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    BearOso I feel obligated to mention that if you plan to unlock the boot loader, doing so will probably wipe the phone. Should have mentioned it earlier in case you wanted to do it and didn’t want to lose your setup.
    CaptainJistuce
    Posted by Screwtape
    I just got a notification from the new Android 9 "Files" app:
    Clear up 13 memes
    Memes are taking up space

    I'm not sure how to feel about that.

    (it turns out it's found a bunch of photos and album cover art that had visible text)
    That's kinda hilarious.
    Screwtape I just got a notification from the new Android 9 "Files" app:
    Clear up 13 memes
    Memes are taking up space

    I'm not sure how to feel about that.

    (it turns out it's found a bunch of photos and album cover art that had visible text)
    nyanpasu64
    Posted by Screwtape
    Second, the default size for icons is smaller than the default launcher, making everything feel empty. There's an "icon size" slider, of course, but it's one of the features reserved for paying customers.


    You can uncheck a box that says "downscale icons to Material guidelines" or similar.
    BearOso
    Posted by Broseph

    Let's see, the Nexus 4 has a...ahh, Krait CPU...never really heard of it. ARM-based, from 2012 if I got this right. Yeah, would have been surprised if it ran full speed. Well, at least full speed is achievable with 9x on phone devices like this so that's good.

    Krait is Snapdragon 600, which was top-of-the-line when it was released. It probably still outperforms many of the low-end devices released today.
    Broseph
    Posted by neologix

    I'm not Screwtape, but I've used Android RetroArch for SNES gaming before. The bsnes cores (including bsnes-next) are next to unusable on my HP Touchpad (yes, old) and most of my Android phones (including the not-so-old Nexus 4) but if I want to go frame-by-frame so I can save-scum 100 Super Jumps in Super Mario RPG it'll do.


    Let's see, the Nexus 4 has a...ahh, Krait CPU...never really heard of it. ARM-based, from 2012 if I got this right. Yeah, would have been surprised if it ran full speed. Well, at least full speed is achievable with 9x on phone devices like this so that's good.

    Posted by Screwtape
    I haven't bothered with SNES emulation, but I can't hit full speed with the Mednafen PSX cores. mGBA works quite nicely, though.


    If you can stomach the prehistoric type of games design they had, you could also try the Game & Watch gw-libretro core



    It's quite nice, though not all games right now are simu/emu/recre-ated, like my personal favorites: Fire and Greenhouse. It should work well on mobile too, given that they were mobile games themselves.



    edit: Or alternatively I guess, use the Gambatte libretro core to play Game & Watch Gallery on GBC which have the originals and also features a remixed version of those G&W games.
    Screwtape > Try enabling and then disabling them to see if they go away. At the very least, the daily summary thing shouldn't appear, especially if you unticked all its items.

    As I understand it, the daily summary is today's date with a bunch of stuff stacking up below it (appointments, weather, etc.) Turning all that stuff off prevents it from appearing under the date, but the date itself is still there.

    Various combinations of enabling, disabling and rebooting didn't make much difference.

    > You should be able to swipe up from the bottom of the screen (the physical bottom, as though you were in portrait) to make it reappear.

    Oh yeah, that works! Thanks!

    > If all else fails, Nova Launcher is the go-to replacement and much better anyways.

    I tried out Nova Launcher, and it definitely solved my problems, but I didn't fall in love with it for a couple of minor reasons. First, It's a freemium app, so a bunch of features are disabled with big "upgrade to Nova Launcher Prime!" labels. Features I probably wouldn't use, so no big loss, but that's not really the kind of relationship I want to have with my software sources. Second, the default size for icons is smaller than the default launcher, making everything feel empty. There's an "icon size" slider, of course, but it's one of the features reserved for paying customers.

    I tried out a bunch of other launchers, though, and eventually settled on something called Lawnchair, which seems to be pretty much the stock Android 8.1 launcher with a few extra options. Given I was quite happily using the Android 8.1 up until yesterday, I think I'll stick with it.

    > Just curious, what kind of performance do you get on your device with different cores? Mostly wondering how Higan and Snes9x perform on it.

    I haven't bothered with SNES emulation, but I can't hit full speed with the Mednafen PSX cores. mGBA works quite nicely, though.

    I hope hex-usr makes a libretro core for bsnes 107 with all the performance improvements, when that gets released. It'll be interesting to see how it compares.
    neologix
    Posted by Broseph
    Posted by Screwtape
    More new developments:

    I've installed RetroArch, and gotten it working. Man, RetroArch is an impressive achievement, and it's great that there's an easy way to obtain and use emulators on Android without having to wade through Google Play, but everything about RetroArch always feels unfinished. For example, RetroArch has a nice Android-style UI with touch support and scrolling, but because it's a full-screen SDL app it hides the task-switching soft button, and the only way to switch to another app is to completely shut down RetroArch. For another example, it's so easy to download new cores that you can do it by accident while trying to scroll through the list, but the only way to *uninstall* a core is to use Android's "delete this application's entire configuration" feature.


    Retroarch has a bit of a learning curve at first when it comes to configuring everything but once you're familiar with it, it's pretty smooth sailing. Though I never used the Android port so I can't offer any advice in this regard.

    Just curious, what kind of performance do you get on your device with different cores? Mostly wondering how Higan and Snes9x perform on it.


    I'm not Screwtape, but I've used Android RetroArch for SNES gaming before. The bsnes cores (including bsnes-next) are next to unusable on my HP Touchpad (yes, old) and most of my Android phones (including the not-so-old Nexus 4) but if I want to go frame-by-frame so I can save-scum 100 Super Jumps in Super Mario RPG it'll do. The SNES9x cores are pretty performant and on both the Touchpad and Nexus 4 can hit 60 fps on SMRPG, though I more often see 45-55 fps when there are many sprites on the screen.
    CaptainJistuce
    Posted by Covarr
    Posted by Screwtape
    because it's a full-screen SDL app it hides the task-switching soft button, and the only way to switch to another app is to completely shut down RetroArch.

    You should be able to swipe up from the bottom of the screen (the physical bottom, as though you were in portrait) to make it reappear.

    And seconding BearOso's suggestion of Nova Launcher. It is far and away the best launcher for Android.
    I still miss hard buttons. Especially egregious omission on my phone, where there's plenty of space to the sides of the fingerprint sensor for them.

    Broseph
    Posted by Screwtape
    More new developments:

    I've installed RetroArch, and gotten it working. Man, RetroArch is an impressive achievement, and it's great that there's an easy way to obtain and use emulators on Android without having to wade through Google Play, but everything about RetroArch always feels unfinished. For example, RetroArch has a nice Android-style UI with touch support and scrolling, but because it's a full-screen SDL app it hides the task-switching soft button, and the only way to switch to another app is to completely shut down RetroArch. For another example, it's so easy to download new cores that you can do it by accident while trying to scroll through the list, but the only way to *uninstall* a core is to use Android's "delete this application's entire configuration" feature.


    Retroarch has a bit of a learning curve at first when it comes to configuring everything but once you're familiar with it, it's pretty smooth sailing. Though I never used the Android port so I can't offer any advice in this regard.

    Just curious, what kind of performance do you get on your device with different cores? Mostly wondering how Higan and Snes9x perform on it.
    Covarr
    Posted by Screwtape
    because it's a full-screen SDL app it hides the task-switching soft button, and the only way to switch to another app is to completely shut down RetroArch.

    You should be able to swipe up from the bottom of the screen (the physical bottom, as though you were in portrait) to make it reappear.

    And seconding BearOso's suggestion of Nova Launcher. It is far and away the best launcher for Android.
    BearOso
    Posted by Screwtape

    And because they're not widgets, they're hard-coded into the home screen, there doesn't seem to be a way to get rid of them. Ah well, that's what I get for exploring the boundaries, I guess, I should be grateful that Google stuff can be disabled at all.

    Try enabling and then disabling them to see if they go away. At the very least, the daily summary thing shouldn't appear, especially if you unticked all its items. If all else fails, Nova Launcher is the go-to replacement and much better anyways.
    creaothceann Can you switch to a different UI? (launcher?)
    Screwtape More new developments:

    I've installed RetroArch, and gotten it working. Man, RetroArch is an impressive achievement, and it's great that there's an easy way to obtain and use emulators on Android without having to wade through Google Play, but everything about RetroArch always feels unfinished. For example, RetroArch has a nice Android-style UI with touch support and scrolling, but because it's a full-screen SDL app it hides the task-switching soft button, and the only way to switch to another app is to completely shut down RetroArch. For another example, it's so easy to download new cores that you can do it by accident while trying to scroll through the list, but the only way to *uninstall* a core is to use Android's "delete this application's entire configuration" feature.

    Another friend of mine turned me onto SyncThing, which is kind of like an open-source, decentralised DropBox. Now when I take a photo with my phone, the next time I walk into wifi range it should be automatically synced to my desktop at home and (if it's awake) my laptop, wherever they are. I stuck my RetroArch SRAM folder into my SyncThing directory, just in case I put a bunch of time into a game and don't want to lose my progress.

    After trying out OmniNotes, somebody recommended I try Markor, which is a text editor that supports Markdown and todo.txt syntax highlighting, and can store all its notes in the SyncThing directory instead of a custom app-specific database. I love the idea of plain-text file formats, and of having my stuff automatically synced around, but it seems that the "todo.txt" format is "simple" but flexible enough for somebody to track their whole life with it, while I'm *really* just looking for a way to keep a shopping list. I went back to OmniNotes once I discovered I could share an OmniNote to export it to Markor.

    A long time ago I wrote a simple J2ME toy, and I discovered a "J2ME Loader" app for Android. It works, although the pixel-art I designed for my 160x80 pixel Nokia 3510 (or whatever the resolution was) is near-illegible on my 1080p smartphone.

    I discovered Termux, which is a Linux environment in an Android app. It's a bit quirky and limited since it runs within the default Android filesystem rather than a traditional POSIX hierarchy (there's no /bin or /usr!) but it works, and now I have a button on my phone's home screen that will SSH to my home PC with my regular IRC and email clients.

    Lastly, I was surprised today to see an "Android System" notification offering to update me from Android 8.1 to Android 9. I said "sure!" and of course it did Weird Things. Two of the big features of Android 9 are apparently the "daily summary" at the top of the home screen, and the Google Assistant box at the bottom. Unfortunately both those things seem to require the Google app, and since I've disabled it (on principle) they just sit there doing nothing. Literally nothing: there's a big box labelled "Search" and when I short or long tap on it, absolutely zilch happens. No keyboard, no browser, nothing. And because they're not widgets, they're hard-coded into the home screen, there doesn't seem to be a way to get rid of them. Ah well, that's what I get for exploring the boundaries, I guess, I should be grateful that Google stuff can be disabled at all.
    Screwtape Bookmarks, history, saved passwords, open tabs. It's great to look at something on my desktop, then when I'm out and about, all that stuff is right in my pocket.

    Yes, I'm contributing to the ubiquity of Gecko, and if it ever attains dominant market share, I'll start using something else.
    creaothceann
    Posted by Screwtape
    Dolphin

    I tried this, and it's... not pretty. I mean, it technically works, but 11fps isn't really fun. :/

    Try GameCube games like Mario Kart Double Dash :)


    Posted by Screwtape
    I imagine it might be better suited to, say, GBA or GBC emulation, but anything besides Dolphin seems to be a quagmire of seedy knock-offs and open-source code repackaged with ads. :/

    Hence RetroArch.
    ‮strfry("emanresu")
    Posted by Screwtape

    Posted by sureanem
    Naked Browser is much faster and smaller than Fennec, at least in my experience.

    It doesn't sync with Firefox Sync, as far as I can tell, and it's just another WebView wrapper, contributing to the ubiquity of Blink/WebKit. :/

    It's true that it doesn't sync. I don't see what you'd want to sync, since it doesn't have any addons. Bookmarks?
    Using Fennec is contributing to the ubiquity of Gecko/Quantum. You can't win.
    Nicholas Steel Battery Temperature is important when it comes to buying phone cases. Try to avoid cases that would significantly impede heat dissipation and yeah, maybe try to avoid quick charging/limit its use to when you're actually in a hurry and only do it in a well ventilated environment.
    Kakashi I think you'll find a lot of Android users get certain apps by means of APKs. You don't even need an external APK installer anymore as the Android OS has a setting that allows you to install third-party applications.
    creaothceann
    Posted by Screwtape
    Is battery temperature a thing I should worry about?

    Afaik there's conflicting info out there on what causes the battery to degrade, one thing mentioned being temperature. Quick-charging makes my phone very hot (even though it is really fast) so I use the normal charger from my previous phone.


    Posted by Screwtape
    - Bubble Level Gauge (via F-Droid)

    Is that a thing you use a lot, or just a fun thing to play with?

    The latter.


    Posted by Screwtape
    - ScummVM
    I installed this, and it was pretty great! I booted up Monkey Island, listened to that theme-tune, then just for kicks I immediately walked back to the island map instead of proceeding to the SCUMM Bar. My phone hard-locked and I had to reboot it. :/

    Works for me... ScummVM 2.0.0, using both the VGA and the CD versions of Monkey Island. Maybe try other game files?
    And I thought that ScummVM's on the Play Store because that's where 99% of all Android users get their apps from.


    Posted by Screwtape
    - LibreTorrent (via F-Droid)
    You download torrents on your phone? Isn't that... battery heavy, at the very least?

    It's rare that I use it these days, but it only takes a few minutes to download, I don't seed for hours.
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