IronRain

PiP won’t work with two media apps? Ugh, I was hoping I could watch two sports games concurrently! Especially during times like now and October, where you have playoff games of one sport and the regular season swing of your favorite teams in the other. I can do this with my Tab S8! If only it could work natively.

Hey, I will take any excuse to get more Kike in the lineup!

On one hand, amazing athletic ability by Mookie to convert to yet another position! On the other hand, I really hope Lux figures it out. His throws have been rough to put it kindly so far. His errant throws can easily cause Freddie an injury by trying to save his terrible arm in regular season games.

I have one with the nail clipper and small scissors, and it’s been such a lifesaver! The clippers are actually better than most of the dedicated clippers I’ve used. I’m hoping they come up with a bigger version with a few more tools attached, and more interesting materials for a back up pair!

I also noticed a gap, and I’m wondering if it’s where the ad banner is now. I really hope not and that this is just a visual bug, because it’s pretty glaring and distracting.

How do you think they got their lower budget models to be so successful? By using the R&D and marketing budget on their flagships. Do you think Samsung would still be selling as many lower end phones if they couldn’t advertise and actually entice consumers? They would be competing for scraps along with Moto, Asus, and other niche brands. Hell, there might not even be an Android presence in the US if they only made $200 phones! Apple’s domination would be complete.

Right!? I’ve used over 8 SD Cards since I first got the Samsung Galaxy S2, starting from 64GB to a 1TB one. Never experienced a single issue! You know what I did see happen though? A buddy’s Samsung S21 completely brick and he couldn’t retrieve any of his data since everything was stored internally. Luckily for him, at least his photos were backed up on the cloud. Lost his entire music and emulation collection in the process though.

This is my first non-Samsung phone, and after a lot of tweaking and using Nova Launcher (yes, yes, they got bought out by Branch) for the first time in a while, I can say I absolutely love this phone! I won’t say it’s better than a Samsung, but I can say that it’s more or less on par, which is enough for a phone that’s a few hundred bucks cheaper. Let me know if you want a more detailed breakdown between Pixels and Samsung (at least as of Note 20 Ultra’s specs)!

Yup! I really wanted a Sony Xperia for the hardware, but the 2 years of updates were a deal breaker. So for the price of a base model 128GB (lol) S23U, I got a 1TB Pixel 8 Pro and a case with enough money leftover for dinner with the price difference. Their holiday sales were pretty generous!

No, Samsung has lost the plot for the origins of their success - hardware supremacy and overwhelming features (e.g. SD card slot, headphone jacks). As I mentioned in another post discussing Apple overtaking Samsung for the first time in a decade in volume of sales, they removed everything that made their phones a compelling device, and decided to be an equally expensive iPhone clone. In an era where consumers are so starved for hardware features that Nothing Phone made a living out of glowing back plates, and iPhone got applauded for an action button, Samsung’s leadership has seriously miscalculated and failed.

I knew this would happen around the S21 series when they removed the last hardware item of consequence, the SD Card slot. After that, Samsung focused on being Android’s iPhone, except they imitated all of Apple’s shortcomings instead of playing to their core values that got them here in the first place: hardware supremacy. Now that the only discernable difference between Samsung and Apple is the OS (folding screens aside), people’s choices became binary (iPhone or equally expensive iPhone clone) instead of multifaceted (headphone jacks, SD card slot, etc. vs iPhone). Actually, scratch that - Apple actually added more hardware features* (action button and USB-C) on their latest model, making Samsung look dumber for regressing.

On top of that, other OEMs, like Google, caught up with the only hardware that Samsung has been improving on - the cameras and folding screens - and soaked in customers that feel spurned by Samsung (myself included as of 2 weeks ago), for a lower price. If they don’t reverse course and begin concentrating on hardware advantages, especially in an era where consumers are so starved for features that Nothing Phone made a living out of glowing back lights, this may be the beginning of the Korean giant’s death knell since younger generations are choosing iPhones.

*Side note - I’m even more pissed about the removal of expandable storage on Android since Apple actually brought them back for the recent MacBooks! So people who claim it’s an outdated technology can try and explain why it’s making a return on $2K laptops, but not mobile devices other than for greed.

I still think this is the hardest achievement to earn, especially in today’s NBA, for one of the most lackluster prizes. Other teams get Chick-fil-A for 2 missed free throws! We have to be a top 10 defense to get mediocre tacos. But I do love the “We Want Tacos” chants that permeated the 2000s!

It was a surprisingly competitive game, which indicates that Ham hasn’t completely lost the locker room. I thought this was one of Ham’s better coached games with the exception of putting Cam Reddish back in during the middle of the 4th quarter, which quickly dissipated our 10 point lead.

Welcome!

The first thing you need to consider is that he exploded from just inside the free throw line (which is 15’ from the hoop), which is insane to begin with. Two, he finished with contact over a strong and lengthy Paul George (although he didn’t contest), which is even more impressive. Three, he elevated even higher than necessary, making him float longer in the air for aesthetics. Fourth, and I can’t stress this point enough, he did this at the ripe old age of 39 years old. Paul George is 6 years his junior. Most 39 professional athletes are sitting on the bench, cheering on their decade(s)-younger teammates, ready to cash in their league pensions.

Paul George also sidestepped at the very last second, preventing this poster dunk from being even more embarrassing for him.

Ugh, I was so excited for the adaptation, since TWOT is one of my favorite fantasy series. I made it 17 minutes into the show before I turned it off on disgust. Poor casting, poor acting, and they couldn’t even get the damn premise right!?

Nope, CA doesn’t recognize non-competes.

Only to start off with the main quest and follow their instruction to start. It leads to you interest points, and you can gradually explore on your own from there. Talk to all the named characters you come across and check out everything you can. The scenic story telling is absolutely fantastic, especially once you soak in all the little details!

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Speaking for my favorite game of all time, New Vegas, you need to push through until you find something that captures your attention. There’s nothing you can really reach in the first 2 hours (for a first play through) that will pop out at you. But once you get that first “whoa” moment, you’re completely immersed. But you definitely need to be a patient gamer in the beginning, because a vast desert provides a lot of empty, forlorn landscape (a lot of people hate this, but I love the desolate atmosphere).

Thanks for the tip, but I was referring to the battery drain while using the wireless device. Not sure if native wireless Android Auto drains as much battery, but using these 3rd party dongles drains about 15% every 30 mins on my phone, even when not actively using navigation.