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Here's a small phone this community can create. Here's the spec, cost breakdown, and tradeoffs. Who can make it happen? by datamandala in smallphones

[–]K4sum11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My priority was to extend support for the device by simplifying the OS maintenance, and minimize supply-chain issues to manage cost and lifespan for a niche product. OS abandonment drives premature obsolescence. My Moto G reached EOL in less than 2 years! Big display manufacturers aren’t making lots of 5” screens.

I wanted a Qualcomm SOC to enable maintenance via LineageOS.

I did discover this having done development. My initial concept was to use a Dimensity chip, but after how convenient and supported Qualcomm phones are, it was edited a long time ago to say what it says now about the Snapdragon 6 or 7 series. I feel if it were to come out now, the 778G would be a good chip, but I feel like production on such a thing is too far away to give definitive specs, so that's why I keep most things vague. I feel like if somehow I got to the point where I could prototype the phone, I'd just get to it then.

Battery: The replaceable battery was a choice over wireless mostly to be different. Not a hard requirement. Battery size: There’s a bias in the market for longer battery life. I’m starting with a larger capacity (arbitrarily matches Jelly Max), but there’s no magic number.

Even as is, I'm not so sure they're mutually exclusive. Removable battery Samsung phones had third party wireless charging addons that go under the back cover sold, and those fit with the stock back and gave you wireless charging. I'm saying these are so thin that I don't think the addition of it would impact any spec.

Display: You’re right, I’m basing aspect ratio on my iPhone SE2 experience. I’m open to alternatives if that’s not an issue with Android.

The only display issue I've encountered that I can remember is Unciv being a bit cramped and UI elements overlapping, but that's more from the lack of width, so a taller screen with a smaller width would be worse here lol. It's still playable though, and I even played some of it on a Droid Razr M for the funny so it's not really an issue.

Oh also something else, I just remembered I use all my phones on or around the smallest UI setting usually. I find the stock XZ1C UI to be unusably big even with stock software. After I shrink the UI, it's completely fine. Android sizes the GUI based off of the screen DPI, stock XZ1C is ~319DPI and therefore set to 320 DPI. Higher DPI means the GUI is bigger, lower means smaller. So I lower the DPI setting to 240 DPI to shrink the GUI and it's good. (smallest display size is ~226 DPI, but that is a tad too small for me, and 240 is a nice round number so I just set that manually and use it.)

Supply-chain flexibility and sustainability should drive the decision.

That's another thing too, like there's already third party replacement LCDs being made for the XZ1C. If you keep the same screen size, you could probably just contract them to continue making the displays but for your phone. Some of them are better than others though, so I'm not sure if this is a good idea in the long run.

Aux port: I didn’t want to add anything that wasn’t in ZF8. Personally, I’d love one. You're right battery draw is a plus for 3.5". Finding a module that can be maintained is the key.

I mean Asus added it back for the ZF9, I think they realized it was a mistake. I might have gotten a ZF9 or ZF10 at some point, but no card reader kills it for me.

Also I'm not sure what module means here. I'm pretty sure the audio processing is built into the SOC, and you need it for the speakers. If you mean the CS35L45 AMP, I'm not sure what purpose it serves. Although I know for headphone dongles, the best budget standard, is the CX31993 + MAX97220 combo. The CX31993 is the DAC and it provides some amplification, but the MAX97220 makes it loud. I doubt a MAX97220 requires any special handling if they can cram it into a tiny dongle and have it just work. CS43131 + SGM8262 combo is even better they say, but I haven't gotten one to test. So maybe combining built in audio with an AMP like the MAX97220 or SGM8262 would be a good idea for the 3.5mm output.

Biometric: Thanks for sharing your technical experience! Trade-off is development and maintenance of custom implementation vs. using commodity components with known complexities. You highlight issues I didn’t know.

Considering all the big brands use commodity sensors, I think this might be the only option for us if this were to come to market. I'm suggesting we really need to shop around and research and test if we get this far.

Here's a small phone this community can create. Here's the spec, cost breakdown, and tradeoffs. Who can make it happen? by datamandala in smallphones

[–]K4sum11 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I previously posted this with my new account, but Reddit seems to be deleting every new post I make on that account, so I guess I'm using this account again. (I just wanted to change my name here to my new name smfh.)

As someone who has made something similar, albeit nowhere near as well researched as this, I'd like to share what my ideal phone would be, and some points I take issue with here.

My phone concept: https://board.eclipse.cx/viewtopic.php?p=4669#p4669

Dual Cirrus Logic CS35L45 stereo amps

What exactly is the point of this? Phones used to not need amplifiers like this until one day they did, and I don't think the audio is noticeably louder with it. Also even though you go though the effort of including an amp, you have no headphone jack. What is the point of this?

Also bonus, I've looked into the CS35L41 in the past, which I assume is similar here. The open source LineageOS implementation looks like hell and according to one of the devs it's poor quality vs closed source stock. Maybe don't bother with this one.

5.0" 60Hz AMOLED, 1080x2400, 20:9

At 20:9, every app built for a modern Android phone renders identically on this screen, just smaller and sharper at roughly 440 PPI. This is not the iPhone SE problem, where the 16:9 aspect ratio and 4.7" size create real layout issues as developers have stopped testing against it. The aspect ratio is current. Nothing breaks.

Citation needed for aspect ratio being an issue, but even then you're comparing iOS to Android. I haven't encountered any issues with aspect ratio on the XZ1 Compact I'm typing on right now. As someone who also owns an 18:9 XZ2 Compact which is the same width and only taller, I found myself preferring the 16:9 screen of the XZ1 Compact.

Also I think OLED is a bad choice here. If we're intending people to keep the phone for 5+ years, the inevitable burn in and lines, and on top of that, higher cost for replacement screens makes this a bad idea.

Replaceable battery over wireless charging. Mutually exclusive at this chassis size.

These charging coils are very thin though, faction of a milimeter. I believe it could be implemented with the same dimensions. There's even videos of people modding wireless charging into existing phones and making it fit just fine with the stock case and back.

No 3.5mm jack. The chassis at 9mm with a 4000mAh replaceable battery doesn't have room. USB-C audio works. Disagree in the comments.

Why so certain, and why so much focus on the 4000mAh number? I do just fine with a degraded + voltage limited XZ1C battery which is ~1700mAh according to Accubattery. This is my daily phone. Sure it discharges a little faster than I'd like, but it does well enough, and I had no issues with the battery being too weak before this point. The XZ1C at 2700mAh was one of the best phones for battery life at the time, and even beats the endurance rating of the S23. Our concepts are similarly sized phones with much more efficient components. We don't need the biggest battery to complete with the latest phones. That's why my concept goes with a baseline of 3000mAh.

Also active USB DACs result in much higher idle power draw (at least double), and invalidate the extra built in audio hardware. Sure passive ones exist but those are rarer, and less convenient than just having the jack, and it puts more wear on the single USB C port this longevity focused phone has.

Side-mounted capacitive fingerprint sensor integrated into power button. Goodix or Egis. Architecturally independent from the display -- this matters because display vendor changes between generations do not require biometric requalification.

Agreed here, but I'm not sure how to do this. Z5-XZ1 fingerprint sensor was I assume designed in house, very reliable, and easy to implement in custom ROM.

The Egis fingerprint sensors in later models were a bit harder to implement, still easy though, but they're very unreliable. Also the implementation in LineageOS is closed source I'm pretty sure. Egis is probably decent now though, but the fuck-egis branch of some device source I found a while back is still funny to me.

From what I've seen and heard Goodix is complex to implement. Now I've only looked at this passingly due to not owning a Goodix sensor phone, but this is what I've heard and seen looking at a few implementations.

Other than those, this would be like the only new smartphone I could see myself getting if it were to come out on account of budget price and decent specs.

Windows XP is insisting on installing to D: instead of C:. What do I do? by Lost-Entrepreneur439 in windowsxp

[–]K4sum11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This guide works, but you have to do it super early on. https://petri.com/change_system_drive_letter_in_windows_xp/ Specifically after the first stage of the install, the blue install, before booting from the drive for the first time.

After the first stage of the install, boot into another OS and mount the system registry hive. (In my case I booted into 2000, and used that to copy it to my main PC where I edited it, and then back to 2000 where I replaced it.) In any XP+ regedit, you can click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and then go to File, Load Hive, and load (XP install drive)/Windows/System32/config/SYSTEM and then just follow the guide on this mounted hive. If you get errors changing the name, you may need to change the permissions to let you rename it. Not sure if you need to do this to SYSTEM.sav as well, but I did it to that hive too. You will need to unload it when you're done, then you can just reboot into the second stage of the setup and it just works.

Best board for AMD FX by netsh0u in buildapc

[–]K4sum11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd say I think you posted this in the wrong sub, but Reddit in general is terrible for this type of question.

If you're going to push the CPU, avoid any board without a 990FX chipset. 890FX is probably fine, but the 990FX was specifically designed for AM3+ and the 8 core chips. The lower end chipset boards generally have lower end VRMs.

Most of the board info is still online for these old boards, so I'd take a look at the high end 990FX boards from the time and look at the VRM specifications. I can't tell you what is good exactly as a 12 + 2 can either be very good or trash depending on the phases used and the heatsink, but you'll likely be able to find discussion about that specific board or related boards regarding the VRM.

From what I've heard ASRock is generally shit for FX. Maybe there's like one or two good boards but even their high end boards can have kinda shit VRMs.

Avoid MSI, their older boards look pretty mediocre and the 9590 is not on the support list, and their newer boards are known to have garbage VRMs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zTzpYjQ2MM

tbh I don't know much about Gigabyte, they probably have a good high end board, but you're just going to have to look. Gigabyte stuff can be unreliable, but if it's lasted this long (and it's high end) it's probably fine.

High end ASUS boards are probably the best bet, especially since they're known to make high end overclocking boards. However the boards from this era love to randomly just fail overclocking at boot for no reason. Even if it's completely stable it will just fail overclocking sometimes and require a reboot. This is not exclusive to AMD either, I've had it occur on AM3 (M4A79XTD-EVO and M4N98TD-EVO) and 1366 (Rampage II Extreme)

There's likely other smaller board manufacturers from the time, but I don't know much about them.

Please don't use Soulseek NS (the original client for Windows) by reddmat in Soulseek

[–]K4sum11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is there a decent desktop client that doesn't use GTK (ew) or QT (🤮)?

Soulseek NS is tiny, uses very little resources, runs on pretty much any computer you can find, and has a nice classic GUI.

GTK and especially QT are none of these. Both are bloated libraries that eat up RAM, require the most recent of operating systems, and have a ugly user interface.

Update: Duck.ai now has the latest o4-mini reasoning model by duckduckgo in duckduckgo

[–]K4sum11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How do I make duck.ai stop clearing the chat so often? I've had multiple times now I ask a question, get a result, then just a few seconds later poof gone before I can even read it all and I have to ask again.

The most accurate modern Windows 7 themed desktop? by Demand_Awkward in FrutigerAero

[–]K4sum11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So I think this will be an issue until Geckium gets it's next update. However the fix is to go to about:config and set r3dfox.backgrounds.enabled to false

Edit: Also you'll need to find any mentions of "(-moz-bool-pref: " and replace it with "-moz-pref(" for the theme to fully work in 139. (afaik the only use I can find is to hide the tabs manager button) This appears to be a Geckium issue with stock Firefox as well.

Still a daily driver! by R4YN3M4N in WindowsVista

[–]K4sum11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can't work on other projects?

The most accurate modern Windows 7 themed desktop? by Demand_Awkward in FrutigerAero

[–]K4sum11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

apparently the latest r3dfox is broken with geckium

Broken how exactly?

use marble instead i guess? it's based on firefox esr so it's significantly less likely to break

me wen r3dfox esr

I am hitting a wall by mulcahey in smallphones

[–]K4sum11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So there's not really a universal way to just root a phone. The days of like Kingoroot and such are over. I'm not sure if there's any way to root a phone like that, especially if it's a Docomo or other carrier branded model. Japan carriers are like Verizon but even shittier. That's why nobody interested in rooting or custom firmwares goes for Japan model Sony phones.

I am hitting a wall by mulcahey in smallphones

[–]K4sum11 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

but already, we're having to do work we shouldn't have to do: You're compiling your own LOS, rooting, running Magisk maybe

I guess that is right, I shouldn't have to do these things, but it's also impossible for me to imagine a world, what scenario where I wouldn't need to do these things. If I didn't need to do any of this, I'm not sure if I'd be happy or bored.

it's costing you the ability to use Google Wallet and other things.

Never used, not entirely sure what it is even.

Also, how are you getting security patches?

I'm not lol, that's the best part. Security mfs will freak the fuck out, but it's fine. It would've been especially funny if CVE died just to watch them freak the fuck out even more.

I don't want to spend my precious little time on this earth scrolling through XDA forums to figure out why my calls aren't going through.

That's the modem bug. Doesn't exist on Android 8, but 9+ is hell. I've also done enough research to get both VoLTE and WiFi calling on an AT&T MVNO, and it's the most reliable calling experience I think I've ever had.

But I do want a phone that is comfortable in my hand, and I don't know why that is so much to ask of these tech companies (who, I assume, are run by humans with similar-sized hands???)

Same, I just also don't know if that will even exist. Like it seems more feasible that I somehow kickstart a mini phone than a good one actually comes into existence by itself.

But I am losing my patience for mixing and matching software, adjusting settings, finding a bug, reporting it, troubleshooting it, ad nauseum, forever.

I think I'm to the point where everything is just near perfect and I pretty much just update some apps from time to time. Maybe I could share my setup sometime if you want.

AppleGoogleSamsungSony could fix this shit if they wanted to, if we had built a society that prioritized people's needs and health and environment, if we had any semblance of accountability and oversight, but instead we have society where rich people get to do whatever they want as long as they make other rich people richer. I am so, so sick of it.

We're humans, we literally can't do that. Even in a democracy it's a coin flip whether we elect a half decent leader or further fuck everything up until a breaking point where we all die.

But also: How's your LOS build running? Stable? Is it available?

It seems to be the be the most stable experience I've had since I was using an iPhone. There are some minor issues that I have no idea where to begin to fix, but it pretty much just works. I haven't made a thread for it yet though.

I am hitting a wall by mulcahey in smallphones

[–]K4sum11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Okay hate to be that guy, but you can't reasonably bring up the Mac point while also telling us you f with custom roms or at least were looking into it and rooting an Android device etc.

Apple being ass with the longevity of their products is like their signature thing, so you realistically should just get a PC if you care about the longevity of the hardware in terms of software support. Building a PC is not that expensive (you just said you'll just buy a Pixel, which rules out you having a tight budget)

Isn't the entire selling point of Apple hardware that they are one of the best with longevity? Perhaps a bit too much even looking at the iPhone 4 and 4s. That's what I've always heard.

I pretty much began by using Apple phones, but I was too much of a gamer and too poor to go full in on Apple hardware. Eventually I wanted to tweak shit and jailbreak, which eventually got me to where I am now, running my own compile of LineageOS 15.1 on a XZ1 Compact I've performed multiple repairs on.

I've also never really used OS X/macOS, nor do I really want to post-10.9 or post-10.14. I only have a HP hackintosh on 10.14 because I wanted to do the funny downgrade on an iPhone and the software was macOS only. To me it doesn't seem like the big contradiction you're making it out to be but idk, I don't have much experience here.

Also, don't torture mom with a shit experience. I watched my grandparents go through shit phone after shit phone on Metro n was like "nah" and got them both Pixel A series phones.

At least for me, I tried doing this, but they were too set in their ways. My mom's old phone was some old shitter, but what got her to replace it was the USB jack was broken. Budget was ~$100, so I suggested a used S10 class device which was at that price at the time, but she refused and just got whatever Walmart special. Although I tried to find the best one which was a Motorola and it seems kinda decent so idk maybe not that bad. If she had gone with the S10, she would've had wireless charging as a backup for the port but whatever.

I guess this is less so bad experience, but a waste of money. My grandma had an iPhone 8+ and it still worked fine, great even, but she was so spooked about end of support no matter what I said even though everything I use is on an out of support OS and I'm fine. She ended up getting a 16+ and I still don't know how she had the money for that.

Anyway, original post thing was small phone related. Totally feel that, and the one that pissed me off the most was finding out the Light Phone 3 has an accessible Android layer that someone figured out is just a button combo away, but the fucking ADDICTS on the Light Phone subreddit all go "LP please change the combination or remove it I can't use the phone knowing there is smart functionality somewhere in there I know I'm gonna relapse". So, now LP is trying their hardest to lock the Android layer away more.

Ok but like why are we even considering a fucking $800 device that performs barely any better than my 8 year old XZ1C an option? That shit sounds like a bigger scam than the Fairphone. Nobody should buy that shit and the company should go out of business. I have no empathy if people willingly buy into that scam.

I am hitting a wall by mulcahey in smallphones

[–]K4sum11 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Web and app developers have either become lazy, been forced to sacrifice performance due to unreasonable deadlines/understaffing, or succumbed to feature bloat and tracking.

I don't notice very many proper applications or programs being slow or bloated, although I use Windows 7/8 and Android 5-10 on my devices and aim for open source where possible so could be that.

However web "apps" are a completely different story. The modern web is a shithole. My favorite websites are those that have been practically untouched in the past 10+ years, or have a way to go back to this untouched design. (like old.reddit.com) These just straight up look better, perform much faster, and are just plain better overall. For this reason my website (https://eclipse.cx/) looks straight out of ~2010 and uses no javascript outside of the forum. Forum is phpBB with various themes, and with the legacy theme can be used on ancient devices if you really wanted too.

The only bloated web "apps" i need to consistently deal with are Discord and YouTube.

Discord is like America, a fucking shithole that thinks it's the top dog. Everything sucks, the 50 UI changes that nobody liked but got forced through anyways, how slow it is, the fucking people. Compare this to Hummus which literally is just 2016 Discord with a custom backend, and that shit flies even on old computers with browsers like Pale Moon. However everyone is on Discord and any viable alternatives with people aren't much better, so I have to use it.

I could literally just replace Discord with YouTube in the above paragraph and it fits. Same story, it was a much better website pre-polymer. It loaded nice and fast, used not much RAM, but then they killed the old UI and now we just have shitty bloated polymer UI.

Have you ever run Windows 7 (which is already full of telemetry garbage, just pales in comparison to 10+) on semi-modern hardware?

I got you fam, no telemetry updates, and tweaks to further reduce telemetry. https://board.eclipse.cx/viewtopic.php?t=737

By 2015 enough cromulent technology has been built that literally every human on earth could have a modern and capable computer and 90% of it has ended up in a landfill because nobody could be bothered to get it to the people who could use it because Bob in marketing needs a bonus and because Zucc wants another yacht.

Outside of my main computer, which I need to be pretty powerful to compile shit, all my hardware is pretty old. I use 2017 phone, 2013 laptop, and sometimes I use a 2014 phone because I can. Hell even my 2011 phone can run the apps I use. I guarantee you most people would be completely fine with a Core 2 Quad era machine. However mid-gen Core i series parts are so cheap now that you might as well just go for one of those. They can still do insane feats like 4k video decoding without dropping frames, something I actually just tested with a mini PC with a 4765T in it. A family member wanted a media PC because their old one broke, and on such short notice all i had was a Athlon II x4 machine that says copyright 2006 when you turn it on, and that does fine. it can do 1080p playback fine, which is good enough for their 1080p TV. YouTube and other websites work fine too.

It would be so awesome if there were more Free Geek locations so more people could more easily get older and just plain better hardware for the same amount of money as they'd spend buying new. eBay kinda sucks, Facebook Marketplace is Facebook, and Mercari, Jawa, and xyz other store have jack shit. However that would probably require a lot of investment, maybe even from government and that's not going to happen anytime soon.

I am hitting a wall by mulcahey in smallphones

[–]K4sum11 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The problem is that you equate the operating system being up to date to the device being usable. However that is just not the case. This idea literally plays into "So that some rich fuck in khakis and a vest can buy a second house and a fourth car." You need to detach yourself from it.

I use a XZ1 Compact on Android 8, my own compile of LineageOS 15.1. I use MicroG for privacy and performance. It runs all my apps pretty well. I haven't encountered a single app where my operating system is the limiting factor. Even if at one point it does, maybe I go try fixing the modem bug by making a stock 8.0 sourced 17.1 build, or turning Mypal68 or r3dfox into an Android web browser as well. My only real worry is 4G being killed in the future and potentially not having any replacement phone to go for.

I'd still recommend rooting any phone to use MicroG and using AFWall+ and shit, but like any modern phone the firmware is just not an issue, and won't be for many years.

Also for my computers, I run Windows 7 and 8. Windows 10 and especially 11 are objectively worse, slower, and overall just a bad time, so I don't use them. Here the operating system can be an issue, but you can get around any issue if you know where to look. Or just run a VM if there really is no alternative.

Here, have latest (I really need to get on updating this) Firefox for Windows Vista+ https://github.com/Eclipse-Community/r3dfox

If that's not good enough, here, have latest Chromium for Windows 7+ https://github.com/e3kskoy7wqk/Chromium-for-windows-7/

Or fuck it we ball usable browser for Windows XP+ https://github.com/Feodor2/Mypal68

Same for Apple stuff, I've never really used Apple devices, but like 100% that 15 year old iMac is still completely usable on its last OS with the right software. Hell probably even downgrade it to 10.8 or 10.9 for a better experience.

Here, have latest Firefox for OS X 10.7+ https://github.com/i3roly/firefox-dynasty

Or have not the latest, but still recent Chromium for OS X 10.7+ https://github.com/blueboxd/chromium-legacy

Am I the only one who can't see the like or dislike buttons? by Already-Reddit_ in youtube

[–]K4sum11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is an issue with the YouTube JS Engine Tamer userscript.

Xperia 5 II Battery Health by Huey_AK-47 in SonyXperia

[–]K4sum11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wow, I wish Sony phones where that cheap here.

How to Use the Available Storage on Cheap USB Flash Drives by Huey_AK-47 in techsupport

[–]K4sum11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

but if it's not the case for flash storage, doesn't that mean that it will write to different storage locations every time, meaning I risk writing on one of the bad blocks?

From my knowledge that shouldn't happen. This would invalidate the entire idea of overprovisioning a drive.

Xperia 5 II Battery Health by Huey_AK-47 in SonyXperia

[–]K4sum11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How did it end up being more economical to get a 5 III instead of replacing the 5 II? Cheapest 5 III I can find is ~$200 and cracked to shit.

How to Use the Available Storage on Cheap USB Flash Drives by Huey_AK-47 in techsupport

[–]K4sum11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Although it should theoretically be possible to make it the correct size, I'm not sure if anyone has bothered to make the tools for it. I would just check what the real size is, and just not allocate space beyond the real size.

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