IAmAndre

17 hours ago, mh_2000 said:

Is the nothing phone 2a value for money since its cheaper than A55 or is it worth to save more for A55? Linus' review for the nothing phone 2a seemed positive so i started considering it. If anyone has any other recommendations for mid-budget phones please let me know.

I would say 100% Nothing 2(a). I'm actually getting it for my mom over the A55 for the following reasons:

• MUCH better OS. It's far cleaner than OneUI
• MUCH better battery and incredibly MUCH shorter charging times
• Much better design: thinner bezels around the screen, but also overall look and feel with the LEDs

Now the other aspects are very comparable to the A55, including the screen quality and overall performance. Benchmarks don't mean everything and none of these phones are high performers. I would also take it over the Pixel 8a because if it's anything like the Pixel 8, we can expect a relatively short battery life and poor network performance. The SoC also performs poorly compared to other alternatives in this price range.

Hi,

My PC is getting buggy and since I haven't done a fresh install since 2018, I'm thinking this could help. It's running Windows 10 and I would like to take that opportunity to upgrade to Windows 11. Would following the regular upgrade procedure be enough or do I have to actually wipe the old Windows installation?

Thanks

13 hours ago, Kisai said:

If a laptop is under 65w, you can just take along additional USB-C batteries. Good luck taking those on an airplane, but you can on trains and ferries.

Well you can use a power bank. I'm able to charge my MBA at 65W with my 20,000 maH power bank, which is around 75Wh. There are bigger ones out there. This same power bank is also able to charge my 2023 LG Gram, with its core i7 1360p and RTX 3050. The 2024 version is even more power efficient so it's a good time to be an ultrabook owner, whether it's a Mac or not.

13 hours ago, Kisai said:

The 12900KF is 241W

 

So the Apple M1 Ultra 20 core has the same performance as a Intel chip 4 times the TDP.

I don't find this particularly relevant. The Intel CPU is still more powerful and MUCH cheaper than the Mac Pro. Since none of them relies on a battery, it would take forever for the energy cost savings to make up for the actual price of the hardware. I would still consider Intel but more particularly AMD as the better option on the desktop side.

On 3/24/2024 at 9:46 PM, Kisai said:

No, Apple ditched Motorola/IBM and later Intel largely over the lack of innovation in the CPU to keep the TDP down. Ever notice how you can get 8 hours of life out of iphones, ipads, and macbooks, and you have to try really hard to get less? Now try that with any Intel laptop, and you might get 2 hours out of most laptops if you try to use it like a desktop. Only some of the crappiest laptops (Eg the Y and U parts) get long run times, but they have the most miserable performance and are on the level of 10th's of the performance of a desktop.

 

I agree to some extent. The battery life is usually better on MacBooks but Ryzen and even Intel CPUs have caught up a lot over the past few years. I'm getting 8 hours of use at work on my 16" 13th gen Intel laptop and I could get much more with less intensive use cases, and the results are better on the 14th gen. Still not Apple-level but pretty close and I would take that over the Apple tax and still enjoy the extra flexibility on the Windows side. The performance also exceeds what I would get on the M2 MBA that I was considering getting.

In any case, as my colleague pointed out this morning, for us it just means that we can ask our employer to upgrade our work MacBook Pros as soon as the M4 chips become available if they don't want their "highly" confidential data to be compromised.

1 hour ago, SandwichMake said:

I was also thinking of these two tablets, but I can't really get my feet around which of the two to choose. The only thing I can go off on is that I myself am using a xiaomi phone. But one plus tablet seems to have garnered a lot of positive reviews everywhere. Plus they both have really good performance, better than the tab FE?

The Galaxy probably performs a bit worse but I would still consider it a solid tablet. The OnePlus Pad is also larger. I would recommend watching/reading reviews of each tablet and see which one you prefer, and also check the prices in your region. It doesn't really make sense to pay a lot more for any of these tablets imo.

The Xiaomi Pad 6 is an excellent tablet for the money. Another good alternative would be the OnePlus tablet. You can also consider the latest Galaxy Tab Fe. You can't go wrong with any of these, especially the first two, so I'd just get whichever is cheaper. 

I would recommend checking the Feral Games ports. This includes the Grid series as mentioned earlier, but also the Life is Strange games, Hitman, Alien: Isolation, etc. You also might want to check the Ubisoft games (Rayman, Assassin's Creed...) and the Sega games (King of Fighters, Crazy Taxi, Sonic...). I'm also into the Odd World series, KOTOR, and the Warner games like Injustice.

I personally like DS-like games, especially rhythm games, so that would include Beats (although it hasn't been updated in years) and a few others with a similar gameplay like Beatstar.

Besides all that, I almost never actually play on my phone, and when I do, it's mostly casual games like Two Dots.

Anyway, there's quite a lot to explore.

46 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I do think it's funny seeing the absolute meltdown at Reddit /r/Android right now though. A bunch of people claiming benchmarks don't matter (even though I never saw that when everyone agreed Exynos was worse) and some are even going so far as to say it's a conspiracy theory by Samsung. That they are deliberately ruining the Snapdragon results in an attempt to make Exynos look better.

Seems like a lot of the people who previously said Exynos was shit because of performance and power have now shifted to "Exynos is bad because of them modem", even though we don't have any tests for that yet. Just a bunch of assumptions.

You nailed it. I remember getting downvoted just earlier this week for saying that maybe Samsung knew what they were doing and should be at least given the benefit of the doubt and the chance to show us what they've been working on. I also saw that modem argument being thrown here and there, which doesn't make sense because the other Exynos like the one in the S23 Fe don't have any issue like that. For many, Exynos had to be bad no matter what.

There are new benchmarks and articles popping everywhere and the results are quite impressive for the Exynos. For those interested, make sure to check this video and the other recent videos of this channel: 

I also came across this article (in German) yesterday, and I was particularly interested in the battery results: https://chip.de/news/Kleine-Schritte-nach-vorne-Das-Samsung-Galaxy-S24-Plus-Ultra-im-ersten-Testfazit_185114289.html Spoiler alert: the battery life is also pretty solid on all 3 phones.

So the Exynos is overall a bit worse in terms of raw performance but very close to the SD, and it even beats it in many, many cases. The S24+ is the one with better cooling the S24 throttles more but I'm still going for this one as I've been waiting for a small phone for so long.

19 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I think the most important and interesting thing to look for is energy efficiency.

Samsung's node has been quite a bit worse than TSMC's and as a result the last few Exynos chip has gotten good performance but bad efficiency numbers. Their implementation of the various cores also seem to have been weaker in terms of efficiency than Qualcomms. Let's hope both of these things have improved.

This gives me hope:

16 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I, and I think people in general, consider things "company" or not based on the dimensions of the body, not the screen.

 

I do too. What I meant is that a 6.4" (not necessarily the OP7) in a modern design would be considered compact, like the Xiaomi 14.

19 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

But I don't think it would be considered compact even if you slimmed down the bezels. 

It would still be considerably larger than the S24 even if we completely removed the bezels, and the S24 isn't really that "compact" either.

 

It would still be on the smaller end, one of the smallest phones on the market. It's hard to find anything under 6.5" nowadays.

20 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

the S24 isn't really that "compact" either.

I agree but it's compact by today's standards. Again, it's one of the smallest phones on the market if not the smallest. I remember the Galaxy Note was considered a "phablet" not that long ago although it was just 5.5" even though it had a larger body. It's all about perspective.

6 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

The S24+ and OnePlus 7 are pretty much the same size.

That's my point, and I think the OnePlus 7 is too big. Never got used to the large size.

7 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

don't agree that the OnePlus 7 would be considered compact by today's standards

The Xiaomi 14 is 6.4". So with a more recent design and thinner bezels the OP7 would be considered as compact because you can fit a 6.7" phone today in this body.

9 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

think it's best to remain open-minded about the Exynos 2400 until it is released. Chances are it will not be the best SoC in the world, but it shouldn't be bad either.

I agree with that. I've seen that the chip itself doesn't support Wifi 7 so I'm wondering what else to expect. I'm just waiting for the reviews and decide whether to import a SD S24 or just get a huge OP12.

5 hours ago, goodtofufriday said:

Sadly they are just too large for me.

Ive got a rule that if I can't use the whole screen one handed, top to bottom, side to side, then I don't want it. 

Exactly my opinion too. I've bought a OnePlus 7 back in 2019, which I'm still using. I thought I'd get used to it but I still think it's too large although it would be considered compact by today's standards with a 6.4" screen.

Sadly we don't have that many options: the Pixel 8 with the lackluster SoC performance, inconsistent battery life and network issue; the Xiaomi 14 that might never come out in the West; the Zenfone 9 with only 2 years of software updates; and the S24 with the Exynos SoC.

Hi,

I recently bought an LG Gram and I'm having battery issues that I suspect are linked to driver issues. So LG advertises 14 -20+ hours of battery life on the product page, and while I wasn't expecting to get these numbers, I'm getting surprisingly low battery life considering its 90Wh battery and low power CPU. The max I was able to get was a bit under 10 hours that was just web browsing. Doing anything else cuts the battery almost in half. For example, I can be at about 60% of battery with an estimated 6 hours left, and see this estimate fall to 2 and a half hours as soon as I start playing a video on YouTube. This morning, I had a Teams meeting for 1.5 hours and the battery went from 100% to 70%, which would mean 5 hours of battery life using Teams only. Okay I had Chrome running in the background and my Bluetooth headphones on, but still.

I think that the video decoding process is consuming too much battery. After disabling the Bluetooth, the battery time left went up a bit too. All this makes me think that the Intel drivers for Bluetooth, WiFi, and potentially iGPU need to be updated. My questions are the following:

• The Intel website shows a message saying that updating the graphics driver might have an impact on all the optimizations made by LG. Should I still go for it or is it risky?
• I also noticed that there's a process called "searchhost.exe" that's been consuming more bandwidth than Chrome over the past week. That's very odd because I have Chrome running constantly so I'm not sure what this process is, what it's doing, and if this could be the issue rather than the drivers.

Any clue?

14 hours ago, saintlouisbagels said:

Try blue light filter computer glasses without the yellow tint.

I know people are going to say it's placebo, or not studied thoroughly, but if it works then it works right?

 

Nah, I think the eye strain issue would be a little alleviated with a tablet. You have much more freedom to move around the screen compared to how cumbersome a laptop/computer is.

Wouldn't a Galaxy Tab be a better option due to the OLED screen (and potentially cheaper price, especially refurbished)?

2 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

Dimming the screen and setting it to a "warm" color profile (like "night light" in Windows and "night shift" on iOS) should help.

 

I use a Switch Lite as my winding-down viewing, and after putting it down and turning the light off I see a flickering in the dark for a few minutes. Maybe that's an after effect of PWM backlighting?

I hate the night light mode in general, but a huge part of the experience when reading comic books is the graphics/colors. Anything affecting the colors is a no-no for me.

18 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

yes - basically it depends on framerate  - as soon that's "out of range" of the vrr you will feel this jittery experience  - which depending on what you do could be quite often. 

 

 

1 hour ago, Andrewtst said:

Just switch to 144hz but turn off VRR.

 

 

The question is more about why 60Hz feels bad on this screen, whereas it's fine on my MacBook. When I lock the frame rate at 60, with VRR disabled, it's still uncomfortable on this particular screen and not on all the others. Is there a reason why?

50 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

yup, because "variable refresh rate" monitors suck, some people are insensitive to this, others aren't.  simple advice : turn it off then it becomes a normal monitor without nausea inducing feature. 

 

I didn't know that was a thing. But still, when I lock it to 60Hz it's uncomfortable to use, at least when scrolling. But when I enable the variable refresh rate, it feels natural again but I think it's mostly running at 144Hz, at least when I'm scrolling. Am I missing something?

Hi,

For many years I've been totally insensitive to screen refresh rate. I don't play fast-paced games, but I do have a 165Hz gaming monitor on which I usually don't notice any difference between 60 and 165Hz. The only times I do is when I use one of these online monitor test tools which show extreme cases, and when I scroll on a Word document, which might have something to do with Word itself. I also have a MacBook Air 13, with a 60Hz refresh rate and I never complained about that refresh rate. On phones, I also don't notice any difference between the refresh rates. I actually do notice a difference between 30 and 60Hz on any platform, but anything above 60 is usually totally fine for me.

Now this week, I received an LG Gram 16 with a 144Hz and "variable refresh rate" option allowing the refresh rate to change based on the content. On this particular screen, 60Hz feels particularly jiggery and I'm not sure why that is. So my questions are:

1. Is there more to it than refresh rate that could affect my user experience in terms of the display specs or technology?
2. Is there a Windows setting that might be off and therefore make the experience this bad at 60Hz?

Thanks!

Hi,

I've been reading comic books on my laptops for quite a while, but I have to admit that the experience isn't particularly great. This week, I switched from a 13" MacBook Air to an LG Gram 16, and besides the larger screen that's about the same size as a physical book, the reading experience gets tiresome after a while. I think it has to do with the backlighting. I'm considering going back to paper books after more than a decade of on-screen reading. I'm still curious to see if I'm missing something on the digital side. I've seen that iPads are often recommended, but I don't think it would address the eye strain issue. There are a few color e-readers out there, but the colors appear washed out on those.

So let me know if there's a track I haven't explored before going back to paper books.

On 1/3/2024 at 7:58 PM, GuiltySpark_ said:

I only played Requiem, well at least half of it. Stopped launching it and never had that pull to finish it. Come to think of it, that kids voice did get real annoying lol

On 1/3/2024 at 8:14 PM, Poinkachu said:

 

 

Hahaha ya, Hugo's voice is something else. They hired a (back then) 7y old kid to voice him. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10691806/
But I'd say the story writing is quite fine, fucking grim & heart rending though. Especially on the latter part of the story.

 

Repetitive-ness sake, at the very least it's way less than Assassin's Creed IMO.

 

As for the puzzle, well.... I really don't expect much from nowadays game's puzzle, unless it really is a puzzle type game.

I actually LOVED the first game. I didn't find it repetitive at all and got very hooked by the story. However, I played it in French, which is my native language, and in the French version at least Hugo's voice is pretty normal. It actually makes a lot of sense since the story takes place in French. The only issue is that the English soldiers also speak French, which doesn't make any sense.

Call me a nerd but I play all my games in the language of the country where the story takes place. So I played the Assassin's Creed games in so many languages over the years...

1 hour ago, jaslion said:

Well yeah hdds were a thing and slow :p. Also that was old old sleep too.

 

 

I actually had a Samsung RBX SSD, but I think my swap partition was on one of the HDD's. So it looks hibernation is the way to go, at least when closing the lid for a long period.

15 minutes ago, ki8aras said:

it really depends on the situation, sometimes i used to pack it up to go to uni( fully charged) only to take it out of my bag like 3 hours later with smoldering hot with 10% battery

What laptop was that? Was it running an update or something?

1 hour ago, jaslion said:

I mean thats really fast no?

 

Like by the time you sat down properly the thing is already up.

 

Modern sleep is like phones where on input it is usable, however not all devices do that

Yes of course. I meant I expected to take longer. With my old Vostro laptop from like 2010 it would take at least a minute. I also had a Huawei convertible after that but the battery drain would be quite noticeable in sleep mode. It was acceptable at the time, but your standards change after you start using a Mac.

23 minutes ago, jaslion said:

On the dell latitudes 7440 at work on a tuesday 30% cuz update day else 10% or so.

 

Or if we hibernate em 0. Just means system takes 3-5 sec to be instead of 1-2 sec

That doesn't sound too bad. I haven't used a Windows laptop in a while, but I didn't expect them to take this long to recover from hibernation.