Just for your information, the article notes this was a change pushed by U.S. officials in the context of the Meta glasses (the ones with always-on cameras), and that is applies to all sorts of wearable electronics (including the Meta glasses).

Of course, it is also in Apple’s benefit to charge users a ridiculous amount of money for repairs, as it is for other big tech giants who produce wearables. No doubt all of them are colluding with the U.S. government, in exchange for money and likely personal data too

One thing of note, since Pixelfed is part of the Fediverse, posts made on Pixelfed instances can be seen by users of Mastodon and other platforms that use the same protocol! It’s really neat!

their results seem mostly identical to ddg/bing too though it’s occasionally better than them for some reason

I believe Ecosia uses either Google or Bing search indexes depending on the region, but they are working on an independent index with Qwant that will hopefully be a good alternative! If you live in France, it’s already bring trialled!

But yeah, Ecosia is like any search engine and there is bit of greenwashing with LLMs and all. However, they are a non-profit with transparent earnings reports, and that makes them better than Google, Bing, DDG, etc. for me.

they geoblock certain countries including mine since 2023 or so

Dang, that sucks.

That’s fair enough (unfortunately, this is the case for most search engines aside from SearXNG instances I think)! Thankfully they do let you disable it, which is nice. I mostly like that they are quite transparent about how they operate! The planting trees thing is a nice bonus, but they certainly aren’t saints to the environment, no search engine is

searxng also doesn’t really seem to work these days…

Of note, this depends on the instance. I occasionally hop between public instances whenever one is no longer reliable. Google and friends are blocking requests from SearXNG instances because it is in their business interests to kill competition

As for alternatives, I would avoid DDG since they seem to be going a similar route as Google with a front page filled with ads and the emphasis towards their chatbot is not to my taste. Plus, DDG is hosted in the U.S., so privacy-wise it’s not as good. Startpage was purchased by an American advertising company some time ago, which isn’t great. Brave Search is also one, but they are doing some shady things on their browser with crypto and whatnot, so I don’t particularly trust them. Plus, they are an American for-profit.

Qwant and Ecosia are solid options, the former is a French for-profit and the latter a German non-profit, and they are working towards an independent European search index that is being trialled in France! Both are quite good, Qwant is shinier and magical blue, while Ecosia is simpler and earthy green.

Ecosia also uses a portion of their revenue for planting trees, which is really neat, and they are super transparent about where their earnings go!

I personally use a mix of SearXNG and Ecosia, and I sometimes use Qwant too for certain queries.

I’m not from the U.S. so I have no idea how flippy guys are doing over there, but in Asian markets they are quite popular and probably won’t die out anytime soon.

But yes, Samsung being a market leader, although it doesn’t mean it’s completely dead, it does show bad signs. Like how headphone jacks were removed, as although they remain in some budget devices as well as in Sony’s Xperia line, the feature becomes niche and less mainstream.

I do think a lot of it is from people with older devices only upgrading now, rather than jumping from S25 to S26.

I would imagine that a lot of people are only now upgrading from some of the older S series devices, and there have been enough improved from e.g. S22 to S26 to warrant an upgrade.

I would also guess that some people, particularly those who are less tech-literate, like Samsung’s new AI features (it was like the majority of their recent keynotes, there are very few hardware changes!) that they restrict to the newest devices. I would guess this isn’t to most people’s tastes on Lemmy, but a regular person just sees cool image editing tools and summarisation features.

But yeah, purely hardware wise, the new Samsung devices have barely changed aside from the chip bump, and the “privacy screen” of the Ultra, as it turns out, doesn’t really work that well (something noted in a Mrwhosetheboss video, where the phone number of one of their friends/staff was accidentally leaked, and they usually shill Samsung’s AI features to a high degree), and it also cuts down the resolution when enabled which isn’t great. Viewing angles when it’s disabled are also worse than last year

I believe Xiaomi has already stopped making new Mix Fold devices (the big screen ones) while their Mix Flip series is still quite popular, at least enough to not get killed as a product line.

For Motorola, their big screen fold devices were not very well received, as they were not competitive hardware-wise, while their small screen devices are considered one of the best in the category

how many people really need a phone that can turn into a tablet?

Turns out, quite a few, especially if you do a lot of business and whatnot. A relative of mine has a folding phone and they appreciate having a much larger screen for reading PDFs, spreadsheets, etc. on the go. It also means they don’t need to bring a large tablet everywhere, so they can get a 13" tablet (instead of a smaller size) just for home use and not need to worry about bringing it around on trips and such

Also of note, this is just Samsung jumping out of the game, but other companies like Motorola, Xiaomi, or similar could take the market of flip phones. For Samsung, their big fold phones are more profitable, but in contrast, those are less profitable for Motorola and Xiaomi (whose small fold phones have been much more popular compares to their bigger options)

I think both big screen and little guy folding phones have their place.

My sibling has a folding phone with an open toilet as their wallpaper, and they said that’s probably the only reason why they wanted a flippy phone. They also say the pocketability is nice, and they don’t really care about the worse camera bits for the price (they definitely aren’t using it in camcorder mode)

If you want a lot of privacy, the Shiftphone 8.1 has physical kill switches which is kind of neat. Also, all their phones use the same battery (so the 6 uses the same as the 8, 8.1, and future models), which seems pretty nice for longevity of the device. The hardware is pretty lacking though, the Fairphone definitely beats it in that

we used my phone for Android Auto. Wired Android Auto, and I still had to hold my phone in front of the air con vent the entire time to stop the music skipping.

Oh damn :O

Thinking I might get an Oppo Find X9 Pro in a couple months

Yeah, I’ve heard that model has really good battery life and cameras. I am personally using the Vivo X300 Pro, which I have mixed thoughts on. The cameras are excellent, and the phone basically acts as my powerbank for smaller devices. However, the OS is sooo annoying and gets in my way (annoying “security check” popup whenever I install any app that always fails with a big warning unless it’s on some hidden whitelist, which seems to basically be Vivo stock apps mostly). I still use it (w/ a custom launcher) since it has a good camera, but if I were to get a new phone, I would like to try a degoogled ROM.

Hopefully ColorOS is less annoying to use compared to OriginOS!

You might want to look at the Fairphone 6 as well if you live in Europe (assumed since you mentioned GBP), it has good degoogled ROM support (one of the only modern phones that have that nowadays) and developing mobile Linux support too which is kind of cool, and it’s super repairable too! Even the stock OS seems pretty nice to use compared to OneUI, OriginOS, HyperOS, and that sort. The Fairphones are midrange phones priced at a midrange price (no idea why reviewers always compare it with devices twice the price), and the latest iteration has some solid hardware like a nice 120 Hz OLED screen and good battery life too. And it’s always nice to support the little guys :D

Pixels have their place, they’re different and some people might like that, but god damn the Android Authority team love sucking the toes of Google

Of note, I find that the Android Authority people promote the Pixel (and Google in general) phones and software immensely. Just something to be aware of.

I think they do have a point in emulation and third-party launchers though, that is definitely something unique to Android. I would also say third-party app stores like F-Droid, Obtainium, etc. are also awesome! Nothing like it on iOS (and even if you’re in the EU, AltStore is really limited…)

aside from various used models (OnePlus 6, Pixel 3a, various old Xiaomi devices, etc.), the Fairphones are your best bet when it comes to Linux phones (as you specify non-Android based projects). The Jolla phone might also be something worth looking at!

iodeOS, e/OS, GrapheneOS, and CalyxOS (they’ve come back, hooray!) are all great options if you want a degoogled Android ROM (but is still based on AOSP, so not fully independent) and are well supported on the Fairphones and Pixels, as well as a few other devices. These degoogled ROMs are the best option we have now, mobile Linux needs more time in the oven, and will give you more control over your device compared to stock Android! (don’t let perfect be the enemy of good and all that)

Understood! I have edited my comment to reflect that

Wait, I thought we recently agreed that LLM assisted projects require a [AIP] tag? Did you not see the pinned post, or are you not human?

edit: Wait, I have been told this is incorrect, it’s not a rule just yet and is still being discussed

It’s satire about how PlayStation is going to go diskless (digital only), which a lot of people are very upset about. If you go to the PCMR subreddit or similar gaming communities on Reddit, you’ll see a lot of this there too about a variety of brands!

I believe this is satire, since PlayStation has announced they will move to be digital-only (if you go on any gaming communities on Reddit it’s filled with these style of posts)