Back in the relatively recent years of 2017(or maybe not, that's nine years ago already), smartphone standards were far below what they are today. You could find phones configured with less than a gigabyte of RAM and 16GB of storage could be considered reasonable. Granted, these weren't going to be considered spec beasts during their time, but they were serviceable for the price. However, as compute power increased, these stragglers failed to hold on after being cluttered by user activity like bottlenecked storage or simply higher spec requirements. Thusly, Android Go was born around the tail end of 2017.

I don't intend to make this a history post, but just for the sake of comprehensiveness, Android Go really took stride by doling out optimizations for barebones cellphones and limiting some features like picture in picture and split screen. It really hit it's stride around Android 11 to 12, when phones were still transitioning to modernly reasonable specs.

Mayhaps the most surprising part is that the main constituent of Android Go is essentially a hard-bound toggle set by the manufacturer. But what may be overlooked is that Android Go still exists in the present day. So some developers still end up using it! But why does it still see use in the present day?

In the current iteration of Android Go, phones with 4GB of RAM or less by default are required to use Android Go. But nowadays, we can utilize virtual RAM extensions by allocating some storage space as quick read memory in settings. So this gives manufacturers the power to provide 8GB Android Go phones, making them honestly ovespecced for their on paper capabilities. Often times, these phones have to tone down their bloatware too, so that they don't sap the phone of too much power.
It isn't all upside though, as the aforementioned limitations on multitasking features are arguably the biggest deal breaker.

Manufacturers that use Android Go today are those that have models that cater to ultra-budget and emerging markets. Lower end Motorola and Redmi phones are the ones that are widely available. A notable example are all the phones of Transsion, whose main target market is in Africa and emerging SEA countries.

What's the experience of using it today though?
Aside from the PiP and split screen, The biggest difference isn't really all that strict: the Android Go apps. These can even be downloaded on regular Android and are often just stripped down and more data efficient versions of official Google apps that haven't been given the fresh do-over of Android Go itself. The notable exception is that Android Go will always have Google Assistant, for Google doesn't have plans to release a version of Gemini for Go. Which is ironic as EoL Android phones with lower spec than the current maximum of Android Go(4GB RAM) actually do have Gemini OTA updated on them. Go phones are trying to modernize, so they nowadays have 120hz screens, punch-hole cameras, and enough compute power for everyday. And yet they still compromise by having SD card slots and headphone jacks. The rest is really in the hands of your OEM. Samsung, Redmi, and the Transsion phones all have their little tweaks on the software, some being a little more egregious than most (cough Samsung cough). Motorola should be mostly stock though.

All in all, I just wanted to spread the word that Android Go still exists. Honestly, considering the world RAM crisis, we might actually see more devices on the horizon that utilize Android Go. What're your thoughts?

I'm streaming Firefox to watch Riverdale, so I opened up Chrome to browse while I wait for them to join. Youtube has ads on it, and I realized I can't grab uBlock or anything (meaningfully) privacy focused. So, I wanna try out one of the cool new browsers, what do people use and recommend?

I'm on Windows and a proper techie, so give me anything that's a bit strange and off the wall as well! The only one I tried out recently was Comet, but it needs more time to bake, total waste of time IME. I remember using IceWeasel for some reason lol

Edit: if this post does not meet the general quality standards of Tildes, I absolutely understand and apologize. Likewise if I should have posted this in a different subsection - ~misc or ~talk maybe?

So, recently I've been annoyed by this new thing in Gmail (and yes, I should be transitioning away from Google services) where this field pops up at the top of my email list called 'Happening Soon'. It mostly has shipping / tracking notifications saying 'hey, this thing with a tracking number is arriving tomorrow'.

I've been annoyed by it because there wasn't an easy way to disable this 'feature' and that perceived loss of agency (and reminding me that my Gmail account isn't really 'mine') was frustration inducing.

So I googled it (I recognize the irony here) - "disable "happening soon" gmail" - and found a Gmail help / community post with a bunch of people expressing the same desire to not have this forced upon them: https://support.google.com/mail/thread/346511942/how-to-disable-happening-soon-for-those-who-see-it-on-gmail-inbox-which-is-related-to-an-amazon-pu?hl=en but while plenty of people shared my frustration, I wasn't finding definitive answers on how to properly disable it.

So I decided to poke around inside of settings. There actually was a section for smart tracking reminders but that was not enabled. Then I saw a rather vague 'Smart Features' that was enabled that I didn't remember seeing before. I disabled that, Gmail had to restart, and then those notifications were gone.

I wanted to share this how-to with all the other people who posted to that Gmail support thread. I simply replied with "To disable this on desktop, go into settings and disable 'Smart Features'. That seems to fix it."

Suddenly I understood why no one else had posted the fix. My post was flagged instantly for 'content policy violations'. Specifically it said "Failed to post. Content violates Community Policy."

Yes, helping other Gmail users figure out how to turn off experimental 'features' we never asked for violates their policy of, I presume, being able to experiment on their userbase. Arg. That ticked me off.

A photographer I knew passed away, and I was trying to see if there was any information. This was the top result I got on google. The part after the ellipses says “killed in a plane accident in Pantanal.”

He did not die in the plane accident! That’s another piece of Brazilian news, about the architect Kongjian Yu. The search result is even tagged with Yu’s Sponge City/Cidade Esponja.

So why is this showing up for a post summary about José Bassit? There’s nothing in the post comments or the post itself saying anything like this.

I've been in the lengthy process of degoogling myself. Email is done, Calendars are done, drive is more or less done (but now at MS, so... yeah) - but a real sticking point is Google Photos.

I just love looking up places and faces and the occasional "This day one year ago" albums really lighten up my day.

Additionally, I am a bit of a hoarder, I never ever throw out photos, so I have right now 101 GB of pictures since 2012. This will be a pain to migrate so I only want to do it once.

I tried Immich, but could not make it work on my NUC with a very limited connection to the Internet and probably because of the vast number of images.

I came across ente.io, and it looks promising. While 4.99€ per Month for 200gb isn't exactly cheap, it feels still okay for hosting all of my visual memories.

But before committing, I would like to get some more feedback on this service, what is nice and what is not so nice and why you feel comfortable with entrusting them with your pictures.

Edit
After the very helpful answers in this thread, I signed up for a 200 GB plan, downloaded all my pictures from google and I'm currently in the process of uploading them to ente. This takes a bit longer than I thought, but then again, these are 45.000 pictures and live-pictures.
So far, this feels pretty slick. Thanks for the feedback here.

I recently moved to a place and unearthed an old Pixel 3. I updated it to the last official update (October 2021) but not sure what to do with it. It’s not worth any money (or at least I don’t think so) and I have a dedicated Android gaming device (Retroid Pocket 5).

What could I do with this device?

I was trying to think of a way to use it. Was thinking of setting it up facing my backyard to film squirrels/possums/birds, but it would likely fill the storage up in less than one day of continuous recording. I’m probably getting way ahead of myself but would there be a way to use it like an IP cam or Ring doorbell that records everything not on the device?

Any other unrelated ideas are welcome too. I just don’t want to throw it away since it’s functioning quite well.

Ok so I have a Google account for an organization. But when I have that account logged in on my phone some of the security restrictions impact all accounts on my phone. I have a pixel 7a with Android 16 if it matters.

I would love to have access to this gmail account, with notifications, on my phone without forwarding the emails to one of my personal accounts. Any way to do that within the Gmail app itself, or if I need a different app, any recommendations?

In my perfect world I'd have OneDrive access too, but I can use a browser window there if needed.