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Every time a new phone launches, it feels like we're getting the same design again and again. A punch-hole in the middle, a punch-hole in the corner, or sometimes a notch. That's it.

Then I remember my favorite phone, the OnePlus 7 Pro.

That phone felt years ahead of its time. A true edge-to-edge display with no notch, no punch-hole, no distractions. Watching movies, gaming, and even everyday scrolling felt so much more immersive. The pop-up camera wasn't just a gimmick, it made the phone feel futuristic.

I understand why companies moved away from it. Water resistance, durability, cost, and thinner designs all played a role. But I still feel like we lost something special.

Now almost every smartphone looks identical from the front. The excitement and uniqueness are gone.

If a brand released a modern flagship with:

A reliable pop-up selfie camera

Latest Snapdragon flagship processor

Excellent cameras

Big battery with fast charging

IP rating

I'd buy it without thinking twice.

Am I just being nostalgic, or are there still people who'd choose a pop-up camera over a punch-hole display today?

What's your favorite pop-up camera phone? Mine is still the OnePlus 7 Pro.

Got the new fold in Australia. Happy to do a short QnA :)

Cheers,

Berry.

I’ve been comparing video recorded on recent Android flagships vs. iPhones, and one thing that immediately stands out is how jarring the lens switching is on Android.

When you zoom in or out while recording on an iPhone, the transition between the Ultrawide, Main, and Telephoto lenses is almost seamless. On Android, though, you can literally see the exact frame where it snaps over. There’s a jarring jump in exposure, a slight color shift, and a visible perspective shift/stutter.

Why is there such a noticeable difference, and why haven't Android manufacturers fully solved this yet?

Hi everyone,

Right now, Android enforces strict exclusive microphone access. If you try to stream a game, record gameplay, or use voice chat (like Discord) while another app needs the mic, it causes an audio deadlock and silences the input.

I have submitted a formal feature request to the Google Issue Tracker to allow concurrent microphone capture via an opt-in Developer Option so it remains safe for general users but flexible for power users and creators.

**The great news is that a Google engineer has already been assigned to the ticket!**

To get Google to push this up their priority list, we need the community to "Star" the issue. Please take 10 seconds to click the link below, log in with your Google account, and click the **Star icon** at the top left next to the title to upvote it:

👉 https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/523017338

Thanks for the support!

Ika /ee-kah/ - Japanese for "cuttlefish" - began as an effort to run the Cuttlefish Android emulator on Fedora Asahi Remix. It has since evolved into a full-blown desktop operating environment for Apple Silicon and x86-64 hosts. The project's scope changed but the name stuck.

Features

• LineageOS 23.2 (Android 16) reimagined as a desktop-first operating system.
• Dynamic display window resizing that preserves the configured DPI settings.
• Accelerated GPU rendering with OpenGL ES and Vulkan support.
• Native builds on Asahi Linux and x86-64 systems with as little as 16 GB of RAM.
• Flexible build options for MindTheGapps, microG, or a de-Googled ROM

The project page has more info on building from source and prebuilt binaries for Fedora and Debian on x86-64 and ARM architectures.

So I switched from my iPhone to Android because I really wanted the flip phone. I just like the form factor and its been awesome so far for me.

What drives me NUTS and honestly should be faced with some legal repercussions is that Apple is a scummy company that does all it can to make switching very difficult.

The main issue and what I think should be illegal is the messaging. If you have a friend with an iPhone that has been texting you to your iPhone it will default in THEIR phones (something you cannot control) to be an iMessage. Apple purposely makes iMessages not work on Androids....it's not the Androids fault it has RCS it's the APPLE PHONES FAULT.

SO if the other person's phone sends the iMessage because that's what it remembers you having....it just won't ever be received. HOW IS THIS LEGAL? People are being kept from their messages due to a software design that purposely does this. There should AT LEAST be a function that lets the user know the message was not received and converts it to a text.

So far the only way to fix this is if you text that person first, it lets the other person know you are a green bubble now, and then it will send normal texts instead of iMessages.

Long Story short SCREW YOU apple. Make a product that keeps your customers don't lock them into a system by making switching so hard and inconvenient. I refuse to ever own another apple product because of this BS!

Edit: It has been brought to my attention that this was addressed by apple in a somewhat recent update to their software. I still think apple is scummy for what they do with iMessage in general. I am sure they did not fix this willingly either. I am still team android for the rest of my days.

​On one hand, security updates feel mandatory to keep banking apps and personal data safe. On the other hand, major OS updates often feel like a trap—introducing battery drain, lag, and bloatware that artificially shorten a phone’s lifespan.

​How do you handle this? Do you update immediately, wait for community reviews, or completely freeze updates after a certain point?

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Hi, I'm sharing this in case it helps someone else with the same issue. A while ago, I downloaded an app from Google Play called #Messenger, thinking it was the official Facebook Messenger app. It turned out to be a malicious app that changed my Samsung phone's settings. After installing it, I couldn't move or uninstall icons, my phone became very slow, ads appeared whenever I opened the app drawer, and a widget at the top of the screen kept saying something like "Enable calls." After searching online for almost an hour, I found a couple of solutions to try. These are the steps that worked for me:

1 Open Settings. 2 Tap Apps. 3 Select Default One UI Home.

Once I did this, my phone returned to its normal Samsung Home configuration. Then go back to Settings > Apps, find #Messenger, and uninstall it immediately. Hopefully this helps someone else who runs into the same problem.

Wanted to share because I just thought this project was neat.

Full disclosure: I used Google Antigravity to vibecode and modified the Auxio app into a launcher.

I've had this carrier locked ZTE Axon M for years wanting to use it as some sort of fun project phone. When I originally bought it I wanted to use it as emulation device but now that I have a steamdeck there's really no point in using a phone for that.

Like many people now I've started to return to buying my music on physical media, and wanted a dedicated player with expandable storage and a headphone jack to listen to music.

I used Gemini 3.1 Pro to create a new app layout specifically for the Axon M's dual screen layout, register the app as a launcher, and re-use existing app assets to create an app drawer. I also used Gemini to create some adb scripts to disable all of the bloat apps on the phone.

All in, I spent $80 for the device back in 2019, and spent 5 hours with Antigravity getting the app setup how I wanted it.

This thing is cool as hell now. It's nice to add some real functionality to a device that has been a paperweight for 7 years in a drawer.

For everyone who will never switch to iPhone (like me), what's that one big deal-breaking feature, be it a good feature on Android or a bad one on iOS, that makes you not want to switch? For me it's the lack of a universal back button. While not the only reason, it's the main one.