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It's so upsetting. I keep my Pixel 3 as a spare phone. It's perfectly fine, I just used it for 5 days while my primary was on it's own adventure. Perfectly fine

It's so upsetting. I keep my Pixel 3 as a spare phone. It's perfectly fine, I just used it for 5 days while my primary was on it's own adventure. Perfectly fine, other than it being completely unsupported by Qualcomm and Google, and thus unusable as a daily-driver since banking apps, wallet, etc no longer work, as I've had to move to LineageOS for any sort of updates.

moffkalast 2y ago
Similarly, my A51 is only like 3-4 years old and it's already being slowly reduced to a useless brick because it only supports 4G which is being phased out and I keep losing connection entirely in some areas. The 85% charging limit has prevented the battery from degrading much over the years so it's still good for more than a day of use even after all this time. It literally works as good as the day I bought it and I'll have to get rid of it soon. There should be more of a push for backwards compatibility at this sort of protocol level, if we stop supporting 2.4Ghz wifi a metric shit ton of devices will just become junk overnight even if they still work perfectly.
- sourcepluck 2y ago
  > The 85% charging limit has prevented the battery from degrading much over the years Sorry, what is that? Is this something everyone knows, or some secret lore. I keep meaning to look up the basics of batteries and prolonging their life, and still haven't got their, so this comment triggers me (in a good way).
  - moffkalast 2y ago
    I think it's called "protect battery" or something like that in recent versions of Android, it just caps the max voltage your phone will charge to if left connected. The basic deal is this: lithium cells like being at sort of half charge (typically 3.85V) where they don't degrade and this is called storage charge as a result. It's what any battery that's in a box or on a shelf will be at. Going above 90% and under 15% (voltages depend on the exact chemistry) will do damage especially if left that way more than a few hours. So if you say, leave your phone on your bedstand to charge overnight, it'll do fast charging (which also does damage btw) and get itself to absolute max in like half an hour and then sit there for another 7-8 hours degrading until you unplug it. That's what this mainly prevents in practical day to day use. So yeah, for best battery longevity charge with up to 1C (e.g. for a 3Ah battery, that's 3A max), charge in large chunks and try to keep it between 25-85% for the most part. Then you're basically guaranteed to get the max number of cycles out of it. There's also another great feature called "power saving" which reduces power draw significantly (at least on my phone)by reducing background spying and capping CPU speed so it can last for 3-4 days if I don't use it much, which again saves a lot of charge cycles.
    - sourcepluck 2y ago
      Awh that's legendary, thank you so much! Will be looking into all this. Great stuff
nfriedly 2y ago
FWIW, rooted LineageOS works pretty well for banking apps, Netflix, etc. It's what I'm using for my daily driver. It takes it takes some fooling around with magisk, zygisk deny, props config, and universal safety net fix; but after you get things initially set up, you just have to re-do magisk after every update and the rest of the settings get restored. The worst part is how the LineageOS folks and don't want to have anything to do with rooted devices. They seem to think that LOS is actually usable without rooting, but it just isn't in my experience.
- foresto 2y ago
  > They seem to think that LOS is actually usable without rooting, Depends on what software you want to run on your device, I guess. I build LineageOS from source, so I'm perfectly capable of rooting my device, but I don't bother. I don't use Google Play Services, Google Play, or any apps from Google's store at all. Banking apps are not only unnecessary on my phone, but also unwelcome, mainly because they all demand overreaching permissions. I do my banking in a web browser, on a computer. This way, I have more control over what the banking client can do with the device it runs on, and no worries about what might happen to my accounts if my phone is lost or stolen. With no need to trick software like that into running on my de-googled OS, I haven't had any need to root it.
  - nfriedly 2y ago
    Ok, that's fair. But you have to admit that there are some limitations imposed on what you can do with your phone. For example: my bank doesn't accept check deposits via the website, but they do via the app. But the app only works if you're on an "approved" operating system, or if you root the device to tell the app it is. If I didn't use the app, I'd have to go to a bank branch in person, which means a car trip for me. Similarly, netflix movies and games are only usable on LOS after rooting it. I don't do all that much of either of these, but it's nice to have if I end up stuck in a lobby somewhere for an hour. Odds are good that I won't have a laptop with me.
    - foresto 2y ago

moffkalast 2y ago

Similarly, my A51 is only like 3-4 years old and it's already being slowly reduced to a useless brick because it only supports 4G which is being phased out and I keep losing connection entirely in some areas. The 85% charging limit has prevented the battery from degrading much over the years so it's still good for more than a day of use even after all this time. It literally works as good as the day I bought it and I'll have to get rid of it soon. There should be more of a push for backwards compatibility at this sort of protocol level, if we stop supporting 2.4Ghz wifi a metric shit ton of devices will just become junk overnight even if they still work perfectly.

sourcepluck 2y ago
> The 85% charging limit has prevented the battery from degrading much over the years Sorry, what is that? Is this something everyone knows, or some secret lore. I keep meaning to look up the basics of batteries and prolonging their life, and still haven't got their, so this comment triggers me (in a good way).
- moffkalast 2y ago
  I think it's called "protect battery" or something like that in recent versions of Android, it just caps the max voltage your phone will charge to if left connected. The basic deal is this: lithium cells like being at sort of half charge (typically 3.85V) where they don't degrade and this is called storage charge as a result. It's what any battery that's in a box or on a shelf will be at. Going above 90% and under 15% (voltages depend on the exact chemistry) will do damage especially if left that way more than a few hours. So if you say, leave your phone on your bedstand to charge overnight, it'll do fast charging (which also does damage btw) and get itself to absolute max in like half an hour and then sit there for another 7-8 hours degrading until you unplug it. That's what this mainly prevents in practical day to day use. So yeah, for best battery longevity charge with up to 1C (e.g. for a 3Ah battery, that's 3A max), charge in large chunks and try to keep it between 25-85% for the most part. Then you're basically guaranteed to get the max number of cycles out of it. There's also another great feature called "power saving" which reduces power draw significantly (at least on my phone)by reducing background spying and capping CPU speed so it can last for 3-4 days if I don't use it much, which again saves a lot of charge cycles.
  - sourcepluck 2y ago
    Awh that's legendary, thank you so much! Will be looking into all this. Great stuff

nfriedly 2y ago

FWIW, rooted LineageOS works pretty well for banking apps, Netflix, etc. It's what I'm using for my daily driver. It takes it takes some fooling around with magisk, zygisk deny, props config, and universal safety net fix; but after you get things initially set up, you just have to re-do magisk after every update and the rest of the settings get restored. The worst part is how the LineageOS folks and don't want to have anything to do with rooted devices. They seem to think that LOS is actually usable without rooting, but it just isn't in my experience.

foresto 2y ago
> They seem to think that LOS is actually usable without rooting, Depends on what software you want to run on your device, I guess. I build LineageOS from source, so I'm perfectly capable of rooting my device, but I don't bother. I don't use Google Play Services, Google Play, or any apps from Google's store at all. Banking apps are not only unnecessary on my phone, but also unwelcome, mainly because they all demand overreaching permissions. I do my banking in a web browser, on a computer. This way, I have more control over what the banking client can do with the device it runs on, and no worries about what might happen to my accounts if my phone is lost or stolen. With no need to trick software like that into running on my de-googled OS, I haven't had any need to root it.
- nfriedly 2y ago
  Ok, that's fair. But you have to admit that there are some limitations imposed on what you can do with your phone. For example: my bank doesn't accept check deposits via the website, but they do via the app. But the app only works if you're on an "approved" operating system, or if you root the device to tell the app it is. If I didn't use the app, I'd have to go to a bank branch in person, which means a car trip for me. Similarly, netflix movies and games are only usable on LOS after rooting it. I don't do all that much of either of these, but it's nice to have if I end up stuck in a lobby somewhere for an hour. Odds are good that I won't have a laptop with me.
  - foresto 2y ago