Outside of Android and iOS, there already is a single app store.

Github.

This is Slashdot, after all.

That's why for me "unlocked bootloader" and "community support" are key aspects when selecting a new phone.

FWIW, I used a Samsung S5 running LineageOS 14 (Android 8.1) this October to replace my dying Nexus 5, and it was a pretty good experience (OLED screen, replaceable battery, wireless charging).

I agree, I'm still hanging on to my Nexus 10 with CyanogenMod, but with 1.5GB of RAM it has its fair share of lag.

DTACK Grounded newsletter ... wow, that brings back fond memories about cutting edge algorithms from the FNE, printed on red paper to thwart copying ...

I use Tiny Tiny RSS (http://tt-rss.org). Better than Google Reader, self hosted, keeps track of article status across multiple browser and app instances, allows to extract the message body from the web page using XPATH expressions.

Can't imagine life without it.

Slightly off-topic: with email delivery times being almost instantaneous these days, wouldn't it possible to write an email client (or app) that provides, for all practical purposes, an IM system based on SMTP and IMAP?

Essentially, conventions like:
1. A set of recipients is a "group"
2. Replies are never quoted
3. The client always shows the full email thread (the "conversation")
4. The Subject line is a magic string to allow filtering on these IM emails

The specialized client would provide a very Whatsapp-like interface, while a normal email client could be used in a pinch as well.

Am I overlooking something obvious?

If they manage to add a Transporter to Android, with just a software update no less, wouldn't it make more sense to beam the phone's owner to emergency services instead of her location?

Locked bootloaders are nothing new.

What the new feature in Android N is about is the ability to add cross-block redundancy to the system image so that a few defective flash blocks can be corrected. There was a posting on the official Android Developers blog that went into quite some details about how they reduced the storage overhead and prepared it for the typical failure scenario of Flash memory.

Here: 13 marathons in 14 years, most just under 4:00 hours.

anjrober, it seems our running cred and our Slashdot IDs are aligned.

Some would consider this an advantage. I'm quite happy to use the web versions of e.g. Facebook and Twitter on my smartphone, and not their apps.

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1174/

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/925/

It exists! It's called the Blackberry Passport :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

I'm not sure about what they mean by "socket", but I think the smallest Power-8 system has 8 cores, going up to 24.

I know, I know - Blackberry isn't really that hip anymore.

But the renders I saw of their passport (essentially, a phablet with a square screen and a physical keyboard) looked intriguing from a usability point of view. Now, a Nexus device with that form factor ...

I'm pretty sure that the ADB commands will just do a low level format, they will not physically overwrite the sectors holding your personal data (which is difficult on Flash memory anyway).

IMO the only safe method is to use Android's device encryption, but of course it's too late for that once you can't access the tablet any more. I learned this the hard way (a dead Nexus 7 which I probably will end up physically destroying).