I bought the Tab5 to make my 2 year old daughter a little music station which can play 6 different songs just to cheap computer speakers over the 3.5mm jack so she can dance.
Planning to also give it a calendar mode to help her learn the days of the week and which days are preschool.
LLMs have just dramatically reduced the amount of time and thought investment it takes to experiment and crank out fun little projects.
I'm tempted to get one to replace my very cracked Pixel 9 Pro XL. With all the incentives Google offers for Google Fi customers it's not all that expensive. Comes out to about $1100 after trade-in and includes a free Pixel Watch 5.
I'm foldable-curious and Samsung just includes too much overlapping bloat "features". Gemini is bad enough, I don't need Bixby and whatever else. Not to mention I would have to pay full price.
> Samsung just includes too much overlapping bloat "features"
Yep, that's a major drawback. My partner has a Samsung phone and seeing all of the included bloatware, plus the terrible updates and add even more, made me not even consider one of their devices last time I bought a phone.
At work we bought a used tablet off eBay to replace a customer device where they really wanted an identical (obsolete) model.
OMG the amount of extra crap that Verizon branded tablet had pre-installed was agonizing.
All system apps so you couldn't get rid of it.
It's worth mentioning that on most Android phones and tablets, you can uninstall apps from the user partition even when they are system apps with adb or a UI for it like UAD-ng.
i take the position that it's all dog shit and i dont care whos fault it is, all of these people need to be put in front of a tribunal and justice done
I'm on my last Samsung for this reason. Just way too much bloatware, need to agree to a new privacy policy once a week, and every time it updates I find a few new apps on my phone I didn't want.
Gonna hold out for the Motorola/Graphene phone though. One of the models is supposed to be a flagship foldable.
imo just get a pixel. unlockable bootloader and almost guaranteed support from pretty much every major privacy-related android fork. and many of them are building support for the titan chip if they dont have it already
I also have a Samsung phone besides a Pixel with GrapheneOS and I just ripped out Gemini, most of Bixby, etc. using UAD-ng. It's very clean now, but I still have all the customizability of OneUI, Good Lock, etc.
Unless you really have a large ethical problem with paying for any google product, I'd just recommend to get one of the previous-gen pixel devices. They are a lot cheaper than the Motorola smartphone coming out.
That’s in the eye of the beholder. Folding phones are unique devices and the best tri-fold designs can legitimately replace a tablet.
A whole lot of people use their phone as their primary and most-used device. I don’t think a high price is insane, it’s just that folks who consider them a utility and a side-device to a desktop computer tend not to feel that way. Many millennials and older who grew up with desktops and laptops probably can’t comprehend the idea of a phone being the only device or primary device.
My iPhone was something like $1300 and I feel like it was worth every penny, and that a cheaper model did not meet my needs and wants.
The other thing I would say is that Pixels are just not high end hardware and they masquerade like they are. They get these insane launch sale deals like we are seeing now and the whole reason for that is because they aren’t competitive with true flagships.
It’s just not really a flagship phone in terms of processor performance.
I know Samsung has a lot more of their garbage software on it but I think if I was in the Android market I’d probably be inclined for a Samsung device over a Pixel. If I lived in Europe or Asia I’d be looking at something Chinese that’s not sold in the US market. Companies like Xiaomi and Huawei make way better phones than Google.
From Europe, at this point I don't even look at Pixels because of their sad excuse of a battery. Just buying directly from China better phones for half the price. Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi are all good, others probably too, Huawei has nice hardware but due to US ban no usable Android.
Huawei has their HarmonyOS but still releases Android phones too for international markets - but these can't use Google Services, so they have their own services. If it's possible to somehow install google services I have no idea.
Personally I would perhaps like to use or at least try Pixel's software (I've had some Google-software phones years ago, a Nexus I think? Maybe even some Pixel. And they were fine), but not on that HW.
> It’s just not really a flagship phone in terms of processor performance.
I'm curious to know which apps/use-cases you feel are hobbled by the non-flagship processors on Pixels. It feels like most peoples top 3 activities on phones are infinite scrolling inside apps or a browser, taking pictures, and playing games, which Pixels seem to be great at. It's been many years since I felt that a phone that is slow enough to notice - even the midrange ones, and I (used to) write and debug code on my phone.
Sure, 4 years later anything can run Genshin, but the point is that the next new hit game is just around the corner and gamers appreciate the extra performance.
My understanding is also that the pixel’s tensor chip series is not very “flagship” in terms of battery stamina/efficiency when you’re doing heavy tasks such as gaming.
So it’s not always about having the faster processor, you can also benefit by your processor being the most efficient on the market and making the most use of the battery in your chassis.
Video comparison of last year’s phones head to head where the Samsung phone lasts nearly 8 hours longer on video playback:
Samsung also has these kinds of sales. A bunch of people on a forum I frequent had some Z Fold 8 just north of 1000 Euro with a trade in and by stacking coupons.
Heck, even flagships like the S26 Ultra, which was introduced in March and still dominates the CPU, GPU, etc. charts are currently 500 Euro off in my country.
Even discounted, Pixel have pretty bad prices compared to the competition. The primary reason to buy a Pixel is to run GrapheneOS. Otherwise, just get an iPhone or if you are willing to remove the bloat with UAD some Samsung phone.
Just be careful about what your actual use case is.
For example, this form factor of foldable doesn’t give you significantly more screen real estate for 16:9 video content since it’s such a square aspect ratio.
They also generally aren’t large enough to take advantage of tablet layouts, while tri-fold designs fold out to be almost identical to a tablet size.
You have to really want to use two apps side by side in my opinion.
it's crazy how normalized spending 1k+ on a phone has become. I can't imagine paying that for a phone that is almost identical in features I care about to something 1/3 the price.
I'm on fi and got the fold 8 through fi for a pretty steep discount. It was cash off immediately + fi credits. I can pull up exact details if you care but it was several hundred dollars off split pretty evenly between instant discount and fi credits. Coming from nearly 10 years of pixels/nexus the transition hasn't been that bad. I miss a couple pixel exclusives, but nearly all the samsung bloatware can be disabled or removed entirely. I haven't bumped into bixby once.
One genuine nice Samsung feature is DeX. Been using it + moonlight (when needed) to make the phone basically a secondary computer when hooked up to USB-C monitor. Honestly I think this phone may end up replacing several other devices - kindle, gaming portable (eg: steamdeck, replaced by phone + GameSir G8 + controller), laptop, tablet. I think it can only replace laptop in my use case because I can remote into my desktop from it if I need extra compute - so if you are laptop only I don't expect it to be a straight replacement.
Honestly, best phone I've ever used - but I hope next year either google gets off the sidelines and adopts passport form factor + gets its shit together on the crease, cpu and dex equivalent so I can get my pixel exclusives and vanilla OS back, or alternatively Samsung makes the wide form factor the "ultra" and gives us better cameras, speaker placement, s-pen and IP68.
I went from OpenSCAD -> cadquery/build123d -> Zoo/KCL
It still is early days, and it needs some more helper functions but it's really nice having two-way capabilities (not just code -> model, but also the reverse).
Of course having Text-to-model as a first class citizen is also nice.
I have played with this but been underwhelmed. However I do think probably on the right track.
I know the ecosystem not-at-all (sum total knowledge of the CAD ecosystem is that my kids got a Bambu printer for Hanukkah) but it feels to me that current LLMs should be able to generate specs for something like https://partcad.readthedocs.io/en/latest/, which can then be sliced etc.
Curious to know what others think? I come at this from the position of zero interest in developing the fine design skills needed to master but wanting to be able to build and tweak basic functional designs.
I want to like Zoo but the rendering engine is so buggy currently that it’s not really usable for more than simple shapes. The text-to-CAD feature they highlight is slow and error-prone, so much so that they explicitly use a “prebuilt” version in the tutorial, and each time I tried it, it gave tool errors or took so long I just did it manually.
Zed looks really cool and I would love to give it a try, but I am just too beholden to devcontainers. I know there are workarounds to use them with Zed but with many extra steps compared to VS Code and it's forks. I can't go back to not having a totally integrated container per repo.
Exactly what I was thinking. Wish I had the time and expertise to give adding support for this codec myself a go. Streaming Clair Obscure over my LAN via Sunshine / Moonlight is exactly my use-case and the latency could definitely be better.
Any chance it could use seamless transport switching? It would be so awesome if it could switch to cellular(if available) or wifi-direct as needed on the fly. I have been thinking about creating such an app but lacked the time.
I actually have this kind of working on a branch - really don't fancy hosting any infrastructure myself though - so I was intending it to be a Windows service or docker container you have to setup and pair with. Once you've done that - the endpoint is included in any group you create, and treated as an extra node in the graph. If available and lower latency than other routes, it'll be used.
Was trying to keep things simple though - the separate server seemed a step too far for most people I talked to about it.
This sounds perfect for my use case. I'm a mountain biker who doesn't mind setting up hosting infra. It's fairly common when mountain biking to unintentionally get separated by line-of-sight or more than 75M even among very similarly skilled riders. Even on straight easy trails, just the dust cloud generated by the rider ahead can cause you to back off significant distance if it's dusty.
I've used these[0] in the past and they worked ok. I lost the pair I bought when traveling and thought using the plethora of radios I have with me anyway on my phone with an earbud headphone would be much better replacement. Would be great for group rides to just send an app link instead of suggesting they all buy $100 hardware.
Honestly I think a well marketed and polished commercial app would have both Sena and Cardo[1] both quite existentially scared.
App will be held down by the hardware. Smartphones are not meant to transmit with the necessary power, and you also don't get direct access to the radio, so you can't run custom protocols like Sena/Cardo, but you must transmit over the actual bluetooth or actual WiFi.
I'd stayed away from WiFi Direct because Android and iOS don't play nicely with it - but looks like the EU has forced Apple to support WiFi Aware in iOS 26. It still looks like it would require A LOT of manual pairing through the system UI if you join a group with new people though. I really wanted to keep the single password (or qr code scan/NFC tap) to join.
Feels like swimming against the current tho. Said dev experience poorly emulates actual linux at best.
Also, I’d think twice before running custom windows isos or unvetted scripts.
I've been thinking along similar lines for a while now, among a lot of users there isn't a sense of security 'hygiene' and a lot of trust granted that doesn't have a foundation beyond looking legit (i.e. has a github). The main thing that seems to be stop it happening is a lack of returns compared to going after a corporation or social engineering/phishing to find someone who will give you money. What I do wonder about is supply chain attacks on something used by a lot of smaller projects, which would end up hitting more targets compared to compromising individual small projects.
Be wary, unknown actors are targeting devs. My email that is only exposed in github recieves targeted mails on the regular, maybe randomly or maybe because I released and contributed to several popular code bases.
Dev credentials tend to unlock more doors than hacking a soccer mom.
I think it might be brutal for more than junior people now. I thought I would be fine when my previous employer decided to offshore all of engineering and I was laid off as a result. I have been at an architect/lead/principal level for the last 7 years doing backend work with mostly state-of-the-art tech on AWS. 15 years experience total, and just getting no traction despite referrals. None of my jobs were at hyperscale FAANG types, or super sexy stuff. I'm not a thought leader with an influential blog nor have I built an open source library with 5k stars. Maybe that is what it takes to get a call back now? I'm a regular hacker who loves technology and never dreamed I would be struggling this badly.
I have 15 years of experience working on boring tech stacks, no social media presence at all, and I’m doing okay.
I’d suggest hitting up some tech recruiters and downgrading your past job titles. As far as your job search is concerned, you weren’t a “lead architect” using “state-of-the-art tech”, you were a Staff DevOps Engineer with experience in <insert AWS buzzwords here>. Etc etc.
Mindset. Be humble and open to learning, don’t be desperate. Explain that this is what you love to do. That you genuinely care about the product/mission/service and you’ll land something. If you go in “I need a paycheck, I can code”, that’s not very compelling. I can teach someone to code. What I can’t teach is for someone to be hungry to learn.
So be positive, be humble, be sharp, and be willing.
I bought the Tab5 to make my 2 year old daughter a little music station which can play 6 different songs just to cheap computer speakers over the 3.5mm jack so she can dance.
Planning to also give it a calendar mode to help her learn the days of the week and which days are preschool.
LLMs have just dramatically reduced the amount of time and thought investment it takes to experiment and crank out fun little projects.