Database Info

I've had it with Lollipop

Lollipop seems to be the worst update I've had in years. I was in the UK and suing the Vodafone network (a mistake in itself), and it kept hassling me to update. In the end I did, and the patch that followed. I am not at all happy. I am on 5.0, and not 5.1, but I have read that 5.1 does not fix much.
My main grips are:
No actual benefits?
Alerts are silly, especially with the lock screen. They have mad a mess of this.
Removal of the privacy mode, which is vital to me as I use the phone as an alarm (even in 5.1 you can't allow the alarm and stop calls etc AFAIK)
Email alerts all show blank and are not removed when viewing the mail unless you click on the (useless) notification itself.
Connections with my Gear 2 are lost, and it does not connect again. The Gear thinks it is, so refuses connections
Task list is awful. I struggle to pick out which app is which. The old was was far simpler.
No longer a media controller on the lock screen unless you have notifications set on.
Automatic brightness stuff up, and makes the screen flicker.
? Can't think of more now (but there are), these are the most annoying to me.
This weekend I'll be doing a factory reset and re-installing the available Kit-Kat here in Oz. I'll refuse Lollipop until all these issues are fixed, which probably means never.

• Yes. The actual benefit is that since the launch of Android it is the first iteration which changed the way Android works, by moving to ART from Dalvik. Now I don't know how much better is ART than Dalvik, so don't ask.
• Yes. I hate that too. You mean the persistent notifications on lock screen right? Well you gotta deal with that it seems. I have tried to find an app or an Xposed module, but I haven't found any. If you do find something then please let me know. And I am sure you know how to disable that bloody irritating Headsup notifications.
• I have never used Privacy mode of Samsung, but my phone is almost always on Silent. But I have noticed that the Do Not Disturb mode is reintroduced in last update, OF3. In any case we should be thankful to Samsung that they have brought back the actual Silent mode of KitKat. Shame Google.
• I use AquaMail, and I don't notice any problem at all.
• No idea, no wear units.
• Disagree with you. I really like the new task switcher. Yes, you need to be a bit picky, but not to any extent of causing any annoyance. Personal preference though.
• No idea! God work life is killing me, haven't listened to music in months!
• Yes, this is a really irritating issue, however for me the auto brightness doesn't increase, but decrease actually. And no the screen doesn't flicker, at least haven't noticed that so far on OF3.
• .............
If you were happy with KK, then simply switch back. At initial stage I was anger with Lollipop too, but mainly because of disappearance of Silent mode and then those damn notifications on lock screen, but as the former is solved now, and I simple love Light backgrounds than darkish ones, I can't think about moving back to KK. And now when Xposed is all but working I can't even think it
Best of luck.

you should have posted this on samsungs forum, not on a hacking forum that has no affiliation with samsung

Android Wear, what I love and Hate

Ok as some of the members of this forum may know I got off to a shaky start with my Android wear watch (a Sony SW3).
I've now had it about four weeks and have over come the major problems I initially had, so I thought I would start a tread highlighting the things I love and the things I hate so others can assess if a smart watch is for them.
Firstly, what I love:
- Reading messages from Text, Email, Whatsapp and Messenger
It's so simply to just quickly look at my wrist see if I'm interested, if not I delete, if I am, may read further on the watch or if the message is to long, find my phone and continue there.
- Voice control
A really unexpected plus for me. I thought 'OK Google' was a bit of a gimmick at first, but how wrong could I have been. It's fantastic (OK, I feel a bit of a nerd saying OK Google to get it started, but that's a tiny problem). Driving and going to be late, OK google, Send text message to XXXX, then speak your message eg ' Sorry running late will be with you in 30 minutes. The translation is actually pretty accurate and it's done, you don't have to take your eyes off the road!
- It's an accurate watch, not sure where it gets it's time from but I guess it comes from the phone which in turn gets the time from the network which means no more setting, not running fast or slow. Not sure how it works when you change time zone though but I'll find that out soon enough.
- It's waterproof. Don;t forget to turn the touch screen off, but I've now been swimming with it, I regularly shower with it. Not a hint of a problem.
- Control you music system. I use Sonos around my home and I can turn the volume up and down, change track. Ok it's limited but it still an unexpected benefit.
- Control Bluetooth music with Spotify. Really a feature best used in the car. There's an app that will fire up Spotify on your phone which in turn will use the blue tooth audio to connect to your car. No more digging around to find you phone, unlock it, fire up spotify, find your play list etc etc etc.
- Incoming calls. Nice feature as I can decide if I want to take the call without having to find my phone to see who's calling.
What I hate (ok hate is a bit strong, but)
- The UI I think is not properly thought through You have al these options, tilt to wake, tilt to scroll through cards. Clumsy at best and a battery drain at worst (tilt to wake particularly) Even the touch screen to wake is not that cleaver as it can be operated but a lot of things touching the screen not just me, eg a sleeve, particularly one that is damp
- Voice control Ok I know I've said above that voice control is fantastic but it has one major down side, it needs internet connectivity. If it doesn't have it, it just doesn't work! Wish it would use the processing power of my phone to process voice.
- Wifi, ok I accept this is probably a bug, but wifi doesn't currently work properly, for some reason it will drain all the all the battery for no apparent reason and it does it very fast. I've now turned it off and only turn it on on the occasions because it's great to have full functionality
- Screen, the screen is fine, but that's damming it with faint praise. I would really like to see a higher quality screen and a little bit bigger would be nice.
- Incoming calls. When rejecting a call, it would be good to be offered a 'rejection message' that is sent via text giving a reason for the rejection.

When rejecting calls you can slide up instead of left por right swipe ano it will show up predefined messages that it will automaticly send to The caller.
::enviado do meu oneplus one via tapatalk::

My complaints (1 month usage) is the app tray feels bloated. Not every app needs to be displayed. Not every app has options set through the watch. Also the layout feels cramped to me. I would prefer some options (icons only, 1x2, list mode, 1x1 mode, text/no text, recent shortcuts at top on/off, etc.)
2. Embedded speaker for taking quick calls without digging for your phone last minute. 1 problem a watch introduces is that your phone starts to be left behind. I now leave my phone on the counter while I buzz around my home. Phone rings, its a mad dash down stairs to find my phone.
3. Some sort of keyboard. I'll take the old school T9 input. Just let me type a few things.

player911 said:
My complaints (1 month usage) is the app tray feels bloated. Not every app needs to be displayed. Not every app has options set through the watch. Also the layout feels cramped to me. I would prefer some options (icons only, 1x2, list mode, 1x1 mode, text/no text, recent shortcuts at top on/off, etc.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Download wear mini launcher from the playstore. It's a brilliant replacement that let's you customise the watch to how you want it.

I totally agree with you. I also use Android wear for
Reading messages from Text, Email, Whatsapp and Messenger
Voice control

Agree with some points according to my experience with my old android wear.
Hope my new one will work better.

My most of my complaints are solved with the Asus ZenWatch2. It is a solid upgrade to the LG G Watch. Once Marshmallow drops, we'll get a new app tray and speaker support (Zenwatch2 and Huawei) for calls.
I tried the alt launchers and it doesnt replace the stock launcher but runs over top of it. So it just adds to the chaos. However after the nostalgia wore off, I dont really use apps thus dont need to go into the app drawer.

Keyboard: try FlickKey
player911 said:
3. Some sort of keyboard. I'll take the old school T9 input. Just let me type a few things.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try FlickKey Keyboard for Wear. It adds a keyboard to any app that wants to call it. Right now, that is limited to Wear Messenger, Coffee for Wear, and K-9 for Wear - you need one of those messaging apps to be able to use it. BTE, FlickKey is not a T9 style keyboard - it works better than that.

I have tried various keyboards. What I was referring to was an option, by default, in Android wear to have a keyboard input. I don't use any of those apps, thus having a keyboard right now would be irrelevant.

What apps would you like to use a keyboard with?
player911 said:
I have tried various keyboards. What I was referring to was an option, by default, in Android wear to have a keyboard input. I don't use any of those apps, thus having a keyboard right now would be irrelevant.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I certainly agree that users should be able to decide for themselves if they want to use a keyboard or not, and which one they want on their smartwatch. What apps would you like to use a keyboard with? FlickKey can be added to any app with just about 15 lines of code. So message the dev who makes the app you want FlickKey in and let them know they can easily add it for free.

I find Android Wear to be very useful - when it works. Performance on my original 360 hasn't been very consistent either but I'm sure the S400 watches fare much better. Seriously though - every Android OEM needs to switch to AMOLED as soon as possible since it's much more suitable for smartwatch use.

I have installed AW on a Samsung Gear 2 (ported to the watch by @biktor_gj) and it runs really great !
Much much better than the default Tizen where it comes with normally.
Since I am using AW, I'm really hooked on it.
I love to be able to navigate with my watch and/or get notifications (from Google Maps) about any traffic jams or hold ups on my route.
I love to be able to use my voice to respond to whatsapp messages or even use my voice to make a new message without even holding my phone.
Really looking forward to the upcoming version (Marshmellow?), which suppose to have speaker support, because the Gear 2 has a build-in speaker.
So that means I can make calls too again from my watch (which is now only possible in Tizen, but not AW).

Hangouts and Messenger and Email (I know there are email clients that support wear and flickkey). I doubt Hangouts or Messanger will get it support.

OTA update to EVA-L09C440B138

Two days ago I got an OTA update to EVA-L09C440B138.
The change log was dire, stating only that it was Google security updates. However, the update was 455MB which seemed way too heavy for a security patch.
I have been playing around with it, and so far I have noticed the following changes;
Finally updated the camera UI so the top icons are not so difficult to hit. They now produce a nice drop-down menu and can be hit every time.
Also added to these top buttons in the centre, is an icon to jump directly to change between Standard, Vivid, or Smooth colour palette.
Not 100%, but I think they have adjusted the Pro camera settings layout to moved metering mode on the left in front of ISO.
Gallery edit confirm and save buttons also now much easier to hit.
About 12 new themes added to the theme store.
Stock default theme adjusted so that only Huawei apps have matching icons. Third party icons now as app developer intended.
Please confirm – Added feature to SMS app to add double-tap message to cancel sending. I might not have noticed this from the previous version though.
Things missing I was hoping for;
Still no way to tell the mobile data traffic management what day of the month your tariff renews on, making it nigh-on useless.
Would love to have been able to show/hide the Clock, Bluetooth, NFC, Alarm from notification bar. It’s all I rooted my last phone to do.
All in all though, still not enough grievance to make me unlock and root. They have squashed the one major annoyance from day-to-day use with those camera and gallery buttons being tricky to register. Apologies if this is already in custom ROMs. This was aimed at people running stock wondering what the next updates would bring. Let me know what I’ve missed.

Issue with black crush, adaptive brightness, notifications, Hotmail issue? and other.

Hello everyone!
Hopefully you guys gonna understand that I just got this phone 2 days ago and been a iPhone user since Iphone 4! (Went from Iphone 7 to P2 XL) So I hope I don't get too much hate because hey, after all. I bought the Pixel 2 XL 128 GB
Anyways where to start.. It's been very hard to go from iOS to Android but luckily I studied abit as a software dev. where we learned few things with Androids so I did know some stuff atleast but there is quite good benefits with Pixel 2 XL that made me go :highfive::silly::victory:
The camera, I can just say Holy crap.. I never seen so good camera in my life on a small device like this! No doubt about it, The customization on Android where you can enable bluetooth, locations and all that is a really good one too and the screen is also really beautiful, There is so much stuff that I like with it but also some stuff I still need to learn and that's why I am here, and hopefully I can get the help I want and also hope it's not gonna be very long text aswell.
Problem:
[*]Adaptive brightness
This one goes banana, hopefully im not the only one but I have never seen anything more sensitive brightness as Google's, Changes every page / app you use and feels quite annoying as it goes up and down all the time and it just kills your eyes slowly. I did find an app called Lux Lite that helped me quite abit but with lower brightness takes me to the next point which is...
[*]Black crush
Black crush, For those who maybe doesnt know what it is, basically you can follow it up by watching this youtube clip: youtube[DOT COM]/watch?v=CYMRRn2Fu1s (Yes, im a newbie and joined today )
- Simply showing when you reduce your brightness, the dark color disappears and becomes totally black - The reason I want to use it is just against the night when very strong brightness kills your eyes just at bedtime. I usually check NBA and Twitch Just before I fall asleep, and now maybe it will sound racist but that's just love! Basically basketball players that are dark-colored and make them completely black and you only see their matchwear and it ruins a small part of the match.
I have looked into other videos and found that the issue is not only with Pixel 2 but also coming now to Samsung phones and basically the new Oled where the company gives a bad calibrations. Im not sure what Iphone uses if its AMOLED but look etc. at iPhone X, probably one of the best
detailing in dark areas of all phones that I have tried and sure I could have bought that phone but also i'm surprised this is not anything is talking about in any youtube reviews so I don't know whatsup with this but this is slowly making me go back to my iPhone 7... I hope im not the only one?!?!?!
I did find an app called Screen balance that helps it abit but I mean... 945$ for a Phone that I need an APP that I NEED to buy to make it look good?! Come on?!
But please, don't take this offensive now. It still gives a really good picture at high brightness! no doubt about it.
[*]Notification
Well, This might be a fix that someone that as more experience than me in Android now so basically I will make a construction of what I want and maybe someone can help me out?
Basically on Iphone there is a button on the left where you toggle to turn on or off the sound and what's happends basically is it just kills all sound if the toggle is on and what I did is that I turned off vibrations so basically I get everything notifications just without sound and vibrations AND thats what I want to make on the Pixel 2 XL now, What I have done so far is to hold the volume down button until it changes to Do not disturb and in the settings I turned on everything but now on the Screen "Where you just see the clock" it just sometimes gives me like small icons AND sometimes it gives me like a big notification like iPhone did.. but however, Is there another way I can do this like so its more instead of just the small icons and to check? Because etc when Iam at work I can usually see if something pops out on the screen (Can even be a pop out for 10 sec) but now it can be very hard if it's only a small icon adding. Hopefully you understand ish what I mean!
[*]Email Hotmail issue?
This is a combination of notification and not, basically what I have seen this is not as fast response as Gmail, basically if I get a email from Gmail, the notification usually pops out instantly BUT when it comes to Hotmail, this can take over 15minutes until the email even comes to the Gmail app (Where I connected it with my Hotmail since it had that option). and I sometimes can't risk it when im waiting for a important email to come where I wait too long so I need to check pretty often manually to see if I get one.. Now the issue is I don't know if that is a issue when Don't distrub is on or if its the Gmail application, Does anyone have any solution for me here?
[*]Snapchat
Well what to say here, Im not sure but I do think this isn't a issue coming from the phone itself but Snapchat, The quailty is just awful, Im sure my Nokia 3310 would make a better picture than that on Snapchat :fingers-crossed: but anyways the quailty is horrible and maybe there is a way to make it atleast abit better or something, I know that Snapchat is alot better with iPhone and also this isn't a big issue, like its not end of the world to get this worked nownownow but I do feel like it could be atleast at the same level as Samsung quailty atleast?!
Now I think im done and hopefully I did not overkill and I do hope from bottom of my heart that I could get all the answers of my questions and hopefully it's not hard to read since my English isn't the best one but I did try my best and hopefully I could love my Pixel 2 XL as much as I did on my iPhone! Help me newbie out!

I don't have other issues but my main issue is my pixel 2 non xl is black crushing. It looks like absolute garbage at night like in bed. Some videos I can't watch it gets that bad.

My phone is a Pixel 2 (which this forum is about) rather than a 2XL, so some differences may be related to the different hardware. I've not enough experience with the 2XL to compare.
Adaptive brightess: actually I don't have a problem - it works pretty well, perhaps occasionally I want to raise it a bit in dark conditions (I normally have the slider set between 25-30%, as I find that more comfortable than higher brightness), but otherwise the only time it causes problems is if I use the phone in portrait mode and shade the sensor with my hand.
Black crushing: my phone is a 2 rather than a 2XL, so has a different display panel. I don't have a problem in any of the images I've used for testing until I set the (non-adaptive) brightness below 5%, and even then I'm not in a very dark room at the moment so it may be that I'd see more if I were. But as it's a different panel that's probably not relevant.
The iPhone X is using a Samsung OLED screen. At best it will be the same technology that Samsung use on their current phones, but usually they sell 3rd parties a slightly older revision. So any differences will be in the tuning: Samsung do tend to assume that people want excessive saturation and contrast, so I could imagine them tuning in a way that crushes blacks. The 2XL uses an LG panel: it's fundamentally the same technology (p-OLED and AMOLED are just branding names: both are plastic substrate active matrix OLEDs), but a different company's implementation. People generally reckon Samsung are a bit ahead of LG in that game though.
Notifications: TBH I don't bother with "Do Not Disturb" - I do it old school, with a quick setting tile to toggle between Ring (which is Ring and Vibrate for me), Vibrate and Silent - the latter is neither ring nor vibrate. Not as convenient as the silencer switch on the side (which OnePlus have copied, but then Apple copied it from Palm in the first place), but not much in it (wake phone with fingerprint scanner, swipe down on scanner to reveal quick toggles, then tap it - only takes a couple of seconds in total). I'm not completely clear about the rest of your description of small icons vs big notifications, especially what you mean by "small icons": do you mean little dots on app launcher icons, or a small icon in the notification bar that tells you that there is a notification tile if you pull down the slide? Your "do not disturb" preferences include an option to block visual disturbances, so maybe check how that is set. Some apps handle notifications in different ways. Some apps can use the notification light to inform you that there are notifications waiting, which I find helpful (mind you I turn off the always on display, may be different for you).
Hotmail: I don't use hotmail, but the obvious question is whether you have set it up to use imap push (so you get notified immediately) rather than the phone regularly to see whether there is new mail. It sounds like your email client may be polling every 15 minutes.
Snapchat: I've never used snapchat in my life, so can't help.

Thrillofit said:
Hello everyone!
Hopefully you guys gonna understand that I just got this phone 2 days ago and been a iPhone user since Iphone 4! (Went from Iphone 7 to P2 XL) So I hope I don't get too much hate because hey, after all. I bought the Pixel 2 XL 128 GB
Anyways where to start.. It's been very hard to go from iOS to Android but luckily I studied abit as a software dev. where we learned few things with Androids so I did know some stuff atleast but there is quite good benefits with Pixel 2 XL that made me go :highfive::silly::victory:
The camera, I can just say Holy crap.. I never seen so good camera in my life on a small device like this! No doubt about it, The customization on Android where you can enable bluetooth, locations and all that is a really good one too and the screen is also really beautiful, There is so much stuff that I like with it but also some stuff I still need to learn and that's why I am here, and hopefully I can get the help I want and also hope it's not gonna be very long text aswell.
Problem:
[*]Adaptive brightness
This one goes banana, hopefully im not the only one but I have never seen anything more sensitive brightness as Google's, Changes every page / app you use and feels quite annoying as it goes up and down all the time and it just kills your eyes slowly. I did find an app called Lux Lite that helped me quite abit but with lower brightness takes me to the next point which is...
[*]Black crush
Black crush, For those who maybe doesnt know what it is, basically you can follow it up by watching this youtube clip: youtube[DOT COM]/watch?v=CYMRRn2Fu1s (Yes, im a newbie and joined today )
- Simply showing when you reduce your brightness, the dark color disappears and becomes totally black - The reason I want to use it is just against the night when very strong brightness kills your eyes just at bedtime. I usually check NBA and Twitch Just before I fall asleep, and now maybe it will sound racist but that's just love! Basically basketball players that are dark-colored and make them completely black and you only see their matchwear and it ruins a small part of the match.
I have looked into other videos and found that the issue is not only with Pixel 2 but also coming now to Samsung phones and basically the new Oled where the company gives a bad calibrations. Im not sure what Iphone uses if its AMOLED but look etc. at iPhone X, probably one of the best
detailing in dark areas of all phones that I have tried and sure I could have bought that phone but also i'm surprised this is not anything is talking about in any youtube reviews so I don't know whatsup with this but this is slowly making me go back to my iPhone 7... I hope im not the only one?!?!?!
I did find an app called Screen balance that helps it abit but I mean... 945$ for a Phone that I need an APP that I NEED to buy to make it look good?! Come on?!
But please, don't take this offensive now. It still gives a really good picture at high brightness! no doubt about it.
[*]Notification
Well, This might be a fix that someone that as more experience than me in Android now so basically I will make a construction of what I want and maybe someone can help me out?
Basically on Iphone there is a button on the left where you toggle to turn on or off the sound and what's happends basically is it just kills all sound if the toggle is on and what I did is that I turned off vibrations so basically I get everything notifications just without sound and vibrations AND thats what I want to make on the Pixel 2 XL now, What I have done so far is to hold the volume down button until it changes to Do not disturb and in the settings I turned on everything but now on the Screen "Where you just see the clock" it just sometimes gives me like small icons AND sometimes it gives me like a big notification like iPhone did.. but however, Is there another way I can do this like so its more instead of just the small icons and to check? Because etc when Iam at work I can usually see if something pops out on the screen (Can even be a pop out for 10 sec) but now it can be very hard if it's only a small icon adding. Hopefully you understand ish what I mean!
[*]Email Hotmail issue?
This is a combination of notification and not, basically what I have seen this is not as fast response as Gmail, basically if I get a email from Gmail, the notification usually pops out instantly BUT when it comes to Hotmail, this can take over 15minutes until the email even comes to the Gmail app (Where I connected it with my Hotmail since it had that option). and I sometimes can't risk it when im waiting for a important email to come where I wait too long so I need to check pretty often manually to see if I get one.. Now the issue is I don't know if that is a issue when Don't distrub is on or if its the Gmail application, Does anyone have any solution for me here?
[*]Snapchat
Well what to say here, Im not sure but I do think this isn't a issue coming from the phone itself but Snapchat, The quailty is just awful, Im sure my Nokia 3310 would make a better picture than that on Snapchat :fingers-crossed: but anyways the quailty is horrible and maybe there is a way to make it atleast abit better or something, I know that Snapchat is alot better with iPhone and also this isn't a big issue, like its not end of the world to get this worked nownownow but I do feel like it could be atleast at the same level as Samsung quailty atleast?!
Now I think im done and hopefully I did not overkill and I do hope from bottom of my heart that I could get all the answers of my questions and hopefully it's not hard to read since my English isn't the best one but I did try my best and hopefully I could love my Pixel 2 XL as much as I did on my iPhone! Help me newbie out!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You might be better at posting this on the pixel 2xl thread
Sent from my Pixel 2 using XDA-Developers Legacy app

gvsukids said:
You might be better at posting this on the pixel 2xl thread
Sent from my Pixel 2 using XDA-Developers Legacy app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh you are right, My bad, I just created a new there! Thanks for that!
Large Hadron said:
My phone is a Pixel 2 (which this forum is about) rather than a 2XL, so some differences may be related to the different hardware. I've not enough experience with the 2XL to compare.
Adaptive brightess: actually I don't have a problem - it works pretty well, perhaps occasionally I want to raise it a bit in dark conditions (I normally have the slider set between 25-30%, as I find that more comfortable than higher brightness), but otherwise the only time it causes problems is if I use the phone in portrait mode and shade the sensor with my hand.
Black crushing: my phone is a 2 rather than a 2XL, so has a different display panel. I don't have a problem in any of the images I've used for testing until I set the (non-adaptive) brightness below 5%, and even then I'm not in a very dark room at the moment so it may be that I'd see more if I were. But as it's a different panel that's probably not relevant.
The iPhone X is using a Samsung OLED screen. At best it will be the same technology that Samsung use on their current phones, but usually they sell 3rd parties a slightly older revision. So any differences will be in the tuning: Samsung do tend to assume that people want excessive saturation and contrast, so I could imagine them tuning in a way that crushes blacks. The 2XL uses an LG panel: it's fundamentally the same technology (p-OLED and AMOLED are just branding names: both are plastic substrate active matrix OLEDs), but a different company's implementation. People generally reckon Samsung are a bit ahead of LG in that game though.
Notifications: TBH I don't bother with "Do Not Disturb" - I do it old school, with a quick setting tile to toggle between Ring (which is Ring and Vibrate for me), Vibrate and Silent - the latter is neither ring nor vibrate. Not as convenient as the silencer switch on the side (which OnePlus have copied, but then Apple copied it from Palm in the first place), but not much in it (wake phone with fingerprint scanner, swipe down on scanner to reveal quick toggles, then tap it - only takes a couple of seconds in total). I'm not completely clear about the rest of your description of small icons vs big notifications, especially what you mean by "small icons": do you mean little dots on app launcher icons, or a small icon in the notification bar that tells you that there is a notification tile if you pull down the slide? Your "do not disturb" preferences include an option to block visual disturbances, so maybe check how that is set. Some apps handle notifications in different ways. Some apps can use the notification light to inform you that there are notifications waiting, which I find helpful (mind you I turn off the always on display, may be different for you).
Hotmail: I don't use hotmail, but the obvious question is whether you have set it up to use imap push (so you get notified immediately) rather than the phone regularly to see whether there is new mail. It sounds like your email client may be polling every 15 minutes.
Snapchat: I've never used snapchat in my life, so can't help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Totally my fault that I bringed in Pixel 2 XL into a Pixel 2 thread, that's so stupid of me and I can understand the reason why you couldn't give me the reason I have issues with! but I still appreciate the answers you could bring in here!
About the notifications, if you search on google for ( android 8.1 always on display ) that's what I meant with small icons. But you are right with the notifications, I have found out that every app gives different notifications and some of my apps have really bad notifications, that sometimes they dont even pop out :silly:
About the hotmail it is exactly the issue there, I did set it up in Google gmail and it says it is IMAP but I could only have it on every 15 minutes, Downloaded Hotmails program and its the program that doesn't give me notifications.

Oh, if you meant the Always On Display then actually I don't use it in "always on" mode! I have to tap to wake it, so all I can say for sure is that while many apps leave a notification, if I wake it a second time it just shows the icon. What I don't know is whether in always on mode it would switch to just showing the icon after some time, or when another notification comes in, or whether it would stay there until you interact. There are some that I've never seen show text, but most of those are persistent things I'd not want to show it anyway (e.g. showing that the "WhatsApp web" app on my computer is active is something I'd not want an actual text message for). If you wake the screen with the power button you can usually see more detailed notifications on the lock screen than the always on display.

Large Hadron said:
Oh, if you meant the Always On Display then actually I don't use it in "always on" mode! I have to tap to wake it, so all I can say for sure is that while many apps leave a notification, if I wake it a second time it just shows the icon. What I don't know is whether in always on mode it would switch to just showing the icon after some time, or when another notification comes in, or whether it would stay there until you interact. There are some that I've never seen show text, but most of those are persistent things I'd not want to show it anyway (e.g. showing that the "WhatsApp web" app on my computer is active is something I'd not want an actual text message for). If you wake the screen with the power button you can usually see more detailed notifications on the lock screen than the always on display.
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Yeah exactly! I turned it off and it is like you said, That some applications doesn't show any text or anything but just an small icon on the always on display and sometimes it does show a preview notification (Like a bigger notification) so thats what curious me like what's the reason of that :fingers-crossed:

I've never been very systematic in observing what gives what sort of notification, not least because if I think there's anything significant I tend to unlock the phone to look. I know that some types of notifications never show anything more than an icon (e.g. as mentioned the notice that the WhatsApp companion app on my laptop has connected). Some, such as calendar and email, I know do. I assume that it's linked to the type of notification, but haven't studied in enough detail.
As a test I just turned my ambient display to always on and sent myself an email. A detailed notification appeared for a few seconds, before disappearing and being replaced by the small app icon. With the display set off but to wake when new messages arrive it shows the full notification for a few seconds, and just the icon when I wake it. With it not set to wake the screen for new notifications then when I woke it with a tap I got the full notification even though it had been delivered about 30 seconds earlier (but only the first time I woke it). Personally if I were designing it I'd give options for the more detailed notifications to persist, rather than just be replaced by an icon after a few seconds, but I don't think Google have done that.

For snapchat u can enable camera HAL in developer options to improve the quality mine did

jaggillararla said:
For snapchat u can enable camera HAL in developer options to improve the quality mine did
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I have done that and there was no difference for me

Thrillofit said:
I have done that and there was no difference for me
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Try reinstalling it. I've heard Snapchat is building a new app version from scratch so I'm crossing my fingers it will be better
Otherwise idk what else to do to improve the quality

A few observations on the google pixel 4a

I've had the Pixel 4a since tuesday and I like it. I've a few observations I thought I'd put here in case anyone else agrees; there's a fix/workaround etc:
1) The speaker isn't too loud and it's only in the last 20% or so of the volume bar that you can hear the difference. They should change the linearity such that there's more control over the sound difference of the last 20% of the range, if that makes sense. Not a big deal.
2) It's annoying that I can't swipe back (ie swipe left from the right edge of the screen) to get rid of the keyboard. Instead a large percentage (10?) of the bottom of the screen is black except for the arrow which closes the keyboard. Waste of space.
3) On a similar note, there's a white line near the bottom of the screen. I guess it's to show that you can swipe up, but I'm not sure. Why would anyone who wasn't sure if they could swipe up see a white line and go "ah - I bet I could swipe up here"? But that's my best guess. And this is on most screens. It's the worst, and the most noticeable, on chrome. You have a full screen site, curving nicely at the top of the screen, and at the bottom the screen starts to curve but then there's the black rectangle, which exists purely to highlight the mystery-white-line-which-might-mean-you-can-swipe-up-here, cuts in, ending the curve and wasting around 5% of the height of the screen. This line doesn't appear in 3 button mode. But isn't the point of gestures that you don't need to waste space on buttons. So...don't waste the space showing me you can swipe up then. There's no swipe down hint, or swiping left/right hint. I don't get it at all. It knows I know you can swipe up, because I've swiped up.
4) Nova launcher problem. It just doesn't stick. Every once in a while it stops being the default launcher and you have to run it again. This has happened on other phones and eventually they fix it. I guess I have to try nova launcher again every month or so. The stock launcher isn't too bad, but:
5) Stock launcher is quite unconfigurable. The 5 icons at the bottom of the screen are sort of like the nova launcher dock (which i always turn off) and are there on every screen.
6) There's a notification history, which is a great idea. If you swiped away a message but then forgot if it was an email, or which whatsapp contact it was, you can see quickly what the most recent message was. You access it via a button under the notification shade which you can press to get at it. But...get this: That button only exists if you currently have unread notifications. If you swiped the last one away, the history button vanishes. You now have to go into settings to read it (why settings? my photos aren't in settings). Why? Who thought that was a good idea? That's when you're most likely to want the history! Doh!
7) Aggressive app killer. This will never change - no matter what google says about ai and machine learning, there's something too complicated about "ok, there's a music player running, playing music, and there are headphones attached, and the headphones are playing music...but...oh, the screen is turned off, which apps can I kill to save battery...well, there's this music player nobody's looking at, that'll do" to ever fix. Really? You're not checking if an app gets reloaded immediately after it gets killed every time it's killed and learning "hmm... it's as if.....he was listening to music and didn't want the app killed?" I guess it's true what they say - most machine learning is just a regex, and this isn't something which can be solved with a regex, so... I've disabled the battery optimisation for this app; time will tell whether that does the trick.
8) Can't disable the sound it makes when taking a screenshot.
9) Google photos can't keep up with quickly deleting a number of photos. To be fair, this happens on the website too. It's odd - you'd think it would be easy. You're not actually doing anything other than marking the fact that a photo is deleted. You're just moving it to the bin; it still exists locally. It's an offline-operation. Why doesn't it just defer until later, or do asynchronously - whatever it's doing. On both web and phone it's so laggy and disorienting that it's easy to end up deleting the wrong photo, the only workaround being to delete literally one picture every 5 seconds. Annoying if you're been taking pics of kids and took a bunch so as to ensure you have at least one without a blur or closed eyes etc.
Well, sounds quite ranty I guess. It's a great phone though - highly recommended. I really bought it for the camera and the fact it's quite a small phone. I recommend the spigen tough armor (sic) case; nice and grippy and feels like it's going to keep it pretty safe.

Maybe these things will be fixed in future updates. I reverted back to 10 and flashed Dirty Unicorns, just a better overall user experience compared to stock at the moment.

I would like to add something: do you also the "bubbles" always appear on the left of the screen even if you have moved them to the right before closing them?

_a! said:
...Well, sounds quite ranty I guess. It's a great phone though - highly recommended. I really bought it for the camera and the fact it's quite a small phone. I recommend the spigen tough armor (sic) case; nice and grippy and feels like it's going to keep it pretty safe.
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Most observations in original post pertain to Android 11 (AOSP) and have little to do with the device itself. My experience on a couple items:
- Nova has yet to crash since updating to Android 11 (stable on A10 too). That said, you likely interact with the launcher in different ways not to mention app portfolio interactions. Should submit a bug report to developer via contact link in Nova settings.
- Not experiencing the same nonlinearity in volume adjustment. Max volume is fine for my tastes but probably would work well as the sole audio source at an Italian wedding

DB126 said:
Most observations in original post pertain to Android 11 (AOSP) and have little to do with the device itself. My experience on a couple items:
- Nova has yet to crash since updating to Android 11 (stable on A10 too). That said, you likely interact with the launcher in different ways not to mention app portfolio interactions. Should submit a bug report to developer via contact link in Nova settings.
- Not experiencing the same nonlinearity in volume adjustment. Max volume is fine for my tastes but probably would work well as the sole audio source at an Italian wedding
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The device runs Android 11, so that's all I can talk about, not what might happen if it ran a different operating system.
I never said nova launcher crashed; just that it stopped being a default launcher by itself a few times.

The white line at the bottom of the screen is annoying! I liked having the option in Oxygen OS to hide it, hopefully that becomes an option on future updates.
Overall I'm really enjoying the phone after coming from the Nord.

_a! said:
The device runs Android 11, so that's all I can talk about, not what might happen if it ran a different operating system.
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Not what I said; no reference to an alternate OS
_a! said:
I never said nova launcher crashed; just that it stopped being a default launcher by itself a few times.
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Almost always the result of excessive memory pressure (also has nothing to do with the device assuming memory is adequate...which it is on the 4a)

For your issue 4 I guess there's bug in Nova launcher. I had similar issue with Nova, but after switching to Lawnchair it sticks permanently.
Default gesture navigation is surely ****ty. I prefer using old 3-buttons navigation.