I was an iOS supporter until iphone 5 then I discovered the beauty and freedom of Android.
To this day with Samsung s22+
But currently I am a bit tired, there is no android phone that I am passionate about, oneplus has given me nothing but problems, Samsung with exynos is a disaster (not to mention the new blockages at sideload and the green stripes on the display), I don’t even want to go near all the other Chinese brands, and Nothing is not what it promised to be.
I want to go back to iOS but there are a few things holding me back:
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how can sideload be managed on iOS? Are there modified apps like youtube, reddit?
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I follow a lot of NSFW channels on telegram, discord and reddit itself, are there any problems on iOS? are there ways around this? (my girlfriend has iOS, and every time I want to forward an nsfw gif she doesn’t see it)
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surf the sea, is it complex on ios? Especially in terms of gaming?
TBH only yt, nsfw and modded apk keep me on android. Thanks a lot in advance
Uuh. I wouldn’t do it. As far as I know iOS is still pretty locked down and that won’t change.
- For nsfw I use Quix but its shareware
- For youtube I use Yattee
- I don’t use reddit since some of us moved to lemmy
- For gaming I use RetroArch
- I don’t know how are things with sideloading
Long time Samsung user. Get a Pixel 8. Install Obtainium. Use it to install Neo Launcher and 99% of the apps you probably use. Or just switch to GrapheneOS. You will be happy again.
I also found filly changing my layout helps. My daily calendar, task list, and clock are the only things on my first home screen.
Filly? What does that mean in this context?
I think they typoed “fully”
OH! Got it! Thank you! I was legitimately just like “is this new lingo I don’t know”
Yes, it’s new lingo, that’s what I was using. Mmmhmm. You should too… Totally…
+1 for GrapheneOS
Agreed, grapheneos is great
Obtainium
Didn’t know about obtenium. I think pixel 8 seems the only good choice also if it’s pricey and I’m afraid that is a lot smaller than the s22+ that I think is a right size
Yea, they have gotten pricey. I ended up going down in phone size instead of getting the bigger 8, really like being able to reach all the way across the phone again. Using a tablet for reading things probably made a difference here, though.
Have you looked at Sony phones? I recently switched to the Pixel Fold from a 1 Mark IV. Sony phones are some of the best IMO.
OMG I was a Sony user long time ago, Xperia X was so so beautiful!
Sony excels at product, sucks at marketing. Their phones are truly fantastic.
How? Even though sony makes camera lenses, their smartphone cameras are terrible compared to the competition and their own standalone cameras
my girlfriend has iOS, and every time I want to forward an nsfw gif she doesn’t see it
Say what? There’s no content censoring that I’m aware of. I’ve had no issues looking at all kinds of NSFW/NSFL content.
Regardless, you’re likely not going to enjoy the lack of modified apps and game piracy; I don’t do either of those. Maybe it’s possible but you’ve gotta jump through so many hoops IMO it wouldn’t be worth it.
Zero issues with NSFW though, that’s bizarre to me. There’s screen time web content filtering but I believe that only affects safari.
I can tell you that there are channel marked as NSFW that share video and gif and if I send it to my gf, on her phone (even with nsfw enabled) she get the message “this channel is used to share pornographic material” while on android I can see everything.
What do you mean by channel, like on Telegram?
This is a region specific Telegram setting if so, it’s not iOS. Tell her to disable the adult content filter.
Apple did something a while back to limit nsfw stuff on iOS. There was a setting in discord that you had to change to see nsfw stuff and some communities you had to join it from the desktop before you could view it on the phone.
I’m remembering more now, Apple had a policy that was like we might block your app if it’s for nsfw. So some apps got worried and limited nsfw stuff on iOS.
My partner can’t view webp/webm content on ios either. It’s a real pain once in a while.
Yeah but there’s a difference between’doesn’t support webp’ and ‘blocks porn’
Wait WHAT BLOCKS ON SIDELOADING for Samsung?? I’m not in the loop
Normally it’s blocked by default which is pretty easy to get around (It’s just a setting toggle) but apparently Samsung added a second “safety” autoblocker to a recent update. (Which can also be turned off, so I’m not sure what all the fuss is about, aside from being a mild inconvenience.) https://www.androidauthority.com/enable-sideloading-one-ui-6-1-1-3463446/
Interesting. I don’t like this at all. Remember AT&T tried this with locked phones (or something like that I believe) where unknown sources was completely gone?
Ya it’s not a good look of things to come, but so far it’s not a huge issue (yet).
Ya it’s not a good look of things to come, but so far it’s not a huge issue (yet).
Not a huge deal now, but…I don’t like this move…I don’t like it AT ALL…
Normally I wouldn’t worry about it, Samsung just apes everything Google does. It’s part of their tug of war, basically Samsung is saying “if you ever pull a Huawei on me and disable every Google feature I’ll still have a copy of everything”.
Then again the US market is wierd so I don’t know. You can unlock Sony bootloaders everywhere else without a hitch but they cut a deal with US carriers so they won’t give unlock codes to US models. If Sony did deals like that so can Samsung.
Wait so when if I bought a Sony phone from then directly they wouldn’t fucking let me unlock it??
Just to be clear, I’m talking about bootloader unlock (so you can root it and install custom ROMs) not carrier unlock. Normally Sony offer bootloader unlock codes on their website, but not for US models.
Carrier (network) lock and unlock is done by the carriers, manufacturer doesn’t care.
Oh bootloader was exactly what I was talking about. Would this be the case if I bought it directly?
Yes, sorry. The way you bought it makes no difference. The unlock code is generated on the Sony website based on the IMEI of the first SIM slot. They can tell when it’s the IMEI of an US model and will refuse to give out the code.
there is no android phone that I am passionate about,
Not what you asked for:
A phone is a tool which should enable you to do stuff. Be passionate about friends, hobbies, art, not a piece of plastic.
Being forced to use iOS (work phone) and Android (Samsung, also work), both suck IMHO but Android sucks less.
My next Android will be a Pixel, as others suggested custom roms are the way to go, but even vanilla Android is more functional/open/practical for my needs than iOS.
I would never buy Apples shit with my own money: Dumped down, locked down and in the end you are renting a device from Apple to pay fees for their Appstore and Cloud offerings and vendor lock in. No thanks.
I will add that, after getting my first Pixel as my previous phone, I’ve found the Google vanilla Android experience is better than Android on other carriers that fill the phone with bloat that you can’t get rid of without rooting.
There are other mobile OSs besides Android and iOS. That being said, iOS is one of the most locked-down restrictive platforms on the planet, and any “freedom” you have now can be taken away in a single update as soon as Apple gets an angry letter from Nintendo or the RIAA or whatever.
This comment has definitely stopped me from wanting to switch to iOS, I can’t do it, if I don’t sail the high seas I don’t feel comfortable, I only spend my money where I have a grain of apparent freedom
I have recently gotten an iPad, because my carrier had a banger of a deal (30% off on the 2024 Air, 48 months payment no interest) and my Huawei tablet was getting long in the tooth, so I jumped.
I have owned Android since the first Galaxy (no number), tablets since the first 7" Galaxy Tab.
I have gone through a few tablets, 3-4 Samsung, Lenovo, Huawei, a couple of no names, and I got the iPad, because for tablet things is still the reference. Best experience hands down.
Would I get an iPhone? NO WAY.
The iPad is an occasional use device. I use it for media consumption, some social media (not much of a user) and for graphics stuff with the Affinity suite, which BTW is reason enough to get an iPad if you do design/photo. It’s the device for when the laptop is too cumbersome, or overkill. It’s great to take notes, scribble, sketch. It’s awesome to edit pics on the go, which I do a surprising lot.
But… Apple limits what I can do. Too much.
Would I accept the constraints of iOS in my main electronic device? No. I can live with the iPad’s constraints because I have a super capable phone (a 4 year old Xiaomi which is truly fantastic), which I can tune as I wish, and because it’s use case is fairly well defined. I would not compromise with my phone. Simple things like changing the launcher, what goes on my lock screen like alternate number / emergency contact, or whatever clock I want, or the keyboard, or installing apps from wherever I want, or rooting and changing the ROM (not all phones) or not dealing with iCloud bullshit, or having proper Firefox with extensions, or torrenting, or any of the tweaks, modifications, or whatever that make my Android MINE.
Just search for “things that iphones can’t do”. You’ll have reading for an afternoon.
THIS ^
Thank you so much, I didn’t think about Firefox, I’m a firefox user on every system I have, and I rely a lot on extensions. And I have my little server with sonarr, radarr, jellyfin and syncthing that is not so much, but it works and I had fun making it, I don’t want to lose the joy of do what I want with my phone.
Same here. iOS is so severely limited compared to Android it would be unusable to me as an phone.
As a tablet I use it 99% for streaming apps (music and series) that I put on while cooking or doing chores, 1% as a backup device for things like access to my bank app.
Why not Nothing, if you don’t mind my asking?
I’ve also thought about Fairphone as my next one.
And I’ve thought about an iPhone like this too - if you have adblocking via a home router or pihole or some such then why not? Piracy could be done indirectly and just play/stream from Jellyfin or some such. But my thoughts are not well enough along to be of any use to you there, just to say that your ideas don’t seem crazy to me. Buttery smooth operation, actually pleasant to hold and use (not burning a hole in my hand after not even a minute of standard web browser usage as my own S22 does, probably bc of my Blokada VPN adblocker?), so long as the downsides can be mitigated.
Pixels seem to be to be entirely too imbalanced to me to include a super expensive camera that I barely use and barely any stats that I actually do (game emulators or whatever) - I really want a Nexus except they don’t make those. Even OnePlus doesn’t make those flagship killers anymore. I doubt they exist at all tbh.
Another idea is to get like an old OnePlus 7-ish device and just immediately replace the OS with a custom ROM. Fast charging is both good and bad - great utility but leads to heat issues later in the battery’s life.
I almost just want a cheap piece of crap dumb phone at this point, so that I don’t have to spend hundreds of hours researching every damn thing that the manufacturers are trying to do to me and ways to get around them without leaving (literal!) scorch marks on my hands.:-( But I also want Google Maps and maybe an Uber app in an emergency so that’s what holds me back.
So with that I think I’ve recommended just about literally everything now in this comment… :-P
I almost just want a cheap piece of crap dumb phone
Looked into a KaiOS device? Not entirely dumb, GMaps is only the web version so no voice navigation etc.
But might be something of interest to ya?
KaiOS
It looks interesting - thanks for the tip!:-)
This does sound quite cool!
My Nothing is the most unstable Android device I’ve ever owned and they don’t ever actually fix anything just come out with childish gimmicks.
I think the last one was Chat Gpt integration which turned out to just be a widget that launches chatgpt if you manually install it and even that only worked for a couple of weeks and chatgpts own widget is better so what was the point.
YIKES!? So it’s a marketing gimmick then? Not the ChatGPT, that’s obviously one, but the Nothing phone itself? So sorry to hear that:-(, but at least you are spreading the word so as to help others avoid that for themselves.:-)
I do have higher hopes for the Fairphone though.
Yep every article you ever see about them is some type of gimmick or another and most of them last about as long as Nothing Messages did.
Well OnePlus definitely jumped the shark, and it sounds like its spinoff Nothing did as well:-(.
I really suspect in future years it’ll be revealed Nothing is a oneplus brand, I mean I know a lot of people already suspect it but yeah I d say Nothing is to One plus what Honor is to Huawei.
Oh the “connection” is well-known I thought: the cofounder of OnePlus Carl Pei left the latter company in a huff, when it decided to switch from the gorgeous buttery smooth OxygenOS to the cheap piece of crap ColorOS (not just similar to but the identical one used in the Chinese Huawei phones) and in the process started the Nothing phone company. And because OnePlus phones used to be amazing but right around the time he left they became crappy, people had high hopes for the Nothing phone company that he would bring some of the old goodness - for the tech “enthusiast” market - with him.
However, it sounds like both companies make crap phones nowadays, just like every other major phone company (except Apple phones are gorgeous and amazing, it’s just that iOS makes you want to drive a nail into your brain). We are no longer capable of purchasing what we want (cheap to moderate price with a balance towards higher specs and far far lesser camera, and without bells and whistles like wireless charging, but has some like fast charging - what the “flagship killer” market used to offer!), there is only what they wish to sell us.:-(
I use a Pixel and would recommend one. I dont have much experience with apple devices but I’ve heard of people using https://sideloadly.io/ to sideload apps on iphones. No idea how well it works if at all.
Sideloading apps on iOS has gotten a lot easier. I use sideloadly. It has to connect to your computer (wirelessly) once a week but does this automatically in the background. I’m still running Apollo, the best Reddit iOS app this way.
I have YT premium through Sri Lanka for $3/mo. Sponsorblock works in safari.
ROM apps like delta are in the App Store now. I have no idea about phone gaming otherwise.
Never ran into any content filtering.
If your gf uses iOS try it out there first and see how you like it.
New iPhones release on a pretty strict schedule each September so even if you don’t want the new model best to wait for older ones to be discounted.
Ever tried custom ROM?
Removed by mod
Fairphone 4 with eOS, escaping Google and Apple’s duopoly is quite liberating and not as hard as I thought it would be. Yeah, eOS is technically Android, but deGoogled.