My experience is dated, but figured I’d share it in case no one else has any input.

I owned a few Motorola Android phones before and after the Google involvement. I think my most recent purchase was 2015.

At that time, they were extremely “pure android” with very few additions beyond the stock experience. The things they added were way ahead of their time - I still think those devices had the best “always on” display implementation to this day, and they did it way before it became a norm.

Their software and update support was rivaling Google at the time, and most other manufacturers were still in the days of 2 years of updates if you’re lucky.

They just stopped making phones it seemed like. I ended up moving towards Pixels over the years, but Moto is the one company that would tempt me to switch back. That or maybe HTC but they’re dead.

Hope you get a more recent answer - I didn’t even realize they were still making phones to be honest.

There’s isn’t enough physical space for three sensors on a smaller phone especially if it’s the size of the iPhone mini

I wouldn’t go as far as to claim that “more cameras” is the complaints being made here. Sure, telephotos make sense as things that take up more space. But most people are using them for like 1 in 50 shots or something. I have an extremely hard time believing that someone would genuinely notice the difference unless they’re an extreme case or they’ve been told the other ones are better. Within reasonable effective focal lengths, these are pretty negligible in the sizes we’re talking about.

If Apple couldn’t make a smaller phone sell particularly well, I doubt anyone else could.

I hard disagree with this. Apple is literally the worst company to try to make this shit work. Apple’s core selling point is the status symbol of it all. People trying to show off having the flashiest phone are not going to buy a product being touted as a half baked smaller and cheaper version of something else. Their entire marketing was about it being mini. Apple customers are not the core audience for something like this, and Apple marketed it as exactly what people disliked about small phones.

around or less than 5% of total iPhone 12 and 13 sales

I find it more surprising that this was below expectations than I do that only 5% of people bought a smaller phone. I doubt much more than 1 in 20 people really is after a smaller phone. I’m sure they exist, but based on the people I know and the number of people I’ve heard interested in smaller phones, I’d estimate it more like 1 in 20 to 1 in 40. It’s not for most people by any means. But 1 in 20 is still a decent number of people.

They have to understand that the cameras on the biggest flagships occupy a lot of space and it isn’t feasible to bring it to a smaller form factor.

Not… Really… Sure it makes some difference, but the much more constraining factor is the money. Cameras arent that big, but they’re one of the priciest pieces of hardware in the device.

The problem is more that they keep trying to sell small phones at cheaper price points. So they end up with much worse screens, socs, and cameras so they perform like shit. People don’t want a small phone because they don’t care about their phone. People want small phones because the standard size is fucking huge. They need to make a high-ish tier small phone instead of low tier small phone that performs like the 50 Walmart shit.

I know it’s not everyones cup of tea but…

I ended up buying a Pixel Fold for the Fold aspect. There’s an added benefit that it’s really short when folded so I can reach the entire screen one handed. It’s heavier and thicker than a slate phone, but I actually enjoy the folded experience way better than other phones.

Problem 2 also shows they have no double checks on access to private video feeds. Mixing up what’s being requested at any step and not reverifying anywhere after that point just reveals fucking terrible security practices.

No, this does actually sound like a solution. But it’s a solution that should be scattered all throughout the process, and checked at multiple steps along the way. The fact that this wasn’t here to begin with is a bigger problem than the “client library failure” as it shows Wyze’s security practices are fucking garbage. And adding “one layer” is not enough. There should be several.

To give a bit better context, which I can only be guessing at by reading between the lines of their vague descriptions and my first hand experience with these types of systems…

Essentially your devices all have unique ids. And your account has an account/user ID. They’re essentially “random numbers” that are unique within each set, but there appear to be devices that have the same ID as a some user’s user ID.

When the app wants to query for video feeds it’s going to ask the server “hey, get me the feed for devices A, B, and C. And my user ID is X”. The server should receive this, check if that user has access to those devices. But that server is just the first external facing step. It then likely delegates the request through multiple internal services which go look up the feed for those device IDs and return them.

The problem that happened is somewhere in there, they had an “oopsie” and they passed along “get me device X, X, X for user ID X”. And for whatever reason, all the remaining steps were like “yup, device X for user X, here you go”. At MULTIPLE points along that chain, they should be rechecking this and saying “woah, user X only has access to devices A, B, and C, not X. Access denied.”

The fact that they checked this ZERO times, and now adding “a layer” of verification is a huge issue imo. This should never have been running in production without multiple steps in the chain validating this. Otherwise, they’re prone to both bugs and hacks.

But no, they clearly weren’t verified to view the events. Their description implies that somewhere in the chain they scrambled what was being requested and there were no further verifications after that point. Which is a massive issue.

It doesn’t even need to go that far. If some cache mixes up user ids and device ids, those user ids should go to request a video feed and the serving authority should be like “woah, YOU don’t have access to that device/user”. Even when you fucking mix these things up, there should be multiple places in the chain where this gets checked and denied. This is a systemic/architectural issue and not “one little oopsie in a library”. That oopsie simply exposed the problem.

I don’t care if I was affected or how widespread this is. This just shows Wyze can’t be trusted with anything remotely “private”. This is a massive security failing.

There the solution was to go into the Apps settings, find Pixel Launcher, and choose force stop, then clear cache, then clear settings.

Fwiw, force stopping your actual launcher should fix the issue without restarting etc but it does come back.

I think I’ve tried doing this on the Pixel launcher with no dice, but going to give that a shot since it shouldn’t hurt. I doubt this would impact the issue if it’s actually based on what you claim though.

I’ve been crazy for months over this lmao. Glad I could help 😜

That’s great and I’m glad that works for you.

But most people buying portable gaming handhelds are not doing that. And the people looking for things like that are likely landing closer to a surface or standard laptop, which Windows already supports well.

I don’t know that Microsoft has any business trying to make Windows support these devices better…

Windows is entirely built around two pillars:

1. Enterprise support for corporations, and team machine management
2. Entirely open compatibility so they can run almost any hardware you put into it, plug into it, and backwards compatibility for all that for as long as possible.

Portable game machines are not an enterprise product. Nor do you care about broad hardware support or upgradability. Nor do you care about plugging in your parallel port printer from 1985. Nor do you care about running your ancient vb6 code to run your production machines over some random firewire card.

Windows’ goal is entirely oppositional to portable gaming devices. It makes almost no sense for them to try to support it, as it’d go against their entire model. For things like these, you want a thin, optimized-over-flexible, purpose built OS that does one thing: play games. Linux is already built to solve this problem way better than Windows.

But, Microsoft will probably be stupid enough to try anyway.

Now we just need that GFX software from intel / amd / nvidia that is available on windows, taking advantage of that newly supported hardware

Stop, you’re making me too hard. I might be able to like, ditch Windows if that happens.

I wish I had a better answer for you… But…

This seems to be some bug in Android 14. I reported it numerous times during the beta program MONTHS ago, and it’s never been fixed. The public release came out and multiple friends have told me they’re having this issue too. It still isn’t fixed.

I don’t know what the fuck Google is doing, but I’ve heard people have this issue with different launchers so I can’t imagine they’ve all got the same bug - this seems to be Google’s fault. The launcher I use has fixed multiple Android 14 bugs, but not this one. I don’t think they can.

Fwiw, you should be able to force stop your launcher which is a little faster than changing launchers and changing back. Pull down notification shade, tap settings, type Kvaesitso in the search bar which should let you tap to get to the app settings, and on that page should be a “force stop” button. Tap that, tap home, and it should be fixed.

I find this shit infuriating and I don’t understand how Google deems this OK. I doubt this gets fixed before Android 15 at this point. Google has their fucking heads up their ass on this one.

I don’t know if it does anything, but there’s an issue about it here: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/302132145 Commenting/subscribing/etc might help get this more attention.

Exactly this. Amazing engineers can still be run by brain dead management. Turns out being a manager gets you more decision making power though.

What? You don’t like a little adventure of “where the fuck did that contact go” or “where the hell is that app icon and why has it changed themes entirely again?”

It’s so frustrating seeing so many people repost this shit thinking that repeating the same garbage is helpful.

No one gives a fuck about the “legal” definition of why this is “allowed”. Looking at this with basic common sense, what Apple is getting away with is much worse than what Google is getting pegged for.

People complaining don’t care that there’s a stupid loophole in the legal definitions as to why Apple is allowed to do this. If the laws and definitions make that OK, and Google’s actions are held to be more “anti competitive” then the laws and definitions need to change.

That’s what people are complaining about. Not that “oh what’s the legal loophole that allows this”. No one cares about the legal shit that allows this. That’s why they keep complaining “even after this has been answered”.

Yeah… How the fuck is Google action here “monopolistic” and Apple literally refusing to let anyone in at all somehow isn’t? What a joke.

It’s cold and has really shitty “inter item” contrast. I don’t get how they think this is an improvement.

Sure, it screenshots better. It makes a “nicer” picture in isolation.

Problem is, maps is a tool not a piece of art. I don’t care how “good” it looks. I care how effective it is at being a tool. If you can make it look better while still functioning, sure, no gripes here.

But the road contrast with the background has been severely increased. Problem is, roads are a step to getting somewhere. I’m not looking for roads. I’m looking for POIs. And when navigating, I’m looking for which road to take. Giving every road contrast against the background means everything else has less contrast against the roads.

I find it much harder to sift through seas of pins. But more importantly, the navigation “path” highlight has such little contrast to roads it’s even harder to discern where I’m supposed to be going at a glance. Previously there was a high contrast blue line against literally everything else so I could look away from the road and in a split second know which way it wants me to head.

Now I have to try to pick the deeper slightly contrasted line out of a sea of lines which are all in high contrast against the background. And they’re all even tinted blue. This removes two of your brains subconscious cues for picking these things out and it makes it significantly harder to discern without really paying more attention to the map. Which is literally not how navigation should work. Navigation is meant to be glanceable.

Honestly, this pushes me more to look for alternatives. But every other competing product is a joke and Google Maps still has the biggest feature set by miles so it’s pretty futile.

In my experience the contrast for navigation is worse. Unless I’m getting some separate A/B test or something, I don’t see how you could argue it’s better.

The background is essentially the same brightness as before, but roads are MUCH MUCH darker. And the nav is slightly darker. The route has less contrast with the roads around it and I’ve had a really hard time deciphering this on a dashboard/in sunlight. I really hope I’m just in some shitty A/B test or something.

I find that the opposite. There’s more contrast on everything. Previously, contrast of the path to follow made if clear where to go. Now that doesn’t have as much contrast from the rest so it’s harder to glance and see where to go. All of the roads stand out. But I don’t care about all of the roads. I care about the ONE road I’m trying to follow and that doesn’t stand our from the rest. That’s all I’m trying to “pick out” while driving and now that is harder.

It feels like “overly” busy because literally every item on the screen is trying to pop out from the background. That’s just noise and over attention grabbing. I don’t care about the 7 streets I’m passing popping out and grabbing attention. I barely even need to know they’re there, so the low contrast made sense.