Android Phones
Moto
I've been using lots of moto phones for a while. Moto has done some stupid shit like try to sell me a charger when I first plugged my phone into a slow charger. Mostly they do pretty good on user interface features. I like their gestures, and button controls.
They disable wireless display even though there's no reason to do so.
Samsung Galaxy A17
This phone is junk. Don't buy it. I took a deal with Fi because it was half price compared to what I usually change my phone out for, and it had a better screen.
Broken things I haven't fixed:
- No vibrations for lock screen pin input
- There is no good way to have both a camera and flashlight quick action. Moto had the chop and flip gestures. This has double press the power button, and a couple lock-screen shortcuts. I use the camera more so the flashlight got the hard to access lock-screen shortcut.
It has no headphone jack, but it does support wireless display.
Fixing poor performance
This thing was slow in an unnecessary way. It felt like every multi-tasking operation was intentionally ruined, but in-app performance was fine.
I did a couple guides, and things got more responsive:
- Follow this reddit post, but I left virtual ram plus enabled. The gist is:
- enable auto optimization in device care
- enable developer options
- change logger buffer sizes to 64k or even off (most recommended)
- enable tethering hardware acceleration (not using tethering, but it was already on, whatever)
- change background processing limit from standard to 'at most 2' or even higher
Follow Shino's ultimate battery guide
I didn't follow this exactly, here's the ones I thought were worthwhile:
- limit which apps can run in background (per app)
- limit background data usage (per app)
- disable Samsung's sending diagnostic data
- enable power saving mode, but then toggle off the CPU speed limit
Enabling features that should already be there
Samsung has their Good Lock app which is basically how you get features that Moto phones already had enabled. The A17 isn't on the list of supported phones. Instead I had to get the third party Fine Lock, then manually download and install the special sub-app APKs so that Fine Lock can run them.
There were two features I wanted this for:
- Creation of shortcuts to setting's items (notification history, battery usage). This requires the RegiStar sub-app, then under Search options is "Allow creation of a shortcut". Then you can long press items in settings to make shortcuts to them (not the usual widget workflow, but it gets the job done).
- Volume key track control. This needs the Sound Assistant sub-app. In the 'Media key shortcuts' section, enable 'Control music with Volume keys'. Unfortunately the phone doesn't vibrate to acknowledge the long press which I liked for track changes while driving.
What a hassle for basic stuff after coming from Moto devices.