Let's give it a try - Weekly discussion thread - discuss whatever you want about Android!

I'm frustrated with the lack of sdcard options in upper midrange smartphones.

If you get a midrange smartphone you either compromise on processor, ram, storage or a combination of other.

I want a good quality smartphone which has 45w of minimum fast charging, UFS 3.1 256GB of minimum. 12GB ram, snapdragon 7+gen 2, or dimensity 8300 at minimum. And provides an sdcard option.

Is it that hard for brands to do that?

Nothing phone 2 and 2a would've been decent. If they had an sdcard option. Alas, they skipped it for some reason..

Nothing skipped on the SD card for no reason. Their cheaper CMF Phone ships with SD card support, though still not with a 3.5mm jack.

I hate Xiaomi's bloatware so much

I only buy Xiaomi phones because the bootloader is unlockable. The stock UI is eh.
- Good point indeed
Debloat with adb or shizuku?
- I thought about it but I have Android 10 , from what I understand, I'll have to redo it periodically... I also don't own a computer so far
It's really getting in the way. I got a Xiaomi's as a backup phone recently because on paper the specs were good. Well, the phone is fast, but the UI...

I got a Motorola next, probably going to resell the Xiaomi once I'm done migrating
- HyperOS?
  
  My phone runs MIUI 11 and I honestly found it very good , I had more problems with MIUI Battery optimization though , and battery draining to some extent
  
  It's probably the first and the last Xiaomi phone I'll ever buy though

I have an old asus zenfone 2 with the x86 processor. Has anyone tried turning it into a small server? It runs some whatever old android at this point, and I figure it could still run a thing or two.

Running a server out of a phone would probably shorten the remaining lifespan

MaterialYou apps are so nice looking but every time I use one of them it frustrate me so much when scrolling because scrolling is too slow compared to other apps

For a short period of time, I thought about buying a Google Pixel phone to run Graphene OS on it , Google Pixel isn't available in the local market, so I'll have to buy it from abroad, and this comes with risks : not being able to benefit from the phone’s warranty , the extremely high costs of shipping the phone into the country, and the extremely high costs of making the device work on the local network legally As much as I would like to try Graphene OS, such risks are too crazy to take so I changed my mind or at least stopped thinking about it temporarily... who knows, maybe some local company will bring the brand to the local market one day due to competition with other local companies. The same competition introduced phones to the market that weren't previously there: Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Infinix, Tecno, etc.

Plus the Pixels with the Tensor chip suck. You pay a flagship price but the processor cannot even compete with 5 year old chips.
- That alone is actually an enough reason for me not to buy it if I knew that , I care a lot about device performance
This risk seems high indeed, I wouldn't do it either

Is it me or is the Pixel 9 hype very low? I feel like nobody is expecting much from it

Same old slow chipset, ugly design (personally), software locked features rather than hardware limits
Well, of course, google leaks everything months before so nobody cares now. Plus the google io was a big fiasco talking 2 hours about AI, completed skipped android 15 which is a pretty incremental release. As a result, everyone expects the same from this event too. Meaningless ai everywhere
- Thank you for your comment, didn't even follow the Google IO
I don't think I've seen any hype for any new phone releases for a while. And that's OK, the technology has matured a lot so there isn't that much to get hyped about anymore. The foldable phones are pretty cool, hoping that they become affordable in the next decade!
- I haven't seen a foldable phone that doesn't have an ugly crease in the screen after a while.
No big features. Satellite emergency is nice, but that's it. Everything else is just a slow iteration on the last version. So it's fine, but nobody will upgrade early for it.

I really wish I had the option to completely disable the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi radio since there are so many networks and it clutters up the list when I'm looking at it. If I could just turn it off and do five gigahertz only, my network's list would shrink a lot and that would be a lot more helpful.

How often do you look at the wifi list? It would be more useful if we could lock one SSID to one specific band (2.4/5/6 GHz). This could help for devices that frequently switch between bands
- Just name network-2.4, network-5 and network-6 if you want band locking.
It's a hack, but if your phone has dual band radios you can turn your hotspot on for one band, which will force your wifi client to only use the other band to look at networks.
Or 5ghz if it is unstable for example. Maybe disable is hard but avoid would be nice

I don't update apps until they break. Never know when an update is going to enshittify an app. (Fing, etc.)

I always update my apps. If an app gets shitty, I change the app cause the problem is not on the app, it's on the owners philosophy and this is what I wanna get rid of.
I don't use most of Google apps and stock's bloatware , so I don't update it too For other apps , it depends on the update itself , if it brings good new things and bug fixes I update , otherwise I mostly ignore until the next update

I love sideloading modded versions of apps with all paid features unlocked

Any recommendable and trustworthy sources for modded APKs? Installing modded apps from unknown sources always feels a bit sketchy...
There's no payment methods or options in where I live , so I relied for a long time on modded apps , until I got to know FOSS softwares which mostly have free good alternatives , since that time, my reliance on modified programs has become almost non-existent
- I like modded apps