If you have Android Oreo/8.x, most (all?) google apps (including Maps) allow you quite fine grained control over notification categories (so you can choose to have traffic updates and nothing else, if you wish)
Notification categories is not exclusive to google apps, of course (OS level feature as long as your app targets Oreo), but their apps tend to give you very good control over what it shows you.
So, I'd disagree strongly that this is a google "strategy". It's more a problem that their apps tend to have a lot of features crammed in.
Of course, I don't know how this works on iOS (I'd be surprised if it's not in the settings somewhere? It's in their interest that you don't disable all app notifications)
Well, to be explicit, they set the minimum timeframe. For example, the Nexus Player is still on the latest version of Android and will/should receive 'O'
(Not letting google off the hook here. What they're doing isn't great and they should do better. Just saying your statement isn't entirely correct)
Here's [1] an open source app that lets you share a link from youtube which then uses a hosted version of youtube-dl to get the direct link to the mp4 url and pass it back to the Android Download app
Windows 10 can _definitely_ do that (I do the exact same thing with bluetooth/wired headsets frequently; I'm "fairly" sure I used to do that on Windows 7 too -- I remember being quite amazed when my Ubuntu machine "finally" caught up and was able to do the same thing.)
In fact, I quite often start music playing on the laptop (chrome/Google Play Music) and then power up my bluetooth headset -- it initially uses eSCO when it routes the audio over (mono) and then switches to A2DP a few seconds later
Maybe the issue is something to do with the SW (chrome/firefox?) you use for GVoice? Or maybe there are some edge cases that I'm not triggering (in particular, a USB headset is effectively a new soundcard and not just an audio sink; I can completely believe windows is flaky with them especially with third party drivers)
The "Fortune" app? As you mention knox, I assume this is an app that Samsung force installs on your phone; so I don't really see what Google can do (without locking Android down even more, and I'd rather they didn't).
Google is mostly going in the opposite direction and allowing you to uninstall any apps you don't use [1] -- admittedly, the Youtube app is not one of them on my 6P. But, I can disable it so it's not visible in the app drawer. In fact I can disable all the google apps and have always been able to do so (the only exceptions are non-Google, "system" apps).
Doesn't help if you buy a Samsung phone though....
As I mentioned in the other [1] thread, you can use this android app [2] (which uses youtube-dl) to download directly onto your phone. If you're on iOS, sorry :(
There is also this app [1] (shameless plug, I wrote it) which uses youtube-dl to download videos off any supported sites. No real UI as it just parses the media URL (when a link is shared to it) and passes it off to the android download manager.
I threw it together (over a few hours) simply because I like watching stuff on youtube at 1.5x speed and the android app does not allow you to do it (whereas if you use VLC to play the downloaded video, you can increaseplayback speed)
It's also available on the play store [2] with youtube downloads disabled by default
Netguard [1] is a loopback firewall (installs as a local VPN) that doubles as an adblocker if you install the version from github [2]. I installed from the play store and used the IAP to contribute to development before swapping to the github version (the version on the play store can't block ads [3] due to it being a ToS violation)
Note that one of the recent updates [4] introduces ads for the free version. But not if you buy any of the pro features. Seems a fair trade, plus it's open source (which makes me slightly happier about routing all network traffic through it)
I'm on windows 10 with a shitty "optimus" enabled laptop. The NVidia drivers routinely crash (typically when viewing a heavy webGL enabled page) and windows 10 just flashes at me and throws up a notification saying my graphics drivers have crashed but it helpfully restarted the drivers for me.
Perhaps you have a different issue? Maybe a hardware failure? Windows 10 should not be BSODing for a graphics driver failure
>Are you saying Bluetooth 4 would actually solve my problem
Make sure your headset and device (phone?) both support HFP1.6 or above (which supports wideband speech/HD voice) which makes the sound quality semi-decent
>Neither Android nor iOS support [pairing ... via the Out-of-Band method].
I'm not sure this is actually true (unless you're talking about bugs with individual manufacturers implementation on Android?). Both iOS and Android support SSP with OOB key exchange via NFC.
>all Skype calls automatically revert to HFP (extremely bad quality)
While it's true that audio quality over HFP is a lot worse than A2DP, note that A2DP is designed for cases where latency is not an issue, you want stereo audio, and there is no microphone audio to carry the other way. (i.e., designed to listen to music)
If you want low latency mono-audio to the headset + microphone audio back to the host, there is no choice except to use HFP.
Note that if your headset (and your host device) supports HFP1.6, then it should support wideband speech/HD voice and the difference should not be so drastic.
But apps can still work around these restrictions (even on iOS; for eg the facebook app was caught "accidentally" playing silent audio.) Even if that was truly a bug, the point remains that it's better to use the website unless you want something specific (offline access, push notifications, etc...)
> 3.5mm jacks are analogue, and they're everywhere
>As soon as headphones are digital, manufacturers can start locking down headphones.
The article is unclear, but the USB3.1 spec does specifically support analog audio over USB-C explicitly for compatibility with 3.5mm audio headsets. So if Motorola don't support this mode then you may have a point. But right now it's unclear exactly what this phone supports
> they'll put a 2.5mm jack on the phone, or cut the 3.5mm jack in half
If I need a passive adapter for my existing headsets, I'd rather get a USB-C port which supports analog audio. Atleast then my adapters would be standardized.
> the article says that Intel is working on a standard to let those pins be used for analog audio
In that case, the article is wrong because the USB 3.1 spec already supports analog audio via the Audio Adapter Accessory Mode. Whether this phone supports this mode is unclear, but it's part of the existing spec explicitly to allow passive USB-C to 3.5mm adapters
You can boot from USB and give it a whirl. There are some closed source bits missing, so I'm unsure if, for eg, netflix, will work. But it'll give you a feel for the OS
It's actually much nicer than hangouts for SMS and has features hangouts doesn't support (search, group messaging) and is updated regularly by Google (with no tie-in to G+ or Play Services) so it's not like it's an abandoned app.
>I'm currently using the AOSP Launcher3, and it doesn't even properly align icons in a grid, because it's missing the autoscaling of Google Now Launcher.
Get a different launcher? For eg, Nova Launcher (paid, but does not have any dependancy on Play Services) is basically Launcher3 (in terms of looks/functionality) with a ton of extra features.
Is your complaint that Google is letting AOSP apps languish? In which case I'd agree, but it's not like you're short on alternatives (and as time goes on Google seem to be opening more parts of Android to be replaced by third party apps -- in fact, the main components left are just the settings app and the notifications menu that you're stuck with whatever comes with your phone. Everything else is replacable by the end user)
I know this is supported in this google dual-port PD charger: https://store.google.com/gb/product/usb_c_dual_port_charger
There is an explanation on how the power budget is split in this post: https://plus.google.com/+BensonLeung/posts/8jmUYtJxAwX
Presumably other multi-port chargers also do similair things