[Andorion]

Silencer, on 03 September 2017 - 08:50 AM, said:

Ugh. My Internet is down (since Thursday) with no estimated resolve time from the isp.

Added to that my phone just decided to go from 30% battery to "I'm turning off" in the middle of a phone call while I was halfway between my destination and home and it has not been a good day/week technology-wise.

Given my phone's been getting worse and worse with not going into battery saver and just shutting down once it hits 15% I fear I may need a new phone (it's one of the "non-replaceable" batteries variety, which means it can't just be solved with a new battery even if I did want to spend half the price of the phone on a replacement battery, I'd still need a "professional" to actually exchange them). Blegh.

Maybe get a powerbank? But it does seem like your battery is shot though.

[Silencer]

Andorion, on 03 September 2017 - 12:28 PM, said:

Silencer, on 03 September 2017 - 08:50 AM, said:

Ugh. My Internet is down (since Thursday) with no estimated resolve time from the isp.

Added to that my phone just decided to go from 30% battery to "I'm turning off" in the middle of a phone call while I was halfway between my destination and home and it has not been a good day/week technology-wise.

Given my phone's been getting worse and worse with not going into battery saver and just shutting down once it hits 15% I fear I may need a new phone (it's one of the "non-replaceable" batteries variety, which means it can't just be solved with a new battery even if I did want to spend half the price of the phone on a replacement battery, I'd still need a "professional" to actually exchange them). Blegh.

Maybe get a powerbank? But it does seem like your battery is shot though.

Eh, it's not like the thing doesn't last me a whole work day or anything with light use - having a power bank would only help if I plugged it in when it was getting low and most of the time I could just plug it in to charge at lunch or after work if that was the problem. It's the random power off despite plenty of apparent battery that's the main issue. Well, and the fact that my phone has 15-30% less total capacity than it should.

That, and I consider needing a power bank or a midday charge to be the sign of a failed phone much like I consider any laptop that can't operate for a few hours of light use on battery as a failed laptop (if you need to plug it in just have a desktop, basically).

Of course, I'm one of those people who would actually prefer that phones were somewhere between 1.5 to 2 times as thick and actually just had properly sized batteries in them - I don't really care if my phone is hyper thin (especially as now they are so thin that they're actually worse to hold). But I'd seriously take an extra 5-10mm of depth to these things (and they could even stand to lose it from the height in some cases at the same time) to almost literally double the battery capacity. By chasing both larger screens and slimmer designs at the same time the phone manufacturers have created a nightmare in terms of both battery life and thermals. Many devices today have 3000mah+ batteries in them and can barely last a full day of light to moderate use even when the batteries are new and healthy. Then, because these batteries are so huge, we are having to use fast charging technology to keep them charged in a timely fashion which overheats the battery (and other components) shortening the life span of the device and ultimately leading to problems like I'm having.
In this respect I have to give some credit to Apple for having better battery management and keeping the screen sizes down for so long. But the whole Note 7 debacle was just a violent illustration of the problem that honestly should have started happening sooner.
It's also notable that the lack of a real solution to the overnight charging problem (i.e the fast charge is now detrimental to leaving your phone plugged in over night because the battery is constantly draining and charging small amounts at the same time) compounds this issue.

Ultimately this problem is something common but not yet big enough to be addressed. People's appetite for news phones every couple of years also obfuscates the problem (considering it's about a two year period before battery degradation becomes serious, it's often a contributing factor but people want the latest and greatest anyway so they don't complain as much as they probably should about what is a semi deliberate "designed obsolescence" to encourage future sales). Hopefully advancement in battery tech and the fact that phones are now about as powerful as they reasonably need to be (and most people are walking around with a phone more powerful than they ever actually use - myself included) will start to solve this problem. Also hopefully people start to complain about battery life more as a crucial feature to speed this up and push back against the ultimately hollow marketing ploy of 'look how thin our phone is and how huge its screen is' in favour of actual pragmatic design decisions... But I'm probably hoping for too much there. XD

[Andorion]

Silencer, on 03 September 2017 - 01:23 PM, said:

Andorion, on 03 September 2017 - 12:28 PM, said:

Silencer, on 03 September 2017 - 08:50 AM, said:

Ugh. My Internet is down (since Thursday) with no estimated resolve time from the isp.

Added to that my phone just decided to go from 30% battery to "I'm turning off" in the middle of a phone call while I was halfway between my destination and home and it has not been a good day/week technology-wise.

Given my phone's been getting worse and worse with not going into battery saver and just shutting down once it hits 15% I fear I may need a new phone (it's one of the "non-replaceable" batteries variety, which means it can't just be solved with a new battery even if I did want to spend half the price of the phone on a replacement battery, I'd still need a "professional" to actually exchange them). Blegh.

Maybe get a powerbank? But it does seem like your battery is shot though.

Eh, it's not like the thing doesn't last me a whole work day or anything with light use - having a power bank would only help if I plugged it in when it was getting low and most of the time I could just plug it in to charge at lunch or after work if that was the problem. It's the random power off despite plenty of apparent battery that's the main issue. Well, and the fact that my phone has 15-30% less total capacity than it should.

That, and I consider needing a power bank or a midday charge to be the sign of a failed phone much like I consider any laptop that can't operate for a few hours of light use on battery as a failed laptop (if you need to plug it in just have a desktop, basically).

Of course, I'm one of those people who would actually prefer that phones were somewhere between 1.5 to 2 times as thick and actually just had properly sized batteries in them - I don't really care if my phone is hyper thin (especially as now they are so thin that they're actually worse to hold). But I'd seriously take an extra 5-10mm of depth to these things (and they could even stand to lose it from the height in some cases at the same time) to almost literally double the battery capacity. By chasing both larger screens and slimmer designs at the same time the phone manufacturers have created a nightmare in terms of both battery life and thermals. Many devices today have 3000mah+ batteries in them and can barely last a full day of light to moderate use even when the batteries are new and healthy. Then, because these batteries are so huge, we are having to use fast charging technology to keep them charged in a timely fashion which overheats the battery (and other components) shortening the life span of the device and ultimately leading to problems like I'm having.
In this respect I have to give some credit to Apple for having better battery management and keeping the screen sizes down for so long. But the whole Note 7 debacle was just a violent illustration of the problem that honestly should have started happening sooner.
It's also notable that the lack of a real solution to the overnight charging problem (i.e the fast charge is now detrimental to leaving your phone plugged in over night because the battery is constantly draining and charging small amounts at the same time) compounds this issue.

Ultimately this problem is something common but not yet big enough to be addressed. People's appetite for news phones every couple of years also obfuscates the problem (considering it's about a two year period before battery degradation becomes serious, it's often a contributing factor but people want the latest and greatest anyway so they don't complain as much as they probably should about what is a semi deliberate "designed obsolescence" to encourage future sales). Hopefully advancement in battery tech and the fact that phones are now about as powerful as they reasonably need to be (and most people are walking around with a phone more powerful than they ever actually use - myself included) will start to solve this problem. Also hopefully people start to complain about battery life more as a crucial feature to speed this up and push back against the ultimately hollow marketing ploy of 'look how thin our phone is and how huge its screen is' in favour of actual pragmatic design decisions... But I'm probably hoping for too much there. XD

I agree entirely with you regarding phones and battery capacities. I have a 3600 maH phone (moto x play) and while it lasts the day I would really have preferred it to last longer. My brother has a monster 5000 maH phone - some model of Asus and he gets 1.5 to 2 days. Frankly I think the escalation in hardware and screen resolution has been a bit extreme. I still fondly recall my first android - a no name India brand that ran a lowly mediatek processor on a 2500 mah battery and lasted 2+ days easily. It was also heavy and chunky, but I never had to worry about it. End of day battery level was 65%.

I hope they do put in larger batteries. HTC are very bad at this, Moto is generally good, Xiaomi has some 4000 mah phones, and there is Asus, but the slim phenomenon is so irritating. I am going to put a hefty bumper case on it anyway, why would I even care about thickness?

Laptops though... I rarely use mine outside a table+chair scenario. I just can't get comfortable in any other way.

[Itwæs Nom]

It's not such a big problem with all phones though, its' battery life was main reason why I chose MotoX over Nexus last year, and despite having this bug where wifi keeps draining it quickly even when it's turned off (have you got the same problem Ando?) it still easily lasts me whole day even with relatively heavy usage. Although I'm used to having my screen way dimmer than most people do, I rarely use more than 2/3 of brightness unless I'm outside.

Edit: heh, crosspost

I think you have the same issue Ando, I used to be able to go almost whole 2 days without charging before the bug started to occur

This post has been edited by Itwæs Nom: 03 September 2017 - 02:06 PM

[Andorion]

Itwæs Nom, on 03 September 2017 - 02:04 PM, said:

It's not such a big problem with all phones though, its' battery life was main reason why I chose MotoX over Nexus last year, and despite having this bug where wifi keeps draining it quickly even when it's turned off (have you got the same problem Ando?) it still easily lasts me whole day even with relatively heavy usage. Although I'm used to having my screen way dimmer than most people do, I rarely use more than 2/3 of brightness unless I'm outside.

Edit: heh, crosspost

I think you have the same issue Ando, I used to be able to go almost whole 2 days without charging before the bug started to occur

With me its not the Wifi, but the unholy combination of GPS and mobile data.

Android lollipop had a serious battery drain issue, in my last Asus phone with its Intel processor this was a huge problem. Now I have Marshmallow which is far better, but despite my phone being on the update list, I have yet to get Nougat

[Itwæs Nom]

Andorion, on 03 September 2017 - 02:22 PM, said:

Now I have Marshmallow which is far better, but despite my phone being on the update list, I have yet to get Nougat

Same here

[Silencer]

Haha, you two both have one of the highest rated battery life phones on the market! Easily beats the likes of a Galaxy or other 'flagship' phones.

https://www.tomsguid...eview-2857.html

(The Z is just a slightly newer X, I believe.)

It's definitely something to note that a lot of the mid range phones out there are *less* terrible at battery life. Though frankly I think it's a bit silly that the top end phones have such a huge trade off in that one area - it's not like battery life is less important when you've got better specs! XD
(side note, this is another reason I do not own a smart watch - having to charge a watch every couple of days, or like once a week for the best compromise ones, is just not worth it to me for the average amount of utility you get out of them... I have never even changed the battery on my current watch of some 8+ years).

But yes, it's not a totally universal problem. It's just far too prevalent, especially among the cutting edge phones.
Though Ando brings up the other major failing of many phones - no updates, or updates that compromise performance (especially on a phone that is not "new"). Just frustrating when that happens.

[Una]

Gust Hubb, on 30 August 2017 - 10:50 AM, said:

Una, on 30 August 2017 - 03:43 AM, said:

I have shingles!

What the heck? I mean, I've always got a lot of stressful stuff going on, but seriously?!

The right side, just below the underarm, went numb last night, along with a large section of the right side of my right boob. It was weird and super annoying, but I thought maybe my bra was too tight and the wire was cutting off a nerve or something, so I switched to a sports bra and waited for it to recover. Well, today, it's not any better, so I go to the mall after work to see about buying a looser bra. While I am in the change room, I notice this weird red patch on my back. Now, I can't really see it that well because it is on my back and I have to twist around to even see it in the mirror. And my back has been really itchy the last 2 days or so. Maybe I just overdid it with the back-scratcher? But sure enough, these aren't streaky looking scratch marks. Looks more like a cluster of little bug bites. Feels kind of bumpy. So then I put all the bras back and high tail it back to the office and get the doctor who comes on shift after me to take a look. Yup! Shingles.

Booooo!

He gave me some pills though. I will probably be ok. Still sucks.

Sorry, that sucks. Dermatome distribution right?

Dermatome distribution. Back, flank, chest. The day after I posted this, I started getting clusters of the rash all over my right breast, including the nipple. The mixed blessing is that I am dealing more with itch than pain. Also, the meds are making me dizzy, but I look fine, so I just had to suck it up and go to work. I might have zoned out in front of a few patients, but the nice thing about being a family doc is that your patients have a long-standing relationship with you so there's lots of time to build up trust, which makes them more willing to cut you some slack when you are having an off day. So the few patients that noticed were like, "Yeah... Fridays are like that, eh? Well, the day is almost over for you, at least." But as nice as they are, there are simply no social or professional situations in which is considered appropriate to stick you hand down your bra and scratch your boob. I am experiencing that textbook situation where all I want to do is stay home and take my bra off because it's so uncomfortable, but I have too many other obligations.

It just has to run its course. Blergh!

[Gust Hubb]

See, that is what I don't get about medicine or other jobs. If you are sick, they need to encourage you to stay home. I know patients need seeing, but there will always be more and more appointments. I am so sorry you are stuck at work doing that. It should not have to be that way.

[Andorion]

Silencer, on 03 September 2017 - 03:38 PM, said:

Haha, you two both have one of the highest rated battery life phones on the market! Easily beats the likes of a Galaxy or other 'flagship' phones.

https://www.tomsguid...eview-2857.html

(The Z is just a slightly newer X, I believe.)

It's definitely something to note that a lot of the mid range phones out there are *less* terrible at battery life. Though frankly I think it's a bit silly that the top end phones have such a huge trade off in that one area - it's not like battery life is less important when you've got better specs! XD
(side note, this is another reason I do not own a smart watch - having to charge a watch every couple of days, or like once a week for the best compromise ones, is just not worth it to me for the average amount of utility you get out of them... I have never even changed the battery on my current watch of some 8+ years).

But yes, it's not a totally universal problem. It's just far too prevalent, especially among the cutting edge phones.
Though Ando brings up the other major failing of many phones - no updates, or updates that compromise performance (especially on a phone that is not "new"). Just frustrating when that happens.

Yeah I bought my phone for the battery life. Unfortunately its the 2015 model and the battery is getting on a bit. I wish I could afford a Moto Z. Technically I can, but it would mean curtailing a bunch of other stuff.

I have seen this phenomenon of mid-rangers having better battery life as well, and its a bit funny really. I don't think I will be buying anything above a lower mid-range anytime soon.

Absence of updates is a very frustrating thing. Especially with Moto which is mostly stock Android.

[Silencer]

Andorion, on 04 September 2017 - 04:30 AM, said:

Silencer, on 03 September 2017 - 03:38 PM, said:

Haha, you two both have one of the highest rated battery life phones on the market! Easily beats the likes of a Galaxy or other 'flagship' phones.

https://www.tomsguid...eview-2857.html

(The Z is just a slightly newer X, I believe.)

It's definitely something to note that a lot of the mid range phones out there are *less* terrible at battery life. Though frankly I think it's a bit silly that the top end phones have such a huge trade off in that one area - it's not like battery life is less important when you've got better specs! XD
(side note, this is another reason I do not own a smart watch - having to charge a watch every couple of days, or like once a week for the best compromise ones, is just not worth it to me for the average amount of utility you get out of them... I have never even changed the battery on my current watch of some 8+ years).

But yes, it's not a totally universal problem. It's just far too prevalent, especially among the cutting edge phones.
Though Ando brings up the other major failing of many phones - no updates, or updates that compromise performance (especially on a phone that is not "new"). Just frustrating when that happens.

Yeah I bought my phone for the battery life. Unfortunately its the 2015 model and the battery is getting on a bit. I wish I could afford a Moto Z. Technically I can, but it would mean curtailing a bunch of other stuff.

I have seen this phenomenon of mid-rangers having better battery life as well, and its a bit funny really. I don't think I will be buying anything above a lower mid-range anytime soon.

Absence of updates is a very frustrating thing. Especially with Moto which is mostly stock Android.

Mainly the mid range thing is just due to less power hungry components and (often) smaller or less high resolution screens.
Again, one of the problems with larger displays is that they need a higher resolution to look as good. Of course, many now have absurdly high resolution displays that are not technically perceptible to the human eye (like the 500+ppi stuff on some flagship phones... Truly insane pixel density). Thus we get phones using more power than they could just to have a higher number in the sales spiel.
And, like I said, most people straight up don't use the higher specs - the only reason I own flagship tier phones is because I like the RAM these devices offer as I'm a terrible tab user in Chrome and running that plus one or two more apps at the same time is hugely RAM intensive. Even my Nexus 6p lags sometimes due to the number of tabs I have open in Chrome (though newer phones have literally doubled the amount of RAM so that's good).

And the other reason being updates. I've mainly owned Nexus or HTC phones and I by far prefer the frequent updates to stock android than all that custom bullshit Samsung pushes, never mind some of the other brands. HTC even does too much that is just plain worse than stock Android though they did do a few things that were nice. The downside being that eventually the hardware starts to be an issue - partially deliberately as manufacturers can't be bothered to properly optimise the software for older phones (thus driving sales) but even so. It's a nasty catch-22 because slow updates are not great either (and can expose phones to more risks). *sigh*

I just hope I can get this sorted because I really don't want to muck around with buying a new phone right now - like you, I can "afford" it but it will still be a pain to re-budget around that expense.

[Macros]

Nicodimas, on 03 September 2017 - 03:52 AM, said:

JPK, on 02 September 2017 - 04:16 PM, said:

rhulad, on 01 September 2017 - 08:29 PM, said:

Slow Ben, on 01 September 2017 - 08:20 PM, said:

Just confounded the whole staff at Dairy Queen by giving them 10.15 for a 7.14 bill,

First, she gives me 2.76, no idea where she got that number. I told her that was not correct, I just need 3.00 and put the penny in the cup. After a very confused look she calls over her manager. After 3 minutes, seriously 3 fucking minutes of conversation, they hand me 3 dollars.

Yep

Math is hard, and this is why I generally don't pay cash anymore.

Math shouldn't enter into it anymore really. Almost all cash registers are pretty much fancy calculators so that all one has to do is enter the amount of money they're given to play for a bill. The register should have just told the cashier to have back 3.01, and that should have been the end of the story.

This had to have been a new employee, right? Please tell me I'm right.

They will be banning cash soon for cryptocurrencies for reasons like this and it's safer for the public ( terrorists/drug dealers use hard currency)..

Please tell me you don't actually believe this.
If the shift to cryptocurrency happens in any country it will be primarily to cut out the cost of issuing and maintaining a hard cash currency and screwing over people who work cash in hand and so can dodge crippling tax obligations. It will have nothing what do ever to do with terrorists or drug dealers

[Macros]

@sil

I have a Lenovo P2. Two full days no problem

[Silencer]

Macros, on 04 September 2017 - 01:53 PM, said:

@sil

I have a Lenovo P2. Two full days no problem

Yeah, sadly it's pretty much no longer available and was never released outside the UK (or at least the US and Australia never got it). But 5100mah battery and some lower specs (notably resolution) make it an ideal example of that mid-range segment we were talking about to be sure.

[Andorion]

Silencer, on 04 September 2017 - 03:00 PM, said:

Macros, on 04 September 2017 - 01:53 PM, said:

@sil

I have a Lenovo P2. Two full days no problem

Yeah, sadly it's pretty much no longer available and was never released outside the UK (or at least the US and Australia never got it). But 5100mah battery and some lower specs (notably resolution) make it an ideal example of that mid-range segment we were talking about to be sure.

Its available in India right now for the same price as the Moto G5.

My problem with Lenovo and Xiaomi is this Hybrid sim slot stupidity. I need 2 sims and a card. Why should I have to choose? I think that should be tolerated only in 64 GB models.

[Mezla PigDog]

There has been a lot of vomit in my house. I can cope with the cleaning up and the fetching and carrying. It's the dread of knowing I'm next that is unbearable.

[Macros]

Andorion, on 04 September 2017 - 03:08 PM, said:

Silencer, on 04 September 2017 - 03:00 PM, said:

Macros, on 04 September 2017 - 01:53 PM, said:

@sil

I have a Lenovo P2. Two full days no problem

Yeah, sadly it's pretty much no longer available and was never released outside the UK (or at least the US and Australia never got it). But 5100mah battery and some lower specs (notably resolution) make it an ideal example of that mid-range segment we were talking about to be sure.

Its available in India right now for the same price as the Moto G5.

My problem with Lenovo and Xiaomi is this Hybrid sim slot stupidity. I need 2 sims and a card. Why should I have to choose? I think that should be tolerated only in 64 GB models.

Mine is dual SIM with 64gb hard drive.
I'll never ever use that much space

[Traveller]

My boy came home from his first year at school with a folder of books to read, and a scrapbook/diary to fill in.

Well, he's been keeping up with his reading every few days (around the day trips, camping, Birthdays etc) he's now pretty much filled his book up, and we've done some library trips where he's chosen his own books to read at home.

It's their last day of summer holiday today, I'm at work, and my wife has decided to text me a load of flack about him 'Not doing enough' and always being the one to get him to do anything.

My opinion - he's only five. He's done well. Don't worry about making him do more, go out and enjoy their last day off.

I haven't had a reply to that yet. Am I wrong?

[Lisheo]

Traveller, on 05 September 2017 - 10:02 AM, said:

My boy came home from his first year at school with a folder of books to read, and a scrapbook/diary to fill in.

Well, he's been keeping up with his reading every few days (around the day trips, camping, Birthdays etc) he's now pretty much filled his book up, and we've done some library trips where he's chosen his own books to read at home.

It's their last day of summer holiday today, I'm at work, and my wife has decided to text me a load of flack about him 'Not doing enough' and always being the one to get him to do anything.

My opinion - he's only five. He's done well. Don't worry about making him do more, go out and enjoy their last day off.

I haven't had a reply to that yet. Am I wrong?

I don't think anyone is right or wrong when it comes to parenting or relationships (within reason!). You've both got different perspectives on things; from your post, it sounds like he's been working hard, and that's great. I would say it's important to acknowledge her concerns though; she sounds like she's stressed about his work, and telling her to enjoy their last day off might not be the way to make her feel better. Maybe you should give her a quick call at lunch, hear her worries out and volunteer to do some reading with him later? Compromise is underrated!

[Traveller]

Stress is a transferable state though - if she starts stressing at this stage it's going to increase their anxiety about school starting (my daughter is already a bit worried about new class etc) and imo we should be the stable part of their lives, helping to deal with events and change, not adding unnecessary turmoil.

But I see your point, I'm probably not helping to improve her opinion on this.