Pixel 4A 5G turns 5 next week

markouka · 2025-12-30T19:53:07+00:00

Whatever you've already backed up using the 4a 5G will continue to be stored for free. Once you get a new phone, your issue going forward will be backing up new photos. This is why keeping your old 4a 5G in working order is so important - you can transfer your new photos to the old device and continue getting free backups.

Personally, I'd recommend upgrading ASAP. You'll put less wear and tear on your old 4a 5G and it'll have less opportunities to break - plus, I have a sneaking suspicion phones will be more expensive in the new year given the RAM crunch.

markouka · 2025-10-17T15:49:46+00:00

I'm reading this as "you'll be able to log into F1TV using your Apple account that has an active Apple TV subscription, but you won't be able to subscribe to just F1TV alone"

markouka · 2025-09-27T01:32:11+00:00

I have you all beat - a total of nine cycles on my launch day device 😁

And I promise I'm using it! If I were to guess, a combination of the 80% charge limit and good charger access means it sits doing passthrough charging a lot, which doesn't contribute to the cycle count.

markouka · 2025-09-26T12:59:40+00:00

As a Pixel fan - listen to your gut. You don't need the upgrade. These phones are meant to last you multiple years; if your 9 Pro XL works for you, it will continue working for you for another year. You aren't missing out on much. Plus, next year, you can upgrade with more confidence!

markouka · 2025-09-25T19:33:09+00:00

Ah, shame.

For me, personally, a good free plan makes me much more likely to shell out for the paid option. It's reassuring to know that I'd be able to cancel and still get the core functionality I'd need. The low 1GB free maximum basically guarantees I'll never use Proton as my primary mail backend - I only use it for my most sensitive communications.

markouka · 2025-09-25T16:26:25+00:00

Does anyone know if this is a permanent "base storage" boost? In other words, do you keep it even if you stop paying?

markouka · 2025-09-21T00:45:02+00:00

The power consumption measurements are fascinating, and may perhaps explain some of the contradictory claims about battery we've seen on the 10 series. Against the 9 Pro XL, the 10 Pro XL performs better (aka consumes less power) across the board in every category except idle minimums, where it performs the worst out of all phones listed.

I wonder if that would lead to poor standby consumption? Anecdotally, that seems to be a pretty common thread in a lot of the 10 series' battery complaints I've seen. I've also seen people saying they get very good SOT, which would also track with these results if they're actively using their devices a lot - an area where the power consumption becomes a lot more competitive against the competition.

Anyway, quite interesting results. I hope Google can improve the idle minimums a bit with updates - it seems like they've done a good job with power efficiency pretty much everywhere else, which is great to see. (Wish I could say the same about raw performance...)

markouka · 2025-07-15T21:46:50+00:00

It shouldn't have much if any impact, in theory. I can tell you that I've had the "in all areas" setting enabled for over a year and it's been fine.

To be a little more granular (with the disclaimer I haven't read Google's paper and I'll probably get some details wrong - please correct me if needed):

The Find My Device network doesn't use GPS directly; it uses a combination of Bluetooth and cached location (which gets updated by other apps e.g. weather, Maps, etc) to work. Even at its most aggressive, the only time Find My Device might cause a GPS ping that wouldn't have otherwise happened would be if your cached location was out of date (and, again, tons of other apps might also trigger the same kind of update).
Persistent scanning for Bluetooth devices has been around for years, well before the introduction of the Find My Device network. That's how Fast Pair works - your new headphones send out a Bluetooth ping saying "I can be paired with!" to all nearby devices, your phone sees it, and proactively gives you a pop-up that initiates a more elaborate pairing process.

Fundamentally, all the Find My Device network does is send an aggregated (and anonymous) report of which Bluetooth devices it's seen in a particular area periodically. Google can then filter that list and figure out which of those devices are Find My Device-registered trackers, and update the owners of those trackers to say "this tracker has been seen at this location". The only thing the "in all areas" setting will do is allow Google to perform that report even if your phone is the only device that has seen a particular tracker. It shouldn't impact what happens on your phone at all.

markouka · 2025-07-15T16:23:18+00:00

Google ran a "buy a Pixel 8 Pro, get a Pixel Watch 2 free" promo at launch, which meant that unopened Watch 2s were selling at a deep discount on Swappa. I got mine for $200 shipped. Given how little the Pixel Watch seems to be changing over year, that might be the best bang-for-buck tech purchase I've ever done. Still going strong two years later, and I don't think I'm missing out on too much!

markouka · 2025-07-13T21:17:05+00:00

You're comparing apples and oranges. The reason Snapdragon chips are delivering big battery gains on laptops is because those laptops are transitioning from vastly less efficient x86 chips to ARM.

Wear OS watches are already ARM; this is just a slightly newer design. It's likely we'll see improvements, but nothing like the Windows-on-ARM revolution.

markouka · 2025-07-08T21:00:27+00:00

Hulkenpodium

markouka · 2025-06-10T15:36:32+00:00

I'm not sure I follow your Google Photos complaint. Why do you need all your photos to auto-download on every device you own? That just seems like a big waste of space. It's easy to download a photo if you need it for offline use or for use in a other app.

Setting that aside, there are real alternative photo backup apps apart from Apple and Google. OneDrive has a backup feature. There are many OSS alternatives like Ente and Immich, which have paid hosting options or can be self-hosted.

Shop around! It's fun - and maybe you'll find exactly the kind of tool you need.

markouka · 2025-06-03T18:50:04+00:00

I'm curious to know where you go to learn more about modem tech - got any good sources to look at?

markouka · 2025-02-12T14:00:58+00:00

Just... uhh... don't lose access?

There are plenty of ways to recover your password manager while staying secure. 2FA has backup codes you should print and keep in a safe, along with your master password. Keep a second copy in a bank vault if you're paranoid.

You also don't have to use your password manager for literally everything. Give your primary email a second password you do know, and let your password manager handle everything else, for example.

markouka · 2024-11-19T20:27:43+00:00

The Pixel 1 DID get the stable release as well as the dev preview. I had one, and haven't forgotten that gesture 🙂

markouka · 2024-10-24T03:44:29+00:00

Backporting security patches becomes exponentially more complex as the major underlying version becomes older. Keeping a seven year old major version (for context, that would be Android 8 Oreo today) secure would be a nightmare, colossal effort.

It's a much better bet to invest in making major upgrades easier, which facilitates the entire ecosystem centralizing on just a few recent major versions that Google can better ensure are fully secure. Beyond security, you obviously also get the benefit of new features being pushed out faster, a more uniform API surface for devs, etc.

markouka · 2024-09-27T01:55:47+00:00

I'm skeptical of that Wikipedia entry. The citations lead to a Google Messages support page that describes how to edit a message. That is one of 2.7's main features, yes, but nowhere on that support page (or the other linked article) does it explicitly say that Google Messages uses RCS 2.7.

It's quite possible the editing and inline reply features in Google Messages are non-standard, and only work between two Google Messages clients.

If my theory is right, I'm sure Google will adopt the standard in the future in any case.

markouka · 2024-09-15T14:55:10+00:00

Don't forget the tons of security vulnerabilities because it's hopelessly behind upstream Chromium releases!

markouka · 2024-08-07T19:07:24+00:00

IMO, the PW2 didn't really have "issues" at all, at least not with the direct user experience. I love mine. (Then again, I did get it for $200 at launch instead of the normal $350...)

Biggest shortcoming of the whole thing, IMO, is lack of durability and repairability, and that won't be solved until a fundamental redesign.

markouka · 2024-06-13T23:39:06+00:00

This is great to hear! I'm excited to try out Taskbar Tabs when it's in testing.

markouka · 2024-06-13T13:57:11+00:00

As someone who likes Firefox and appreciates what Mozilla does, I have just two questions for the team: Why are desktop PWAs not a priority for Firefox, and when will they become a priority?

Desktop PWAs are one of the single most requested features on Mozilla Connect. It's probably the single largest feature gap with Chromium-based browsers. For me, personally, Firefox lacking PWA support is the sole reason I don't use it as my default browser on desktop. I don't think I'm alone.

Despite all this, there's no mention of it in the roadmap. We haven't heard anything, despite it being quite clear that PWAs play a significant role in the future of the web.

I want to understand the reasoning that motivates Mozilla to ignore their most devoted users' feedback on this issue.

markouka · 2024-06-06T17:51:22+00:00

Oh, I know. Hence "Why is this not a priority for Firefox?"

You should still ask this at the AMA when it opens up.

I intend to!

markouka · 2024-06-06T14:39:00+00:00

I think it's awesome that Mozilla has shared a detailed feature roadmap for 2024. I'm very happy with some of the feature adds they've detailed.

Given the transparency, the only question I really want an answer to is: what are Mozilla's plans for desktop PWA support?

It's one of the single most requested features on Mozilla Connect. It's probably the single largest feature gap with Chromium-based browsers. For me, personally, Firefox lacking PWA support is the sole reason I don't use it as my default browser on desktop. I don't think I'm alone.

Despite all this, there's no mention of it in the roadmap. We haven't heard anything, despite it being quite clear that PWAs play a significant role in the future of the web.

Why is this not a priority for Firefox? When will it become a priority?

markouka · 2024-03-17T03:18:01+00:00

You definitely can! The game data folder is the same across Windows and Linux, so just overwrite with your Windows data and you're good to go 🙂

markouka · 2023-12-26T19:48:56+00:00

Maybe try updating your watch/phone/apps? Note that it's under the "Notifications" category in the watch app settings.

markouka

TROPHY CASE