You buy as much space as you’ll need in the next few years and make a plan for proper duplication/backup, such as 3-2-1 Backups.

Your family isn’t dumber than average.

Uu tech folks tend to forget/overlook that most people are clueless as to how mobile devices work. I have IT friends who know practically nothing about the Android file system, or how apps store (but don’t sync) data, for example. And these are people designing/implementing/supporting complex systems.

Most people can’t be bothered if there’s more than one or two steps. I can’t walk my “70 year old uncle” through configuring an app on his phone, over the phone. The stuff he says he sees make no sense at all. I’m like “no, that’s not what you should see, what did you click on”?.

That’s the key.

That said, I’ve always bought ~2 year old phones. They usually have batteries at 85% life (or more).

I haven’t had fast charging hurt one significantly yet, and I’ve used it a lot on some phones.

Of course, I avoid using it as much as possible. I use a slow charger (1A,max) overnight and it’s on a timer. On rooted phones I use a charge limiting app.

Is helium used in deodorants these days?

I wonder if maybe some kind of notification system for her, and you, would be useful (in addition to blocking).

Then maybe you can interrupt her, perhaps talk about it, or setup some tools for her to use to help manage stuff and learn along the way.

Guess what I’m going for is the learning/growth angle, rather than just automatic constraints (which hy themselves don’t teach or help us learn to manage this stuff ourselves).

Seems like there’s a need for all this for all kids, not just neuro-atypical.

Ah, OK.

Yea, not sure if these units can yet support expansion of a data set.

BTRFS and ZFS technically have the capability (from what I recall) in the latest versions, the question is does the device you’re looking at support the capability? I haven’t looked into enough of them to know for sure.

That said, my ancient Drobo can do this, but… It will only see the new size once you upgrade all the drives. It will resilver with a new larger drive but until all drives are upgraded it won’t use the extra drive space of an added larger drive.

(And yes, Drobo is garbage, this one was free, I had some spare drives and I use it as a third local storage device, kind of a spare I don’t really trust).

Oh, cool, that’s slick. I didn’t know this existed!

Yep, an OS would need to be monolithic for a given device.

Something the computer world decided was a Bad Thing in about 1978.

Have you checked with Lineage? That’s the most likely source.

Samsung phones are complex - if it can be unlocked depends on the exact model number (not just A15, there are often separate versions of each model).

Generally, US versions aren’t unlockable or flashable. Generally.

I gave up on Samsung several years ago because I got tired of fighting to do anything. Even the unlock and flash procedures were a pain.

What do you mean by “possibility to upgrade storage other than just replacing drives with bigger ones”

That’s pretty much all you can do with a fixed number of drive slots.

Today’s NAS’s use some form of ZFS/BTRFS, so they’re really good at handling new drives. Though I think dynamic expansion is just coming on line in the latest versions, and may not be in production just yet

I can’t speak to NAS, I’ve always “rolled my own” because no one makes what I want, let alone in a price point I can manage (I like to use 2.5" drives with a moderately powerful system as a media center/home server, etc, for compactness). My current box is an old small-form-factor desktop that maxes out at 3 drives, though I have 5 shoved into it.

For photos I use Syncthing (specifically Syncthing-Fork as it has more flexibility) on my phones to sync the DCIM folder to an always-on machine at home.

My DCIM folder syncs to a folder in my user profile on the server, other people sync to their respective folders. I permit this sync job to run in any network, with any power (AC or battery), so I never lose pictures I take.

This has a benefit of enabling me to manage photos from a pc, and those changes sync back to my phone (I generally move the photos out of the synced folder to somewhere else, this has the effect of removing them from the phone). Just don’t use the built-in photo backup sync job, which only syncs photos from phone to PC.

Nice thing about Syncthing is you can sync anything anywhere however you want. Windows, Linux, Max, iOS (using Möbius).

I currently sync hundreds of gigs between several phones and several PCs. I have about a dozen sync jobs (folders in SyncThing terms). I also sync other folders from phones, to enable file management from a PC, since changes will be synced back with two-way sync jobs.

The MDM APIs in android land are a hot mess

Ain’t that the truth.

I avoid Google stuff, actually going Google free on the phone I’m setting up now, so Family Link is out for me. And I try to avoid all-eggs-in-a-basket anyway.

Yea, it sucks. I’ve looked at a LOT of MDM for Android.

Hmm, I couldn’t find that anywhere. Thanks again.

Oh, cool. Thanks for the recommendation!

What’s Activity Watch do?

I looked at Github, by like so many projects there, the descriptions vary from minimal to non-existant.

For phone, a couple things.

Look for Mobile Device Management. I’ve been meaning to do this for family for years.

Flyve is an open source MDM. I’ve only tested it so far. You may want to look around for others.

To help with file management on Android, I setup sync jobs between the phone and a desktop (or a user’s laptop) for certain folders, things like DCIM, Download, Movies, Pictures, etc (and certain app data folders such as Camscanner) using Syncthing-Fork on the phone, and Syncthing or SyncTrayzor on a pc. Doing this enables file management from the pc, as changes can sync back to the phone (and since I want my photos on my pc anyway…). Syncthing can work across most any network, including the internet and your phone data plan (so don’t let it sync big stuff using data). It can be locked with a password too, to prevent little hands from mucking things up.

You could, in theory, just let it sync the entire sdcard, but lots of stuff changes all the time, such as app data in the Android folder. No reason to sync that stuff. Plus doing that doesn’t permit finer control of sync for things like DCIM, which I permit to sync over any network and any power state.

Syncthing also works between two or more phones, or PCs (windows or Linux), and has lots of flexibility for sync. I use it extensively to share stuff with friends so we don’t have to think about sharing, especially for larger files. I sync files between phones with no PC, some sync jobs use a pc as intermediary so both phones don’t need to be connected all the time, etc.

Another sync tool, Resilio, is really good. But on the phone it’s a major memory and battery hog, so I use it only for it’s selective Sync feature, and keep it turned off otherwise.

These are just my ideas, everyone’s use-case is different. Your problem is one I’ve been lazily working on for years, so I look forward to the other ideas that come up here.

And even where it’s a factor, local code will (slowly) reflect actual capability.

Ive lived in several states, a few which get snow, even the heavy wet kind. Even there code permits up to 3 layers, depending on how the roof is constructed.

Pixel is clean, from a battery saver perspective, so that’s probably not your issue.

Not sure what to do next. I’ve used it for about 10 years now, and keep gobs of stuff in sync with it.

I do recommend Syncthing-Fork for Android, it moves the sync conditions into the individual since folders, so you get finer control.

Do you get any errors on the desktop console? On Android, if you launch the web client you get much more info and configuration capability (Menu - Web GUI). Once there, click the gear at the top right, and open Logs. Maybe there’s something there that can help.

SSD only?

Look at Mr Moneybags over here. That would increase my cost about 400%

And no, I wouldn’t recoup that in energy cost reductions, as my oldest NAS with ancient drives only draws a few watts 97% of the time.

Yea, I like Resilio, but it’s a battery and ram hog.

Syncthing should work fine for you.

Does your phone have some custom battery management? Some vendors do that, and it causes issues.