On my old phone I had an issue with the proximity sensor and front facing camera. This led me to holding my phone backwards to take photos and being unable to hang up phone calls.
I think I put up with this for a year and a half.
I did end up figuring out the issue with the proximity sensor but opening up my phone to reconnect the camera module was too much effort for me.
Some 20 years ago, the right shift key on my keyboard was busted. I ignored it for so long that I got used to only using the left shift key. To this day, and many keyboards later, that’s still how I type.
I actually never learned how to use the right shift. I’m doing fine without it.
Oh no, my virtualbox host key is LShift + RShift.
I used an Ubuntu Phone as my daily for about 6 months.
And how was it
Quite bad. This was over 10 years ago so the details are muddy… It was on BQ hardware and the first weeks it couldn’t even work outside on GSM or 3G (or whatever was at the time). It was clearly developed and tested solely on Wifi. Using cellular connection make it fall apart and constantly hang.
Then it never was able to get WhatsApp working. Everyone uses WhatsApp, and had to get by using old SMS or whoever I got to trick to install the then unknown Telegram.
Eventually got tired and got back to an Android phone. An Alcatel if I recall correctly.
After some time, BQ offered a way to revert the hardware back to its Android version, did that and had a backup for many years.
It was a very messy and buggy launch, but being on the bleeding edge, it’s expected. If they had offered a WhatsApp app I would have hung on way longer, it was the only deal breaker.
My truck has two warnings. I could get them fixed but they don’t bother me, it’s for features I don’t use and I don’t care enough.
Used an OG Google pixel until about a year ago. Had to replace the battery a couple times but otherwise still mostly ran like it was brand new.
Have a Samsung Galaxy. Screen cracked by itself several months after getting it, however I was busy, didn’t have time to take it in and got used to it. Now the warranty is expired so I can’t get the screen replaced anymore. I cope by believing they wouldn’t have replaced it and would have told me it was somehow my fault despite using a fairly heavy case and not being a phone-dropper/slammer.
I knew a woman who used an iPhone 6 up until I think 2022.
Her secret was she never did updates. And lo and behold, the phone kept working fine and she never felt any need to get a new one. By the end, the battery lasted about 15-20 minutes.
This is pretty horrible to hear as someone working in security. Just because it works does not mean you should do it.
I imagine her data gets lost multiple times per year.
I don’t disagree - I should make clear; I’m not saying this as an example of a good thing you should do (hence why I posted it in this thread), more as a data point about how happy Apple is to break their stuff for old hardware holders and to give some perspective on how they use software updates to encourage hardware purchases.
My 6s still works. I did have the battery replaced 3 years ago because I expected to continue to use it a couple more years. I got a new phone last year but my old one is still happily running.
It belongs in a museum!
So did I, it was just fine. Though I kept it updated and replaced the battery once.
Not getting a UPS for my server. Even though I’m pretty sure one of my VMs got corrupted (it won’t boot in ESXi anymore) after the server shutdown during a brownout several months back. I’ve had a server at home for like 4yrs now. Have experienced multiple brownouts. Still don’t have a UPS, even though I always look for one.
I can’t imagine running a server without a UPS unless you only use it for experimental stuff…
It is a homelab, so it’s all basically experimental. I don’t really need any of this.
But yes, I should absolutely just buy a UPS =x
Grab a Pyle power conditioner off of Amazon. It’ll run you 100 bucks, but you get the benefit of AVR which is more important imo than being able to run while the power is out.
So this is instead of the UPS, rather than in addition to?
I’m looking at one now and I’m assuming it’s like a big surge protector type thing. Do UPS have these built in?
So ups have AVR (automatic voltage regulation), that is a big part of the selling point. The power that they output is “clean”. One of these is basically AVR without the battery.
It’s not quite as good as a good ups+AVR, but it’s a fuckload cheaper and you don’t have to replace the batteries every 6 months.
My parents’ plasma TV (probably one of the last working ones in existence) has had HD overscan cutting off the edges of the picture for as long as I can remember. Once they started using a laptop as a media PC, they had to increase the height of the start menu to see it. Just this week I found the setting to fix it burried deep in the TV menus.
They’ve been effectively watching 720p scaled up to 1080p this entire time…
Oof, there’s many.
Let’s start with my older phone (Moto G5s Plus). Right since I got it, the camera focus was broken. When trying to focus, it would just vibrate and make rattling noise. HOWEVER, I found a “solution”. Hitting it just right from the back and shaking it side-to-side worked. I used it like that for 4 years.
My current phone (Poco X3 Pro)has many software bugs. Some I probably don’t remember as getting around them is a muscle memory.
Let’s start with audio. The left and right microphones are swapped. Thus I flip it around (left-handed) when recording videos. This actually affects a few different MIUI-powered phones as I found out.
Wallpaper bug:
This started appearing since I got my phone back with MIUI global instead of EEA after both MOBO replacements (yes, and both were in warranty). The lockscreen wallpaper gets stretched top to bottom after reboot, but isn’t affected by resolution. Homescreen wallpaper gets stretched if resolution is different than native, otherwise it gets zoomed in.
“Fix:”- For homescreen, create a black rectangle with resolution of 1080x2400 and insert the desired wallpaper into it, but slightly smaller, in center.
- Set it as wallpaper
- Reboot the phone
- When asked for PIN, lock the screen first, wake it up, and just then enter the PIN. This fixes the lockscreen wallpaper.
- Unlock the device and stay on homescreen
- Pull down the notification bar, decrease and then increase brightness
Done! The wallpaper now has correct aspect ratio, it’s just a bit fuzzy due to upscaling.
Images created in Termux not visible to Google Photos:
Go into Google Files, rename the file to something else, then change it back. Done!Files from Termux counting into “System storage”:
Same fix as above.Uploads to OneDrive from Android crashing:
The solution is to use Firefox in Termux. Yes, desktop Firefox.Poco X3 Pro screen not rotating:
The “solution” is opening Accelerometer and Gyroscope in PhyBoxMTP reporting different timestamps:
I do backups with rsync. Unfortunately, I did so over MTP, not realizing the timestamps are adjusted in some odd way. Now, unless I wish to re-do the whole backup, I have to stick to MTP. Unfortunately, I had issues with gvfs on Manjaro, so I can’t get CLI access to MTP.
Solution: Use Linux Mint for backups over MTP.Memory card slot not working in Manjaro for 2 years:
Solution: None. Some update brought the drivers after 2 years.School network being unrealiable:
Solution: Connecting to both Wi-Fi and mobile data at once and running my own HTTP proxy server in Termux.
Warning: The username and password isn’t encrypted in case of HTTP proxy. The proxy will likely also allow access to localhost by default. I’d recommend to null-route those requests. There may be more security issues.ProtonVPN client being mostly broken on Arch:
Solution: Connecting to ProtonVPN on my phone and running proxy server on it.School proxy server limiting network speed based on MAC addresses:
This one was used long time in past and kept as a backup. Unfortunately, it was needed again. It limits the speed to around 0.2Mbps if the MAC is unknown, which among other devices includes newer school PCs.
Terrible solution: Cloning MAC of one of the least used ancient desktops and using that on my laptop. I also bought RTL8152B USB Ethernet adapter, and burned that MAC into its eFuse memory (permanent). Pretty convenient.Ok, I guess that’s enough.
After i switched from windows 11 to nobara, the os would rarely randomly freeze and the only way i knew to stop it from freezing was restarting it
I ignored it until it got fixed by itself
no bars
?
…oh, yet another Linux distro
My old iPhone took a swim but it mostly came back. The face sensor and NFC stopped working immediately but after a few months the NFC started working again. Eventually however parts of the touchscreen started failing in vertical strips. At first it was still usable but at some point too much of the screen became unresponsive I had a get a Bluetooth remote to use the phone.
I was stubborn about getting a new phone as I knew the iPhone 15 would get USB C and wanted to wait hot that.
I didn’t add a power switch to my 3D printer for nearly three years. Wasn’t that bad, I had it plugged into a power strip and would use the switch for that to turn the printer on and off.
I’m not sure my laptop’s discrete GPU works anymore. which is fine for the away mission web browser machine it currently is, hell if I need to do graphical work or something I can ssh tunnel to my desktop.
I used an old Dell monitor with a column of dead pixels for a shockingly long time. Thing just had a line of red down it about 1/3 of the way from the right edge. Ghosting and other artifacts have started to show. I still use it as a backup-to-a-backup on an old machine but it is out of main desktop service now.
did you ignore
You’re using the past tense here. That’s gonna narrow my potential responses.
None. I’m an engineer, if there’s a technical issue, I just can’t ignore it. I have to fix it, or get it fixed, or implement a workaround or switch to an alternative.
My luck with phones has always been pretty good, never had any major issues with any of them, going all the way back to the dumbphone era. Only exception ever was a Note 8 that I’d dropped on concrete only a few days after I bought it, but instead of fixing it, I decided to just sell it off the very next day, and switch to some other phone (kinda hated the Note 8). But otherwise, never had issues with phones - even second hand ones bought off eBay. I even bought phones from Kickstarter, like the Nextbit Robin and the Unihertz Jelly, never had issues with them either.
Same with technology in general. Never had any major issues with latops, PCs, consoles etc, going all the way back to my 486 DX2 in the MSDOS era. At least, there was never anything that I couldn’t fix myself.
I had a cellphone around 2004 or so, where sometimes the dosplay would suddenly become mirrored. After a while it would als turn upside down. On the really bad days it would be both. Everything else worked fine, so I kept using it, but writ8ng and reading SMS was a pain.
My old note 9 stopped charging via the USB port. Ended up having to get a wireless charging dock. Worked so well that I still use it instead of wired charging.
