In this section you can find old articles from my Android opinion blog appydroid, as well as new articles from this area.
Last year I wrote about how I check the battery health of my smartphone. The app I used for that shows a notification when a certain charge level is reached that you can unplug the smartphone so it doesn’t charge to 100%.
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My smartphone, a Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite, which has been my daily driver for a year and a few months, has a 4500mAh Li-Po battery ("lithium-ion polymer" – like lithium-ion, but with solid or gel-like electrolytes that allow a thinner design). My smartphone can be charged with a maximum of 45 watts. The included charger, which I always use for charging, delivers a maximum of 25 watts.
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After I put my new SIM card in my phone today (yes, the one with the unlimited mobidata volume - thanks for all the replies to my recent post!), I noticed that there suddenly appeared a new app that wanted to offer me additional services via SMS, of course for a fee. An app with no benefit for me, even annoying me by the presence of the app icon in the app drawer and the missing possibility to deactivate the app!
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Until recently, I used the first generation Galaxy Watch with Tizen. For Tizen, Samsung had released a browser app for smartwatches. This allowed me to view links in notifications directly on the smartwatch when I didn’t want to reach for my phone.
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When I used to run back in the days, I used Runtastic to record my runs. When I tried running again last year, my app of choice was Strava. For recording hikes, I mostly use Komoot. But today for recording a bike ride, I tried FitoTrack.
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Over three years after I mused about what it is like to still use a Holo Design app in 2018, the final version of K-9 Mail has now been released with a revamped user interface.
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A few years ago I used to watch the Google I/O live and report about it on my Android-blog. Time has passed, I no longer blog about Android and I’m not a Google fan anymore.
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It’s 2018. Long gone are the days where Holo UI is the current design language for Android apps, Material Design is everywhere since 2015. But one of my favorite and most used apps still uses Holo UI…
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As you may know, I have a new phone. And because it’s new I didn’t root it. Thanks to German laws and the merchant I have 24 months guarantee - so if it breaks itself, it’s not my fault. And because I didn’t root, I have to live with some of the manufacturer’s decisions. And that one includes the deep integration of the Google Assistant.
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At the beginning of December 2017 I wrote that I will buy the Xiaomi Mi A1 when it finally gets the update to Oreo. That’s exactly what I did. I’ve been using it for over 24 hours now, so my first impressions here:
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