mikestevens

mikestevens, 9 months ago

Hmm. What you’ve posted isn’t far off Samsung’s shade, except for some weirdly wide buttons at the top and a media controller that doesn’t add anything to the experience.

Yes it’s got minor but not insignificant aesthetic differences, but to say Samsung’s is awful and then hold this up as an example of good design… 🤔

Here’s my Samsung’s shade in its two positions (which can be changed to open fully on the first swipe if preferred).

https://lemdro.id/pictrs/image/cf1def90-1021-4074-8099-a71670d10211.png

https://lemdro.id/pictrs/image/1f5b38be-886b-4e8e-aaf1-e8f561a0627a.png

mikestevens, 9 months ago

I was referring to the weirdly wide buttons on his shade, not mine. :)

mikestevens, 9 months ago

Looks fine, I guess. One UI is getting into that boring zone, but that’s consistency for you.

mikestevens, 9 months ago

Thank you for this mate, great list! A lot of ugly stuff there, haha, but a lot of gems too. Each to their own, of course!

mikestevens, 9 months ago

I’ve got the Galaxy Watch4 and I love it. I get nearly two days of battery, which is fine by my standards, and the UX is snappy as hell.

mikestevens, 9 months ago

Extremely frustrating, but I suppose I get it.

I’ll probably get some airtags. I have an iPhone I don’t use, but I’ve taken to carrying a bag more often when I’m out, so I guess I can just keep the iPhone in there for these sorts of things. (And hope I don’t lose the bag. 😂)

mikestevens, 9 months ago

Pretty tempted to order one of these. I really want a folding phone, but damn it’s hard to talk myself into a Fold 5 when I know this exists.

mikestevens, 9 months ago

I had the first gen, and it wasn’t great in terms of performance, but damn I Ioved it. Very fond memories.

Also, I do have to chuckle at the progress since then. My S23 Ultra’s screen is almost as large at 6.8 inches, yet the overall device is much smaller and obviously much, much, much more powerful. Progress!

mikestevens, 9 months ago

Hmm. I have a Tab S4, a Tab S6 Lite and a Tab S8, and the S8 is markedly quicker.

mikestevens, 9 months ago

Honestly can’t say enough good things about my Tab S8. I use it for editing photos in Lightroom Mobile, and it works so damn well with the stylus. Very responsive and fast.

mikestevens, 9 months ago

Sorry yes, those are all Samsung model names that I was listing.

Well, I can’t speak for the Lenovo experience as I’ve never used one, and I’ll happily admit that any Samsung device needs a little tweaking to begin with, but I use my Tab S8 regularly for editing 60mb RAW photos off my full-frame camera and I can confidently say it performs very well.

My daughter uses my Tab S6 Lite and it’s more than up to meeting her demands — which includes a lot of educational games and so on.

My son uses my Tab S4 and he’s had no complaints either.

I mean, there’s not much else a tablet is meant for, really!

mikestevens, 9 months ago

That’s what he said.

mikestevens, 9 months ago

I wouldn’t be surprised if the unsaid part is that they’re focused more on productivity apps than social apps, but I could be wrong. Also wouldn’t be surprised if Instagram doesn’t care about getting downranked, given its brand and market awareness somewhat transcends the need to appear in top-apps lists.

mikestevens, 9 months ago

What carrot? A carrot is an incentive. Google didn’t embrace the tablet format until very recently, in the grand scheme of things. They haven’t offered devs any special deals that I’m aware of — say a revenue split from the play store or paying them to deliver a tablet version of their app — so they didn’t incentivise devs to focus on Android tablets.

iPads have dominated the market for so long, and remain a fairly predictable and consistent device to develop for, so… why would an app developer have poured time into an app for Android tablets in years past?

mikestevens, 10 months ago

Hmm, yeah, I don’t have it yet here in Australia. I tend to prefer SwiftKey anyway, but this looks like a pretty handy feature!

mikestevens, 10 months ago

Nova. I actually really like the One UI launcher anyway, but I’m just used to Nova. Mostly just the extra gestures and the bigger home grid. Not interested much in the cosmetic tweaks it’s able to make.

But yeah, One UI is quite good too. I got used to it back when Android gesture nav didn’t play nice with 3p launchers.

mikestevens, 10 months ago

Apart from Disabled, I tried each of these and didn’t get a picker with an overflow menu. Disabled is the only one that allowed me to get to the system media picker.

https://lemdro.id/pictrs/image/d774171c-769a-4f26-b7de-255948c55b39.png

mikestevens, 10 months ago

Aaah, of course. Yeah, none of the options gave me that older picker, apart from Disabled of course.

mikestevens, 10 months ago

It is, but I find Infinite Painter is largely up to the task for most of my drawing needs — and what it lacks aren’t significant enough reasons to splash out on an ipad.

mikestevens, 10 months ago

It does, yeah, but not giving it to you is part of how they’ve sold so many iPads. Think of how many parents and couples would be happy with one shared multi-user iPad instead of having to buy one for each user.

mikestevens, 10 months ago

I hear you, but at the same time, there are so few apps I want to use on a tablet more than I’d prefer to use it on my phone – which is likewise always with me.

Reading comics, watching video, editing photos, drawing, reading meal recipes on the kitchen bench… that’s about the extent of my tablet use. Browsing social media? I’d rather do it on my phone. Productivity, notes, gaming? Even that, I’d rather do on my phone – if not my Macbook, of course.

So it’s been a pretty easy decision for me to stick with Android tablets, especially Samsung, which obviously ties in well with my S23U.