cassidyjames

I'm actually really not a fan of this design.

Size

This phone has a massive display. And then there's the bigger version. I get that they fit a bigger display into the same size phone by shrinking the bezels, but a bigger display actually affects usability, even if the outside of the phone is the same size. I think it would have been much, much better to keep the display size small, and shrink the rest of the phone down to minimize those bezels and the overall footprint.

Bezels

I'm indifferent on the side bezels themselves (unless software has gotten even better, it's going to manifest in annoying accidental touches). Top and bottom bezels look great, but again, I think the overall phone should be smaller and more one-hand friendly.

Curved Glass

Meh. I've poked around the S6 and S7 Edge phones, and the whole curved glass thing was either unnoticeable (most of the time), or annoying and unnecessary (the rest of the time). I get that it's a design differentiator, but it really feels arbitrary.

Curved Corners

Wat. No. Android OEMs, stahp. The navbar is unaligned because the corners of the screen are cropped off, and apps are going to now have to be aware that the display might not be rectangular? Seriously? No. Arbitrary and with no benefits.

Fingerprint Reader

Derek Ross originally shared:

The next Allo update includes a 'quick selfie' button which shows a tiny live preview, when tapped takes a quick circular selfie, and posts it to your conversation. Thankfully, this abomination can be disabled via settings.

It's not that the feature itself is bad, it's just that the live preview always being visible lessens Allo's beautiful UI. I do not like it. But as I said, you can hide it. I guess if you're into sending nonstop selfies in a Snapchat type of scenario, then this feature is for you. Go you.

Who knows, maybe this feature won't make it out of beta?

I ordered two separate things for relatively time sensitive projects. They were marked as shipping from another state in the US, and I picked these items because they would arrive the soonest according to the date provided to me by Amazon.

The far end of the arrival date range came and went, still no items. So I check the tracking numbers. The items are shipping from China and haven't even arrived in the US!

At this point, I contact Amazon to complain about the items, and they just forward the complaint onto a third party seller and tell me to wait at least two business days for a response.

I finally get a response and it's obviously poorly translated to English, and is along the lines of, "No worry, item will arrive, I promise it."

What do I do now? Amazon took my money, either lied about the shipping origin and arrival date or allowed their third party sellers to, and is being wholly unhelpful in resolving things.

This is actually really interesting. Icons can be defined as a background and foreground element, with explicit large padding on each for the system to mask, animate, etc. If apps actually get on board, Android could do some incredible things with animation.

Lots of great photos coming out of the +elementary Denver sprint. Super exciting things happening.

AppCenter tees!

Katie and I drove around the mountains near Denver today. Red Rocks is always impressive.

Samsung Smart TVs being actively exploited by the CIA and UK government in targeted audio surveillance. It looks like this requires physical access to plant (from my skimming of the info), but then sends audio recordings over the Internet to a CIA server.

Yesss, this is the one feature I've wanted for a long time with Gboard. Happy that the latest update brings emoji suggestions.

Oh. Snap.

Do my eyes deceive me, or has +OMG! Ubuntu! just written about System76 for the first time in about 4 years?! ;)

The System76 Galago Pro is the company's first super thin aluminum laptop, and is kitted out with the latest Intel Kaby Lake processors and up to 32GB RAM.