Android phones, apps and tablets

Had a read of some cubot and umidigi reviews and I've been put off due to apparent software issues.

Xiaomi A3 looks good as it's on the android one thingy, no headphone jack so no use to me, but for anyone else interested take a look.....

no headphone jack

strange, gsm is showing it with one.

You're correct, I typo'd; I should've written A2

You're correct, I typo'd; I should've written A2

Managed to brick another Pixel, this time it's the 2.
The thing was completely full and I was trying to save something only to then have gallery constantly crash every time i tried to use it, so i restarted the device and now it doesn't boot up. I've tried restarting through bootloader as well as entering recovery mode. Download mode doesn't work and shows an error. Is there anything i can do here or do i have to accept that everything on there is now gone?

tia

ps excuse the random username - cant manage to log in to my regular account

Second edit: Actually it might not be possible to do this as Pixels are encrypted by default

I think if you can access recovery mode you might be able to install ADB on a computer and use that to connect to the phone. I know its used for updating software so might also be possible to get access to files on the phone.

(also, doesn't the Pixel automatically upload all images to Google Photos?)

Edit: something like this from ADB

https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/188292/get-internal-storage-path-for-pulling-over-adb

User storage might still be fine. Re-flashing with fastboot might make access possible.

What was the error in download mode? And why were you trying download mode - that's a Samsung thing, I thought.

^ If you can boot into recovery, you can usually just pull things from storage over USB / mtp - you only need adb to pull from /data or /system (if you have root)

@TW @branwen
All of this is way above my understanding. Guess I'm just going to have to do a bunch of learning if there's any chance of recovering anything. Popped in to two shops near me today and both said it's highly unlikely that they'd be able to do anything.

The Pixel does upload images to Google Photos, but only if you've enabled it to, which of course, I had not.

Re the Download mode - didn't know what it was for exactly so gave it a click and it went back to the bootloader screen but listed
ERROR: Operation Denied

Got it working!

Sideloaded the most up to date OTA, booted it up and after a very tense 5 minutes, it fired up and seems to be working fine again.

Hurrah! Now back everything up!

Is there a company that makes a calendar/reminders app that integrate.

Ie. I set a reminder in to do list, for a set date/time, then it appears in the calendar?

Keep does that.

@skinny: Google Tasks and Keep?

thanks both I'll check keep, didn't know that. Too many apps!
I am not a big iphone person, but Reminders/calendar are really dialled apps

What app do I want for video calling? Needs to be simple so that my non techy mum can use it. How about Google Duo?

I'm just going through the same thing.

My parents managed both WhatsApp (on phone) and Hangouts (on tablet) with remarkable ease..

Cheers. Didn't think about either of those.

No worries.

I called them first in each app so they could get used to it then asked them to call me back.

Only hiccup was my mum voice dialled me initially but soon got it when I told her to press the button that looks like a movie camera and not the one that looks like a telephone handset.

Doing the same thing here. Getting the elderlies working facetime and WhatsApp video.

Yeah. I also found it helpful to explain it was 'free' i.e. they wouldn't get charged for the call beyond what they already paid for the internet.

Does anyone have any experience of Realme line of phones, looking at the Realme X2Pro

https://www.realme.com/eu/realme-x2-pro

Does anyone else find that if one app is downloading something reasonably large (e.g. Plex syncing, Radio Paradise filling cache) all the other apps can't access the internet. It's as if the phone can't allocate bandwidth. Any solutions?

Pixel 2 battery is running down fast.

There doesn't seem to be a breakdown of app battery use in settings as on other phones.

What is the best battery analysis app to verify if the battery is fucked?

Cheers.

I use Accubattery. It tells me lots of stuff. No idea how accurate it is.

Cheers