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What phone you use as your daily driver? And, a discussion of them.

My S20 Plus 5g cost me £320 in mint condition with not a mark on it. Not too bad, for such a nice phone.

the only reason I didn't pay a little extra for something like that or the s21, is the 4 years OS and 5 years security updates samsung promised for the a53, and the 5000 mah battery is nice too.

the 5nm chip may be slower than snapdragon, but its insanely fast for me... so yeah no complaints on my end.
 
Was it marked as new or refurbished plus or whatever.. ?

I don't get used bc compromised waterproofing and battery stuff so..

The a series isn't as supported by good lock modules and stuff like smart devices to.. that's why I don't get the a series.. might be good as a backup.

Hubby has an a20s and he like it tho. He doesn't do much on a phone besides internetz
 
Was it marked as new or refurbished plus or whatever.. ?

I don't get used bc compromised waterproofing and battery stuff so..

The a series isn't as supported by good lock modules and stuff like smart devices to.. that's why I don't get the a series.. might be good as a backup.

Hubby has an a20s and he like it tho. He doesn't do much on a phone besides internetz

I don't even know what a good lock module is... and I don't need smart devices other than bluetooth earbuds, so I guess I chose the right series for me.

I got new. the A53 just came out a couple weeks, its a brand new model, I had mine on pre-order. the battery is insanely good on it
 
Good luck is a tweaking utility that gives your more ui customization as well as sound tweaks and stuff.

Only a few modules work w a series

Screenshot_20220408-213314_Good Lock.jpg
Screenshot_20220408-213339_Good Lock.jpg
 
Good luck is a tweaking utility that gives your more ui customization as well as sound tweaks and stuff.

Only a few modules work w a series

View attachment 242964
View attachment 242965

thanks for letting me know, I googled a couple in the images there, I really have no need for any of that. I am not a power user by any means though... I turn on Dolby Atmos... and hit play on Netflix, lol that's about all I use my phone for other than calls and texts.
 
Okies

Lmk how that battery works out for yah

This is how my phone is holding up with mixed LTE and wifi usage

Screenshot_20220408-215732_GSam Battery Monitor Pro.jpg
 
Does anyone here know if modern phones, when they have 100% battery and are plugged into the wall, do they run off the wall electricity or is it always draining and charging like that last tiny percentile of battery making its longevity worse?
 
Does anyone here know if modern phones, when they have 100% battery and are plugged into the wall, do they run off the wall electricity or is it always draining and charging like that last tiny percentile of battery making its longevity worse?

This is something I was also wondering since I'm not sure what to trust.
I did read that 'modern' phones simply turn off the charging after its 100% and it does no harm but I'm not sure really.

For what its worth I always charge my phones when the battery is at ~20-30% and then I often fall asleep and unplug it in the morning.
So far my previous phone I had between 2018 June-2021 August still has good battery life so even if it does something its quite insignificant. '4000 mAh battery Meizu M6 Note'

I'm doing the same with my Realme 8 4G I bought in 2021 August and so far I can't notice any worse battery life vs brand new. '5000 mAh battery in this one'

That being said I could be completely wrong so correct me in case and that was just my personal experience with this use case.
 
My A53 has a new feature under battery settings: "stop charging at 85% (this will increase longevity of battery)"

I wouldn't mind doing this feature, and turning off fast charging. I intend it to last all 4 years of OS and 5 years of security updates it has... so I think I will do that.
 
My A53 has a new feature under battery settings: "stop charging at 85% (this will increase longevity of battery)"

I wouldn't mind doing this feature, and turning off fast charging. I intend it to last all 4 years of OS and 5 years of security updates it has... so I think I will do that.

That sounds reasonable I think, tbh I'm not sure if 85% or 100% difference would bother me either.
Fast charging uh I will have to check if my phone even has that as an option, it charges to ~100% in about 1 hour from 20-30% even tho I don't really need that.
 
My A53 has a new feature under battery settings: "stop charging at 85% (this will increase longevity of battery
That is true. What I do on my V20 enable battery saver while I charge. I don't think with the new phones charging at 100 will hurt the battery but I'm also curious of how phones now do if at 100 while full
 
I use a S21+. Kinda wish I didn't get the plus version I don't need the size. I miss my Pixel 3.
 
@remixedcat You know a lot about phones, can you please answer this for me or if anyone else knows feel free to help:

Can I turn off a phone, pop out the sim tray, replace the sim card (but leave the microsd card) pop sim tray back in with new sim card, turn on phone, and not risk any corruption on the microsd card? or does the microsd card always have a trickle of battery going to it? I should always unmount while phone is on, unmount sd card in settings, before doing a sim swap?

i just don't want to risk getting a corrupted microsd card ever again...
 
I don't see why replacing a sim would damage one's SD card... :wtf: Now if you go to insert the sd card in another phone it would I think to format it I'm assuming
 
@remixedcat You know a lot about phones, can you please answer this for me or if anyone else knows feel free to help:

Can I turn off a phone, pop out the sim tray, replace the sim card (but leave the microsd card) pop sim tray back in with new sim card, turn on phone, and not risk any corruption on the microsd card? or does the microsd card always have a trickle of battery going to it? I should always unmount while phone is on, unmount sd card in settings, before doing a sim swap?

i just don't want to risk getting a corrupted microsd card ever again...
Depends on quality of SD card and it doesn't matter if you leave it in
 
That sounds reasonable I think, tbh I'm not sure if 85% or 100% difference would bother me either.
Fast charging uh I will have to check if my phone even has that as an option, it charges to ~100% in about 1 hour from 20-30% even tho I don't really need that.
Accubattery app has basically the same thing, which is vibrating once phone is charged to say 80%. You can set it to whatever value you want. I have been trying that app for a while and yes initially it does bother you and kinda panic a bit, when you have overall less battery life and aren't at home. With 100% charges my A50 was very close to being a two day phone. But after capping battery to 90% charge, it's just not the same and I'm not willing to test if it lasts 2 days. I once got into less than 20% charge and wasn't at home, not fun. Before trying app, I almost never used fast charging and even if I did, A50 only has 15W charger, so it's not like it really had much of those capabilities anyway. With basic charging mode it still reached 10 watts. I have decided to use 5 watt charger to see what happens and surprisingly nothing much. It becomes somewhat longer procedure, but I don't really care about that enough. I even tried 2.75 watt charger, but that was just way too low and clearly bothersome, so I don't do that again. And to be fair, according to app, there isn't much temperature delta between 10 watts and 5 watts. It's still above 30C, perhaps 34C instead of 32C. Meanwhile putting phone in pocket can raise temperature by 4C and opening window at night and leaving charging phone there, can reduce temp by 8C. So I'm not sure if there's any merit by going that low. Perhaps at that point amperage may do more bad than temperature, but I haven't found anywhere if amperage itself, without negative temperature effects, can harm battery. Most people online only mention temperature and talk about ridiculous fast chargers. And yet we all used Nokia bricks before and their batteries still degraded after years. My Note 3 Neo had some battery degradation too after 5 years of daily use, but when I replaced battery, I saw no real difference between old one and new one. In terms of usage stats, it seemingly performed basically the same, but psychologically it felt off. I once switched back to it after using A50 and it felt liek it had poor battery, meanwhile on screen time difference between them two is just a bit bellow 2 hours. It seems that psychological perception of degradation and actual degradation are really off, not to mention ever growing psychological demand for longer lasting batteries and then completely making that feel not like improvement, but like new normal. So yeah, you can't really fight against your mind, but I'm still not sure if all this effort to preserve battery health is worth it and if it really works. BTW my 3 year old A50 according to that app still has 90% battery health, meaning that degradation rate is really damn slow and to meet technical definition of being underspec, it will need 3 more years to reach 80%. At that point phone will be 6 years old and I will be more likely to see more degradation of AMOLED screen and of screen's glass wear from all scrolling.
 
Just got an Samsung S22 Ultra and the best thing is the 10x optical zoom camera, looks great
 
Samsung A22 5G

Stopped buying flagship after my V50 broke down on me for no obvious reason, it just died
 
Accubattery app has basically the same thing, which is vibrating once phone is charged to say 80%. You can set it to whatever value you want. I have been trying that app for a while and yes initially it does bother you and kinda panic a bit, when you have overall less battery life and aren't at home. With 100% charges my A50 was very close to being a two day phone. But after capping battery to 90% charge, it's just not the same and I'm not willing to test if it lasts 2 days. I once got into less than 20% charge and wasn't at home, not fun. Before trying app, I almost never used fast charging and even if I did, A50 only has 15W charger, so it's not like it really had much of those capabilities anyway. With basic charging mode it still reached 10 watts. I have decided to use 5 watt charger to see what happens and surprisingly nothing much. It becomes somewhat longer procedure, but I don't really care about that enough. I even tried 2.75 watt charger, but that was just way too low and clearly bothersome, so I don't do that again. And to be fair, according to app, there isn't much temperature delta between 10 watts and 5 watts. It's still above 30C, perhaps 34C instead of 32C. Meanwhile putting phone in pocket can raise temperature by 4C and opening window at night and leaving charging phone there, can reduce temp by 8C. So I'm not sure if there's any merit by going that low. Perhaps at that point amperage may do more bad than temperature, but I haven't found anywhere if amperage itself, without negative temperature effects, can harm battery. Most people online only mention temperature and talk about ridiculous fast chargers. And yet we all used Nokia bricks before and their batteries still degraded after years. My Note 3 Neo had some battery degradation too after 5 years of daily use, but when I replaced battery, I saw no real difference between old one and new one. In terms of usage stats, it seemingly performed basically the same, but psychologically it felt off. I once switched back to it after using A50 and it felt liek it had poor battery, meanwhile on screen time difference between them two is just a bit bellow 2 hours. It seems that psychological perception of degradation and actual degradation are really off, not to mention ever growing psychological demand for longer lasting batteries and then completely making that feel not like improvement, but like new normal. So yeah, you can't really fight against your mind, but I'm still not sure if all this effort to preserve battery health is worth it and if it really works. BTW my 3 year old A50 according to that app still has 90% battery health, meaning that degradation rate is really damn slow and to meet technical definition of being underspec, it will need 3 more years to reach 80%. At that point phone will be 6 years old and I will be more likely to see more degradation of AMOLED screen and of screen's glass wear from all scrolling.
The way I see it is I wanna use that capacity... that's the reason I went for a higher mAh phone.

And I would rather do software tweaks to get better battery in the first place to reduce charging cycles overall for better health. Much easier to do in the long run.

Biggest thing is to use dark mode, disable all the location accuracy shit and only enable location period..if you are navving for trips, put apps to sleep you don't need to have notifications on, disable stuff like blur and turn animation scales down to .5x , etc...

Those alone make a difference..

This was mostly using LTE and I had Hotspot going for 45 minutes.

Screenshot_20220410-044734_GSam Battery Monitor Pro.jpg
Screenshot_20220410-044959_GSam Battery Monitor Pro.jpg

Here's my gsam from yesterday

Screenshot_20220409-071102_GSam Battery Monitor Pro.jpg
 
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I like flagship, but no way am i paying the dumb prices for them sim free, or getting a £/$ 50+ a month contract just to have one. My S20 plus 5g was second hand, but is mint condition with not a mark on it. Still a flagship phone without the extortionate cost. If i want a s22 i will wait and do the same. I am on a £20/month contract that is unlimited mins/text and 6gb data which is fine as i am mostly at home on the wifi.

On mine i use Nova launcher, have done for years. Not a fan of Samsung's default
 
Accubattery app has basically the same thing, which is vibrating once phone is charged to say 80%. You can set it to whatever value you want. I have been trying that app for a while and yes initially it does bother you and kinda panic a bit, when you have overall less battery life and aren't at home. With 100% charges my A50 was very close to being a two day phone. But after capping battery to 90% charge, it's just not the same and I'm not willing to test if it lasts 2 days. I once got into less than 20% charge and wasn't at home, not fun. Before trying app, I almost never used fast charging and even if I did, A50 only has 15W charger, so it's not like it really had much of those capabilities anyway. With basic charging mode it still reached 10 watts. I have decided to use 5 watt charger to see what happens and surprisingly nothing much. It becomes somewhat longer procedure, but I don't really care about that enough. I even tried 2.75 watt charger, but that was just way too low and clearly bothersome, so I don't do that again. And to be fair, according to app, there isn't much temperature delta between 10 watts and 5 watts. It's still above 30C, perhaps 34C instead of 32C. Meanwhile putting phone in pocket can raise temperature by 4C and opening window at night and leaving charging phone there, can reduce temp by 8C. So I'm not sure if there's any merit by going that low. Perhaps at that point amperage may do more bad than temperature, but I haven't found anywhere if amperage itself, without negative temperature effects, can harm battery. Most people online only mention temperature and talk about ridiculous fast chargers. And yet we all used Nokia bricks before and their batteries still degraded after years. My Note 3 Neo had some battery degradation too after 5 years of daily use, but when I replaced battery, I saw no real difference between old one and new one. In terms of usage stats, it seemingly performed basically the same, but psychologically it felt off. I once switched back to it after using A50 and it felt liek it had poor battery, meanwhile on screen time difference between them two is just a bit bellow 2 hours. It seems that psychological perception of degradation and actual degradation are really off, not to mention ever growing psychological demand for longer lasting batteries and then completely making that feel not like improvement, but like new normal. So yeah, you can't really fight against your mind, but I'm still not sure if all this effort to preserve battery health is worth it and if it really works. BTW my 3 year old A50 according to that app still has 90% battery health, meaning that degradation rate is really damn slow and to meet technical definition of being underspec, it will need 3 more years to reach 80%. At that point phone will be 6 years old and I will be more likely to see more degradation of AMOLED screen and of screen's glass wear from all scrolling.

Thanks, I will check that app out now it made me curious.
I also kinda agree that it depends on perspective and use case, thats why I ususally avoid giving any short of phone related 'advices' since my use case is definitely not relevant for most 'modern' users nowadays.
Like I'm a very light user and I stay mostly at home and barely touch my phone during the day and even then I only use it for watching YT and browsing the net + playing a simple idle game for ~30 mins/day when I'm resting in the bed. 'thats why I'm not buying fancy expensive phones, it would be a complete waste on me:oops:'
Don't have many apps installed or running in the background either, this way I easily last 2-3 days with 1 charge from 100% to ~20-30%.

On mine i use Nova launcher, have done for years. Not a fan of Samsung's default

I had Nova launcher 'free version' on my first smart phone, it was a very budget crappy phone and the default launcher was terrible + ate trough the already bad battery like nothing.
Nova Launcher somewhat made that phone useable till I bought a better one.

On my previous and current phone luckily the factory launcher is alright so I kept that. 'Flyme on my Meizu and Realme UI 2.0 with Android 11'
 
Thanks, I will check that app out now it made me curious.
I also kinda agree that it depends on perspective and use case, thats why I ususally avoid giving any short of phone related 'advices' since my use case is definitely not relevant for most 'modern' users nowadays.
Like I'm a very light user and I stay mostly at home and barely touch my phone during the day and even then I only use it for watching YT and browsing the net + playing a simple idle game for ~30 mins/day when I'm resting in the bed. 'thats why I'm not buying fancy expensive phones, it would be a complete waste on me:oops:'
Don't have many apps installed or running in the background either, this way I easily last 2-3 days with 1 charge from 100% to ~20-30%.



I had Nova launcher 'free version' on my first smart phone, it was a very budget crappy phone and the default launcher was terrible + ate trough the already bad battery like nothing.
Nova Launcher somewhat made that phone useable till I bought a better one.

On my previous and current phone luckily the factory launcher is alright so I kept that. 'Flyme on my Meizu and Realme UI 2.0 with Android 11'

It's worth paying for nova. has some cool stuff like swipe to open folder.
 
The way I see it is I wanna use that capacity... that's the reason I went for a higher mAh phone.

And I would rather do software tweaks to get better battery in the first place to reduce charging cycles overall for better health. Much easier to do in the long run.

Biggest thing is to use dark mode, disable all the location accuracy shit and only enable location period..if you are navving for trips, put apps to sleep you don't need to have notifications on, disable stuff like blur and turn animation scales down to .5x , etc...

Those alone make a difference..

This was mostly using LTE and I had Hotspot going for 45 minutes.

View attachment 243071
View attachment 243072

Here's my gsam from yesterday

View attachment 243073
Already been doing this for years, charging to 90% is just recent cherry on top.
 
I don't bother using those battery monitor apps. They are a waste. Just use the settings battery
 
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