Okay... between the Buds3Pro and the Watch Ultra looking more & more Apple-y (why I have NO idea), I'm not sure if anyone on those design teams actually wears Samsung devices and not Apple!

That said, the Watch Ultra is an absolute BEAST of a watch: with the same battery capacity as my Galaxy Watch 5 Pro and a 2nd Gen 3nm processor, it should last upwards of a week with power saving mode! Not that I expect to need that OR the 100m of water...

I went ahead and pre-ordered it (titanium gray with gray band because orange... ewww) because I have little to lose and a lot to gain. A used Watch 5 Pro in pristine condition is selling for MAYBE $100 on ebay; but Samsung offered me a $350 trade-in on it so it's kind of a no-brainer. I didn't order any other devices although I'm sure the foldable enthusiasts have a bit of enthusiasm.

What about you? Did you pounce on the squircle Watch Ultra or other device?

Soon everyone will need a Real ID to fly. Some of the requirements with options are just stupid. Cancelled checks, SSA info, Current DL, Bank statement, Credit card statement...etc.. what if they get hacked? all of your important information is now on the black web

Check with your state for requirements

REAL ID | Homeland Security

My wife has had repeated problems with the Galaxy Z Flip4 and I want to seek more objective sources of truth here as we continue to pour money into Assurion:

The first incident, she dropped while it was in its case that came from Amazon (instead of Encased, who I use). It broke the screen, $99 for a refurbished phone.

The second incident, the screen just stopped responding to her touch. They covered that free under warranty and shipped her a refurbished phone.

The third incident, the screen went black. This was a few weeks ago and on the phone they said it was her fault and had a $99 charge. They just received the phone so let's see if they cange anything.

The fourth incident if the refurbished phone we got a week ago. When she closes the phone, from the outside, it looks on. But then when she opens it, the screen remains black.

As we continue to finance Assurion, I'd like to ask, re these problems normal or is there something else going on?

I put an inactive SIM card into my HTC Thunderbolt for the lulz to see what'd happen (when Verizon cut me off in 2022, it went from having four bars of LTE to no service while that SIM was active) and for some reason it showed four bars (and in status, network it showed that it was on LTE and 'in service') and of course no data, but it was a sign of hope.

Figuring whatever they did during the transition to VoLTE or whatever I wondered if it were possible to resurrect it in a way I did in the past, by using a BYOP SIM kit. Went out and got the necessary stuff to activate a cheap Verizon Prepaid account, and used my Samsung Galaxy S5 as the 'line'. That worked (well sorta, the website didn't like Opera for Windows 7 much and kept saying the payment method is not supported, even PayPal and a Verizon airtime card (both options). Calling the CSR they said it had activated perfectly fine, and gave me the number. I still hadn't gotten a 'welcome to Verizon' email or anything but played along anyway.

Placed the SIM into the S5 and turned it on, as expected everything worked. So an hour later I pulled the SIM and placed it into the Thunderbolt. Bars, but no data. Fine, maybe it's the APN setting given this was last used with another MVNO, so I edit the APN settings. Nothing. OK, so I can just use Wifi and live without MMS. Test sent an SMS out. Error. Failed. Well damn. Guess thou was expecting too much. Wait, My Note II still exists, and it's one year newer. Maybe..

Put the SIM in, powered it on, totally worked. 4G popped on, data, bars, and test SMS works! How?! Welp, that is neat. Sent the new number to my girlfriend, and switched it from Global Mode to CDMA/LTE/EVDO to avoid it 'disconnecting (when in Global, it occasionally goe no service and texts send, but show as failure, and she gets duplicate texts). Now I got a working 2012 Galaxy Note complete with TouchWiz Nature UX again.

I'm happy. Just had to say it. So long as LTE continues to exist, I'll be fine. Maybe we will be living together before I have to deal with the next shutdown?

I would love to know what is different about the Note II that makes it work and not my HTC Thunderbolt. Both are of similar age, and both are LTE Verizon handsets. Would anyone know why the Note II works but not that one? Band differences? I men it got bars, but no data. Odd.

I mean functionally and specs wise the Note II is far superior, but I have a fondness for the Thunderbolt that I can't exactly express. I mean it ended up being my all-time favorite Android phone in 2020/2021. I can also credit it to being the one that detoxed me from smartphone addiction (it didn't do a lot besides play MP3s, SMS, browse poorly, and make/receive calls, and the camera was no bragging right). Ever since all I use one for is texting, email and the occasional Google and playing MP3s. I haven't used one to make/receive calls since the landline in my home got reactivated and using rotary telephones. Everyone just defaults to calling that.

I have a Galaxy Xcover 4 with 16 GB internal storage. It's telling me that I'm running out of space with only 613 MB left. I only have three apps on internal storage, and I checked how much is actually being taken up and can only come up with 2.4 GB. So there's 13 GB that I can't see and don't know how to access or clean up.

A US Navy veteran who has lived in America for more than seven decades says it now feels like his country “doesn’t want him” after his citizenship was challenged by authorities in Tennessee......

Tennessee cancels driver’s license of 77-year-old Navy veteran saying he isn’t a US citizen

...launching when I swipe up from the bottom of my home screen?

I ask because my S9 constantly asks me if I want to use Samsung Pass to save my logins to apps and Web sites. Every time I say yes, it requires me to access my mail and approve the new attempt to save a new password.

Thing is, after I've done that, nothing seems to have changed.

I feel like I'm missing something.

How to you use Samsung Pass, and has it actually improved your experience?

I feel like either it doesn't work, or I'm not getting some key part of why and how it works?

I'll start. I've squooshed 6 days into 5 days of work a couple of weeks ago, so my Monday through Friday work schedule is busier, now. For this week, I've squished 5 days of work into 4 in order to take off Thursday the 4th. I'm looking forward to that, but I have to say working extremely long days is brutal, but worth it once in a while.

Having said all that, for the 4th we will be going to a pool party at wife's aunt. Looking forward to it! Anyone else care to join in?

I run Boinc (scientific distributed computing) on my Android phone (version 12). A few months ago, it suddenly makes Boinc run half speed (Boinc's own reporting system). I'm running one program on each core, and each one is showing 50% usage, used to be 100%. The phone is cool. It used to be warm. So it's not overheating, and is clearly doing less work. Any ideas what might cause this? I know the OS tends to interfere if you're "overloading" the system. The phone has no problems running anything else like games. If I tell Boinc to use 4 cores out of 8, they are fully used. But I used to be able to run 8.

How to add a signature on here?

On my moto edge, I can figure out duration when I do always do the Drops app and after that, it seems so stupid to have it make the [] button on the main screen not function,
anyway how to clean it up and have it just prompt up as a funcitonal little button?

I'm excited to say I just ordered an S23 FE to replace my S9.

I'm told Smart Switch can or will make it easy to migrate my stuff over, but I have questions:

1. An employee at the T-Mobile store told me I can pick and choose what I want migrated over. For example, if I just want my contacts copied, I can do that, right?

2. I'm kinda worried I might have some contacts stored on my S9's internal memory vs some stored on its SIM card. How do I figure this part out?

3. When it comes to apps, would I be correct in thinking Smart Switch will copy them over with their saved preference files and logins intact?

4. Does Smart Switch simply copy your apps over, or is it "smart" enough to go to the Play Store and download and install on your new phone the same apps you had on your previous phone?

5. Given how old the S9 is, and given how much old and extraneous apps can gunk up your system, my gut instinct is that it might be better to not copy any apps over, and that I should instead go to the Play Store on my own and do fresh, clean installs of every app I want to continue using. Am I correct in thinking this is a better, smarter option?

6. If I do want Smart Switch to copy apps over, does it allow me to pick and choose which ones, or would this be like Apple's Migration Assistant for Macintosh, where it's pretty much all the apps or none?

7. The lady at the T-Mobile store suggested I do this all over Bluetooth. Isn't Bluetooth hella slow, though? She did say I could use a USB cable to accomplish this if I wanted to. Would USB be better and faster?

8. And speaking of T-Mobile, while I am a T-Mobile customer, I ordered this unlocked phone on Amazon, 'cause T-Mobile doesn't sell this model with 256GB of storage. I'm planning to install the T-Mobile Visual Voice Mail app. Are there any other apps or utilities I, as a T-Mobile user, should be installing in order to get the best out of my service?

9. I've never signed up for Samsung or T-Mobile's cloud backup services, but I figure I ought to, since my whole life is on my phone. Whose cloud backup, if any, do y'all recommend?

10. Should I used Smart Switch to migrate over all my old, existing text messages? It's nice to think of not losing them, but I dunno, maybe I'm gumming up the works if I carry over years of old messages? Is it better to just get a clean start?

Thank you for your guidance!

This is getting crazy. First it was Louisiana and the Ten Commandments in schools. Now it's Oklahoma ordering the Bible to be taught in public schools. I hope we go back to the separation of Church and State through the court system, rather than letting The Christian Taliban having their way.

Oklahoma's top education official orders schools to teach the Bible

This guy keeps complaining about getting calls from fake medical stuff, plan b or whatever, and cops and police or somebody pretending, asking for money. I said I would help if I could. Is there a way to get rid of that? I used to see ads for robot killer or something that way.

Hello All,

I have a Samsung A7 tablet and will be on holiday soon. Does this tablet have data facilities? I canfind nothing. Do I need andsd card? What to do please, kindly treat me like an idiot, I'm getting old.
Best
Alan

Normally these events happen in October. Google will introduce the Pixel 9 and Pixel Watch 3 on August 13, 2024

so this is some scary shit!!!!

they want to supplant over 50,000 federal workers with their own people and it will based on your political affiliation. it also has insane plans for the border. it also plans to shut down certain departments like the Department of Education. a lot of trumps policies were based off of what the heritage foundation suggested to him.

here check this video out:

here is the actual plan:

if you have time please read it. it really scares me that this could actually be implemented should trump wins the presidency.

Julian Assange has reached a plea deal that will allow him to return to Australia as a (convicted) free man.

First class U.S. postage is currently 68 cents. It's going up to 73 cents on July 14, 2024

so the 1st debate is coming up this Thursday at 9PM ET. i just wanted to have this thread up so we can discuss it before, during and after the debate. this is the 1st of 2 debates before the elections here in the US.

are you going to watch it? anybody want to give a prediction?

I just had a notification of a OneUI update on my S22. I let it perform the update but it then wouldn't let me back into my phone without going through all the new 'stuff' that's been added. There was no way to bypass it because the Recents and Home buttons were absent. That was mildly annoying but what really infuriated me was that it wouldn't proceed further without me logging in to my Samsung account. The problem was I DIDN'T HAVE ONE!! I've never wanted one so have never set one up. It didn't provide an opportunity on the page to create one so I was locked out of my phone. I had to go into the Samsung webpage on my PC and set one up before I could get back into my phone. To add insult to injury in order to register I was compelled to enter my date of birth. I don't feel that corporations like Samsung should have the right to demand such personal information.

It was lucky I was sitting at my PC. If I'd been away from home I would have been completely locked out because there was no way to bypass the screen so no way I could access my browser to set one up.

I find this behaviour on the part of Samsung - locking me out and forcing me to create an account - totally unacceptable, not to mention unethical, and when the time comes to upgrade my phone it will not be another Samsung. Nor will I purchase any other Samsung products from now on.

LOL! I just had a reminder to fact-check everything on the net. I saw this picture of Dolly Parton without makeup and I believed it. Turns out it wasn't Dolly, but rather Nicollette Sheridan.

Does This Rare Photo Show Dolly Parton Without Signature Makeup?

Don't know if this is on my end or the forum end. I keep getting a 502 Bad Gateway message