone. Browsing Tildes, and a little reddit though I hate Reddit now, making spreadsheets on Google drive for hobbies, catching up on any news, playing a dumb phone game, watching YouTube (though this is much harder and I can only do something audio based when I sneak away to a private corner which I can only do for limited amounts of time), browsing LinkedIn for other jobs/career path.

I'm at a loss for what else to do. I'm at the point where I have many hours in my day with nothing to do, and boss doesn't care I'm on my phone as long as my shit is done, which it is.

Obviously can't do much video watching or actual video game playing or anything requiring audio.
Also phone games have to be vertical so it isn't obvious I'm playing a game if a client walks in. Any suggestions?

I’m about to take a road trip and I want to be able to easily play my music and it would be a huge pain to do this with iTunes. I’ve got VLC but the UI leaves much to be desired. I can’t even view my music by album in CarPlay, which is how I’m going to be accessing my music. There are tons of music playing apps out there but they are all varying degrees of sketchy. Does anyone have any recommendations?

My previous phone was a pixel. My tech life generally is a weird mix of things that are bad for privacy that I accept for convenience but also in other ways I choose to sacrifice things to protect privacy.

Does not registering the phone with Samsung actually cost me any functionality as a user?

I've been a long time Fi user on the Pixel line of phones, so I've always gotten the gold standard of service from Fi. My wife is an adamant iPhone user. We want to port her over to my plan, but I was hoping to get some recent feedback from anyone using a modern iPhone (just bought her a 16) -- All the things I find on Google are months to years old. If this is you, how well do the iPhone features (Visual voicemail, iMessage, RCS, FaceTime, 5G, etc) work for you on Fi?