Excursions

Yesterday, I was sitting with my iPad Mini on the sunny balcony, with my sister’s iPhone and my Galaxy S24 Ultra next to me. Barely able to read on my iPad, I picked up my phone and was reminded how I had fallen absolutely in love with this device. Especially the two aspects. The stunning screen. The monstrous battery life.

I don’t think I have seen a better screen than what this has. All reviews have called it out. But you must experience it to appreciate the brilliance of what Samsung has achieved. The text is crisp; the colours pop out. Plus, the lack of reflection is mindblowing. I don’t think I can go back to any other device now that doesn’t have the technical wizardry that Samsung has packaged here. It’s perfectly visible even in the harshest sunlight without losing clarity or colour.

I am surprised no one built such a screen earlier. This is much more important than the high refresh rate or crazy resolutions. Here’s a snapshot from the official product page.

The second one is also a no-brainer with its trade-off – the battery life. Since moving to smartphones in 2009 with the iPhone 3GS, I haven’t had any phone with a battery life longer than a day. But then I also stubbornly preferred phones with smaller dimensions. I never liked the likes of Notes and Plueses and Pros and Maxes. So, my decision to shift to a large phone this time was clouded by my fear of discomfort.

All my fears were washed away right on the second day when my phone wasn’t screaming at me to be plugged in. My last phone, the Galaxy S22, was the slickest of all the devices I have ever owned. But it was frustrating to put it to charging every evening. From that to now, when I am easily going through two full days without charging my phone, it is a drastic (and welcome) change. Even three days once. This might be a benefit that all large phones share. But with everything this device packs, it has to be the best amongst the best.

Even without the natural benefit of a larger screen to read and write better, I would always select a larger phone from now on just for the battery life it lends.

In addition, there are miscellaneous benefits of Samsung’s versions of Android phones for me. They have been nailing the physical design of the phones for the past few years. Without all the gloss, they look and feel premium in hand. Everyone who has held this device has commended the richness of its feel.

One UI feels slick, elevating the overall Android experience a notch higher. It’s inherently Google but distinctly Samsung at the same time. All the small touches they add across the platform are well thought through. The ones that I have found the most used are Modes and Routines. It helps set your phone for different phases of the day. I can customize all aspects, the most important being which apps I access during a particular mode. For example, in Life mode, I have set it so that I can’t use any apps from my work even if I wanted to. Neither do I get notifications from them. 

Samsung has woven a lot of such small additions into the platform. S Pen works nicely. The side Panel stays hidden, yet it is extremely useful. Dex is an absolute stunner. And the list goes on.

This post has gone on for much longer than I initially expected. And I haven’t even talked about the cameras. With Galaxy S24 Ultra, Samsung has indeed mastered the smartphone.

Maya narrates an annoying annectode involving iMessages.

By buying my mother a gift, I have now made it so that her contacts with iPhones, who all have her email saved, will – by default – send her messages that she cannot access on her phone, and they won’t know that they’re doing this when trying to text her. This seems terrible.

This is terrible. I recall I had gone through a similar frenzy when I had switched from my iPhone to Android. Getting back my messages from the clutches of iMessages was so painful. I had to go through this again when I bought my iMac and Apple decided I want messages with my email. It’s frustrating to see the limits Apple goes to to decide on its user’s behalf what’s best for them. I really resonate with this thought from Maya (emphasis mine).

If they’d just built their own thing in a separate app that needed both sides to explicitly opt-in to use in their communication, I wouldn’t be writing this!

Amen! Only saving grace is there are not many in my family or friends circle who use iPhone.

I received yesterday the Galaxy 24 Ultra that I had preordered. A quick opinion after a day’s use – I am mighty impressed. Stunning display. Monstrous battery. And a brilliant camera – I have taken a few shots in low light and portraits, and boy, am I impressed. This is the basic feature set that matters to me.

With a place now for my snaps on my website, I am going to have so much fun taking pictures with this set of cameras.

Coming from a smaller screen size of Galaxy S22, I was very worried that I might not like the massive size jump. But I think I am going to love this size. It has a lot of space for all the elements on the screen. One that also renders a lot of crisp words – I am now on the lookout for more to read.

The overall experience feels buttery smooth. The feel in the hand is light, yet premium. Plus, did I say that I love the larger screen on the phone!?

When I upgraded to Galaxy S22 a couple of years back, I wrote this about my initial impressions about the device.

I love the design of this phone, plus the feel in the hand. It’s compact yet powerful. I also like what Samsung has done with Android. This is possibly the best compact smartphone out there. Not just with Android.

After a couple of years with a compact phone, I have decided to jump to the other extreme. I have preordered the Galaxy S24 Ultra. I want to use a monstrous phone now. Though the compact phone was brilliant for general use, two issues have troubled me a lot.

The first is battery life. It barely lasted a whole day for me. If I use it heavily, I would need to juice it up towards the evening. With a bigger phone comes a bigger battery. I require a phone that lasts at least a day now.

The second is the smaller screen wasn’t the best to read and write. Especially later. I felt constrained and generally preferred to read on my iPad and write on my iMac or laptop. I hope both changes with a larger screen.

I knew back then that Galaxy Ultra was the device I wanted next. I will have one next week.

Apple’s response to the ruling to allow devs to steer users to external payment methods is such a farce. They knew these new rules were stupid and wouldn’t be accepted by the developers. They also knew that these rules will be challenged by Epic. Yet they went ahead publishing them. Tells me they just wanted to delay doing what is an obvious solution.

Apple should stop blowing their own trumpet on how it always has its developers' and customers' best interests in mind. Get down from your high horse and admit you are a business first.

I watched the Rabbit R1 keynote for the first time, and I have to say it’s an exciting device. What surprised me the most was the price! How can any AI-based device be launched at this price range? And that’s when I looked at the specs. Behind all the funky-looking exterior, it’s underpowered inside. Also, tells me most of the functionality happens in the cloud.

The makers have smartly called out that this does not replace your smartphone. It’s a companion device. And that’s where I have my doubts about R1. It might sell brilliantly at the beginning, which it already is, according to the reports. But I am afraid it will lie forgotten in the drawers for many.

An exciting, cute tech nonetheless. The question is, are we ready for an AI-only device?

I have uninstalled all the filler apps from my smartphone. There’s no social network or news or video app. Yet I reach out for the device if it is around me. I won’t do anything there. Open emails to find nothing new. Open some random website. Or worse just check if there are any notifications. This is pitiful. I need a filler activity that’s better than swiping randomly on my smartphone.

A filler activity is the one I would do when I am not fully focused on something. While I sit in meetings where I am just a listener. While I wait for my food. While I start while my tea is brewing. Unfortunately, my smartphone continues to occupy such periods currently.

I have always disliked the apps that provide you with a 15-minute summary of the books, usually non-fiction books. Such services are reviewed well and people seem to be paying for them. For example, Blinkist. Here’s whom this service claims to be built for.

Perfect for curious people who love to learn, busy people who don’t have time to read, and even people who aren’t into reading.

I don’t get this. What’s the fun in listening to a 15-minute summary of books? Even podcasts, they claim?

It’s okay to not be into reading books. One isn’t really missing anything if they don’t read books – the information will find its way to reach them. Why, then, the farce of reading books through summaries?

With the rise of ChatGPT and likes, services now don’t even want people to read articles on the web. For example, the latest update for Arc browser launched a new feature called 5-second preview where one can “press Shift and hover over any link to generate a summary of the webpage, without a single click”. This is not good as it can potentially kill people’s (already dwindling) interest in visiting other websites.

Why are we so against any form of reading in the original voice?

Why should I care if my writing gets included in training the ChatGPT and likes? Is there any clear harm that I am not able to see? Or is it just the fear of anything not in direct control?

I would rather want myself to be my own voice than someone else.

I am really enjoying my experience using Bard- I have long stopped using search engines as the first stop. Only after I have asked Bard, my query do I return to a regular search engine. And even such instances are getting rarer.

For example, I was today wondering what movie a particular scene was from. Bard got the answer bang on. A search engine never got this right for me.

Unfortunately, ChatGPT has long fallen behind in the race. This is what it came back with. As much as I would have liked otherwise, Google is quickly gaining back the lost ground.

I love USB C standard for charging - one cable at a fixed places charges everything throughout the day. My work and personal laptop, iPad, earphones, headphones, speaker. And my phone. Thank god i don’t use iPhone.

I have stopped using YouTube on my phone for quite some time now. Even my iPad and laptop, I use it very carefully. I do not like what it has become, especially the home page. Google’s aggressive recommendations and creator’s ability to game it have made it home to clickbaity and idiotic content.

Google wants to make YouTube addictive, and I want to fight back. Here’s the way that worked for me.

I either access the video directly (if I know what I want to watch) or browse my Subscriptions page (when I don’t know what to watch). The home page is useless without history turned on. And so are other recommendations. Trust me; you do not want them.

Well, Google has managed to ruin the subscriptions screen too.

As if the recommendations for sensational videos weren’t bad, Google found another way to spike engagement or our addiction to the app - shorts. I have been vocal about my dislike for this form of content.

What’s worse is that Google seems to be aggressively pushing it on creators, making it more profitable in some manner. Now my subscription page is full of short videos, with no way to filter them out.

The high-quality videos are getting lost in this drivel of mindless shorts, even from the creators I respect. I do not know how some of the most intelligent minds are ok with this. I have seen this play out to written words – the long-form essays are lost amidst the hot takes and rants on social timelines.

Google has done the same to the last sane space on the platform. I can now simply get rid of my usage of this platform altogether.

Congratulations, Google, and thank you!

Too much is said about how AI - ChatGPT & likes - is already challenging our being. Our personhood. But AI can learn from and build over only its training data.

What makes us human is we invent our own training data. As long as we keep the bulbs in our heads flashing, we have nothing to fear.

The weekly report from Digital Wellbeing on my phone informs me that the daily average screen time was 20 minutes less than last week’s. And I am pleased to see that trend has been downwards for the last few weeks. I uninstalled YouTube from my phone a few weeks back, which is one of the key reasons for lowered usage.

YouTube sucks away time without you noticing. The best way I know to control this beast is to not be available to you. The web app is a pain enough to not be distracting. So just get rid of the app from the phone and get your time back.

I never tried Matter enough, even though I like most of what I have seen and respect their goal. I just don’t want to start liking an app that will eventually cost me another monthly subscription. One that’s not cheap either at $8 per month.

I have been using Matter for the last couple of days. I don’t see the benefit yet, other than a different way of doing the same? Why and when should I use this reader app?

One of the problems with Twitter is that it became a lot bigger and important than just a fun social network. Like someone built a fun clicker to play with and others made it a switch that can trigger wars.

With a lack of any options for a minimalist phone in India, I am glad that Android allows custom launchers. I have stripped most distractions off my phone with one such option. I’ve managed to kill the subconscious “swipe-tap-launch” cycle for sure.

iPadOS, specifically its multi-tasking, must be Apple’s Achilles' heel in making the iPad the default family computer. They attempt to improve its windowing capabilities significantly every iteration, only to further muddle it. What’s a Computer? It for sure is not an iPad yet.

I have never had the dark mode turned off since the option was made available on my devices. I did today. After an initial bout of pain, things don’t look too bad. Instead, they look cleaner. The whole experience - the platform, the apps, the websites - is so very different.

One thing is pretty apparent - all the interfaces look better in the light mode. As if the apps are designed for the light mode first. The setting, the interface elements, and the colour palette look ingrained. With the dark mode, all apps look the same – white text on limited shades of dark background. Maybe that is the reason many people prefer this mode. Irrespective of the app, it looks the same.

I don’t mind a diverse collection of interfaces. So against the wishes of the techie in me, I will extend this experiment for a bit longer on my smartphone. I will use it with the dark mode turned off. It can’t be too bad, right?

After returning to Safari from Arc, I realized how pathetic the experience with this default browser is. It looks dated, is slow, and has terrible interface choices (tabs bar, bookmarks, home page and on & on). I tried Chrome, too, and it is ridden with bugs. So I’m back to Arc.

I’m done with my Arc browser experiment. I don’t use any of the unique features. Plus I miss the ability to use the bookmaklets (I had no idea I would need them this regularly). By being back to the regular browsers, I would know if and how much I miss the Arc’s newness.

Since I downloaded and started using the Arc browser, I haven’t gone back to the other browsers. It has allowed me to stay on a website for longer and not get distracted by the bookmarks. Or shortcuts. And I don’t even use the marque features of the browser.

I liked this article from Monica Chin at The Verge, where she talks about what makes a good laptop. Though the answer to that question usually is “well, it depends why you need it”, I agree with all of the must-meet criteria that she lists down – good RAM, good display, good keyboard (with backlight), good connectivity and good battery life.

In addition, portability and form factor matter to me. Too thick, large or heavy, and it no longer is a laptop in my eyes.

I don’t get Apple’s iPhone 14 lineup. Let me be upfront and say I have no intention of being an asshole. Or to troll Apple. I am genuinely curious if Apple has improved iPhone 14 (non-Pro) in any significant way over the last year’s model. Even S models from yesteryears had more significant upgrades. If I am wrong, I must have missed reading something between the line.

If there ever was a generation of iPhones that the previous year’s model could be recommended over, this lineup has to be the prime candidate.