Samsung is a separate kettle of fish in that they make things difficult while keeping the bootloader technically unlocked. Things like a lack of fastboot option, or bespoke for Samsung security changes, and a whole mess of other things. Carriers do also impose addition restrictions for locked models.
Most Motorola phones have unlockable bootloaders. The ones in their range that don’t are the carrier specific models.
Motorola Moto Edge (2021)
Pros: Moto’s classically lite skin with sensible additions that can be turned off if you don’t want them, great battery, great performance, really just a well rounded device.
Cons: I think I legally have to mention the update cadence, and lack of long-term support, but honestly it doesn’t bother me. Android versions haven’t mattered much past, what, Jelly Bean? Though longer security support would be nice. Also, the camera can be a little soft, but I don’t take a ton of photos so I’m rather ambivalent on it.
Honestly, I paid a good price for an unlocked device that still holds up amazingly well. I’m very satisfied.
I haven’t done much with it in a while, but I’m also not giving up on it, so I suppose it’s still valid lol.
I collect LaserDiscs
I got started with the format around 2010, and it was super neat to delve into this old, but strangely good, format. I found that most players and films were super cheap, and as a poor family with really no ability to move to HD yet, the SD format picture was clearly worse than DVD, but not so much so that it was unwatchable or anything.
I spent a lot of time collecting new films, looking at players, etc. etc., but I took a break while in college. Turns out that in that time everything went wild, and now the format is expensive to collect for. So much so that I’ve basically stopped at the moment. It’s still a super neat format though, and I’m not about to offload all my kit just yet.
For anyone looking for info about the format, I’d recommend Techmoan on YouTube. Matt does a lot of interesting tech videos, and the handful he’s done on LaserDisc are quite good.
I still do, but not in the same capacity.
With the death of BaconReader I don’t scroll as much, and just from looking at my front page, I imagine it’s not only the summer doldrums that have thinned it out so much. It’s just… harder to find good discussion there, and what I do find is often charged in some way, or very thin. So, I stick around for some of the communities that I’m more active in, but I’m also doing things on Lemmy, and a few other places. Honestly, idk that I’ll ever full drop Reddit in the same way that I did, say, MySpace, mostly in that there’s probably going to be some value somewhere on the site. But, it’s certainly not my main source of idle scrolling or engagement anymore.
Also, yes, I know I can still make BR work, but at this point I’ll just keep using Reddit in browser with uBlock Origin.
Coming SoonTM
But yeah, they’re plugging away at it yet. Basically, K-9 sat in maintenance mode for a good while, and while it worked, there’s a lot of tidying up to do yet. I imagine they’ll have the Thunderbird name on it once it has some of the bigger pieces in place.
They’ve been selling NFT avatars and avatar parts for a bit now. They’re not like, $1800 single unit ape pics, but they are a limited run set of digital items purchased for real money. They actually gave most people one for free like 2 years ago or something.
I’ve used BaconReader for the last 11 years, and at this point it’s even hard to think about removing it from my phone. I know it doesn’t do anything anymore, but it’s probably been the most consistent app on every one of my devices since starting with it. Just feels weird to think about uninstalling it.
Just a heads up OP, Capcom did improve the multiplayer experience in Monster Hunter Rise. No more waiting to join a friend till after they’ve seen a cut scene. Honestly, makes playing with other people a lot smoother. Also, Avengers was kinda rough imo. I picked it up for about $8 a few months back after they mentioned it was going down and all the content was included, found the main story pretty meh, and gave up on getting to the DLC since it would take take a good bit of grinding to get to it. Certainly not the worst I’ve ever played… but wow does it leave a lot to be desired. Here’s hoping you have more fun with it.
As for me: if I’m counting Friday, PowerWash Simulator dropped the SpongeBob DLC on Thursday, so I finished that out. Really fun, super high quality, though a shame it doesn’t appear to have the music present. That being said, music licensing is wild, so I don’t really hold it against the devs.
Planning to get back into Final Fantasy XIV some more as I’ve been out of it for months and just kinda wanna play it some more. It has literally been months though, so I’m super terrified of getting back into like, the actual new content. Just gotta shake the rust off I guess, so I’ve been cleaning up some solo stuff to get the feel back.
And since I’ve got the 4th off as well, probably going to tip into some Boltgun as I haven’t finished it yet. It’s good, but it hasn’t grabbed me like some of the other boomer shooters I’ve played lately. Oh well.
From what I can tell, Odin should still work on US devices, but I don’t think that its been kept current with devices and Android versions. Most of what I’m seeing is support for Android 9.0 and later, which is pretty out of date at this point. That being said, it’s not something I’ve messed with much, so I’m happy to defer to someone else with more direct experience.