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Entries tagged 'author:steeph' (Page 1)

Web Pages About The Web Worth Reading

My thoughts about the state of the web and how to shape it are not the most interesting ones. They're fueled by articles and other pages I've read. I decided to link to a few here. Many more I've read and closed without saving the URL. But maybe I'll extend this list in the future so it becomes a curated reading list on the topic.

Web Browsers and Engines

  • grazer - grazer is like a web browser but trees are shorter
  • Dillo - fast and small graphical web browser
  • Servo - The embeddable, independent, memory-safe, modular, parallel web rendering engine
  • Verso - web browser built on top of the Servo
  • The Argonaut Constellation - range of software projects aiming to illustrate the potential for a more private JavaScript-free web
  • NetSurf - multi-platform web browser - small as a mouse, fast as a cheetah
  • -

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Alternative Operating System: Sortix
This entry is referencing the entry 'Alternative Operating Systems'.

sortix

Sortiix is one of the more mature hobby OSs. In fact, the first time I booted it I checked that it really isn't "just" a Linux distribution that's trying to hide that fact on the surface. And it isn't. Sortix is a Unix-like, POSIX compliant OS with it's own kernel, system tools and libraries. It contains packages that have been ported from Debian. But all the most interesting core compeonents are implemented anew.<

Sortix has made steady progress over like 15 years. That's probably the biggest difference between it and similar hobby OSs. Version 1.0 was released in 22016. Even in that form it is really usable. It boots without any issues on real hardware. It's stable, comes with all the core unix tools you'd exopect, but it didn't have a GUI and network support, yet. It switched to nighly releases after that. Since then, features have been added to the point that not many things separate it from being as useful for daily usage as HaikuOS.

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Alternative Operating Systems

A few years ago I became interested in operating systems that are positioned off the main stream; in other words: That are not Linux, macOS or Windows but still usable as a desktop OS. And since BSD is so well known, I exclude it from the list of systems I will write about here, too. I've started to write about alternative OSs over two years ago. But I didn't find the time and energy to actually look at much and write about it at that time. I've decided to start anew with this entry and put my reviews, tests and introductions of OSs under the topic top:Software:Alternative Operating Systems. You may ignore everything that I've previously written about this topic.

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Alternative Operating System: MikeOS
This entry is referencing the entry 'Alternative Operating Systems'.

MikeOS

A very limited and simple operating system written in assembler for 286 computers (and newer compatible architechtures, obviously). Pretty much what I would imagine as a successful outcome if I would write one to see that I can do it. It works, there's a text editor, a game, you can list, edit and execute files. Not much more though at first glance. I didn't look into writing additional software for it myself, yet. There are many forks of MikeOS. Most of them named after the forker and not under active development. It's a project I'd look into if I'd want to learn x86 assembler. Simple, not looking like any other OS I've seen.

MikeOS is neither UNIX-like in any way nor is it similar to CP/M or DOS. It is closer to being a BASIC interpreter with a program menu. But there is a bit more to it. Everything is in the same text mode in VGA resolution. After booting, you get a box with list of menu items in pointing to submenus or executable programs. Among those programs are a BASIC interpreter, some simple games, a text editor and a file browser. That's about the gist of what you get. It's all very simple and fast. Enough to write your own applications or scripts. And it all fits on a single 3.5" HD floppy. There are third-party applications to be found on the internet. But almost all that I stumbled upon were part of MikeOS forks.

Next to the menu there is also a command line with a very small list of commands. To be honest, from a user point of view, I don't know what to do with it.

There are quite a few forks. It seems to be a great hobby project. And because it's all relatively simple it's a project you can actually finish after a while, not like writing your own UNIX clone with system tools, glibc port and modern GUI. MikeOS forks usually come with some additional apps and scripts and some changes in UI. Some add to the few system calls, add their own menu. Some even started to add network support. One MikeOS fork I have to mention is MichalOS because it overhauled the UI to make it more pleasing and added quite a few simple apps and games that all seem to be very stable. It has an image viewer and a music program. TomOS is a fork that adds support for directories. ShoockOS seems to be about simplifying things even more.

On the MikeOS web site there are handbooks, resources for development and links to software projects for MiikeOS. MikeOS is a great help if you want to learn x86 assembly in a practical way without starting from zero. But it is also useful as an OS for embedded applications or simple hobby projects (interacting with Arduino, other serial communication tasks, …). And it could also be considered useful for everyday tasks if you found a home computer from the mid 80s useful.

tba: creenshots

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A Document-centric Web

I've been thinking about what exactly it is that is wrong with the WWW and what to do about it. It feels like it became worse over the years. It's easy to make out individual reasons: Walled gardens, ad-centric web sites, bad mass-generated and LLM-generated at the top of all web searches, the lack of search results from small, personal web sites without an SEO budget or the malicious will to implement all the SEO tricks for the sake of it, egoistic algorithms (that push harmful and hateful content because it makes them feel good). Thinking about how these things became the way they are is sometimes interesting and may help by teaching a lesson. But it doesn't really bring us closer to a solution. I've had a few thoughts about what does, though. It's not as complicated as I make it sound here. It's just that I needed to think about it to be sure what I even want. And that is for the web to be made of documents with hyperlinks. If it is a text document, a searchable database, a set of image, a list of things, an article with pictures and audio samples, a video file that I can download and play, a tree of links to other documents or something similar to those, then it is something for the world wide web. If it is an application, it's not a document for the web. It's impossible to draw ab exact line here. But that's the general rule for me now. It's not that web apps shouldn't exist. People make then and people like using them. So that's fine. But that's not what the web was made for and not what I personally want when browsing the web. It's one thing that photo editors, t-shirt designers, CAD software, action games and all those things exist. You can use them or not. But it has become so normal that web sites are huge and require JavaScript to even load that sites started being huge and require JS even though it's not necessary to serve their purpose. And that has become normal, too, by now.

What can you do?

I've came to believe that there is no route to turning the web into the web that resembles my vision of a good web. It's not even just that I don't think that I (together with similar-mimded people) can't obtain the power to force the usage of certain software or to form habits in others. I don't think it would be a sustainable way with a lasting positive effect on the web. That doesn't mean that there aren't ways to bring others to use better alternatives to walled gardens, closed networks, sites with lots of ads and only 10 % content, sites that use dark patterns and search engines of the oligopositic type. You can promote small projects, share links to useful and interesting sites, talk about how you use the web, make it normal to use a search engine that doesn't only find bloated, commercial, SEO optimised sites. You can start your own projects, enrich the market with libre and other non-commercial software, submit pages to search engines with a curated index, create good content for alternative search engines to find. In this entry I'd like to talk about what I do to change my own experience of the web to the better, though, not about making the web better for everybody.

What I do for now

I needed to think about web things a lot before I realised how much of my own web experience I can change by making certain choices and how viable it can be to simply not use certain services. It's not a new idea to me. I don't do Windows, I use alternative front-ends to YouTube, I've used various unconventional operating systems on PCs and phones. But in regards to the web I thought that it's not that simple. Web sites are how they are and even nice web sites link to bloated pages with megabytes of unhelpful CSS and megabytes of maliscious JavaScript. If I use a browser that is fast and doesn't do JavaScript, my web experience is worse than it is with Firefox (I prefer LibreWolf, btw). Whenever I tried Dillo, Nersurf or something similar, or when I disabled JavaScript in Firefox, I didn't get along with at least some pages. It doesn't appear to be easy to simply decide accept that some pages don't work and just go on to the next one. There surely are use cases where this is not acceptable. But for the usual usees - everyday browsing and casual research - that shouldn't be a problem considering I already accept that some pages aren't accessible because I don't want to register with them. In a sense it's my fault that I don't like how the web is today. It's me who keeps visiting web sites that are like that. And I can stop that by doing some simple changes: Disable JavaScript and use a search engine that prefers non-commercial web sites in its search results.

Really?

Don't get me wrong: I doesn't feel like an improvement to disable JavaScript entirely. There are browser extensions that let you control what page is allowed to serve scripts and what you want to execute. I've tried that, but it's complicated to get it right and frustrating because you always have to configure stuff while browsing and that never stops. But maybe it is an improvement despite not feeling like one at first. I mean, quitting to take drugs to which your brain has developed a strom chemical dependency also is often a worse experience than continuing to take them. But also often it's worth getting used to not taking them anymore. It also doesn't seem like an improvement to only use search engines with tiny indexes that rarely return with the ideal search result you hoped for. Maybe this isn't a viable choice. I think there is no search engine of that type with a large enough index to recomment it for daily use. Those projects just aren't there, yet. But that may just be one more reason to use and support them more. And since they do get rid of all the sites that do things that I don't like, it could be an improvement to get used to using them.

What does that mean in practice?

Some web sites don't have any images anymore, some web sites only load ads and recommendations, but not the actual article, modern closed-plattform chat apps don't work, just as most other sites that can be calles web apps, keyboard focus doesn't start at the main input field, some sites aren't readable because all their styles are missing, burrying the content between or under thousands of things that should have started out hidden, on some sites certain links aren't working anymore, many audio and video players don't work because of attempts to prevent permanent file downloads, there are pretty much no ads. If you use a browser with a less than very popular rendering engine, add misaligned elements on many to almost all web sites, unreadable elements on some sites with unconventional styling and missing elements if they use unusual positioning options. If you only use a search engine that doesn't do commercial sites or whitelists desirable sites, add to that the feeling of trying out the web in 1995 unless you navigate to specific sites that you know contain what you are looking for. The web feels relatively small with a search engine like that. But even then it's huge. Maybe it's a quiestion of what you expect. If you really don't know what site you are looking for, use a universal search engine. If you have an idea where to find the information you are looking for, start at that site. It might be Wikipedia, Slashdot, Toms Hardware, an Invidious instance. The web is totally usable if you don't enter everything in the same search engine as a lefrex. I thought it was great at a time where we didn't do that. And for the rest (missing content, non-working sites): Those tend to be the sites that I wanted to filter out in the first place. So the endeavour seems to work as intended.

There are also sites that I would like to read that just happen to use a CSS trick or JavaScript that isn't supported by all browsers. Those are sites that don't pay a lot of attention to accessability design guides but don't have any bad intentions. I've made sites like this before. This article is being posted to sites that fall in this category. Feel free to contact makers of those sites to let them know that you would appreciate being able to read the pages. I know I should test a site in text browsers before publishing them. I never do. Nowadays I don't even test in any other browser than the main one that I'm using (except when using engine-specific style rules). We came to accept that it just looks the same in all browsers. That is something that web designers always wished for. And when Microsoft's browsers improved in this regard it felt like we were there. But it is also true that most users of the web use a browser with one of two/three engines (depends on where you make the cut and call it a new engine after a fork). I think it does still make sense to test a web site in different browser engines. It doesn't have to look great in a text browser (although that would be the best), but maybe Dillo and NetSurf. If you cover those two, you cover pretty much everybody and you don't even have to test the site in Firefox or Chromium.

So, what did I change? For work: Nothing. Corporate dictates what software I use for what. On my private laptop, I currently use NetSurf as my main web browser. I use LibreWolf for two purposes: Copy individual bookmarks or URLs from open tabs, and go to sites that don't work in NetSurf when I don't have the time to find an alternative solution. For chat apps I use their "native apps" although I suspect that they are all just the web app shipped with their own browser. For social media I'm trying out different mastodon/fediverse clients for Linux, which I wanted to do for a while anyway. For search I'm currently using various Searx/SearXNG instances. (I know, not that alternative. I don't want to ruin everything at once for me.) More than recently I deliberately navigate to a specific site instead of using a search engine and ending up on a site that I already knew. When looking for something on eBay, I don't find as many interesting things like before because the pictures are missing and I don't needlessly buy things as much now. When searching for some random information or doing some curiosity research I close many search results directly or very soom after opening them because they aren't displayed properly. So far that doesn't bother me much. I'm already used to having to close tabs again right away because of cookie banners and other popups that make it impossible to get to the content without finishing a maze and reading a bunch of things for at least a minute. Not I open and close more search results, but get my ansers anyway. On video platforms, I open the video in an external player. It's nicer to have the player of my choice with my prefered UI and my custom configuration anyway. Some sites simulaniously look worse and better at the same time. I may have to scroll a bit to the content and it is obvious that the page wasn't designed to look exactly like that. But at least I don't get any grafical animations, lots of side-loaded unrelated content or ads. For shopping my options are very narrow. I already stopped using Amazon for other reasons a while ago. It's really not as much of a hassle as people seem to think. But much more shops than I expected rely on JavaScript for purchasing or logging in nowadays. (Probably at least for a CAPTHA.) It's pretty much all, actually. According to my rule from earlier, those are apps though, and there would be better ways to implement those. So, I don't have a solution other than switching back to LibreWolf or an app on my phone when I need to buy something online. So far, I didn't actually need anything, though. For online banking, sending a message to my insurance, using the Wayback machine and I predict much more, it is the same. For some things I will try to find alternatives. For others I will realise I don't have to. For some sites that I want to consume for enternainment it's disappointing when they don't work. There are so many alternaives for entertainment in all categories. I have so many ebooks, web books, audio books, lecture recordings, podcasts, … that I would like to consume when I get the time and energy to, I really don't need whatever interesting thing I've just found or somebody has just recommended. But now that I know it's there, I don't want to miss out. So far, this has been largest part of my negative experience after switching. But I haven't been at it for long. I'm curious to see how this will go for me.

(tba:links to previous entries, external links)

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crAzy!modz

In den 2000er-Jahren habe ich gerne Webseiten für Projekte gebaut, die ich vor hatte, mit anderen oder alleine, zu in einen Zustand zu bringen, in dem sie Content für eine Webseite abwerfen würden. Begonnene und nie auf einen vorzeigbaren Stand fortgeführte Projekte waren schon damals ein Ding in meinem Leben. So haben die meisten Webseiten, die ich zu der Zeit gebaut habe, nie ihren Weg auf einen öffentlich zugänglichen Webserver gebracht. Daher habe ich einige offensichtlich sehr unfertige Webseiten, die zu erwähnen ich keinen Sinn sehe. Kürzlich bin ich über ein Backup unter anderem davon gestoßen. Eine Seite war aber darunter, über die ich gerne ein paar Sätze verlieren würde.

crAzy!modz war der Name, den wir für die Webseite gewählt haben, auf der wir unsere Case-Modding-Resultate sowie Tipps für einzelne Mods präsentieren wollten. "Wir" meint dabei drei junge Menschen aus Bad Dürkheim, die nichts als ihr interesse für Case Modding verbandt.

Unter denen meiner Webseiten aus dieser Zeit, die nie einen Zustand errecht haben, in dem ich sie veröffentlichen wollte, ist c!m wahrscheinlich die am weitesten fortgeschrittene. Als ich sie neulich wiederfand dachte ich sogar daran, den bisher darin enthaltenen Content ein klein wenig aufzubereiten und alle Platzhalter und Links auf noch nicht gefüllte Seiten zu entfernen. Danach wäre die Seite tatsächlich vorzeigbar, auch wenn sie nicht das kollaborative Projekt darstellen würde, das ich hoffte, dass aus ihr werden würde. Aber der Nutzen ihres Inhalts wäre nicht groß genug um mich dazu zu bewegen, die Peinlichkeit einzugehen, meine Texte von damals zu veröffentlichen. Da müsste ich schon noch weitere Modding-Tipps und How-Tos ergänzen. Und diese Inhalte würde ich heute eher hier veröffentlichen. Ich werde einfach diesem Eintrag hier einen Screenshot oder drei Anhängen und die Sache dann weitestgehend wieder vergessen. Die Bedeutung des Wortes "Nutte" werde ich einfsch mal nicht erklären.

Das A in crAzy!modz ist großgeschrieben, weil ich ursprünglich die kleine Variante des Logos (auch für's Favicon) ein großes A in einem Kreis machen wollte. Die beiden anderen Beteiligten waren aber nicht so freundlich mit den Ideen des Anarchismus, weshalb diese Variante des Logos nicht in der Webseite enthalten ist.

Die Seite enthielt ein Showcase von Casemods des Teams (Beispiel im Anhang), Ideen für kleine Mods (runde IDE-Kabel, individuelle Lüftergitter, in Software schaltbare Beleuchtung), Links zu anderen Modding-Seiten und hätte noch viel Platz für aufwendigere Mods und detailliertere HowTos gehabt. Meine Wahrnehmung war, dass ich gerne weiter an dem Projekt gearbeitet hätte, wenn positives Feedback mir den nötigen Ansporn dazu gegeben hätte. Damals wusste ich noch nicht, dass alle meine Projekte so verlaufen würden.

Die Seite dürfte eine der letzten gewesen sein, die ich in Hand und mit Frames geschrieben habe. Ich mag den Stil noch genau so sehr wie damals. Grün auf Dunkelgrau, Links, deren Hintergrundfarbe sich beim Hovern ändert: Sehr cool.

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Selbstbild

Letztens habe ich mich mit jemandem unterhalten, der eine Sicht auf seine Rolle als Deutscher mit Migrationshintergrund in der Deutschen Gesellschaft hat, die ich, in diesem Ausmaß, noch nie zuvor wahrgenommen habe. Er bezeichnet sich selbst als Kanacke, wenn er seine Wahrnehmung seiner Position in der Gesellschaft beschreibt, um deutlich zu machen, dass ihm bewusst ist, wie er häufig wahrgenommen wird. Er wurde beim Autofahren schon oft angehalten, nur um ihm nach einem Fahrerlaubnischeck mit der Bitte, vorsichtig zu sein, wieder weiterfahren zu lassen. Eine Erfahrung, die ich als weißer Deutscher, obwohl ich jahrelang Vialfahrer war, nie gemacht habe. Ich weiß aber aus anderen Gründen zumindest, wie es ist, an Bahnhöfen und auf großen Plätzen von der Polizei, meiner Meinung nach anlasslos, kontrolliert zu werden. Man gewöhnt sich dran und wenn es zu viel wird beginnt man, sich unauffälliger zu kleiden und so zu verhalten, wie man vermutet, dass es von einem erwartet wird. Als Weißer habe ich die Option, dieses Spiel so weit mitzuspielen, dass ich gar nicht mehr kontrolliert werde. Aber wer als Außenseiter behandelt wird, ohne etwas dagegen tun zu können, lernt, sich mit dieser Rolle zu identifizieren. Genau so verhält es sich, so nehme ich an, wenn einem immer wieder gezeigt wird, dass man als Gefahr, als verdächtig oder als jemand, der beobachtet, kontrolliert und in Schach gehalten werden muss, betrachtet wird. Es wird Teil der Identität, die auch aus dem Selbstbild mit geformt wird, das andere einem aufdrängen.

Das alleine wäre schon genug, um darüber nachzudenken und daraus Schlüsse für viele Aspekte des eigenen Lebens zu ziehen. Den nächsten Teil der Unterhaltung aber habe ich als Anlass genommen, das hier zu schreiben. Es fühlt sich wie ein Geständnis an jetzt zu sagen: Mit so einer Sichtweise habe ich nicht gerechnet. Offenbar ist er selbst davon überzeugt, dass zu einer Rasse gehört, die in der Gesellschaft weniger zu sagen hat, als "deutsche" Deutsche, dem Schicksal, Verbrechen leicheter zu verfallen, als Weiße, ausgeliefert ist und aufgrund ihres Neurotyps weniger wert ist, als leistungsfähige "richtige" Bürger. Die Überzeugung, dass er für mindestlohn arbeiten muss, sich einer Peergroup, die zu Gewaltverbrechen neigt, zugehörig fühlen muss und Auto fahren muss, wie ein Geisteskranker auf Todesfahrt, um seiner Identität zu entsprechen, scheint groß zu sein.

Meine Gedanken zu dem Thema waren seit letztens vielfältig, führen aber zu nichts, was ich als brauchbar bezeichnen möchte. Ich müsste noch mal mit anderen darüber reden.

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F(x)tex Pro¹ X

So, I've hand this device with the weirdly complicated name spelling for a while now. But I haven't used it as my main phone since recently because I first wanted to flash a different OS onto it. I didn't have the capacity/time to take care of that among other reasons because it's something that I've rarely done, and never before successfully. After several failed attempts to get /e/OS to run on it, I've now settled fore LineageOS. Since I want to use it as my main phone from now on I don't think I'll experiment with any other systems on it for now, even though it would be the perfect phone to get some experience with Ubuntu Touch, Sailfish or some other Linux Distro.

Battery

The last time I've written about this device it looked like the battery was affected too much by having been empty for years, notz even allowing the phone to charge its own battery. Android suddenly shut down seemingly randomly and had 3 to 20 % battery when turning it back on minutes later evewn though it displayed 30 to 50 % when it turned off. Sometimes it displayed a higher battery charge after turning back on than when it turned itself off. Sometimes it would last less than five hours usage before it went down. This became better over time. It seems that Android became better at guessing the current battery charge. Now on LineageOS the battery doesn't last a whole day when it's used a lot, but so far it didn't do any surprise jumps or shutdowns. Technically, it lasts a bit over 24 hours with moderate usage. But that is with the last couple of hours under a warning LED (if I hadn't turned that off). According to the LineageOS settings, the battery is healthy and has 100% of its original capacity of 3313 mAh. That would be 113 mAh more than advertised. Maybe I'm just too spoiled by my previous 4000+ mAh devices with smaller and low-rews displays. I didn't do any independent measurement yet. (Edit: More on that in the last part of this entry.)

Keyboard

Probably the most important thing of this phone is the keyboard that makes it unique on today's marked. It is very similar to those of the later Nokia smartphones that still had keyboards. I sort of see it as an N900 with more room for a larger keyboard. It is crammed, but none of the keys are too hard too reach. Not even the number row, that has smaller keys very close to the screen. And every key on this board has a good reason to be there. As somebody coming from a Unihertz Titan Pocket with a Blackberry-style keyboard with a very reduced layout, I'm glad not only punctuatioin and number keys but also for proper arrow keys and four modifier keys of which the ones that are used as lot appear twice. I chose a German keyboard layourt because I'm used to it and can find every symbol I need on it, and it's useful to have the extra letters when I write in German. The Android it came with had only one German QUERTZ layout to select and it didn't match the labeling exactly. Some special characters were switched or missing, and it couldn't produce an apostrophe (') by any means. With LineageOS there is a 'F(x)tec QUERTZ' and that works perfectly now. After the first getting used to they keyboard is a delight to type on compared to any other phone I held in my hands in the last 5 years. I think I still like the Nokia N9300 and N9500 keyboard better. But the more layout closer to PCs does make more sense with a phone where apps aren't developed for that keyboard specifically. And I am enjoying the extra keys, especially on the command line. The backlight also works as one would expect, which is not a given in keyboard smartphones.

Camera

Let's not get into it too much. The camera isn't good. 48 MP doesn't mean anything when every picture that it produces is automatically heavily mushed by noise reductin. It's better than my last phone camera. It's able to produce photos with room light that aren't blurred to the point where you can't read anything. That's enough for me right now. It does have the bug where the camera app gets rotated when you open the phone (which forces all apps into landscape mode), but the image isn't rotated, but its dimensions are. The viewfinder isn't really usable with the keyboard open. But it's not as bad as it is with the Planet Computer phones/PDAs.

Display

Once a smartphone display has reached a certain quality, I don't have much to say about it. And that quality point has been matched even in cheap phones for years. It's bright enough, resolution is high enough, I don't know or care about the maximum frame rate, colours seem fine, viewing angle isn't an issue (very good actually), touch resolution is fine enough that it isn't a problem. It does have black spots in some corners. Apparently that is something that can happen when you bend a panel that maybe isn't advanced enough to be bent that much. The rounded edges are nice though and I don't mind the black spots as long as they aren't growing. I've never accidentally activaterd the touch screen while typing.

Fingerprint Sensor

It's located below the power button on the right. I haven't found a comfortable way of using it to unlock the phone, yet. Maybe I won't use it. It's irritating how often it thinks it's been used when I handle the phone and vibrated he phone. Sometimes it's locked for too many failed attempts once I actually want to use it.

Exterior

As for ports, there are two: USB-C and a headset jack. No more or less than necessary. There's one fingerprint sensor. There are four buttons: Power, volume up, volume down and camera. And then there's a SIM and SD card tray.

Sound

It has stereo speakers, which are actually placed on opposite sides, facing left and right when in landscape mode. They are loud enough and sound like phone speakers sound nowadays: clear, without any surprises and enough bass to not miss it during any sort of speech recording. The position of the speakers could be worse. They arent covered when the phone rests on somthing and they can't be accidentally covered both at the same time. But they aren't facing you directly and can't possibly both face you at the same time. So the sound will always be roomy if both speakers are on. Their distance also creates a problem that I've rarely heard in a phone: If both ar producing the same or almost the same sound waves, parts of them will cancel each other out before the reach your ears, especially if the phone isn't exactly in the middle between your ears and exactly horizontal and straight. At 50 cm distance, if you want to watch a video with sound, in order to understand ecerything, you have to turn up the volume so much that others in the room are wondering why you're watching at that volume. At least I have to and I would wonder. My solution is to turn one of the speakers off almost completely. One is still loud enough usually. In Google's Android the audio settings are hidden in advanced accessibility settings. On LineageOS audio adjustments are directly on the accessibility settings screen. Set to mono you'll still hear everything. The setting does not influence bluetooth earphones.

Practical Usage

Whether the screen is activated by opening the keyboard or by pressing the power button, it takes a second until the screen comes on. That's annoying, but I'm going to get used to it. It's the case with both stock Android and LineageOS.

For daily usage so far it has been great, except for the battery life. Once I've stopped downloading and installing lots of stuff every day and trying things out it has become better. Also I think the battery charge indication has been caribrated. Because it doens't turn off with two digits of battery charge left. I'be decided to go with the battery enabled all the time. This way it lasts well over one day, even when I use it a bit more than usual. According to both the phones own and my measurement the capacity is almost exactly as advertised. (4 to 13 mAh more. I didn't factor in the voltage.) But the fact that it's runtime is at least a third shorter than that of by previous phone (with a smaller battery) makes me think it that the screen and other parts are probably not as energy efficient. I glady charge it more often for the experience with the better keyboard.

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