Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…
What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…
What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
@JasonHowell Definitely suffering from Android 11 issues mentioned in the show. Had a Samsung S20 FE since November, was flawless until I (stupidly) accepted the Android 11 update just before Christmas. I now cannot reliably get mobile data, Bluetooth connections are sketchy to the point you can’t use earbuds or stream in the car.
Samsung has remoted into the phone, numerous factory resets, issued a bug-fix release in January, but still not working. The phone is now wiped and being sent back to Samsung for ‘repair’.
Happy to give Android 12 a miss
I have had several fitness watches and none of them has lasted less than a week.
The whole point of them is to track continuously, including sleep. If have to take it off and recharge it at night, it isn’t fulfilling its role. I currently have a Polar watch and I recharge it when I take a bath at the weekend - it will actually last about 10 days of general use, but I charge it weekly. It takes less than an hour to charge and is ready to continue day and night monitoring.
For me, someone who doesn’t sleep well, being able to track my sleep patterns and try and work out any causality is important. If the watch can’t do a weeks worth of tracking for an hour or two’s charge, it isn’t the right model for me.
Agreed. I have a Garmin Instinct for exactly this reason. Needs a charge every 7 days or so, solar keeps it going a bit longer in the summer. Also needs to survive being dragged through a hawthorn bush. I guess it’s WiFi/LTE radios that kill ‘real’ smartwatch’s battery life. All these other watches are BLE only I assume? Mine is GPS too though.
The S20 was glass backed, it was the S20 FE that was plastic, from what I recall.
Yes, mine has GPS/Glonass/Galileo and if I do a lot of outdoor tracking, it will reduce the battery life to just a few days.
That is a shame, regarding you 20FE. I upgraded my S20+ and I haven’t had any (new) problems.
The only problem I have had, and that since release, is that my car will sometimes stop playing podcasts/audio books for a minute or so, then it will start again, but the phone has continued playing. This happens sometimes every few weeks, other times 4 - 5 times in a 20 minute journey. But generally not more than one journey a week having issues.
Yeah, that’s the issue I’m getting, but it happens all the time with me. Audio keeps cutting in and out on the earbuds/car, but it continues to play on the app. Sometimes it comes back half an hour later and you’ve missed 30mins of a podcast.
Also data weirdness going on, on both WiFi and mobile data. Even the technician was struggling when he was remotely controlling my phone. It would drop the data link (over WiFi). If I touched the screen from my end, it would reconnect for a few seconds and then drop again.
I suspect it’s over-eager battery saving by either Google or Samsung. Things keep getting backgrounded.
Pretty sure it’s not hardware, but they insisted I send it back for diagnostics. Now using a 16 gig iPhone 5c I found in the drawer
I got fed up with the old iPhone very quickly Found a very cheap second-hand Pixel 3a. Totally see why people get these - it just works. The S20 may end up being refunded/sold when I get it back.
Got that S20 FE back, they replaced the motherboard and it’s all working Guess I got a dud one. So, happy with Samsung again. The Pixel I’ll keep now as a spare and for pics.