Posts by Dave 126

Samsung Galaxy S21: Lots of little downgrades, but this phone is more than the sum of its parts

When phones shipped with 8 or 16 GB, one could see the use for a microSD card slot. However, now phones have 128 or 256 GB of very fast and encrypted storage, the need is less obvious.

The clamouring for SD card slots in phones is beginning to look like mere dogma. I may be wrong, and if so I'd like to hear a reasoned argument in favour of them.

(The only vaguely sensible use case is for for prerecorded media (I wouldn't trust an SD card to maintain write data rates for all video types) but how many movies do you want to take to the Gobi desert - or anywhere else with no data wireless data access? SD cards *can* be encrypted, but then you can't swap it into a camera or music player. Personal and professional documents on an unencrypted card are a no no. )

Re: Already switched away....

Well there's a reason that people don't use 'digital zoom' often - one gets the same results afterwards by cropping.

Re: Continuous improvement

To clarify, the S range has started to become diverse, with the plain Sx and then the Sx Ultra, with the latter having the bleeding edge features.

Quick charge devices DO charge quickly over USB PD

Sorry mate, you've got your (charging) wires crossed here:

I have a Galaxy S8 (with Quick Charge). I was at a friend's once and used the Apple USB C power brick that was supplied with their MacBook (not the Air, not the Pro) and my phone charged quickly whilst displaying 'Fast Charging' on the lock screen.

One careful driver: Make room in the garage... Bloodhound jet-powered car is up for sale

Re: Perhaps Elon Musk...

> your proposal to have a fighter jet land to do this is probably significantly flawed

It wasn't a proposal, just an illustration. I didn't mean the jet fighter's wheels but a custom-built wheeled cart that the jet lowers to the ground as it is flying 20' above the ground.

As an EV? Well you could retrofit an ion drive, but you'd need a helluva long course in order to accelerate to 800mph at such low thrust. (Joking aside, the air resistance would quickly outweigh the ion drive's thrust. Do the rules state that the land speed record must be held on Earth? The thinner atmosphere of Mars might give you an edge)

Re: Perhaps Elon Musk...

I get a bit of that sort if feeling... There's a whiff of engineering to meet arbitrary criteria (as opposed to engineering for the sake of reaching orbit or rapid reuse, or cost savings etc)... the sheer speed is the easy bit (any number of fighter jets can do it), the hard bit is doing so in a vehicle that has to be touching the ground. Touching the ground (in which case could a jet fighter lower a wheeled cart onto the ground for a mile?) or do the rules explicitly state the vehicle must start on the ground?

In the past, one land speed record was denied because the vehicle only had three wheels, making it a motorcycle in the eyes of one Motorsport organisation. Yeah, arbitrary.

That said, were Elon Musk to buy it it'd be a way of making an entrance to the Burning Man festival, which he is known to attend (as least the terrain is vaguely suitable, unlike say Glastonbury... Might need to fit tractor tyres... Not for grip but to give it greater clearance). And he did buy the submarine Lotus Esprit from that James Bond movie (though he hasn't yet converted it to work as the movie depicted it, which he said he was considering)

Smartphones are becoming like white goods, says analyst, with users only upgrading when their handsets break

Re: Just off S8

At least you can fall back on wireless charging on the S8

Re: They all look the same these days....

Form follows function, so yeah, these things that people use for viewing text and video do all look like screens.

Re: New Features

Google's Pixel magic algorithms originally came from efforts to coax usable images out of the camera on the Google Glass (a camera module which was even smaller than the sensors used on phones at the time or today). And yeah, Google, like Apple and later Qualcomm et al developed hardware accellerators to be baked into their SoCs for this sort of computation.

I wouldn't let yourself be confused by the mere accident of history that led to us referring to our pocket internet terminals / connected PDAs as 'phones', though. The 'core function(s)' of the general purpose device depends upon the individual user.

Interdependent variables

... and self-fulfilling prophecies.

Example:

User in 2018 needs a new phone for whatever reason. They notice that the latest phones don't represent a massive upgrade over their last phone, compared to the advances that they saw in their past upgrades. The user can't imagine any near future phone as suddenly introducing a 'must have' new feature or being leaps and bounds ahead of existing phones.

Therefore: they decide that whatever phone they buy will do a good job for next few years. Having decided that they will be buying a phone for next several years they spend a bit more on it (to get full features, wireless charging, waterproofing, nice screen, better camera, whatever). Knowing it is a pricier model that has to last them for years, they use a good case, screen protectors, and generally take good care if it.

In short, some variables may be independent, some variables interact with each other.

Apple: Magsafe on the iPhone 12 may interfere with pacemakers and cardiac defibrilators

Re: One can suspend MacBooks with a magnet too

> isn't allowed in the kitchen when the microwave is on, on doctors orders. Engineers here have claimed that is paranoid,

Malfunctioning microwave ovens are not unheard of. It is possible, for example, for the door latch switch to malfunction, allowing the device to emit radion even without the door being completely closed.

That said, the biggest heart health issue associated with microwaves is that they encourage the consumption of ready meals. Since vegetables produce bitter-tasting compounds after they are cut, a ready meal requires more sugar and salt to taste acceptable than a meal you've prepared by chopping your own vegetables. There is also some evidence to suggest that the act of cutting vegetables and activity preparing food causes your body to anticipate the coming meal, and thus digest it in a healthier way.

You can drive a car with your feet, you can operate a sewing machine with your feet. Same goes for computers obviously

Re: "the occasional overheated Apple III motherboard"

Another fix that involves a bed is for XBOX 360s 'red ring of death' which was caused by poor understanding of the newly mandated lead-free solder in its design. Some folk reported that turning the console on and then wrapping in a duvet or towel would bring the console back to life. The reasoning was that by preventing the machine from cooling itself the solder would soften and repair the cracks, at least for a while.

Re: Foot pedal

Touche! I was no more aware of dictaphone foot pedals than the customer was of of mouses!

Well,a vague bell has rung in my head now you've brought it to my attention, but even before doing so I was thinking of sewing machines, pianos, organs, guitars, electric keyboards with sustain pedals...

Nothing new since the microwave: Let's get those home tech inventors cooking

New heating methods

Microwaves seem like magic. Induction hob heating ditto. Perhaps we can heat food through friction? If you fired a potato from a cannon at a walk with sufficient speed, would enough if this kinetic energy be degraded to heat to cook the spud? Perhaps using a magnetic railgun instead of a canon (to avoid tainting the spud with the taste of gunpowder) would work, if you wrapped the spud in a ferrous metal foil?

Mantis shrimp can create bubbles of plasma by sheer kinetic force from their claws... Perhaps this mechanism can be adopted to cook (or merely sterilise as I'm led to believe shock waves can kill bacteria) food?

Re: Smart heating system?

A good number of people, as they are driving to the airport for a family holiday, are haunted by thoughts of 'Did I leave the gas / iron / heating on?'

The ability to check and remotely turn off such things would bring peace of mind to many individuals.

Of course many people are friends with their neighbours and leave them a key. Others folk though, perhaps new to to an area, or too busy, haven't built that level of trust.

Loser Trump's last financial disclosure docs reveal Tim Cook gave him $5,999 Mac Pro, the 'first' made in Texas

Re: $5,999

It's hard to think of a task that a home user might do that justifies the extra cost if a Mac Pro. If the user is doing an intensive task so much that the price tag of the Mac Pro is offset by their time savings, they clearly take their hobby damned seriously.

If these tasks are not a hobby or education, then one assumes that they are for work. Hence "workstation". Yeah, it's a single user machine, but more 'professional' than 'personal'. The sums can be done to see if a faster computer allows for projects to be done more quickly, and thus more commissions undertaken and therefore more income generated. Cost / benefit.

> Six grand for what I would describe as eff all storage!

Anyone in the market for a Mac Pro will have redundant network / Thunderbolt storage, which the Mac can access at blistering speeds. The internal SSD is really just to buffer it. Why? Because 1, data on just one machine is vulnerable so it's not kept there, 2, the quantity of data they might need in a month could dwarf the amount of storage you could fit in to any desktop machine 3, if you don't need stupid IO speed for all data (archived) and so use spinning rust, you keep it in away from the workstation because it is noisy.

The value of hard disks from a day's video shoot is equivalent to the day's wage bill for all talent, extras, crew, transport, accomodation, insurance fees etc etc. Yeah, it gets very pricey very quickly. Storage redundancy is designed into every part of the workflow.

Re: $5,999

It's not a personal computer, nor is it sold as such. It makes the jobs of some specialised professionals faster.

It takes up the same space on a desk as a personal conputer once did, and it consumes roughly the same amount of electricity - but we've had about twenty years of Moore's law since then.

Re: A HUNDRED AND FORTY QUID!?

Hacker: "But I have a valuation here that says it's just a cheap reproduction and sononly worth £50"

Sir Humphrey: "The Treasury tends not to accept valuations written on the backs of menus, Minister"

Bernard: "But it is a very fine menu"

UK Prime Minister Johnson knows not when 400k+ deleted records from police DB will be back

Re: oops...

Private Eye saw this coming. When they reported ladt year on the scandalous prosecution of sub postmasters due to Fujitsu cockups, they remarked that it didn't bode well for the police database.

Remember - Fujitsu did not disclose pertinant information and so innocent people went to jail, had their business and reputation wrecked, and in some cases were driven to suicide.

Screw you, gadget-menders! No really, you'll need loads of screwdrivers to fix Apple's AirPods Max headphones

Re: £550 headphones

The job of an audio engineer is to mix audio to bring about an emotional response in other people who are listening using a whole range of speakers and earphones. Often they are doing this job sat down in a noise-insulated room, where open-backed headphones are suitable. They require headphones with a 'neutral response' which convey faithfully what the mixing desk is outputting. A cable between them and the desk is no inconvenience.

(Note: recording studios in the 1950s had listening rooms with cheap speakers of the type found in domestic radio sets... since the radio is how most people would hear new music, it made commercial sense to mix music to sound at its best on low quality speakers. I daresay some music produced today is also tested on, for example, bass-heavy headphones)

However, the end listener when listening to music might be jogging, dancing, sat in a quiet room or in a subway. They require headphones that work in those contexts. Additionally, the listener may have their own tastes, both in musical genre and in EQ. Furthermore, the sound is changed by the fit and seal of the headphones over their ears. Open-backed headphones are not suited to noisier environments or where other people might hear the sound that leaks from them.

> I read somewhere...

Then it *must* be true. /s

https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/apple-airpods-max

https://www.techradar.com/uk/reviews/airpods-max

In the grand scheme of discretional spending, £600 is nothing compared to a leather seat option or B&W speaker option in a German sedan. It's naff-all to someone who chooses to fly business class instead of premium economy. £600 is far less than the difference in price between an OLED TV and a normal LCD TV of equivalent size.

Perhaps a more enlightening way of looking at the question is 'What is the buyer giving up in order to afford these headphones?' - and the answer for many buyers is 'they are giving up nothing'.

Traditionally Noise Cancelling earphones were marketed at airline passengers (as was the very first Walkman, which cost around the equivalent of £600, the first gen iPod ditto), but with less travel and possibly more family members staying in a single house at any one time, the domestic use of ANC headphones seems appealing.

Sidenote: when Concorde was retired, lots of BA-branded Sennheiser HD on-ear headphones were auctioned off... I'm just wondering if the mothballing of passenger aircraft due to Covid will result in their noise cancelling headphones being sold off?

>Surely only an utter idiot (or an Apple fanboi) would buy this at this sort of price

The wireless Sennheisers with ANC are around the £300 mark - much like the Sonys or Bose. Much as I value sound quality, I can't justify spending that much on headphones that leave the house (thus liable to be lost). However, for someone who has no money worries, the decision to spend £300 or £600 really has little to do with their intelligence (maybe they have no money worries because they used their brains, or were just born lucky, or combo of above)

Leaked memo suggests LG is thinking about quitting the smartphone biz in 2021

IIRC, the G2 was the first Android device able to output 24bit 192Khz audio natively. I believe LG gave the necessary software bits to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP).

The LG G2 was a very good all-rounder, and pioneered features that are now common - such as a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor.

However, some of their subsequent flagships were just weird for the sake of being weird.

Well, smaller 0hibrs tend to have smaller batteries, since a smaller screen uses less juice.

You might look at the Samsung XCover Pro - flat screen, ruggedised, 3.5mm port, FM radio, swappable battery, just 6mm wider than your desired width. Enhanced 'glove mode' for wet conditions, user mappable extra button. No IR though. And the aspect ratio is taller than the specs you gave (more text on screen for the same width).

https://m.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover_pro-10001.php

Samsung tones down sticky stuff in the Galaxy S21 series, simplifying repairs massively

Re: very hard to make a phone waterproof with a removable battery

@onemark03

Don't worry about it. Your phone likely has a hydrophilic coating inside in addition to whatever gasket it has around the battery cover.

What is true of every waterproof phone is also true of yours: waterproofing can save your phone from a clumsy moment, but don't tempt fate by 'testing' it!

Waterproofing nothing related to sealed-in batteries

It's an oft repeated myth. There have been plenty of phones with swappable batteries *and* waterproofing in the past, from Samsung and Sony. Also note that the trend to seal in batteries started long waterproofing became mainstream.

These days the waterproofing largely depends upon a factory-applied vapour-deposited hydrophic coating to the phone's innards.

The reason batteries tend to be sealed in to phones is that a swappable battery (unlike a replaceable battery) needs protection from the elements - a hard casing, just like the swappable batteries that power digital cameras. A swappable battery needs a few mm of material to prevent it from being punctured by whatever else lives in your glovebox / handbag / toolbox / rucksack. This few mm of material, translated over the area of the battery, results in a phone containing a fair volume of inert plastic rather than actual battery.

I don't think any phone vendor wants the bad press or publicity that might ensue if some idiot puts a damaged battery in their phone and caused a fire. Or leaves a naked battery on their dashboard in hot weather.

Samsung still make a phone with swappable battery, waterproofing, SD card slot and headphone socket - if you want it, buy it. Otherwise, a lot of people can justify to themselves spending 5-10% of their phone's initial cost every few years on an official battery change, less if they go backstreet or DIY.

The hour grows late, the enemy are at the gates... but could Intel's exiled heir apparent ride to the rescue?

Re: They should rebrand themselves as Penelope...

You don't have to be into pastel colours and Swarovski gems to feel that computer hardware doesn't have to look like a Lamborghini stealth jet as drawn by a 15 year old boy with fluorescent marker pens.

Hmm, I'm thinking a workstation that looks like a scale-model mini Cray supercomputer - the cylindrical ones with the vinyl-clad donut-shaped bench seats around the base. The supplied action man figure comes with a chance of clothing, white shirt and pocket protectors, or shorts, tie die t-shirt and beard.

Or: some cases for NUCs that are 1/4 models of Silicon Graphics workstations... the purple one or the weird teal coloured one. Soooo 90s.

What do I know? My computer looks like a Sony transistor radio, and my speakers are big and have wood veneers!

Apple reportedly planning to revive the MagSafe charging standard with the next lot of MacBook Pros

Re: The irony of 3rd party "magSafe"-like adapters...

I'm tempted by a Magsafe style adaptor for my USB C phone, but unless it's very low profile it will sit proud of my phone's case - potentially transmitting shock from a fall directly to my phone rather than being reduced by the rubbery case.

I might invest in a couple of Qi wireless charging pads instead, and pop a rubbery blanking piece in the phones USB C socket.

Re: Tempting fate?

Magsafe and USB C PD are not mutually exclusive on a laptop, any more than Willing charging and USB C are on a phone.

Re: Magnetic adapters are a thing...

Sony also implemented a magnetically-secured charging system in their Xperia Z phones some time ago. I had the phone but didn't buy the official magnetic cable - or even a cheap 3rd party knock-off (Amazon reviews of the knock-off versions suggested that their magnets were too strong, eventually damaging the phone)

Re: MagSafe was awful.

I can't image Apple moving away from the idea of docking a laptop to monitor, power, storage etc with just a single cable.

Re: SD card reader? Really?

Back in the say, you couldn't realistically use a PC for colour accurate work. This was one of the reasons that Macs survived the 19990s. This thankfully changed some years ago. However, high resolution displays took a long time to be properly supported by Windows (i.e, so that you could view a high Res image without the UI elements of your application be too small). Sadly, even after Microsoft sorted Windows out in this regard, Adobe dragged it's feet for several years, meaning that Photoshop on Windows laptops with high resolution displays was a PITA for viewing high Res images.

Photographers often stayed with Macs.

> Magnetic USB-C cables do exist, and I need to buy one to see if it can withstand long-term high-voltage charging

I might be wrong, but the wall charger will start at 5v 2.1A, and then, only after a handshake with a compatible device, bump up the voltage to 9v (depending upon which fast charging system is in use*). Since this handshake requires a good connection, there isn't a high voltage present at the moment that pins are brought into contact with each other.

* Qualcomm and Samsung use a system that bumps up the voltage, but it appears to be compatible with some tier of USB C PD (which is a standard). I.e, my Samsung Galaxy S8 will fast charge from a USB C PD charger made by Apple for MacBooks. I believe that OnePlus used an adaptive system where the wall charger would bump up the current instead of the voltage.

> Think about it, though: if the problem was as endemic as is implied, why don't other vendors come up with alternatives?

Because for a long time most other vendors sold their laptops based on price, knowing that many would would-be customers would, if offered two machines for the same money, buy the one with the faster CPU or most RAM. Fitting extra features, or more refined features, would make a laptop cost more but wouldn't allow it to command a premium over rivals unless the market saw the advantage in it.

Okay, that's a gross generalisation. Vendors like Sony, IBM and Toshiba would compete on features and refinement too (eg, all of the above, like Apple, had charging circuitry that meant a laptop could be left plugged in indefinitely without killing the battery - this sadly isn't true of all laptops) - but Apple had an easier job of communicating such things because they have been consistent in their attitude to cost and features.

Re: I like the Touch bar.

I guess it depends upon how much you used the Function keys. Certainly many laptops are inelegant in how they consign things like Screen Brightness and Audio Volume to a [Fn] + [F12] style key combo. Most laptop users have need to for these functions, but a lot of software doesn't require the user to use F1 - F12: there is a basic issue with 'discoverability'.

The other unknown (at the time of its creation) was how widely the touch at would be adopted by 3rd party applications.

In the late nineties, Sony VAIO laptops (as well as Sony phones) had a jog dial. Many of the functions that Apple would have on the touch bar (brush tool size, zoom, volume, brightness, etc etc) could work well on a jog dial, with a screen pop up providing visual feedback. However, a lot of these things can also be well controlled with [Keyboard modifier] + [ Mouse Scroll Wheel]

Haha, it occured to me how much data about accidental laptop damage Apple gleans from its repair centres (my guess is, as much as it can), with a view to informing later refits, revisions and models. I then imagined a scenario where a repair technician can view the last 5 seconds of video seen by a laptop's webcam immediately before it is knocked to the floor and 'killed' ("Benson!"). My chuckle is because it is a familiar premise from science fiction - a wetware hacker / psychic cop / time traveller uses the last images a murder victim sees to identify their killer.

I guess people aren't removing their Macbooks from their home desks* as often, now that they're not taking their laptop to a client, an office or a coffee shop.

This means that a MacBook may be left plugged in for a greater fraction of the day - increasing the chances of the cable being tripped over.

Also contributing to the chance of a MacBook's power cable being yanked is that children are present in more homes more of the time.

* Or likely a kitchen table (that isn't against a wall) in lieu of a proper desk, further increasing chance of cable trip.

Samsung rolls out new Galaxy S21 range, including extra-lux Ultra

Re: Samsung Galaxy

It takes less than five minutes to permanently disable Facebook on the S8. It takes a bit longer to read up on and then install BX Actions to get rid of Bixby - and in return you a very handy hardware button that you can remap to an app or function of your choice (double click for flashlight, for example).

No, Facebook shouldn't have been installed. And yeah, not being able to delete it means a miss a few Mb of my Gbs of storage.. but deal breakers they are not.

Re: "starts at £1,149"

You might consider:

https://www.cnet.com/news/samsung-brings-back-rugged-galaxy-with-xcover-pro/

Samsung Xcover Pro, removable battery, SD card, headphone socket, waterproof, ruggedised,...

Re: Yet again ....

> Does your GPS have roads you've personally never driven down? But your roads are other peoples roads!

Unfortunately my GPS also thinks some bridle tracks are roads, leading me in unwise directions. Point is, some roads aren't suitable for all users.

I've lost data because of micro SD cards (being so damned small) or because an app has saved data into it and after I've moved the card to a different device and back, the app hasn't reintegrated its data.

If you use an SD card to regularly transfer data between devices, then it can't easily be encrypted.

There are niche use cases where an SD card in a phone is useful, but there are pitfalls. It's generally better, and definitely safer, to use USB OTG to transfer data between a phone and a thumbstick, SD card, or camera etc.

Now, I'm sure you are experienced enought to sidestep these potential pitfalls, and more power to you. However, I wouldn't recommend using SD cards with phones for most people (nor are they likely to ask me).

Re: Yet again ....

> Or it just works, and the only warning they get is when the card is detected and it warns them the card is slow to write.

How does the phone know the speed of the SD card prior to recording video? Remember, many SD cards get significantly slower at writing the fuller they get. It's a variable outside the control of the phone that can easily result in the phone failing to capture video. Data loss. Not good.

Yeah, you could have the phone buffer all video to its built-in in storage before transferring it to the SD card, but then you need a mechanism to prevent the user removing the SD card before the write is complete.

Re: Yet again ....

> So, you can't record to the SD card and swap it out when its full.

It causes consumer confusion when the phone has to alert the user that higher resolution / frame rate video can't be recorded to SD card because either the card isn't fast enough, or the bus that it sits on can't keep up.

The phone also has to alert the user that video recorded into an SD card isn't by default encrypted, so that a thief could view the user's videos just by placing the SD card in a different device.

It might be noted that amassing days worth of video footage upon a phone's SD card is vulnerable if you lose the phone before you transfer the SD card. If you more regularly back up (via USB C to computer, USB phone as host to external drive, or wirelessly) your data then you're less likely to find yourself needing to free up the phone's storage in a hurry. Plus your data protected against loss and theft, as well as phone malfunction.

Qualcomm pays $1.4bn to acquire ex-Apple and AMD Arm server chip engineers (and the biz they set up)

Possibly, but even an outfit like Apple (that holds perpetual, irrevocable ARM licences irrespective of who owns ARM) still had reasons to go beyond ARM's IP.

It's not unreasonable to assume that Qualcomm might share those reasons.

Backers of Planet Computers' Astro Slide 5G phone furious after shock specs downgrade

> Not exactly innovative.

Who cares?

Re: Peak Planet

> and it had some unobtrusive way to draw power from the phone instead of having to hassle with charging two sets of batteries.

True. Options are:

- keyboard has both a USB port and a low profile USB C plug. (This method was used by Apple on their battery cases, using Lightening instead of USB C)

- similar to above, but keyboard is supplied with Magsafe-style USB plug for phone.

- keyboard draws power wirelessly from phone. This ability of a phone to transmit power is present in the latest Samsung and Apple flagships. It's thought it is done to charge earbuds (Samsung) or for an iPhone to act as an Apple Watch charger. Wireless keyboards use little power compared to phones, so even a small battery will keep them going for days - it'd just add ten minutes to the time it takes to fully charge your phone.

- extinct or proprietary solutions such as those used by Apple (pogo pins on iPads for stylus and keyboard), Essential phone or Moto Mod system.

There are some minor downsides to the above approaches, but the alternative is making a combined keyboard and phone so reliable that the chance of *either* component failing within a few years is acceptably low. Not to mention, it might be desirable to upgrade your phone but bring your keyboard with you.

Re: Peak Planet

One component breaking - be it in the phone part or the keyboard - is one reason why having a slim discrete keyboard that works with a range of phones from various vendors is probably the better option. The end result won't be quite as streamlined, but the advantages of a detachable keyboard may make up for this.