(okay, it is a little personal, I lurk random groups and get pissed off every time I see it, but at the same time get that it is too late when the site's incentives are way off)

I know it's a long thread of messages, but there's something I giggle about inside:
Some time in the future, a frustrated user of a HMD Global phone will ask their support agent why tf the bootloader is permalocked. There's now a very significant chance that such an outsourced human agent will literally cite that post as the reason after copying the question into an LLM. A post itself coming from a conclusion made by LLM.
Tldr, AI already rules, we're cooked.

Okay, I've been pinged that there are edits going on in the original post, good to see.

The vibe loss can't be corrected tho, Google caused a lot of trouble, so people expect a cascade, let's not hasten it.

This is the last message about that post.

Remember the Android's lock screen album covers? Apple done that too and is using separate image files to avoid stretching a square to a long portrait screen.

Meanwhile an informative post about just a fraction of what a camera system has to take into account:
https://commonlands.com/blogs/technical/lens-chief-ray-angle-and-mismatch

Now also SamMobile, late to the party. Well, at least you can see how untrustworthy they are. I think they used to be better 10 years ago.

European Union law specialist.

I came across a video of cool looking phenomenon from a boomer channel on tg (flat earthers this time). It was atmospheric turbulence which they obviously interpreted as stars being fake. The worst thing is that no video I found elsewhere looks as good as theirs. Guess they were the only ones to care to magnify it or the only ones to think of Nikon P1000 as a good telescope (otherwise it's a great camera for its original purpose).

After ~10 minutes of searching for a comparable video I found just one:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ooeRUOZ0Gi4

Imagine it at a much higher res, slowed down and used as an animated wallpaper. That would be something. Subpar optics can often be unexpectedly fascinating, and same goes also for sensors. Every artifact can be recreated in post, but for artistic purposes it's always best to pick the real thing.

To state it once and for all:
THIS ISN'T DPI.

Smallest width setting sets your shorter display side length in dp units. The goal of this setting is to simulate same display size on various screens, no matter their resolution and actual size, as long as the smallest width value set by you is the same.

This means that setting your smallest width to round values is incorrect and counterproductive. It'll cause your dpi (which is what you can look up by wm density) to move away from the values the rasterized app assets were shipped for, resulting in unnecessary scaling.

Back when smallest width wasn't present in dev settings, CyanogenMod used to have a setting for actual dpi, equal to setting it in wm density.
What smallest width actually is is:
px / (dpi / 160)

So for example, the classic:
1080 / (480 / 160) = 360

So, what are the recommended actual dpi values if what you care about is for no assets to be additionally scaled?
120, 140, 160, 180, 200, 220, 240, 280, 320, 360, 400, 420, 480, 560 and 640.

Spread the awareness 🥺

https://github.com/Mr-Morat/Black-Peler/commits/AOSP/

There's a guy ready to fry your Redmi with AI slop kernel.¹²³
¹ If it even compiles
² If it even boots up far enough to take over charging
³ If you're gullible enough to flash it

ZTE revealed Leica router.

I'm breaking my promise, but fr, they actually pushed an additional post to milk it further instead of editing, at the time I was writing this. They know exactly what they're doing, I overcredited the page and the author. Gotta get these liras.

But to be a little more detailed than salty (initial channel audience would already be aware of it), a reminder:
Secure boot off phones are exceptionally rare, unlockable bootloader is a bit of an ugly artifact, in a better world you'd be able to choose your own bootloader despite (and in compatibility with) secure boot, just like it is the case on desktops. The regulation refers to modems.

If some day in a better world the EU law actually starts demanding smartphone vendors to give you the same flexibility as proper laptops do, we'd be in a much better world. It wouldn't solve all of the anticompetitive measures that we're seeing, but at least you could do something you can on desktop: dual boot.

You can enable secure boot and still natively run Linux and Windows. To run anything that isn't stock Android on smartphones, you have to knowingly resign from the "perks" given to you by compliance of the stock ROM.

Yes, it'd be quite frustrating to reboot your phone every time you need to use a bank app, but honestly, it'd be a much better position than we are in right now.

And no, Snapdragon laptops with integrated modem won't force secure boot on you, they'll still be better than phones. If not for the panic, even a theoretically hostile EU stance would stop whenever the desktop equivalence is boldly pointed out. Smartphones are mini PCs.

The one thing that ARM laptops share with phones is keeping everything on a single storage chip to cut the costs. Modem firmware (protected), UEFI (protected). Yes, the latter sucks compared to usual x86 devices and it's a shame that you can't casually format everything as easily, but this state would already be a huge improvement for phones, completely in reach.

I understand that people are happy about it, but I'm not.

The monopoly state of GMS Android means it needs to be just "good enough" to serve serious blows to any alternatives. Position of Windows on desktop is completely incomparable to Android on smartphones. On desktop, you may even say that Linux started thriving. On smartphones, the consolidation into the garden of stock GMS Android seems to only increase.

Say you want Linux and Android on a single device. You may rely on projects like UBPorts, Waydroid, Droidian, PostmarketOS and do whatever you want with drivers or even whole kernel of your own device, make them more efficient and up-to-date in plenty of ways.

Google offers an alternative: you get to also have Android and Linux on a single device. But now, you'll do nothing with your hardware, even if it's EOL, even if something obvious sucks about it and can be easily fixed. [1/2]

Why would anyone choose the latter? The answer is already there: Play Integrity and free app licensing (aka sideloading restriction). Measures that make sure to put difficulty onto any alternatives, especially commercial.

How popular would a mobile OS project have to be to get millions of users and hyped up investors in current state of the market? Whenever GMS Android makes a step forward, it pushes the rest five steps back.
[2/2]