Smartphones have become an indispensable part of our lives. When it comes to the two major players in the market, Apple and Android, there’s no denying that Apple stands out as the clear winner in terms of security and overall features...
Read the Full Post by Kyle on All Things Tech
Yes I just stole that upper embbeded post thingy from Kev’s site.
Recently Kyle did an editorial piece on Apple, which is, in my opinion, quite interesting to say the least. After reading it a while ago and once again when writing this, I still think that Apple is NOT the clear winner in security and features.
This is going to be a bit of a rant, I ain’t gonna lie, but sometimes, you have to correct things you know are wrong. But hey, maybe I am not correct in many things either so, feel free to respond to this too.
Kyle, I am very grateful for everything you as a developer, and also co-administrating a pretty cozy instance on Mastodon, but this article didn’t really have that many good points—in the opinion of an Android fanboy such as me, lol.
So, since this is my blog, I’ll just write the reasons I consider many of the arguments brought up in this case are wrong—from a certain point of view.
I have to admit, that in a way, Security is the one factor where Apple has a certain advantage, but does it really?
Apple is a closed ecosystem, so, once its compromised, we have to rely on them to fix it. With Android, we can switch, we can upgrade, we can build from source, we can remove system apps and do whatever. Of course it is not always easy and its a burden on the regular user—one does have to get to work and get dirty with some things.
Also, in Android we can usually get apps (at least the FOSS ones) directly from developers and whatever distribution methods they provide (GitHub, F-Droid, Websites), without having to rely on the app store itself. This argument could be used against a Distro Repository, or F-Droid itself. But I would rather trust people and systems I can even contribute to, instead of a corporation.
Apple has a single point of failure and we have to put all our trust in them, simple as that.
I mean, Android has more features—and it is much more flexible. There is simply no comparison. When it comes to interface and design, it is just a matter of taste. Both old and young people can struggle using an Apple device just as much as they struggle with Android. And you can get Android phones with physical keyboards, different screen sizes and features according to your needs.
Apple likes to refine things to a level that sometimes makes no sense, and then they also like to pretend it never existed. Just look at the dynamic island, have you ever heard of any new uses for it since it came out? And look at widgets, they maybe more fancy, but they are nowhere near as useful as on Android, and their potential is very limited, they end up unnoticed and underused, unless they can make money out of it, I guess, like getting rid of the headphone jack, or having a bunch of MagSafe add-ons.
Privacy is a matter of scope nowadays, you can’t be fully private if you have a connection to the internet, but you can choose who you want to be private from.
I don’t trust Apple with my data, and I don’t trust Google with my data. Or maybe I do, I have YouTube, I can use YouTube, but I can also use a frontend for it if I want, which can also serve as a proxy and anonymize me.
But wait! Apple won’t let you install those app frontends like Newpipe or so. At least you can use the brower you want to check websites frontends right? NO, gotta stick to Safari. Or you can use a skin that is just frontend of Safari to watch a frontend of YouTube of course, very fun!—alright enough getting off topic.
Similarly, Android can be used in its AOSP form thanks to a good amount of custom ROMs, maintained by the community. Of course, you have to trust those random developers. But again, I’d rather trust them than Apple or any corporation.
Yes Apple has a bunch of privay claims and they somewhat fulfill them, but it really feels like a marketing strategy rather than something they do just because it is the right thing to do.
Android apps can support multiple Android versions, you can still install modern versions of many apps on Phones running versions like Android 8 (Oreo) or even older.
I may be wrong, but I think that as soon as an iOS version stops getting support, there are really no more app updates for it. Of course they give you a lot of updates for a long time, but Android is catching up on that regard too! At least with some vendors. Not to mention custom ROMs.
While interactions between devices is not as smooth as what Apple can do. Android has a lot of apps that help achieve similar functionality. Kyle mentions the seamlessness of Google products and services, but I don’t use either of them. I can do wit DAVx5 (Calendar and contact sync), Nextcloud (Cloud file storage, also interacts with DAVx5), KDE Connect (Computer and phone sync, share clipboard, and a lot more), Syncthing (Cloudless file sync) and similar tools that get the job done in many regards. And a bunch of these 3rd party apps can’t even work on iOS, so you are stuck with what Apple offers you and not much more.
App Store is controlled by Apple and they are evil.
Play Store is controlled by Google and they are evil.
Apple is barely following EU regulations in the worst possible way regarding their walled garden practices, and I don’t think any upcoming new changes they may have to do will still make it worth it.
Android let’s you install apps from 3rd party sources. You can use F-Droid (FOSS app store, I recommend the Droid-ify client), Obtainium (Fetch app updates from multiple sources, usually the developers themselves), Aurora Store (Get apps from Google servers, without a Google account), and many other options, some more trusted than others, of course.
There’s a lot not to like about Android as it is offered by Google and OEMs, but the community behind it offers a bunch of ways to stray away from the surveillance and data mining that goes on. Apple says they do things, and we have to trust them, but when they don’t, who can hold them accountable anyway? I just don’t trust Apple, and Google sucks too.
Give up on Google, give up on Apple, give up on an easy life and just install a Custom ROM on some random Xiaomi phone while you can, or get a used Pixel that works just as well if not better.
Just kidding, I have Google on my phone, I have to use banking apps now and I gave up on my privacy and freedom and we are all doomed.
This is day 19 of #100DaysToOffload
]]>If I recall correctly I bought a couple games on my phone, maybe a season pass once. And a couple years ago I bought Cross Code, Axiom Verge and Hollow Knight. I still don’t finish any of the games I’ve bought somehow, adult life is a sad little thing.
Of course, I also have an Epic Games account with a bunch of games, such as Celeste, The Batman trilogy, the Tomb Raider Trilogy, the Bioshock trilogy, and tons of other games I’ve acquired over the years for free. I don’t think I actually own any of the games in there but I can play them at least.
Whatever, since I got my Switch, I discovered and rediscovered a bunch of games that I want. But I also found myself wishing to just, play the games I already own on my Switch.
Seriously, I wanna play Hollow Knight, I paid the price on Steam, why can’t I have it on my Switch? Why does the world have to be like this??
At the very least, why can’t I drag and drop (or cp
) my savedata from my computer to my Switch’s filesystem?
Paying the same thing multiple times just because is so annoying. Sure if it takes some effort to port a game ask for payment, but if your engine can just export to whatever format you want, why.
Don’t get me wrong, there are many games that offer a DRM free copy for it—some even add a Steam key—for just a few bucks. But that doesn’t solve the issue of running them on my Switch, or any other console.
I am probably just going to buy the games I want again—and not complete them for another year maybe— but I’ll be very upset about it. 😤
I am really considering to just get my OLED model chipped and call it a day, get whatever I desire on it, it would be so liberating and fun.
Maybe I’ll get a Steam Deck…
This is post 76 of #100DaysToOffload. Have a good rest of your day, fellow reader. 😊
]]>@Doctor_Derp asks: Do you like waffles/pancakes/french toast?
Yes, I like them all, I eat them all, I enjoy them all, good food.
Konstantin asks: what’s your favorite kind of coffee?
I think it would be American coffee? It’s just coffee with a couple spoons of sugar and fresh milk. Café con leche!
I also like Café de Olla.
Clayton asks: What was your first computer and what lead you to love technology and FOSS?
This is a hard one, I remember playing with my father’s laptops a few times, there was this cereal box motorcycle racing game that I found quite fun. I think I still have it.
My first desktop was some sort of HP thing with 512 MB of RAM, running Windows XP and quite a bit of very slow hard drive storage. I remember trying a CD of FIFA 07 for PC and it ran pretty well. I didn’t really care about FOSS until 2016 or so, when I discovered F-Droid and custom ROMs, but still, it was more because of the free as in gratis, I didn’t care much about the freedom for another couple years when I started to care about game development, discovered Godot, then Linux, and the rest is history. I may go into more detail in a biggee post.
Rogue asks: Any rare games you’ve been wanting to find and play on your PSP?
I don’t really have anything I can’t find 😉 … But there are some games I’ve been meaning to play. One of those games is Riviera: The Promised Land, it sounds neat, and it is a JRPG, I don’t know what else to say.
Hyde asks: What do you think of those youtubers that do some boxing?
I don’t know who does that, not really following that side of YouTube, but the few times I’ve heard about that I found out there’s also Chess-Boxing where you do a round of boxing and another of chess, and I think that sounds kind of fun.
Benjamin Hollon asks: If you could do anything full-time without having to worry about money or other factors, what would that dream job be?
Traveling is probably the answer—not really a dream job though.
Honestly I would probably like to do game development, I really enjoyed it during the pandemic and it was fun, I would use some of my infinite money to get a powerful desktop and some instruments to make my soundtracks and learn more about everything. I liked making games. Maybe even be in charge of just directing it, having a full team of well paid people to help me achieve my vision—I don’t know that vision yet, though.
82Mhz asks: What brought you to blogging and having a website in the first place?
I kind of answered this question already! In my previous blogpost. In short, I found out about the fediverse, about the small web community and Linux, and I decided to start blogging once I discovered Kev Quirk’s 100 Days To Offload challenge.
CactoChameleon9 asks: Do you have any interesting short term or long term ambitions?
I just want to have a job that allows me to have 2 free days and where I just have to be in front of a computer doing whatever I’m asked to do, I want to have enough time to keep blogging, doing my hobbies and discovering new ones. I would like to code or expand on one of the videogames I’ve developed, as a solo project of mine, and earn some money that way too—it would still be FOSS though.
I would like to have a family, have kids, teach them everything I know as soon as possible, specially origami! They would be bilingual, solve rubiks cubes, do yo-yo tricks and be the coolest kids at school, But I also want to be able to accept their choices in life—unless that choice involves not doing origami. 😤
Wouter asks: Why isn’t your top 25 GOAT list on your blog, and why don’t you talk a little bit about each entry?
Oh yeah, that was going to be a future blog! I kind of did it on a whim, I will expand on my choices later and think this through more in depth, it should be fun! I meant to do it but I kinda forgot, so thanks to the reminder… proceeds to forget again.
For now these are all the answers for the questions I could find, if you have anymore questions feel free to leave them somewhere! This was really fun, actually—let’s do it again!
This is post 74 of #100DaysToOffload. Have a good rest of your day, fellow reader. 😊
]]>Thankfully, a few months ago, it was finally possible! Since July of this year I’ve been the proud owner of a Nintendo Switch OLED, Tears of the Kingdom edition! Yes, pretty much a single game (and a very decent salary from my internship) gave me the push I needed to own my very first console acquired with my own money.
Additionally, I have a lot of good friends who own Nintendo Switch game cards, and its been a lot of fun, because I get to borrow their single player games and enjoy them without much worries, since they already played them I am also free to take my time with them.
The system itself is great, I bought a transparent case for it that makes the joycons easier to hold in handheld mode, since ergonomics were one of the complaints people have with the console and I could feel the pain during the first few days too. I eventually got a 3rd party controller that made the experience lot more comfortable as well.
After a while its been all fantastic. Besides the games I’ve borrowed. I also bought my own games in physical format, and I even acquired some digital games.
All the games I’ve played look absolutely awesome in the OLED screen, and I was surprised at how nicely they all play. Yes, there are some hiccups here and there in some areas in some games. The hardware was already outdated when it came out, but the optimizations done by Nintendo and some notable developers are commendable. Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak runs buttery smooth and it looks absolutely wonderful, for example.
When it comes to indie games, the story is even better. There are so many great games, and they run perfectly, since they’re not as demanding as Triple A titles. Also they are pretty much discounted all the time in the eShop. This is a minefield for me, I’ve already bought like 5 games that I have barely played. So I decided to at least wait until Christmas to see if discounts are even better then.
I am not a fan of digital media, I know I just said there are some great deals on the Nitendo eShop, but I still feel uneasy about it, where will my library go, the money I spent, in 6 or 8 years? Its one of the caveats that worry me quite a bit.
Especially because there are more and more rumors regarding a “Nitendo Switch 2” that may make my console obsolete. If the Switch was easy to crack I would not care at all, I am very much into modding, rooting and doing whatever to devices I own. However, there are still many risks that I don’t know if I’m willing to take.
For now, I just want to enjoy what I have. I am still playing a ton and having a great time. Honestly my purchase was worth it purely because of the 40 hours I’ve played on Breath of the Wild so far.
If my PSP has lasted me for 13 years, I don’t see why I can’t do the same with my Switch! Now that I think about it, if a next-gen console comes out, Switch games may get cheaper! There are so many of them out there, and stores will want to make space for the new titles, so maybe it won’t be as bad as I fear. I remain hopeful.
This is post 67 of #100DaysToOffload
]]>As always, my hobbies come in waves, and this is no exception. I recently had added a bunch of new roms and isos to my psp, and I had also started to back them up in my Raspberry Pi server. I was doing this in many ways, via the user interface, using a file manager and also via the good old terminal, which proved to be the best, as expected.
Maybe three weeks ago, I decided to do a full backup of my PSP
folder, since I didn’t trust my microSD card enough. The folder contains pretty much everything important to me: savedata, homebrew files, emulators, and of course, games. I backed everything up to my server using rsync
without any problem.
Recently I wanted to do some cleaning up of unused games and launchers I had made, and I decided to delete some folders. You see, using the game categories plugin for my PSP lets me create, well, categories, that show up in my PSP game list. Since all of my categories have the CAT_
prefix, I pretty much just did rm -rf CAT_
and used Tab… The terminal is too powerful for me sometimes…
I ended up deleting my Emulators folder, which contained the emulators I listed on my what’s on my psp post, as well as all my games, my save files and config.
So, if it wasn’t because my past self decided to create a backup out of this, I would be emotionally in shackles.
I did lose some hours of Metroid Zero Mission, Mario and Luigi Super Star Saga and also some recently added romhacks like A Link To The Past Redux and EarthBound Redux. Thankfully, it really wasn’t that bad, in the end it was only a couple bossfights and some upgrades that got lost.
I am so glad I didn’t delete my PSP’s SAVEDATA
folder though, now that would make me cry.
Do your backups people.
This is day 58 of #100DaysToOffload
]]>Look, I still love to play around with custom roms and rooting, I know a lot of people have accepted reality and stuck with whatever comes by default on their phones, maybe disabling google services and other things like that.
Others have gone with a Pixel, and I’ve even seen FOSS advocates and Linux users, going for the iPhone and calling it a day, its a very sad, yet common ocurrence.
What I want is very simple:
That’s it. I don’t care about the camera, a small size would be nice but I don’t care too much, I don’t particularly mind if rooting is annoying or difficult as long as its possible. I have asked in some places and have noted down some of my options.
The Pixel 6 or 6A is the easy choice when it comes to rooting and custom roms, but I give up my sd card slot, it probably have to be used so the battery may not be best and I would also lose a physical SIM. Besides, the Pixel is not easily available in Mexico and signal issues are common with them, which is pretty sad, still I would love to try the huge ROM catalog available for this.
Another one that has been in my list is the Nothing Phone, it would be a fun one, but I would lose my SD card slot, still everything else seems to be there and the design would be super unique, the only problem is that it is over my budget, but I can save for a bit more without trouble. I would love to have this fun just because I would be the only one with it, but still, it does not have everything I want.
Then there’s Xiaomi, be it the Poco F5, or the Redmi Note 12 Pro or something like that, their phones are cheap, and they have everything except maybe the SD card slot in some options, also the amount of roms is not as big when the phone’s new, or maybe they’re only limited to MIUI variants. Its also a bit more annoying to root, you have to wait around a week to unlock the bootloader, but it is posible. I quite like their phones, and since I would be using roms their buggyness and adware would not affect me that much.
Still, there are tons of other options to consider, maybe an older flagship device could be better, or a last gen Xiaomi phone too. Regardless, I am honestly not happy with anything. I think the only thing that would make this fun for me is if I go with the Pixel, give up on expansion storage and just enjoy the amount of personalization I will get out of it. Some people say they can have buggy updates, but I will be using my own roms and updating at my own pace anyways. If you have any phone suggestions please let me know!
This is day 52 of #100DaysToOffload
]]>Anyway, it was nowhere near as nice as using a proper charger, since the laptop’s output was incredibly slow. Thankfully I didn’t use it much, and if I did, it was still plugged, so I didn’t really care. The first night was alright, I left my phone connected through my sleep and nothing of interested happened when I woke up that day.
However, the morning after that one, I woke up to a phone that was incredibly hot. I felt it through my pillow, while it was still rather early. I immediately unplugged it and in my panic I decided to leave it in the freezer for a few minutes. I tooted about the event, and from there I’ve been a lot more worried about my phone’s longevity.
You may be wondering, why would my phone heat so much, since the previous day was fine? I had no idea. But I did something different. At first, I left my laptop on, and it went to sleep and turned off the display all by itself while still logged in. The next day, however, I logged off and closed the lid. Maybe some process or daemon that manages the USB port got interrupted or something, but it is what it is, and I can only wonder the exact reason behind the overheating. The worst thing is that the phone didn’t even charge to 100%, but I guess that was actually a good thing, maybe I would have ended up with an inflated battery, or worse.
After the incident, I installed a couple of apps, such as Battery Guru and GSam Battery Monitor. It had honestly been a while since I was so worried about battery life. My Redmi Note 8 has always been reliable, and I always have just enough battery, as long as I don’t play games for too long. So, with a bit of self-control it has never been that bad.
Now I started to feel like my battery lasts less time than before. I don’t trust myself of course, since I feel like it’s just a placebo and my battery is as good as it can be after 2 years of usage. Perhaps just a single day being super hot won’t actually affect the battery that much.
Honestly, I’ve been using my phone for 2 years already, living a life of Custom ROM hopping since its bootloader got unlocked, and it still rocks Android 13 like a champ. I can live charging it a bit more often anyway.
For now, I installed Battery Charge Limit to get it to never charge beyond 80% (it requires root access), to learn to live with a bit less, for a longer period of time. But who knows, its possible that I’ll get to get a new phone this year and pass this one down to my younger siblings. If you want to help with that you can always send me a tip or something ;)
Sorry for being shameless, but I had to try…
This is day 38 of #100DaysToOffload
]]>I had been interested on updating my Mi Band 4 for a while now, funnily enough, a YouTube review channel I actually trust finally dropped their opinion on it after like 2 months since the Mi Band 7 came out, I found a really good deal online and even convinced my dad decided to get one for himself too.
I was excited and really happy with the device, I actually shared a couple posts on Mastodon about my purchase. The Mi Band 7 is a nice product, and I don’t have any complains for the most part. During the last 3 weeks my sleep statistics were not being recorded by the app. This was annoying, but I didn’t even realize until later.
Despite my shiny new gadget, I started to feel the itch to use some of the watches I already owned. Perhaps it was nostalgia, or maybe I was influenced by the appearance of the Casio F-91W in Stranger Things’ 4th season, or maybe the new watch a friend got at work and happens to also have a small collection. Anyways, tons of factors coming into play proving my free will is only an illusion 🙃.
I have 2 analog watches that were gifted to me years ago, as well as a Casio F-108W. They were all in need of some fix, a battery replacement for the analogs, and a new strap for the Casio. I got them all working, and started to wear them again.
It was at that time that I shared the toot that started it all, and the replies got a little crazy for a bit, especially the Casio wearers among the crowd. Of course I and many others jumped on the bandwagon that still prevails after a couple weeks, funnily enough.
So, my smartband, which I bought in August, had now been relegated to staying in my backpack or pocket, still counting my steps, and to being worn at night to see if sleep tracking started working again – It actually did after an update a couple days ago, awesome!
Yesterday I finally bought a Casio F-91W for myself, and it was quite a fun story. I was planning to do it a week earlier, in a small store downtown, which is the only place where I could find it (other than online), I could not afford it at that time since I expected it to be cheaper. Funnily enough, when I asked again this time around, the seller actually gave me a lower price – reducing it by a 2 bucks.
He actually explained how the price fluctuates from time to time, although I suspect he may have recognized me from the previous week and decided to lower the price to get me to buy it. Anyways, I happily paid for it this time, since the cost now matched the one from online stores, without having to wait for it to arrive.
So, currently, I have 2 casios, 2 analog watches and a Mi Band 7, I gave my previous band to a sibling. At this point I guess I’ll start a collection of affordable watches, since thanks to some generous donations I’ll be able to get an AE-1200 this week. I think I’ll stop there for the time being, but I plan to get something for Christmas too.
I’ve also gotten a bit more conscious about my clothing and looks. I don’t really care about current fashion trends and stuff, but I’ve been trying to look a bit more presentable and I’ve even let my sisters pick some outfits for me and stuff like that. I guess I care a bit more about the impression I give to people, I am growing a beard too, which is going quite well, if I do say so myself.
The plan I have for now is to wear whatever watch I want (I am rocking my F-91W while typing all this), have my smartband with me to keep track of steps, wear it at night to keep track of sleep, rinse and repeat. I really don’t feel the need to have constant heart tracking and stuff. If I excercise, I can just wear it during those moments. I haven’t really been able to excercise constantly, I want to do it but I just don’t give myself the time for it, I still have to work a bit more to get my life in order.
]]>The decision of getting new earbuds was made from the start, since the pair I already had fell pretty hard on the floor, and one of the beans broke a little. It still worked, and it sounded fine, but the other side which was still physically intact got volume issues, and it was not as strong as the other.
My previous pair were the Haylou GT1 Pro, which costed me around $25 USD. They’ve served me well. But, I mean, they’re 25 bucks, you can’t expect much from them (nor from this “review”).
I lived with wired earphones until late 2018. The quality of them was mixed, some were the ones that came with the phone (remember those times?), others were iPod style clones, and most were budget Sony earphones that costed me around $8, and were pretty good for the price.
Back to a few days ago. When we got to Walmart and I ran to the tech section, I saw some of the cool Samsung, Pixel and Apple products which were $150 or so, I immediately looked for something cheaper than that. Below I saw some more affordable options. JBL, Soundcore, Onn and others I didn’t know at all. I was not convinced by any of them. I saw some that advertised ANC and other features that I was kinda interested in, but I knew enough to know that even if those features “worked”, they would not compare to the real deal.
I was losing hope, until I noticed in the top right corner of the bottom section, hidden from the view of most, there was Sony, a brand I recognized, although the model, not so much (We all know Sony sucks at naming their products).
I decided to go for them. There was free internet in the store, so I looked up a couple reviews and decided to get them, without really getting to know a lot, since at that moment my parents were ready to checkout and go somewhere else.
I got the Sony WF-C500, and I have been trying them for 4 days or so, while doing work, walking and sleeping.
They are incredibly comfortable. Sony’s designers have a made a great work, this model is really similar to their top of the line earbuds such as the ones Kev bought. They fit nicely in my ears and I did not wake up with my ears in pain, as I used to do so before.
The controls are physical buttons. Some reviews may say that you can feel them pressing against your head, which could be uncomfortable, but its perfectly fine for me, it feels more like haptic feedback, its not bothersome.
The one downside is that I cannot turn my head while sleeping, since I could make a button press by mistake, I can place my hand in between my head and my pillow to create some space and avoid false positives. I’ve been sleeping face up more often lately, so this is not really a big issue.
I was surprised at the English voice indications. I got used to Haylou’s sounds effects, but the voice here is quite soothing.
There is no ANC nor Transparency mode. But I can’t miss what I’ve never had, so its a no problem.
Sony has quite a decent app that comes with a great equalizer and some modes available, and they really improve the sound a lot. Its the first time in my life that I’ve been able to notice the equalization actually do something noticeable to improve the music coming to my ears.
The battery life is pretty great. In my first night I forgot to setup a sleep timer for my music. I woke up to the sound and they still were at more than 50%. I may have woken up quite early, but still.
The case only holds an extra full charge, giving around 20 hours total. Its a bit less than what the GT1 Pro had, but the case is a lot more portable, and the earbuds battery life is superior.
There is a bit of white noise when nothing’s playing in my right ear, it is what it is, I can’t notice it when music’s playing, so its not a big deal.
Also, the case has a semi-transparent lid, which looks pretty cool in my humble opinion, it lets the LED indicators shine through it, which is nice.
Overall it was a really satisfying purchase that fits my needs quite perfectly.
]]>But I believe this is the first time that I’ve restrained myself to the same ROM for multiple updates, without any factory reset or wipe of my data. Even mantaining encryption enabled for better security, although I still have superuser enabled via Magisk, but its my phone so deal with it.
This update they fixed plenty of bugs, the most annoying of which was one where the SystemUI stopped working if I accessed an app’s info screen from the recents overview. I also noticed a smoother experience and animations, which are always a little sloppy on 3rd party launchers. Yes, I am still rocking Nova Launcher, its just too good, even if its not FOSS. Don’t bother recommending anything, I’ve tried it all and just keep coming back, sorry.
So yeah, I think I am staying on CR Droid for the time being, the support is great and everything works just fine. So I guess my ROM-hopping has ended when it comes to Android 12 roms. Let’s wait for what 13 has to offer…
]]>So I thought it was about time I went ahead and wrote about the history of devices I’ve owned and played around with, I thought it would be fun to make a trip down memory lane…
First, what did I have before Android was even a thing? Well, I was just a kid back then, so I don’t remember specific models, but I at least know the type of phone and brands I had.
My first cellphone could not do phone calls, it was a Nokia phone that was locked down so it would only work in the US (I didn’t live in the US). It had a green monochrome screen that served me well to play simple games such as Snake and Space Impact. It was a wonderful little thing with tons of battery and fun, it resembled a classic Nokia 3310, but the up and down keys were in the middle (Kinda like the 3510, but I remember the keys being separated). I have not found a picture of it anywhere.
After that, my second device would be a Sony Ericcson, after some googling I was able to find that it was a K300i. I remember playing a Darts game on it, as well as recording a lot of videos of me practicing magic tricks, the quality was not great, but kinda decent back then. Again, I didn’t really had a SIM card, so no phone calls.
There was another phone that I really liked, because it finally had a QWERTY keyboard, it was an LG phone with a Windows Mobile OS, it was really fun. This was one of the first times I tried side-loading stuff, I realized the phone could run java apps, so I found a version of Plants vs Zombies and managed to get it running on it. It didn’t run great, but it was cool nonetheless.
Looks like LG made a ton of phones with QWERTY keyboards, so I couldn’t quite find the model I used to have. I remember its keys were all separated, instead of being like a single grid, they were all a bit spaced out, and it was quite squared, the body was not as rounded as some of the models I saw online.
When Android came out, I remember the talks about it, one of my most clear memories were a friend who thaught Android apps where pirated versions of iOS, and that’s why they were free on Android’s Marketplace and paid in the App Store.
I really defended Android back then, I remember phones like the Samsung Galaxy Ace taking over the budget market, and stuff like the Galaxy S phones growing in popularity. I also remember the Galaxy Young ripping everyone off with its terrible performance compared to its older brothers.
Back then my dad didn’t really like smartphones, and didn’t feel the need for one, and my mom had a similar sentiment. But one day we ended up at a gas station where they had an electronics store, my dad was buying a FM radio transmitter for the car. I saw some phones there, and I somehow convinced him on the spot to get a phone for mom. It was some terrible chinese knock-off that was super cheap. It ran android 2.3.5 and it kinda sucked, it was already out of date when we got it, I remember around that time learning about Nova Launcher and icons packs, and it all required Android 2.3.6 or 4.0.
It didn’t take long for my mom to give up on the touch keyboard and get another phone. The thing actually had quite a lot of buttons compared to today’s navigation gestures; along the volume and power buttons, there also was a Search, Menu, Home, Back and Overview buttons, which is kinda interesting.
I ended up getting it, and I was very happy, at least it had some things that modern phones lack, like a removable battery, a TV antenna that also worked for FM radio (without needing plugged in headphones) and an SD card slot.
I got Whatsapp, games like Flow Free, Pou, or Zombie Highway, and it was quite great. Sadly, I didn’t have a lot of storage, just updating from the Android Market to the Play Store left me with enough space for a couple other apps. So I was quite limited.
Eventually the battery inflated and I did not bother to look for a replacement it, I wasn’t even aware of stuff like that just yet.
I actually still have the box of this device, but it had another thinner box around it that contained all the information, so the actual container does not say anything.
The next phone I got was once again passed down by my mother. She got an HTC Status, also known as the HTC ChaCha, and it had a QWERTY keyboard and Android 2.3.6, still.
I really liked its interface, it looked really nice, with great animations and a skeumorphic look that rivaled Apple’s. Sadly, the horizontal screen limited the apps that worked on it, they just didn’t look right. It had a direct Facebook button, which I found quite annoying since I didn’t have an account (although I wanted one, back then). The storage was, once again, quite limited so I never really had a chance to explore too much with it. I did try a couple of launchers and icon packs tho, like Smart Launcher 3 and an icon pack called Goolors, which is not available anymore. Most other launchers were vertical only though.
It was not until the Samsung Galaxy S III mini, passed down to me by my father around 2015, that I finally got the chance to play around with root access and custom roms. I remember that I bricked it the first day I got it, I was so eager to mess with it, and I flashed the wrong recovery. Thankfully, Odin was a thing and flashing the stock rom was not hard at all. I decided to wait for a while (only a couple days, actually 😅) to try again. I eventually found out about the rom mantainer’s website of the different roms available for my device, so I stopped relying on specific YouTube tutorials.
I was very happy during this time, I tried a ton of roms, many mods of the stock samsung UI (Touchwiz), stuff like Carbon or Resurrection Remix, with versions like Android KitKat, Lollipop, up to Marshmellow and even Nougat. It was a great time.
Sadly, out of nowhere, my phone died completely, it just stopped turning on. I actually had two Galaxy S III minis, but the second one was locked down, so, again, no phone calls, it worked for a while though, until I managed to fully submerge it in water, and it ended up dying months later, the charging port was also quite messed up, so it wasn’t even charging properly already.
I ended up going back to the HTC Status for a while, with only Whatsapp, Facebook Lite and Geometry Dash installed on it, anything else would not fit, at the time I realized there was a 4.0 custom rom somewhere, but I never bothered trying it out.
It took until now to finally get a new phone, that was actually new. I had saved some money, and my dad would pay half of it, I wanted a Xiaomi Redmi 5A, codename: Riva; it was a really good phone for the price, pretty low end, but good enough for me, since I knew it had good rom support, even today I think it has some Android 12 roms available.
I remember I spent a couple months running MIUI on it, I kinda liked it to be honest, it worked just fine. However the limitations it had on background processes, and the bad support for auto-fill were a bummer. It was around this time that I started to get interested in using FOSS, and since Bitwarden, my password manager at the time, did not work properly, I decided to try out some custom roms.
Once again, I got the wrong recovery for it, I was getting some blurry lines instead of the proper interface, turns out that the recovery to install Android Pie roms or Android 10 was different, but thankfully it was a matter of running an ADB command and flashing the right thing. It did scare me though, so I waited a couple weeks until I tried again, this time I succeded and got into the world of custom roms once again.
This was the first device where I could try pretty much everything without worrying about compatibility. I only had 16 GB of storage, but I learned to live with that just fine.
Sadly, once again the charging port was starting to show its age and quality, becoming looser and faulty. If there was anything that made me want to switch phones, it would be the lack of a fingerprint scanner, and that it still used microUSB for charging, other than that it was pretty awesome, I could probably still use it today, since I kinda like the small form factor too, which is even less common today.
And finally, we arrive at my current phone, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 8, codename: ginkgo. Yet again I saved up half of the price and my dad completed it. I remember being so excited about it, since it would be the biggest step up since the S III mini. I would be having a current gen phone for the first time, even if it would be a mid-range phone, its more than enough.
I have to admit there were not a lot of new things that weren’t possible with my S III mini or my Redmi 5A, but just type C charging and updated hardware is more than enough for me, not to mention the great support for custom firmware.
Its the phone where I’ve managed to go degoogled for the longest time (if you don’t count the ocasional browser logins for Google Classroom and other school shenanigans).
I am still really happy with my current device, and I don’t see myself switching at least for another year. For the future I am looking forward to getting a Google Pixel 6A or 7A, whatever is latest when I have to change. Or I might go with another chinese phone if they still have Snapdragon chips, since they have not been in the Redmi Note series for a while, as far as I’ve seen.
There were other less important dumb phones I used too, but I didn’t see the point on mentioning them since I don’t remember their model or anything interesting I did on them.
It has been fun to write all this, I was remembering stuff on the spot and many fun memories returned to me. It was quite a wordy post this time around, vacations seem to be going quite well.
I hope more people try doing this, I got the idea from a post by Ru, so maybe you’ll be inspired too.
]]>The website that hosts it is still up and running, despite showing a bit of age, you should be able to download it from there.
I discovered this homebrew a few years ago, back when I was playing Monster Hunter Freedom Unite online making use of the now dead EvolveHQ service (A VPN of sorts) and also Hunsterverse, but I had no use for it up until recently.
I was trying my best trying to defeat a boss in Hollow Knight, which I recently acquired, and found myself unable to move quickly enough. I know I am better using a controller, so I went ahead and used this, and, while I knew it worked fine on Windows, I was quite happy to see that it also works perfectly fine on Steam.
I tried it in other games with mixed results, so I guess I’ll have to figure out some more stuff, or maybe just switch to a distro more focused on gaming, I feel more and more tempted by the day, but I want to stay on Void for a little longer.
Anyways, this post is just a quick write up on a fantastic tool I think more people should know, I think I should talk about some other PSP homebrew, sadly, a lot of it is not open source and probably abandonware, since the PSP hacking scene died a while ago.
I think, however that there are still quite a few things being developed for the PSP, besides the already huge library of games and emulators, I think even stuff like Doki Doki Literature Club have been ported to it, and you can also setup a Minecraft server on it!.
So yeah, the PSP is not only a great emulation gaming machine, its also a pretty decent PC controller, at least when certain games properly support it, or maybe its Flatpak being weird, or some other random setting, who knows?.
This has been day 77 of #100DaysToOffload
]]>But of course, I had to get a Raspberry Pi, and I just cannot stop being distracted by it. During the first couple of days I decided to try and move my website to it, self host a few things and try some new programs.
Sadly, despite my best efforts, I was unable to open the necessary ports to the world, so I wont be able to self host at the moment. Thankfully, it looks like the network in the area we live will be updated to fiber. We will get some new modems and maybe the software and configuration allow me to have it working before this year ends.
After failing to use my Pi as a web server, I decided to at least use it as an local ad blocker, so everyone at my house can enjoy an ad-free experience. To do this easily, I used a software known as pi-hole.
Setting it up was extremely simple, I only had to run a simple script and then configure my router to use my Raspi as its main DNS. I added a few more host lists, blocked some specific domains, set up dark mode for the web UI, and voilá!
It has worked quite well for me and my family, from time to time an ad will appear, but I just had to add it to the blacklist and say I won’t see it again!
I have to use this device for a a University class, but I will only have to access it via ssh, since we’ll probably do code for it and I already know how to live in VIM and of course, the terminal. I will love to teach my classmates a little bit about how Linux works thanks to this class, the teacher is a bit too strict tho, and does not like interruptions, so I am going to try and behave instead of correcting him everytime he pronounces commands in a weird way…
This has been day 53 of #100DaysToOffload
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