Nothing makes sense. They started to supposedly merge Android and Chrome OS in 2024, didn't do much on Android except to fiddle with a desktop mode that's better than nothing but still really bad. And they didn't do much on ChromeOS (and can't really make it too Android-y without alienating the customers they have and use it, especially in education).

My theory is that they realised at some point they overcommitted with these and will just polish a little both Android and ChromeOS (rename it to AL...OS too) and call it a day.

NOTHING makes sense! If they want to merge them both why call one Android and one Aluminium? Now they're having "desktop mode" in Android that supports keyboard and mouse, and is intended for really all display sizes, from small portable monitors to large TVs and anything in between. Just say "Android" and call it a day, it's probably the most popular OS out there anyway, take advantage of the network effect.

Microsoft tried to call their thing Windows Mobile _number_, Windows _number_ Mobile, and Windows Phone in between only to drop COMPLETELY the "Mobile" thing and say their phones run "Windows 10" (no small print, no nothing): https://download.microsoft.com... . Even if confusing and dishonest they saw the value in just going with the most known and popular name.

The main problem is the keys have to be accessible to the WhatsApp ... app ... itself and you have no way of validating what that does. Never mind that it isn't open source, you can't read its memory space or debug it in any way, heck if you aren't rooted you can't even read /data/data/com.whatsapp/files/ . Because you know, it's too dangerous for you to be able TO READ YOUR OWN FILES ON YOUR OWN DEVICE.

They already have the facility to read your already decrypted messages remotely via the web interface "app", even if that encryption is end to end (which I guess can be, but it might be very cumbersome as opposed to whatsapp's servers doing everything and serving you the web interface) still the authentication process is mostly under Meta's control.

it would be a lot more difficult to establish communications with new users
 

No, encryption between any two (initially unknown) parties is a solved cryptographical problem (and when well implemented it would survive any sniffing or even active attacks). AUTHENTICATING the other party is the problem and of course you need in this workflow to trust Whatsapp on that, and nobody ever claimed or thought otherwise I bet. It goes without saying that it's on them to insure you are talking to the one who has that phone number - not great security but at least not a random attacker, you also trust it to be that app at the other end not Whatsapp themselves ...

Nah, the only thing that was better probably were cheaper drugs, other than that the Office for Windows Phone (later renamed to Windows 10 Mobile, than Windows 10 -even if it had nothing in common with "the real" Windows 10 - and then killed) was a pathetic joke. Even compared with the current Android MS Office, which is in fact worse than the web version.

Slippery slope much? What else should you buy in a multi-year contract just because it might make sense to buy a house? Full tank of gas? A loaf of bread?

And YES, the amount DOES matter. If you could buy a double-digit number of houses from a monthly salary (starting from minimum wage!), YES, it would be just as dumb to enter a two years contract to pay for it!

I love all the folks that are "just buy the phone outright, unlocked, then this isn't a problem". Not everybody has the money to do that.

Phones start from $100, new. If you can't afford that you have no business entering some tens of dollars per month (if not close to $100) multi-year contract to finance your phone.

And yes, I know well what's the experience with a $100 phone, I have a very close relative with a Samsung A13. Yes, it takes 5 minutes to boot (well, until it's fully up) if you need to restart it, it doesn't have a glass back and it can't compete with the sun if you want to watch videos at the beach. But that's about it, otherwise is fully usable and FULLY USED, beyond belief - it has installed every shopping app and messaging app you can think of, some TWICE (once in the normal profile and once in the "work" profile, just to be able to work with two different accounts at the same time). And on top of it Syncthing running twice (once in each profile) to grab the media from both sides.

For many things it's even better than flagships. It has a large more than full-HD screen, a big battery that's even better because of the weak CPU, it is dual-SIM PLUS microSD (yes, 3 slots), headphone jack and a good not-in-screen fingerprint sensor that works instantly and reliably. It's 3-4 years old and it'll hang on for 3 more I bet.

Sorry, but I have yet to see a phone that can replace dedicated products. Smart phones do a lot of things good enough for average use but fail when you need precision.

You're probably 20 years late to this party. There are very, very, VERY few of the usual things that the phone replaced where the phones are doing a sub-par job. Maybe the only relevant somehow common example is a bright, telephoto lens, sure you can't beat physics and replace sometimes literally kilograms of glass with a lens as small as the tip of your pinkie. For the rest, the complains are usually overblown. Compact cameras are just about as good, as the good phones, what can one insist on, having more physical buttons? If anything phones have even decent advantages there: they're usually waterproof (while most compact cameras aren't), they have a huge screen that not even 50k$ camera have, networking capabilities that really work not the wifi afterthought that's a pain in even the mentioned multi-thousand$ cameras, encrypted storage and so on.

What else, mp3 players? What can one insist on, maybe better DACs in a particular model ... even if when that isn't audiophile "gold power cable" level bickering still there are phones with very good DACs (and many mp3 players had unspecified DACs just as much as the smartphones), and lately mostly everyone takes out digital signal from the phones so it doesn't even matter.

Digital organizers, or address books? C'mon. Oh, wait, I have a good one: alarm clocks! Remember when you had an alarm clock at home, and a nice folding travel alarm clock? How is the phone worse, not good enough haptics if you need to smash the snooze button?

I maintain that if you can't tell your story in 100-110 minutes, you don't know how to tell a story.

Ironically "The Martian" (yes, starring Matt Damon) at over 2h couldn't cover quite a bit of the book. There was there enough material for a mini-series (possibly more than mini). Also the level they could've gone to explain the science behind was limitless, without straying at all from the book. Enough material to end up with quite a few cliffhangers too.

But Starlink receivers use GPS to locate and enable connections to satellites. âoeSince its 12-day war with Israel last June," The Times says, âoeIran has been disrupting GPS signals.â That means shutdowns are localized, and has resulted in a patchwork quilt of Starlink connectivity, including near blackouts in some high-profile areas.

GPS is way easier to jam, if that's required (or if it needs some alternative manual configuration most users won't know about) then it sounds very plausible they'll be able to seriously disrupt indirectly the internet service itself (even if that's much higher signal/noise ratio, directional, and packet loss resistant).

Yeah, working closely with vari-focals on something you can't put on your desk or in your lap is crazy house. Luckily a lot of mechanical work is anyway done half blindly and partly by touch because other parts or tools or your hands are in the way, or the lighting isn't the best just in the corner you're trying to work and so on.

Everything from a few meters to Andromeda Galaxy (the furthest you can regularly see with the naked eye) is the same focus for the human eye.

If you look through a camera viewfinder you take out the glasses and use the camera viewfinder diopter adjustment. You don't need to adjust your eyes/glasses to see a clear image, just the camera focus itself depending where the subject is (this has nothing to do with your eyesight you need to do it anyway for a sharp picture).

There's no "simultaneously see far clearly and the dashboard instruments" as the other comments told you, sure it HELPS to have distance and near vision corrected (we're talking here specifically about a different correction needed) when driving depending where you look, but it isn't required or critical to operate the vehicle. Now many people would have bi/vari-focals because let's face it mobile phones but it isn't that much of a deal to drive a vehicle with just distance glasses even when you need reading glasses and they're a different pair. I bet there are people driving like that since decades, and here we're talking about am emergency fallback situation, not that dire that you can't read the small print on some "low washer fluid" or whatever message the dashboard might spit at you.

Nope, he's hanging on Reddit I believe :-)

THIS. As it is you need to multiply the mAh stated value with 3.6V and assume the "losses" from the DC-DC converter+the marketing "padding" are about 15-30% and deduct that too. Assuming one of the "good" manufacturers otherwise you're looking at 50%, 75% or even more that's marketing "exaggeration". And we're still in the "plausible" and "real" powerbanks range, not in X000000000 Ah astroturfing and/or cells filled with sand/clay/etc.