Hacker News Reader

I use a Pixel with the Nova Prime launcher (which is a fantastic launcher) and it can do all of these things except the audio stuff. Individual app audio control is definitely one of the features I wish I had the most.

What's the Pixel version of Dex?

Taskbar app by farmerbb

On my Pixel multi-tasking has become suite limited since Android 13. Cannot switch only one of the apps anymore when dual tasking.

And the rounded separator wastes more space. And you can't pick one app and then start another to go into split screen, both have to already be running.

I wish I could talk to the PM who decided this was an upgrade.

Individual audio volume per app is one of the simpler things you can do with Tasker.

I paid for Tasker years ago but never got around to trying it. This might be the impetus I needed.

Some of this depends on your ecosystem as well... my iPhone has smooth integration with my desktop (iMac)... I also have VLC on my iPhone... the thing that bothers me the most are the audio things you mentioned and the web browsers. When I was on Samsung I had a heavily customised Nova launcher but I surprised myself how little moving to the iPhone UI from that bothered me

Was the move little and the bothering big, or was it a big move with little bothering? It’s ambiguous

99% of humans can pass that captcha

Dex is really valuable for me: I use it a lot; about 50% of my programming time. The other 50% is a MacBook Air m1.

This really should be an Android standard. I would prefer Linux instead of Android, but this is the next best thing.

I ignored Dex for years and only recently started using it, especially during travel. I was blown away by how convenient and useful it is.

Could your share how do you use it for programming? Do you screenshare the dev apps from your computer, or run tools locally? If the latter, which tools?

I run locally with termux and emacs and vscode in the browser but also vnc via ssh to a server with Linux/i3. It works very well.

All of the customization is why I still have a Samsung phone too. The default Android experience is too close to an iPhone, and at that point I'd rather have an iPhone.

One Samsung feature I've seen is "limit battery charging to 80%" ... the adaptive battery feature in stock Android does not work well for my scenario.

You can do this on Pixels as well.

On my Sony Xperia I can force battery limit to 90% or 80%, but on my parent's Pixel 5a only the automatic/adaptive option was available? This seems like one of those things that's easy to offer, but Google hides it to be more slick and apple-like, while Samsung and Sony add the control in for power users / "value-add".

(There are other trade-offs between Google and Samsung, of course.)

The BMS, ie the hardware has to be setup for it, it isn't just a thing u can solve with a software limit.

I don't think you can. At least not out of the box. Pixels can do stupid adaptive charging where it tries to learn your routine and won't fully charge until X amount of time before you supposedly wake up. But they do not have a setting where the phone just stops charging at 80% like Samsung or ay least my Pixel 7a does not.

On the flipside, Samsungs are also exceptionally bad at breaking Android expectations around battery management (and, by extension, background processing and applications): https://dontkillmyapp.com/samsung

Err, what does termux have to do with Samsung? (Samsung did beta a "Linux on DeX" briefly, but it vanished years ago...)

> Linux shell

Just because it might come in handy for some: There is iSH for iphones, that emulate a whole x86 CPU to run a lean linux environment. I use it to ssh into servers and edit some txt/special files ios is too dumb to handle otherwise (you can move stuff to its file system).

Why emulate x86 for this?

> Samsung's browser has some unique features for phones and tablets and I end up using it the most.

I recommend in the strongest possible terms that you familiarize yourself with Samsung's privacy policy.

> Hide status icons that are just always on and thus meaningless.

Could you share some examples?

I routinely hid the cellular, battery, and VPN indicators on my KeyOne. This isn't unique to Samsung, it's available via ADB. They might expose it, and allow non-geeks to use it, but that hardly makes it a Samsung feature to anyone browsing this site and with more than a passing interest in UI customization.

But why? Do you also hide your speedometer when using cruise control?

No, but the ratio of data I use to data available per billing period, coupled with excellent coverage, meant being on data vs wifi made no difference whatsoever. It served absolutely no purpose.

Same with the battery icon. When you plug in your phone every night, but the battery lasts 2-3 days, knowing you're at 80% vs 72% has no purpose.

Why have them there if all they do is contribute to anxiety (why did I lose 3% faster?) and take up space in the top bar (where alarm and DND indicators live)?

Samsung has an app called "Good Lock", with a bunch of sub-apps, that allow a crazy amount of customization. Those for example are just toggles in the "QuickStar" sub-app.

Some of the changes I've made include different icons for the back/home/app switcher buttons at the bottom of the screen and a different layout for the app switcher.

I specifically hide the Alarm, Volume, Battery (I show percentage), NFC, and Bluetooth icons.

A bunch of those things are not Samsung specific.

> DeX for desktop environment when connected to a display -- I can even remote display to my LG TV and the magic remote can be used as a mouse pointer.

What?!! I didn't know this! I used the phone as a stupid touchpad.

Yeah, but the unremovable bloatware is obscene

Well, there's good to have vs. stupid. It would perhaps be nice to have per-app volume. But the fact that iPhone has just a global volume ... that my ringtone vs. media volume can't be separate is plain stupid isn't it. I will turn down volumes because at work/kids and lost my ringtone. I mean who makes decisions like that?

Now in terms of a little thing that's a major annoyance is the alarm. Android has this feature where upcoming alarms are shown as notifications which you can turn off (just the next one). I set multiple alarms for the morning so that if I shut off one I get another. Now if I wake up on the 1st alarm I will have the next 2 on notification that I can turn off. On iPhone I will keep having those alarm bells and turn them off (which can wake up my kids/wife) or disable them once I wakeup and I might end up forgetting to turn them on for the next day.

Now the freedom in terms of application or browser and extension!!! are obviously general problems.

> Well, there's good to have vs. stupid. It would perhaps be nice to have per-app volume. But the fact that iPhone has just a global volume ... that my ringtone vs. media volume can't be separate is plain stupid isn't it.

The volume of media playback und ringtones can be changed separately. Ringtone volume can be set in "Sounds & Haptics". Disable the toggle for changing the ringtone volume with the physical volume keys if that interferes.

On Android you can change any of the volumes using the keys. No need to go into settings and find the option each time. I change mine throughout the day.

> that my ringtone vs. media volume can't be separate is plain stupid isn't it

It is separate on iOS.

Funny how portable toy users think that bare base features that proper computer OSes have been doing for 3 decades with sub-100 MHz processors and sub-32 MB RAM, are somehow crazy stuff.