Weekly output: Trump’s TikTok reprieve, Android + Samsung Galaxy S25 series, ISP performance, Android 16

For a little while Sunday afternoon, I thought I might have a home-team rooting interest in the Super Bowl for the first time in my post-collegiate life–but the Washington Commanders’ improbable renaissance season, one that somehow got me to appreciate pro football a little more, ended with a 55-23 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC championship game.

1/21/2025: Trump Executive Order Hits 75-Day Pause Button on TikTok Ban, PCMag

I made sure this post included the most important bit of context in any story about privacy fears over TikTok: the continued, pathetic failure of Congress to pass a comprehensive privacy bill.

1/22/2025: Google Adds AI Shortcuts, Lock-Screen Updates, More to Galaxy S25 Series, PCMag

The context I made sure to add to this post: Samsung’s flavor of Android still isn’t getting the Hold for Me feature that I frequently rely on when calling customer-service lines from any of the Pixel-series phones I’ve used.

1/23/2025: What’s the Fastest Wireless Network in the US?, PCMag

I wish Ookla–owned by PCMag’s parent company Ziff Davis–would provide more clarity about how it factors upload speeds into its speed ratings. I would also like to see them stop treating AT&T Fiber as a separate service while lumping Verizon’s Fios in with slower residential services.

1/23/2025: Google Ships First Beta of Android 16: Here’s What You Get, PCMag

Google PR gave me a heads-up about this announcement only the afternoon before, but I’ve now had more than enough practice at summarizing release notes for upcoming Android developer-preview and beta releases.

#Android15 #Android16 #ATTFiber #GalaxyS25 #Ookla #SamsungUnpacked #Speedtest #TMobile5G #TikTok #TikTokBan #TrumpExecutiveOrder #WashingtonCommanders

Two years and seven months should not rate as a lengthy tenure for an electronic device. But for the Google Pixel 5a I bought in late 2021, that span of time is starting to feel more like a career. And in the context of people who feel compelled to buy a new phone every year, my phone might as well be on its second afterlife.

The device still functions fine–the 5a’s 5G radio has yet to be made obsolete by T-Mobile deploying new spectrum bands–and looks decent overall. In particular, I’ve managed to avoid any damage to the screen I replaced with an iFixIt repair kit in October of 2021 after shattering the original screen a few weeks earlier.

But the glass cover over the back camera assembly has developed a crack that apparently lets in enough moisture at times to lightly fog some photos.

On the phone’s inside, more than two years of discharge-recharge cycles seem to have left their dent in the battery. I’m now more likely to look for the nearest outlet by the afternoon of a day on the go to ensure that the phone retains a healthy charge margin when I get back to home or a hotel.

This phone’s 128 GB of storage also doesn’t have much left, with 112 GB now eaten up by photos, music and a collection of apps overdue for culling.

None of that seems too bad on its own, considering that I’ve kept this 5a in daily service for longer than its three predecessors: a Pixel 3a used for about two years and five months, a first-gen Pixel that served me for just over two years and a month, and a Nexus 5x that succumbed to a fatal bootloop after just a year and eight months.

But the factor most likely to push me to buy a new phone in the coming months is not the 5a’s hardware but its software. Google’s Android-support lifecycle document only pledges version updates for it through August, three years after the 5a’s debut, and Android 15 will almost certainly ship a month or two later.

A Pixel 8a, the most likely replacement, would bring a commitment of Android updates until May of 2031–far longer than I can imagine myself continuing to use a 2024-vintage phone–as well as a better camera, more storage, and cordless charging.

But the 8a and, apparently, every future Pixel phone from Google, will not include a headphone jack. Finally knuckling under to that collective design delusion on a device I use more than any other is going to sting.

https://robpegoraro.com/2024/07/12/a-not-all-that-old-phone-nears-retirement/

#android #Android15 #AndroidSupport #AndroidVersionSupport #headphoneJack #Pixel5a #Pixel8a #softwareLifecycle #TMobile5G

CES 2024 travel-tech report: a new laptop and an old phone

My messenger bag had less hardware than usual for a CES trip when I flew out Sunday morning–only one laptop and only one phone, plus their charging accessories, and no WiFi hotspots or any other review hardware to back up my own devices. In other words, I was gambling a little in Vegas.

The laptop, a 2022-model HP Spectre x360 that I purchased at about 30% off in August to replace the 2017 model that died at the end of 2021, made battery life one of my lesser worries at the show. I only recall it going into power-saving mode once, at the end of a long day that hadn’t allowed any recharging breaks.

But the HP’s fingerprint sensor became one of my bigger annoyances when it would mysteriously stop working. I’ve seen this happen before and know the fix (the old-school two step of deleting it in the Device Manager app and then having the app scan for hardware changes to restore it), but at CES this happened multiple times in a day because every tech problem gets worse at the show.

I assume that reinstalling Windows would fix this, but CES is also no time for complicated troubleshooting.
Fortunately, none was needed for the other glitch I saw: a confusing minute or two of this convertible laptop acting as if it had been folded up to use in tablet mode, ignoring physical keyboard input, that ended when I rebooted the machine.

The phone was the Google Pixel 5a I had brought to the two previous CESes. It’s aged extraordinarily well overall, thanks to Google software updates that have added such useful new features as Live Transcribe–a kind of magic for interviews and press conferences.

But two years and change is a lot of charge cycles for a smartphone’s battery–on top of which, I kept using the phone as a mobile hotspot to work around spotty or nonexistent WiFi. That left me worrying about recharging this more than the laptop. At least the 5a, like most new phones, also charges quickly, so 2024 battery anxiety isn’t like the 2014 kind.

I took all of my notes at the event in Evernote, having somewhat reluctantly renewed my subscription at the new, much higher rate. (I had thought of switching to Microsoft’s OneNote, but seeing Microsoft make it harder to switch by retiring its importer app did not make me want to fuss through moving over my notes via third-party tools.) Evernote’s new management seem to have fixed this app’s sync-conflict problems, which is great, but on the phone the app would struggle to load my increasingly long CES notes in lower-bandwidth situations.

Which came up often, between T-Mobile’s 5G network appearing over capacity in some places and various WiFi networks dropping my laptop or phone randomly. I was glad I’d brought my ancient USB-to-Ethernet adapter, which let my connect the laptop to a press-room cable instead of having to edit the saved press-room WiFi network setting to add the day’s password.

I tucked one other form of old-school hardware into my bag that I found useful at CES: business cards, a form of analog data exchange that’s stayed in style at this show even as networking at other tech events has been compressed to on-the-spot LinkedIn invitations.

#batteryLife #businessCards #ces #CES2024 #CESTravelTech #Ethernet #fastCharging #LasVegas #Pixel5a #SpectreX360 #TMobile5G #USBC #Vegas

Among this weekend’s achievements: homebrewing a new batch of beer. I hope this coffee porter lives up to its recipe, but I won’t know for another three weeks and change.

This week’s bonus post for Patreon readers covered three ways, two of which can be stacked, to save money on Google storage.

12/6/2023: Twitch to Log Out of South Korea, Citing ‘Prohibitively Expensive’ Costs, PCMag

I am nobody’s idea of a Twitch regular, but seeing this Amazon-owned game streaming service say it will exit an entire country–apparently because of a “sender pays” policy along the lines of what telecom firms in the U.S. have requested–got my attention.

12/6/2023: T-Mobile: Here’s How We Got 5G to Top 4-Gig Download Speeds, PCMag

A speed test under special circumstances isn’t necessarily news, but one of the big three wireless carriers suggesting it could finally find a use for millimeter-wave spectrum it’s sat on for years does rank as news.

12/7/2023: CES 2024 Media Preview, Consumer Technology Association

After months of occasional banter with one of my CTA friends about how I’d like to share some of my hard-won experience with CES, we finally made that happen on this webinar for journalists signed up for the giant gadget gathering next month in Las Vegas. I enlisted my fellow CES veteran and New Jerseyan Andrea Smith, and she may have provided the most value by reminding PR types pitching companies exhibiting at CES that it would help so, so much if their e-mails could specify upfront where in the wide world of CES exhibit space their clients might be found.

12/8/2023: Comcast to Hike TV and Broadband Rates (Yes, Again), PCMag

I wrote a new version of a story I’ve already written for three clients over the past four years: in November of 2019 at Fierce Video, now Stream TV Insider; a year later for Forbes; and then in in December of 2022 at USA Today. I don’t know how I missed this at the end of 2021 and feel bad about that failure to monetize what seems to be an evergreen topic.

https://robpegoraro.com/2023/12/10/weekly-output-twitch-to-exit-south-korea-t-mobiles-5g-speed-test-ces-media-preview-comcast-rate-hikes/

#ces #CES2024 #Comcast #ComcastRateHikes #millimeterWave5G #netNeutrality #senderPays #TMobile #TMobile5G #Twitch #Xfinity