The stupid thing keeps trying to get me killed, is unresponsive to the most obvious urgings, and insists upon joking around when i need some info NOW.
I also have issues with most map apps and using them for navigation. It seems that the UI designers for these things never consider difficulty in seeing the crucial details on a small screen at high velocities with small glances.
I need the remaining KM until that turn, in large numbers, Google.
At the end of the day, despite being an allegedly technical person, I find smart phones to be rather difficult to use for their intended purposes. I have had immense difficulty in answering phone calls with mysterious swipes that at least this horrid samsung willfully ignores, laughing at me in derision, no doubt.
I don't get along with smart phones.
OsmAnd has a nice design, IMO: https://imgur.com/a/oZJIZst
It also lets you change the widgets and colorschemes, that's the LightRS map style and route line.
Enshittification. I don't know what is being taught in design schools but enshittification is definitely one of its subjects. Take a look at major products and how shitty they became, with poor design decisions that are unjustified.
Google Maps switched to a Apple-like color scheme months ago. Everyone hated it, the main roads were no longer highlighted and distinguished from normal roads. Google ignored. I had to drive back to the office 2 weeks ago and my friend setup the GPS, only to be confused about the route because the streets I should take were highlighted in blue, but due to high traffic in the area they became yellow. I was confused for a few minutes thinking "okay, this is a main road, where the hell should I go?" until my friend told me it's yellow because of traffic conditions.
>I need the remaining KM until that turn, in large numbers, Google.
One thing with maps too is that it decided to default to auto mode when using the app, but auto mode won't bring up the keyboard, which sucks if you need to make changes to your route and aren't wanting to use the voice mode.
I don't know exactly what model of phone you have, but most smartphones have a proximity sensor which is used to intelligently blank the screen only when it is at your head. Not uncommonly this sensor gets dusty or dirty, causing the issue you describe.
That’s because, in a rush to move to touchscreens and display-based electronics, every company has let go of the simplicity of buttons.
This is kind of maddening. Tesla is the worst. Their recent cars have very. few. buttons. They have NO stalks, and what hasn't gone to the touchscreen goes to a few touch buttons in the center of the (rotating) steering wheel. They "control" turn signals, wipers, lights, etc. It guesses the gear shift (forward or back).
I rented a Model Y which was an incredible experience, but so much is on the touch screen and being new to the car I did have to take my eyes off the road a few times to flick through menus.
Having said that with further customisation you can control a fair bit from the steering wheel.
Removing stalks is a bit full on in the Model 3.
Relegating the side button to only function as power off and nothing else is not a good default behavior, in my view. For power users, sure… let them configure it to do that, I guess.
I do not chord key binds on my desktop with the power button. My speakers, TV, router, etc will only ever turn off/on when I hit the power button.
It overrides a fairly rational user assumption: that “the power button” is responsible for controlling whether the device is on or off, and that that is its primary function.
They would probably fare better if they switched to calling it a Meta key (or something else that doesn’t invoke Facebook). Meta+VolumeDown to shut down makes more sense than Power+VolumeDown; the latter makes me wonder why the power button alone isn’t enough.
Overall, there really just aren’t enough context-free inputs on mobile phones. Apps generally use the whole screen, so all your non-app-specific inputs have to be put on weird chords of the 3-ish physical buttons a mobile phone has.
Also, it probably would be best to call it a “sleep” button or “screen” button… or something like that. After all, that’s the primary single press function that is universal to all phones. It’s not actually a power button from a single press, it’s a button to toggle the screen on and off. The long press not resulting in a power off command is somewhat unusual, but also not ridiculous.
If anything, a combination seems like the better option when we’re talking a feature that is almost never used triggered by exposed buttons on a device that spends most of its life in people’s pocket.
If I accidentally turned my phone off in my pocket as often as I seem to accidentally hit buttons on my car key fob, it’d drive me fucking bonkers.
The extra button presses the once or twice a year (if that) I intentionally turn my phone off is really not much of an inconvenience, comparatively.
And what will be a "good default behavior" ? A button which choses its actions by the phases of the moon ? /s
I turn off my phone, when not in use (at some nights or my work phone when i'm in the office).
You can argue whether or not the default behavior is good… but no phone “chooses its actions by the phase of the moon”. That’s very disingenuous. Either way, having the power button held down not force off the phone is a good thing for avoiding accidental power down.
It's especially helpful as an accessibility option.
Reliably being able to determine and set if a device or computer is running is a critical aspect of making sure that machines serve their users. If a device is doing shitty, undesirable things, I want to know that I can quickly and easily power it all the way off. That includes if the screen becomes unresponsive or otherwise damaged.
Considering that Google Assistant (and Gemini now, I guess - the distinction isn't clear) have somehow managed to get LESS functional and useful as time has gone on, I found it extremely irritating that some promo-chasing PMs and engineers at Google tried to hijack this basic, established device control to push a garbage product which I KNOW is getting discontinued, migrated, or cancelled in the next few months.
I'm not even much of a zealot for free or pro-user software, but this is an insane idea from Google that speaks to a deep misunderstanding about how much control I think they should have over my phone.
Really, the power button doesn't work any more?
Besides, the power shortcut is the most used (and appreciated) function on my phone. I'm using it to quickly open the camera.