I never used it myself, but rather than a dedicated alarm clock app, maybe look at tasker?

Looking at their website they actually list your use case as an example of what is possible

wake up with a random song from your music collection

(Third point under “usage examples”)

I’ve had two USB C ports fail on HMD phones.

Yeah, that’s what got my HMD made, Nokia branded, 7 plus. And from a search at the time this was a common problem

Sometimes it doesn’t work, especially when it is a particularly weird colour palette, but it gets it right most of the time. In that case it does have the options to make some adjustments or just turn it of for that particular site.

Dark Reader: Especially late at night white page background just burns out my retinas, no idea how I ever managed before.

Right, totally forgot about that step.

Haven’t used it myself, but similar to casa os there is also cosmos os, which looking here seems to offer some build in storage management options. Maybe this could be worth looking into?

openmediavault is ok for raid, but the containers aren’t one click wonder like in other NAS OSes

Since OMV also uses docker compose with a build in GUI to manage them, I don’t assume this would be what OP is looking for either? Unless trueNAS also comes with some repository of preconfigured compose files.

I am currently using Openmediavault for my NAS and can confirm that with an official plugin so far I havent had any issue with my ZFS pool (that I migrated from trueNAS scale since I didn’t like their kubernetes use and truecharts, but as someone mentions they seem to switch to docker).

Otherwise I am happy as well, but I am far from a poweruser.

Is the 10 VI Sony’s midrange? It’s certainly priced like one, but within their lineup it would be the lower end, no? The 5 would be their midtier offering.

Yeah, slightly better now, but still lackluster in a phone of this class.

Especially considering that eventually every phone in the EU starting June 2025 will be required to offer at least 5 year updates. You’d think that they could offer that level of support slightly earlier to someone willing to drop well over 1k€ on their phone. Unless of course they plan to pull out of the european market at that point.

Bloat and bad performance aside, you don’t see a benefit in having a all-in-one solution that in a way acts as a drop in replacement for people wanting to switch away from the likes of Google/Apple? I certainly do.

Yes, having a dedicated app selected for each use case will likely give better results. But it also means more management. And many users don’t actually need more than basic functionality.

But yes looking at the complaints, they should look at polishing existing features first.

I don’t understand why there isn’t higher demand for audio phones like there is for camera phones.

I agree that there should be demand for a large enough niche audience, but it won’t be even near the same demand as for good cameras.

For most people smartphone are their primary and usually only camera. And there are plenty of situations where you want to take a nice picture or video.

With audio the trend nowadays is wireless for the vast majority of people. And for that a build in DAC doesn’t really help at all.

Downside might be that this requires a good internet connection, which depending on where OP travels might not always be available.

This seems a bit impractical. 2 phones to keep charged and manage.

Depending in your use case can’t you just get some external USB storage?

I haven’t used it, but maybe look at Cockpit? You could install it on your generic Debian server and it would give you a nice gui and tools, while letting you do whatever you are currently using it for.

I am using openmediavault for my NAS, which seems reasonably lightweight and is debian based. If that fits the bill

To me price and software support are somewhat linked. Supporting their devices for such a short time is unacceptable especially for expensive high end devices. And by the time prices come down over time the phones are already closing in on the end of their software support.

Regarding the cameras in the midrange you are forgetting the Google pixel A series. I think they are increasing the prices with the 8 series, but the 6a/7a are in the same price range as Samsung’s A5x series. And outside of lacking zoom capabilities they offer flagship quality cameras.

3D movies always felt weird to me

I think the big issue is that for most 3D releases it’s more of an afterthought. It is however pretty cool in movies specifically made for it such as the Avatar movies.

Google struggles with presenting a unified interface, design language, and overall experience across their scattered hardware platforms

Agreed, but that to me seems more of a conceptual and software issue, rather than the hardware side. Although the article makes it seem like the teams getting merged are also (at least partially) responsible for that:

Currently, all three teams operate separately, making standalone decisions on things like design, software, hardware engineering, etc.

However they also need to be more reliable to build an ecosystem that people buy into. It’s kind of a meme that in every google thread killedbygoogle.com gets mentioned, but there is truth behind it. Especially in the smart home space you really need to project long term support for people to buy into your product suite.

Very late to reply, but thanks for posting. I got the OP11, Pixel 7a and Pixel fold in the standard test. I might do the others at a later point.

Always fascinating to see how much the skin color and sweater colour can vary between pictures.

That sounds pretty useful. Is this “tool” just software that could also be rolled out to other pixels or is there something physically different on the hardware level?