Smartphones

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Re: Smartphones
« Reply #465 on: December 25, 2015, 01:22:12 AM »
During an extended session screwing around installing Android 6.0.1 (and de-installing, and reverting to 5.1.1 and then to 6.0, and etc), my now no longer miracle phone, which was plugged in the entire time, presently reads 4095% battery. That's a bit unexpected.
when ur a roamin', do as the settled do o_0

Re: Smartphones
« Reply #466 on: January 06, 2016, 08:17:37 PM »
During an extended session screwing around installing Android 6.0.1 (and de-installing, and reverting to 5.1.1 and then to 6.0, and etc), my now no longer miracle phone, which was plugged in the entire time, presently reads 4095% battery. That's a bit unexpected.

LOL - if only that elongated your battery life 40-fold

How do you like 6.0.1? I love the doze feature.

Re: Smartphones
« Reply #467 on: January 06, 2016, 09:12:55 PM »
Android 6 is a lie. It's a glorified 5.2 and it's the only Android update I have reverted away from.

I held off getting 6.0 because Xposed for marshmallow was taking a while to appear, but eventually it did appear and I duly upgraded, and was like wut? because this new "6" appeared only marginally different to 5.1.1. New notification control options? Pfft. I'm sure there are other things going on under the hood but colour me not impressed. Also, my battery life appeared to have declined. Since it didn't seem I would lose anything much if I went back to 5.1.1 to check for a while, that's what I did. And yeah, for me with my setup and my normal usage, 6.0 was using 3-4% battery per hour and 5.1.1 uses 1-2%.

So then 6.0.1 comes out and I kind of didn't care, but around Christmas I decided I had some time so... I went ahead and lost two days to trying to make the damn thing work. Gaining root access in Android 6 is needlessly difficult. That 4095% battery reading was caused, somehow, by a custom kernel I flashed as part of one of the earlier methods of gaining root. Slightly more current methods are simpler, as I discovered late in day 2, and everything looked almost fine until a very ordinary reboot that shouldn't have caused any trouble became a boot screen bootloop and so I scrapped my 6.0.1 experiments and I'm back on 5.1.1 again. I might try again in a week or so.

Root access btw is a vital precondition for how I run my phone. It allows for adblocking, for making Google Play Services go to sleep, and for making the navbar disappear. (That navbar is the ugliest thing about Android and pie controls are just so much better.) Also, without root access, I'd have a hard time installing what used to be the stock Email app (with Exchange), which, given the way I use email, is the considerably superior choice to all the other options. Also, what is Titanium Backup without root? And so on.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2016, 09:32:34 PM by Calach Pfeffer »
when ur a roamin', do as the settled do o_0

Re: Smartphones
« Reply #468 on: January 17, 2016, 08:48:41 PM »
The first backup I made in my current attempt at transitioning from 5.1.1 to 6.0.1 is dated five days ago, and today I have finally re-acquired almost all the functionality I had before I "updated". Thanks, google. Five days of screwing around so I can have my phone be almost as good as it was five days ago. That's what i call an upgrade. For people who don't seek root access to their phone, probably none of this is an issue, but you know what you can use root for in China? Letting your phone not forget your home wifi every damn time you use it.

Since Lollipop, Android has come equipped with internet connectivity checks. If you can access wifi and/or mobile data but they do not show internet connectivity, you'll get tiny exclamation marks placed on the connection indicators in the status bar. And in some misguided attempt to be helpful, if your wifi consistently shows no internet connectivity, your phone will "forget" that network. In other words, if your home wifi, or any wifi you use in China, cannot contact Google servers, your phone won't remember that network, and you'll have to input passwords every time. But if you have root....

(1) Open, or install and open, a Terminal emulator.
(2) Type: su
(3) Type: settings put global captive_portal_detection_enabled 0

Then reboot.

I *think* there are apps that'll do this operation without root access, but I don't know for sure. In the above operation, you need root access because you're calling su (Super User). Now, I don't know what captive_portal_detection_enabled really is, but if you're setting it to zero, you're turning it off. The exclamation marks go away. Your wifi passwords are remembered. You can connect to wifi just by turning it on. You know, just like it always used to be.

So there.
« Last Edit: January 17, 2016, 08:54:31 PM by Calach Pfeffer »
when ur a roamin', do as the settled do o_0

Re: Smartphones
« Reply #469 on: January 20, 2016, 08:54:06 PM »
For anyone playing along at home, the issue I was having was - I'm pretty sure - related to Titanium Backup trying to work on a read-only /system folder. That is, if you gain root access to Android 6.01 using BETA-SuperSU-v2.66, and then start screwing around with Titanium Backup 7.3.0 (and probably lower), then you're going to have troubles - bad troubles - namely, endless bootloops the next time you reboot. BUT if you manually set the /system folder to r/w *before* any and all instances ever of screwing around with TiBu, everything should work fine. That is, you have to do that every time. Root Explorer or something like that will help.

Basically, Google's made it harder to find ways to gain root access to Android and the usual tools made available by the developer community aren't doing exactly what they usually do yet. But if you don't care about root, then don't sweat it. None of these problems will occur for you.
when ur a roamin', do as the settled do o_0

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old34

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Re: Smartphones
« Reply #470 on: January 21, 2016, 01:56:44 AM »
But if you don't care about root, then don't sweat it. None of these problems will occur for you.

I don't, and they don't.

I'd rather spend my technology time getting productive stuff done and usable in the classroom.

Created one presentation in Keynote this week: "English is NOT a Tool" for my Chinese Teacher trainees. Revised, polished and updated three more for my graduate classes on Technology, Shopping, and Banking. updated Mac OSX on my MacBook and iMac and iOS on my iPhone and iPad all of which updates came out today all without a hitch. (even had the MacBook update downloading through the school Wifi while using it to present in class.) And updated iMovie which I'll be using next week with my Teacher trainees when we do the TV News Project.

Even got one of my best students ever from 15 years ago to go for a new MacBook rather than the Surface Pro she was contemplating. She's now a University Assoc. Prof. and she's been getting in to building lessons, apps and podcasts for young English learners on the side. I pointed out to her that Macs come equipped with built in software organising your media and photos available through all productive apps, and apps for creating mp3s, video, podcasts all baked into the system.

I especially like the ability to change languages on the fly. AND a little known function in all of the productive apps (Pages, Keynote and Numbers). Type in the Chinese characters for a word. Right-click and choose Phonetic Spelling and the Pinyin is added above the characters. It won't help her, but it sure helps me when I try to add Chinese characters to Keynote presentations.

I gave a lecture two years ago at NYU's new Shanghai campus and she snd group of her students came down to watch. NYU-Shanghai is a 100% Mac school. The classrooms, the admin offices, and all the Teaching Fellows (as they call them) are provided with Macs, She remembered how magical that experience was ( I was using video, mp3s, photos,etc.) in fact, one of the photos I used was from her own class in 2001.


One group in her Business English class created a new company and new product  They had to present on the blackboard because this was pre-classroom technology China. But I have a picture. They created a new Watch which they called WatchEr. It had the following functions: 1. ID fingerprint recognition;
2. You can add money to your watch account;

3.You can pay for something by waving your watch over the POS reader;

4. GPS

They missed on the camera thing because it was only 2001, but they got most of the iWatch right quite a few years before Apple did.

Chinese uni students can be very creative given the chance.But I've strayed very far from the original post. Sorry.


and WeChatted me today that she'll go for for the MacBook rather than the Surface Pro.
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad. - B. O'Driscoll.
TIC is knowing that, in China, your fruit salad WILL come with cherry tomatoes AND all slathered in mayo. - old34.

Re: Smartphones
« Reply #471 on: January 21, 2016, 02:21:25 AM »
It occurs to me just now that I may have never in fact laid eyes on any icomputer. Macs, they call them. With a little i. Little Macs. I've ever seen them on tv. But now I wonder. This was in movies, after all. iPhones, a literal handful of times I have seen them in the hands of others. And now I am watching old x-files episodes. Coincidence? Now I'm not so sure.
when ur a roamin', do as the settled do o_0

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old34

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Re: Smartphones
« Reply #472 on: January 21, 2016, 03:25:10 AM »
It occurs to me just now that I may have never in fact laid eyes on any icomputer. Macs, they call them. With a little i. Little Macs. I've ever seen them on tv. But now I wonder. This was in movies, after all. iPhones, a literal handful of times I have seen them in the hands of others. And now I am watching old x-files episodes. Coincidence? Now I'm not so sure.

Watch and learn. There's a reason that more creatives choose Macs.
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad. - B. O'Driscoll.
TIC is knowing that, in China, your fruit salad WILL come with cherry tomatoes AND all slathered in mayo. - old34.

Re: Smartphones
« Reply #473 on: January 21, 2016, 01:43:39 PM »
I... want to believe.
when ur a roamin', do as the settled do o_0

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Stil

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Re: Smartphones
« Reply #474 on: January 22, 2016, 09:47:56 PM »
Don't do it Calach! Don't switch to Apple. You fight, the fight and remain free.

People like Old34 and myself who have gone into that Mac world are stuck with our boring machines. We have nothing to talk about. There's no conflict, no excitement at all. The goddamn things just update on their own. I don't even know what OS I'm using anymore. I don't get to spend time searching for fixes and making friends online with like-minded people now.

It's so lonely.

Computers and phones used be thrilling. Any time you turned them on (or tried to) you never knew what you were going to get. Now like a Tv or microwave it's just mundane and I have no choice but to use it for what I bought it for instead of the thrill of the blue screen, and countless hours of delving into technical information online. I've lost contact with some of my best friends because I have no excuse to talk to them anymore for their computer expertise.

I'm a pampered, well-fed pet, now trapped in a beautiful walled garden, yearning to be free, to join the dog-eat-dog world outside but paralysed by my own fear of not being able to succeed out there and though the gate is open, I dare not venture into that vast wilderness I once proudly roamed.

Save yourself from my fate Calach.

Stay away from Apple.
« Last Edit: January 22, 2016, 09:53:19 PM by Stil »

Re: Smartphones
« Reply #475 on: January 23, 2016, 02:02:32 PM »
Fight the future
when ur a roamin', do as the settled do o_0

Re: Smartphones
« Reply #476 on: February 18, 2016, 09:17:38 PM »
Anyone going to be using Apple Pay?

Apple Pay Goes Live In China

Apple Pay has today launched in China, a move that takes Apple’s digital payments service into its fifth country worldwide....
when ur a roamin', do as the settled do o_0

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old34

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Re: Smartphones
« Reply #477 on: February 19, 2016, 06:46:26 AM »
Anyone going to be using Apple Pay?

Apple Pay Goes Live In China

Apple Pay has today launched in China, a move that takes Apple’s digital payments service into its fifth country worldwide....

I (of course) will be joining Apple Pay in the Apple Orchard-when I next upgrade my iPhone. I currently have the 5c which doesn't support Apple Pay. I don't like watches at all. I've only ever had two in my life-both gifts from old girlfriends-and I never kept them. Neither the girlfriends nor the watches, so as much as
i like Apple gear, an Apple Watch is pretty much of my must-have radar. iPads were too, until
i was gifted an iPad mini from an ex-student. Now, I love it, but my workhorses are my iMac, Macbook Air and iPhone.

So if I want Apple Pay, I'll have to wait until
i upgrade my 5c iPhone. There is a rumoured 5se coming out next month. That's my target. Same small screen as the 5c (which I prefer) with a better chip and camera. Hopefully it will also have NFS and One Touch ID so Apple Pay will work on it.

The other problem with Apple Pay rolling out in China, is that it requires retailers/stores to upgrade their POS hardware. Large conglomerates here-Mcdonalds, Starbucks-will do this. It may take awhile for others. Apple has partnered with Union Pay on this. Already have my ICBC account linked to Union Pay so anyplace that takes Union Pay, I can swipe my ICBC card to pay.

Too, my Union Pay/ICBC card is already linked to both the Mac App Store and the iTunes Store so I can use that for purchases in those stores. Easy-peezy.

But out on the streets, I use my WeChat Wallet quite a lot for purchases. Many small shops and restaurants on and around my campus offer WeChat paying. no need for them to buy special POS hardware. they just open the app, type in the amount which generates a QR code. Scan the code with my phone through my WeChat app. and the money is paid. The Wallet is also linked to my Union Pay, so I can immediately add more money to the Wallet.

Until the hardware requirements of Apple Pay on both ends (consumer and retailer) roll out, Apple Pay will have a slow uptake in China I'm afraid. For now, WeChat Wallet rocks.
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad. - B. O'Driscoll.
TIC is knowing that, in China, your fruit salad WILL come with cherry tomatoes AND all slathered in mayo. - old34.

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Stil

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Re: Smartphones
« Reply #478 on: February 21, 2016, 04:32:43 PM »

But out on the streets, I use my WeChat Wallet quite a lot for purchases. Many small shops and restaurants on and around my campus offer WeChat paying. no need for them to buy special POS hardware. they just open the app, type in the amount which generates a QR code. Scan the code with my phone through my WeChat app. and the money is paid. The Wallet is also linked to my Union Pay, so I can immediately add more money to the Wallet.


Tencent to charge users in China for transferring money from WeChat Wallet to bank accounts


Tencent’s popular mobile messaging app WeChat will soon begin charging users in China for money transfers made to personal bank accounts via its built-in digital wallet service.
From March 1, a fee of 0.1 per cent will be levied on digital transfers to bank accounts where the sum exceeds 1,000 yuan (US$153), the company said. The minimum fee per transfer will be 0.1 yuan.
WeChat Wallet, which arrived in Hong Kong last month, can be used in various ways in China. Users can send money, or digital red envelopes bearing money or gifts, to friends or make payments at a variety of offline stores.

The company is imposing the charge to cover bank handling fees for users’ WeChat Wallet transfers instead of absorbing them itself as it has been doing, it said.
“The transaction fees will encourage users to make fewer withdrawals and thus keep more money circulating within the WeChat Wallet ecosystem, therefore increasing the opportunities for other spending within it,” said Michael Yeo, an analyst at market research firm IDC.
WeChat’s biggest rival for mobile payments, Alibaba-backed Alipay, does not charge its mobile users for transferring money to bank accounts, although website users are charged 0.2 per cent of the transaction value.

“WeChat Wallet is very convenient, and I often transfer money to colleagues when we split the bill for restaurants or taxi fares,” said Jade Zheng, a Shenzhen-based administration and human resources manager in southern China.
“But I’ll probably start using Alipay and internet banking [when the new WeChat charges take effect]. The fees may sound small, but it all adds up eventually,” she added.
Li Mei, who runs a WeChat public account providing entertainment news, said she uses Alipay and bank transfers instead of WeChat Wallet when she receives payment for her work.
“Alipay doesn’t charge any fees and I can even choose to earn interest on my money in Alipay via its financial product offerings,” said Li.
“Sending money to a bank account using WeChat takes one or two days. Now that they want to impose charges, I definitely won’t use WeChat for that.”

WeChat said that other WeChat Wallet features such as sending money to contacts, as well as sending or receiving virtual red packets will remain free of charge.
Unlike Tencent, Ant Financial, Alipay’s parent company, will continue keeping its transactions free for mobile users.

“Alipay does not charge users for withdrawing cash, depositing money to their bank accounts or transferring money to others’ bank accounts via the app, and we have no plans to start charging our Alipay users for these transactions,” said Miranda Shek, spokesperson for Ant Financial.

But pundits believe users will continue to use WeChat Wallet instead of migrating to other services such as Alipay, due to the massive popularity of the mobile messaging app.

“With such a small fee, I don’t think that there will be a very large effect on the user base, and migration to other platforms will be unlikely,” said Yeo.
“WeChat Wallet can still be used to pay for a substantial number of activities and goods, and that hold will be hard to break.”

Shiv Putcha, an associate director at IDC, echoed similar sentiments.

“WeChat has scale and is popular enough today that it may not [be affected] too much. If Alipay continues to cross-subsidise their own offerings, then we may well begin to see customers playing arbitrage,” Putcha said.

Although WeChat Wallet is now available in Hong Kong, its uses are restricted to online purchases within the app, such as tickets for trains or public attractions.
The red packet function was released for users in Hong Kong this month to coincide with the Lunar New Year holiday, which officially fell on February 8. Chinese traditionally give cash in small red envelopes to friends, families or staff during this period.
The service means Hong Kong residents can now use the app to transfer money they receive to a bank account of their choice.
People in the city who use WeChat Wallet will continue to enjoy free money transfers to bank accounts despite mainlanders now being asked to pay for the service, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Re: Smartphones
« Reply #479 on: February 22, 2016, 04:27:58 AM »
Don't do it Calach! Don't switch to Apple. You fight, the fight and remain free.

People like Old34 and myself who have gone into that Mac world are stuck with our boring machines. We have nothing to talk about. There's no conflict, no excitement at all. The goddamn things just update on their own. I don't even know what OS I'm using anymore. I don't get to spend time searching for fixes and making friends online with like-minded people now.

It's so lonely.

Computers and phones used be thrilling. Any time you turned them on (or tried to) you never knew what you were going to get. Now like a Tv or microwave it's just mundane and I have no choice but to use it for what I bought it for instead of the thrill of the blue screen, and countless hours of delving into technical information online. I've lost contact with some of my best friends because I have no excuse to talk to them anymore for their computer expertise.

I'm a pampered, well-fed pet, now trapped in a beautiful walled garden, yearning to be free, to join the dog-eat-dog world outside but paralysed by my own fear of not being able to succeed out there and though the gate is open, I dare not venture into that vast wilderness I once proudly roamed.

Save yourself from my fate Calach.

Stay away from Apple.

That's right. Apple stuff is rubbish.