The grumpy thread

[beko1987]

I had one too! Yea it was beautiful. However I've zero interest at all in the modern version as it'll just be dogshit physically 😢 My friends got the original rebirth flip they did in excellent condition fully boxed he's keeping until it's worth flinging on ebay (the screens fucked up on them alot) 

Your doing it right, hopefully you'll go on 4/5 years now and I bet the handset won't be that far outdated. It won't say AI and that's about it 🤮🤷 

I think I've got a pixel 9 coming my way soon and I don't know what to feel about it. Doesn't help that my work phone is a pixel 6 and I don't like it! That's mostly due to it being very locked down though and me never using it bar for 2fa on everything I do 😭

[beko1987]

My p20 pro is still going strong* too. I used to use it for filming my videos but the camera on this oppo is much better. Charlie dropped it and cracked the corner of the screen so it's got a protector on it now and it's used for YouTube/I take it to the car when photographing/frantically googling things

That was probably the last phone I got properly excited about I think. It was genuinely groundbreaking when it came out and reminded me of the leap HTC took with the m7, and I got a £25/m deal on launch (which turned into about £60 at the end of the term, I'm so glad I'm sim only now). 

If I dropped this tomorrow I'd put my sim into the p20 and carry on as if nothing happened. 

The poor p30? Again from my friend, but I never found a case that fitted it. Cos of the curved screen the sexy bastard. I had to park very naughtily at the John Radcliffe when my mum had to go there after passing out infront of Chris once and as I climbed over to the passenger side to get out it slipped from my trousers and smashed front and back on the car park. 

Bought a cheap screen and back from ebay and did the transplant but that was such shit quality Eva dropped it on a pillow and it cracked, and now the screen and back are held on with sellotape and Eva uses it as she can't be trusted with anything nicer. It's currently sat on the side in the bathroom blaring music whilst she has a shower, if it falls into the toilet I won't be sad

[Zelandeth]

3 minutes ago, beko1987 said:

I had one too! Yea it was beautiful. However I've zero interest at all in the modern version as it'll just be dogshit physically 😢 My friends got the original rebirth flip they did in excellent condition fully boxed he's keeping until it's worth flinging on ebay (the screens fucked up on them alot) 

Your doing it right, hopefully you'll go on 4/5 years now and I bet the handset won't be that far outdated. It won't say AI and that's about it 🤮🤷 

I think I've got a pixel 9 coming my way soon and I don't know what to feel about it. Doesn't help that my work phone is a pixel 6 and I don't like it! That's mostly due to it being very locked down though and me never using it bar for 2fa on everything I do 😭

Pixel 9 Pro XL here.  Have to say that after far as the initial out of the box experience goes, Huawei was leagues ahead.  

I've also come to the co conclusion that Google's launcher is going to have to go soon or this handset is going to itself get launched through the nearest window.  It is so dumbed down and locked down that it's unreal.  Home screen I can effectively use maybe 2/3rds of.  Rest is covered in a search box I'll never use and a giant pointless notification area that covers the top inch and change of the screen.  I can remove data from said area...but I can't actually remove IT and just stick the icons and the weather widget that live up there there.

[Zelandeth]

25 minutes ago, beko1987 said:

My p20 pro is still going strong* too. I used to use it for filming my videos but the camera on this oppo is much better. Charlie dropped it and cracked the corner of the screen so it's got a protector on it now and it's used for YouTube/I take it to the car when photographing/frantically googling things

That was probably the last phone I got properly excited about I think. It was genuinely groundbreaking when it came out and reminded me of the leap HTC took with the m7, and I got a £25/m deal on launch (which turned into about £60 at the end of the term, I'm so glad I'm sim only now). 

If I dropped this tomorrow I'd put my sim into the p20 and carry on as if nothing happened 

Only reason I upgraded from the P20 Pro (I started out on the P9 when I ran out of patience with Samsung's inability to produce even vaguely stable software) was because...I accidentally left it sitting on the bumper of the car and drove off with it still there.  It stayed there for a good 3/4 of a mile... unfortunately when it fell off it landed in the middle of a dual carriageway.

Have to admit I'm personally not that impressed with this thing so far.  It's noticeably heavier, way more bulky than the Huawei (especially the way the camera sticks out the back), and - I feel a bit like a posh tech reviewer saying this - doesn't *feel* like anywhere near as premium a product.

Plus it's just a matt black cuboid...it just looks like an oversized TV remote, compared to...

I know it doesn't add to the functionality...but c'mon, if I'm seeing for the first time or picking up a bit of tech that's worth more than several cars I've owned, I want there to be a bit of wow factor. 

Can't say I'm that impressed with the camera based on a bit of just random snapping of things around the house today...no there's nothing wrong with it, but it certainly doesn't seem any sharper than the one from the P30 Pro.  Despite seemingly taking up a hell of a lot more space.  Admittedly I've not done any real testing there beyond randomly pointing it at a few things round the house.

The fingerprint reader is orders of magnitude more flaky than the one on any of my Huawei handsets.  Which is already getting old.

I guess the biggest things I've seen that it has going for it so far are that it should be supported for a good while, and it's not an iPhone.

[IronStar]

Not being excited about new phones is a good thing in my book - we got to a point where they just work and get out of the way. Hardware refresh doesn’t net you anything groundbreaking, but you get a bump in speed, a nice feature or five and a better battery life. Going back two or three personal hardware refreshes backwards (to the phone you replaced  5 years or so) deffo shows that the tech has progressed.

I remember when I was in high school and new Android gen was  groundbreaking, amount of time wasted faffing with ROMs, kernels and overclocking those to squeeze every last bit of (inadequate) performance they had is not something I’d like to see a return of.

I’m currently on iPhone 13, absolutely the best and most stable device I ever had. Locked down? Sure, but I really CBA to tinker with any of it, I just want it to work and it excels at that. Probably to be traded in for 15 when 16 comes out because USB-C and fresh battery. 

[beko1987]

I was just thinking about custom rooms when you said it yourself 😂 That's when it was exciting! 

I started with my galaxy s2 which felt really amazing at the time, although I was coming from an LG slide thing iirc which was goppingly shit. I also got an original nexus tablet and fell into the xda developers forum! Kept both going for years and the nexus tablet worked fine (albeit uselessly) until 4ish years ago when Eva dropped it and it just wasn't worth fixing. 

But keeping that s2 going years after it should have been led me to lightweight custom rooms, and the (I forget what their called) root packages you could add to get amazing things line a torch, always on display, making the shortcut keys do different things and so on. My m7 I dropped too before I got nodding it (didn't mind the stock ui iirc) but my m8 I kept for years and years with a beautiful slim rom and minimal gapps and many hacks. 

Was barclays fucking it up in the end, it wouldn't run on a rooted phone and it was just as banking apps started to be useful. And by then alot of the things I rooted and modded for were being baked into android anyway. Got the p20 pro and Huawei had done such a good job with the software it was perfect as it was, and alot of the apps I used by then wouldn't work anyway. 

Now I'm happy just taking a friend's cast offs, although we do have flipping loads of bloody phones now, but they all have a purpose/too fucked to be any use otherwise. 

My IBM thinkpad x60 tablet has all the adb drivers installed though, I last used it many years ago to remove via the terminal all thebloatware from the ex's dad's Samsung a_whatever. Made it into a beautiful device and was all he needed as he was a complete technophobe. He nearly passed out as I did it infront of him on his dining table (following a guide 😂). I bet he's had to get another phone now and I bet he hates it! 

[AnnoyingPentium]

2 hours ago, beko1987 said:

Hopefully just a flexy? 🤞🤞

That it was! AA man has fitted a new one and bled the system up. Car now has brakes! 😂

[Markeh]

1 hour ago, beko1987 said:

The poor p30? Again from my friend, but I never found a case that fitted it. Cos of the curved screen the sexy bastard. I had to park very naughtily at the John Radcliffe when my mum had to go there after passing out infront of Chris once and as I climbed over to the passenger side to get out it slipped from my trousers and smashed front and back on the car park. 

Must be something about hospital car parks - I killed my Sony Z2 in a similar fashion. The back had broken ages before (tripped over a kerb with it in my hand), and it lost some structural rigidity. Struggling to get out of the car in a tight hospital car park, it got wedged between my thigh and the B-pillar of the Megane I had at the time, and it suddenly became an early Z Flip prototype.

I said I'd keep one til it died after upgrading to an S20+ and ending up buying it outright cheaply (thanks to Three for lying about coverage in my area), and that lasted right up until the S23 came out, I was having a bad week, and I worked out I could get £300 off an S23 Ultra by trading in an S3 Mini with a cracked screen that owed me £2, plus the £150 I got for the S20+ separately, I ended up paying about £800 for what was then £1300 of phone (and getting it in a unique non-boring colour on release day). If there's not a cheap offer similar to that when the S25 comes out and my Samsung finance is paid off on this one, I'll probably stock up on a couple of Spigen cases and screen protectors, and keep it til it dies.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

I still think my favourite phone was a Nokia Lumia 800 in black.  It was a beautiful bit of design and with Windows Phone 7, lovely to use.

[beko1987]

I skipped all that, had my HTC m7 then and was fully in love! Before dropping the p30 that was the last phone I smashed a screen on so I had a good run. 

Nearly fucked my m8 when it slipped down the back of the rear seat of my green zx as I was folding it down and I felt the resistance of the seat on the screen... It didn't break the glass but the lcd in that area was a yellow tinge forever more. 

I don't count my flip breaking as it broke itself. The ribbon cable went and the screen went black randomly and that made it unuseable for Google maps in the car

[bramz7]

God, some of the posts about phones give me flashbacks to the six years I spent in telecommunication retail. 

'Why can't I get WhatsApp on my Lumia etc etc...' AGH

I've been a staunch Pixel user for many years. Hate all the UIs on the other Android devices. Aside from an increasingly poor battery, my 6A is fine. 

 

[GrumpiusMaximus]

1 hour ago, bramz7 said:

God, some of the posts about phones give me flashbacks to the six years I spent in telecommunication retail. 

'Why can't I get WhatsApp on my Lumia etc etc...' AGH

Pretty much why I moved on from Windows Phone.  In the end I got an iPhone and I’ve been using a succession of them since 2014.  Currently on a 13 Pro Max I’ve owned for a couple of years and it’s great…

[Westbay]

Wish my Motorola PEBL still worked…

[reb]

Something I've noticed is that my S22 seems to have acquired all of the features they advertise the S24 as having. And when it boots it just says "Samsung Galaxy" rather than mentioning the model number like it used to, something which I think has rolled out onto even my Note 9.

We have reached a point where year to year the hardware doesn't change all that much. The real advances will be in software from now on I think. Midrange and up mainstream phones have a lot more power than they really need for day to day stuff, so there's a lot of headroom for them to do something interesting without everyone having to upgrade hardware every year.

I have about 18 months left until my S22 is paid off, totalling about £500. I can in theory pay off the balance and get an upgrade sooner, but I don't really see any benefit in doing so this time round. The only real benefit would be having an extra phone to use as a camcorder.

[Datsuncog]

Sainsburys.

 

It's 

👏

Still

👏

Chuffing 

👏

August.

👏

Mince pies that are best before 28 October.

Yeesh.

[beko1987]

5 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

Sainsburys.

 

It's 

👏

Still

👏

Chuffing 

👏

August.

👏

Mince pies that are best before 28 October.

Yeesh.

Blimey their £1.50 in my sainso's local, not long been stood infront of the same shite thinking the same thing 😂

I'm waiting for them to be a quid or less which they will be. Me and Eva like them 👌

[iainrcz]

The flusher in the upstairs bog has broken 🙄

[Agila]

17 minutes ago, iainrcz said:

The flusher in the upstairs bog has broken 🙄

Hopefully a bog mess monster is not trapped in there. 💩 

[iainrcz]

40 minutes ago, Agila said:

Hopefully a bog mess monster is not trapped in there. 💩 

Thankfully no cocker.

[Low ontime]

1 hour ago, iainrcz said:

The flusher in the upstairs bog has broken 🙄

Bucket and chair method works as a temporary method …. Always something to do at home.. 

[Rustybullethole]

1 hour ago, Low ontime said:

Bucket and chair method works as a temporary method …. Always something to do at home.. 

Cut a hole in the chair and shit in the bucket? 

[richardmorris]

9 minutes ago, Rustybullethole said:

Cut a hole in the chair and shit in the bucket? 

Reminds me of Terry Wogan’s whisky glass and postcard method for getting rid of spiders. Distract it with the postcard and whack it with the glass from behind.

[Low ontime]

10 minutes ago, Rustybullethole said:

Cut a hole in the chair and shit in the bucket? 

Sure if you want to … then what??

[Lord Sterling]

Ah yeah, so back onto the phone thing.

Now, phones to me are generally inanimate objects, they just do what they do. Generally I'll keep one until the screen finally smashes (in a lot of rage or dropping carefully onto a soft passenger footwell) or the software is too old to update, thus it gets very slow.

I now have a Samsung S21, I'm sorry but I honestly cannot stand iPhone, I've used then and I don't like them.

Prior to this phone, I updated with a Samsung S20, but for some reason, this phone was just an absolutely evil little bastard that took issue with being owned by me. Firstly, it wouldn't talk to my bluetooth system in the Peugeot, despite other phones having no issue, then one time, as I was driving it dropped off a very secure phone holder in the car knocking into the recently swapped out new VCM I'd fitted in the car leaving a tiny bit of lasting damage to the pixels. In a fit of rage, I chucked into the footwell where I had 2 plastic bottles of milk in a plastic bag, it somehow managed to split one of them open. Thankfully as the milk bottles were in a plastic bag and that I had thick OEM rubber mats in the footwells, most of the milk just stayed in there until I washed it all off. The phone was then binned with the damaged milk bottle and bag.

[Rustybullethole]

35 minutes ago, Low ontime said:

Sure if you want to … then what??

Walk away and pretend it wasn't you. 

[Low ontime]

Just now, Rustybullethole said:

Walk away and pretend it wasn't you. 

Think I’ll just fill the bucket with water,  stand on chair and chuck water down bog pan . Job done. 

[Dyslexic Viking]

If you are a black sheep and reading this, please start wearing a reflective vest.

[ruffgeezer]

Doing a bit of gardening and when hoeing managed to catapult something back straight into my eye.

By christ it hurt, worked on for a bit before giving up and having an early night. It seems a lot less painful this morning.

[New POD]

10 hours ago, Low ontime said:

Think I’ll just fill the bucket with water,  stand on chair and chuck water down bog pan . Job done. 

My great aunt, was apparently doing this for the 10 years before she went into a home.  She carried a bucket from the outside tap upstairs to the bathroom, 2 or 3 times a day.  Stupid thing was that when she died, there was money in the bank. Lots of it. 

I don't think she stood on a chair. 

[New POD]

9 hours ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

If you are a black sheep and reading this, please start wearing a reflective vest.

Only works if the other sheep have head torches. 

7 minutes ago, ruffgeezer said:

Doing a bit of gardening and when hoeing managed to catapult something back straight into my eye.

By christ it hurt, worked on for a bit before giving up and having an early night. It seems a lot less painful this morning.

Some might say that elf and safety has gone too far, but safety specs or goggles might be advisable.  If I ran a council parks and gardens department* mandatory use of eye protection whilst weeding would be high on my agenda.

*note, my Grandad was Director of Parks and Gardens for the London borough of Bexley in the up.to the mid 70s and his one health initiative was to have everyone working in the greenhouses when it was raining heavily.  Reduced deaths from pneumonia, by 100% amongst the work force.