Blah blah blah (saying hi)

[lettersquash]

Hi,

After coming here to ask something (and getting very helpful answers very quickly), I thought I'd introduce myself and make a quick point about buying devices. I just got a new phone, or rather, a second hand one, from https://uk.webuy.com/ (or the Computer Exchange / CEx).
What is CeX?
CeX was founded in London in 1992. We have stores in the UK, Spain, Ireland, India, Australia, Portugal, Netherlands, Mexico, Poland and Canarias. We buy, sell and exchange a range of technology and entertainment products including mobile phones, video games, DVDs and Blu-ray movies, computers, digital electronics, TVs and monitors, and music CDs.

My Homtom HT3, which I've had for years, is losing its battery resilience a bit, and I've learned from bitter experience it's usually not worth trying to buy a replacement battery, as they never work like the new one. Battery life is important to me for the rare occasions when I go wild camping, for navigation and in case of emergency.

I was looking around for what to get, new new, in between watching the COP26 news and Greta Thunberg taking the mick, when my partner suggested getting a second-hand one for environmental reasons. I feel pretty good about that decision, although I've not got to booting it up yet, a Samsung Galaxy A41, as I need to get a nano sim card. Just thought I'd put it out there as an option (s/h, I mean, not the A41). Every device we re-use means one less coming off the production lines.

I'm hoping to sell the Homtom to them, or just on eBay, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea. It's one of those cheap Chinese jobs and came with the Fota/Adups spyware, which was a shock. I disabled the offending files with Debloater, but I assume they'll be reactivated as soon as the thing's factory reset. It might be better to send somewhere to recycle it. FOTA Adware Chinese spyware. How to test for it and get rid of it.

Ah well, enough of my blah for now. Some interesting discussions here. I look forward to browsing around.
Cheers
John

 

[ocnbrze]

welcome to AF!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sorry but for me, especially with phones, i will not buy hand me downs. there is just too many issues that could arise from buying such devices. i have seen many people spend money even though it might be a deal;, only to have to jump thru soooo many hoops to get it running. i have seen where sellers will sell a phone with a bad imei and you can't contact them to get it straightened out. i know you might have bought the phone on a reputable site and everything worked out for you, i'm just saying that i have seen countless horror stories here on buying used phones.

plus i like to have the latest and greatest. it is why i own the Z Fold 3. but the good thing is that i was able to trade in my phone to get the price reduced. I think Samsung recycles those trade in phones to be used on newer phones......so in essence i'm still helping to reduce waste.

 

[mikedt]

Hi,

After coming here to ask something (and getting very helpful answers very quickly), I thought I'd introduce myself and make a quick point about buying devices. I just got a new phone, or rather, a second hand one, from https://uk.webuy.com/ (or the Computer Exchange / CEx).
What is CeX?
CeX was founded in London in 1992. We have stores in the UK, Spain, Ireland, India, Australia, Portugal, Netherlands, Mexico, Poland and Canarias. We buy, sell and exchange a range of technology and entertainment products including mobile phones, video games, DVDs and Blu-ray movies, computers, digital electronics, TVs and monitors, and music CDs.

FWIW I bought my very first Android phone from CeX in Bristol back in Sept 2010, a Samsung Galaxy S, that I very soon rooted and was using CyanogenMod on it. However all my smart-phones since them, I've bought brand new. Most recent is a Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G.

My Homtom HT3, which I've had for years, is losing its battery resilience a bit, and I've learned from bitter experience it's usually not worth trying to buy a replacement battery, as they never work like the new one. Battery life is important to me for the rare occasions when I go wild camping, for navigation and in case of emergency.

I was looking around for what to get, new new, in between watching the COP26 news and Greta Thunberg taking the mick, when my partner suggested getting a second-hand one for environmental reasons. I feel pretty good about that decision, although I've not got to booting it up yet, a Samsung Galaxy A41, as I need to get a nano sim card. Just thought I'd put it out there as an option (s/h, I mean, not the A41). Every device we re-use means one less coming off the production lines.

Some of my old smart-phones I've passed onto friends for them to use. Others were broken, such as the Galaxy S which had a busted screen, so they went for recycling.

About waste and unwanted things, I've got quite a few pairs of earbuds that came with various phones, that I'll never use and are still sealed. So if new phones no longer come with earbuds included, that's OK by me.

 

[lettersquash]

Hey ocnbrze and mikedt, thanks for the welcome, nice to meet you - yeah, there are lots of ways to make a difference, and if nobody bought new phones there'd be none second-hand either! I have to say I was always quite sceptical about buying second-hand tech, but I've also had enough brand new items that had to be returned for various reasons, and plenty of s/h ones that have given great service. Most of my PCs have been hand-me-downs (ups?) from the kids, until they abandoned laptops and went onto tablets, which don't suit me at all.

I've been very pleased with CeX. I only found them when shopping for memory to speed up my latest hand-me-up, and their service and advice was great. My smartphone, and all their phones and PCs (I think) are guaranteed for 2 years (except consumables), which is longer than most new kit off the shelf. They grade the items on condition - A, B, C and F (not working) - and mine's a B (I'd not get a C unless it was very much a punt). It has a very small ding in the plastic back, and what looks like an air bubble behind the screen protector, about 2 mm across in the bottom left corner - I'm not sure if it'll peel off and another could be attached.

I've not got it up and running until I get my nano sim, but if anything's wrong with it, it's under warranty, so (hopefully) no sweat. I'm thinking of getting a laptop from there, partly just to upgrade to Windows 10, as I'm nursing my Windows 7 without proper M$ support and it's only a matter of time before this old thing dies. ...or Android? I don't know anything about using Android on a laptop. I assume it's a thing. Any recommendations? I like programming in AutoHotkey, which is just Windows-based, so I might miss that, but I could maybe learn something else.

 

[lettersquash]

Well, it's not looking too good, to be honest. The main reason for switching was to get a newer battery, but now I've got the Galaxy A41 up and running, updates installed, and charged it up, it's losing power quite a lot faster than the old one (both on standby) I got a different sim for the new phone after all (basically, TalkTalk are such a pain to contact about anything I gave up and decided to start again), and I've not yet moved the old number to it, so they're independent.

I'm guessing the slowness is partly going to be due to Android 11 being a lot more power-hungry than 5.1, but it might also be that I've not managed to stop all the damned bloatware from Samsung and Google. I declined the Samsung account and all its goodies, but I wish I'd not got a Samsung, and I'm wondering if I'll have to return this. The bloat I can probably work around, but if it's going to lose power too quickly it's no good.

One thing I haven't got up and running yet is NetGuard, which is on the old one (Homtom), because I can't remember how to set it up - it's a bit confusing - so the apps on the Samsung might be phoning home in the background more.

Maybe it's smarter and will optimise battery use in time. I downloaded all my apps from by backup, but haven't got much running yet, so it's still on its default desktop where the old Homtom is running Nova and a bunch of Power Toggles and widgets. I can't even find the widgets on this new one!

Any advice/thoughts gratefully received.

 

[mikedt]

Well, it's not looking too good, to be honest. The main reason for switching was to get a newer battery, but now I've got the Galaxy A41 up and running, updates installed, and charged it up, it's losing power quite a lot faster than the old one (both on standby) I got a different sim for the new phone after all (basically, TalkTalk are such a pain to contact about anything I gave up and decided to start again), and I've not yet moved the old number to it, so they're independent.

I'm guessing the slowness is partly going to be due to Android 11 being a lot more power-hungry than 5.1, but it might also be that I've not managed to stop all the damned bloatware from Samsung and Google. I declined the Samsung account and all its goodies, but I wish I'd not got a Samsung, and I'm wondering if I'll have to return this. The bloat I can probably work around, but if it's going to lose power too quickly it's no good.

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_a41-10138.php
Chipset: Mediatek MT6768 Helio P65 (12nm)

The slowness may actually be the Mediatek processor. AF has had many posts over the years, about sluggish devices with Mediatek MTK chipsets in them. Usually cheap entry-level devices.

Samsung usually uses their own Exynos chipsets in their phones, and Qualcomm Snapdragon for China, Japan, South Korea, and USA. And so seeing a Mediatek in a Samsung Galaxy phone, seems rather unusual to me.

I've got a Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra with Qualcomm Snapdragon running Android 11, and it's the best performing phone I've ever had.

 

[lettersquash]

Chipset: Mediatek MT6768 Helio P65 (12nm)

The slowness may actually be the Mediatek processor.

Yeah, I didn't expect it to be very fast. But would a slow processor make it use more power? My guess (fairly uninformed) is that you can't easily gauge power use from the speed of a processor, as there will be fast and slow processors that are more or less efficient, and as a general rule I'd even expect a faster processor to use more.

I'm a little encouraged this morning to discover that on airplane mode overnight it's not dropped as much as the old phone (also on airplane). It just seemed to tank from 100% to 90% in no time last night. Besides, the old one will catch up - it now goes down to about 25-30% fairly sedately and then begins to give up the ghost.

I was definitely panicking yesterday when I set the new one up, even thinking maybe I've got old enough to require a dumbphone. I've had the Homtom so long and done so much customisation it's like part of me. With a new phone and going from Android 5.1 to 11, there's so much that doesn't make sense. I wasn't making enough use of the manual, which explains most of it now I start digging. I had 14 days from receipt to decide if it's okay for me, and I lost a lot of that trying to get a nano sim from TalkTalk, who are so difficult to contact I gave up in the end and got a new one.

 

[lettersquash]

Well that's all turned around very nicely. I continued to keep my old and new (to me) phones on the same settings (networked or airplane, etc.) and the new one's battery lasted three days and was then at 32%, so might well have done four, but I thought it best to charge it again not let it get too low. The old one did better than usual, for no apparent reason, managing to keep going for two days. This was with very little use of either, to be honest, but on the network a fair bit, so it's not disappointing at all.

I also found my way around Android 11 a bit more and felt a lot better about that too. Reading user manuals helps, if all else fails, as the saying goes.