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Mike
Mike GRM+ Memberand SuperDork
2/16/20 5:45 a.m.

Moto uses an interior hydrophobic nano coating for a bunch of their phones. 

Essentially, they spray Never Wet on the guts before screwing everything together. 

I gave one of those a dunk, literally for about a second in shallow water, and it wasn't the same. Strange power button behavior, a strange "mumbling" noise from the speaker. I guess the nano coating is better than nothing, but a rating is better still. 

BoxheadTim
BoxheadTim GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
2/16/20 6:28 a.m.

In reply to lnlogauge :

Just to clarify, I'm not looking for a phone I can take on a swim with sharks or something. I have a mostly waterproof phone holder for the bike, but I want to make sure that the phone doesn't immediately short circuit if it gets a few rain drops or spray from a passing 18 wheeler on it.

bluej
bluej UberDork
2/16/20 7:46 a.m.

I'm about to ditch this bloated piece of crap galaxy s8 active to go back to a oneplus, a 6t in this case. I'd suggest looking into them for your needs. Best fingerprint unlock I've used. I had a 5t, but the radios weren't configured for all us bands, so had a bit of signal issue (I thought). The s8 isn't much better, and now that tmobile offers oneplus phones directly. you can get one w/ the radios correctly configured for their network. The 6t was like $300 recertified on Amazon. 

Curtis73
Curtis73 GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
2/16/20 10:01 a.m.
BoxheadTim said:

In reply to lnlogauge :

Just to clarify, I'm not looking for a phone I can take on a swim with sharks or something. I have a mostly waterproof phone holder for the bike, but I want to make sure that the phone doesn't immediately short circuit if it gets a few rain drops or spray from a passing 18 wheeler on it.

I use my pixel for underwater photography when I'm snorkeling.  I take it in my pocket when I wet-wade fishing for bass and pike in the river and it might stay submerged for hours at a time.  It fell out of my boat last summer in 22' of water and it was there for an hour or more until I went back to camp to get my mask and fins.  I don't swim with sharks, but it sure has been nice to have a waterproof phone.

RevRico
RevRico GRM+ Memberand PowerDork
2/16/20 10:26 a.m.
Curtis73 

LG, Moto, Samsung... you're paying for the prestigious name, the expensive TV commercials, and free bloatware.

Since permanently leaving Samsung in 2011, I've had nothing but LGs and Motos. On Sprint and Fi. No bloatware from either, WAY cheaper and more capable than Samsung, and on Fi anyway, monthly updates through both brands.

Samsung is really trying to turn into the next Apple as far as locking down devices with fancy useless garbage, while at the same time stripping away standard things top sell you more expensive and jankier hardware down the line, like a wireless charger our berkeleying airpods (ugh yea, no more headset jacks, go buy $160 pair of easily lost cordless headphones instead. berkeley you Apple and berkeley everyone supporting you in this bullE36 M3), and really should be avoided.

Let's not pretend Apple isn't data mining as bad or worse than Google, they've just got better publicists.

BoxheadTim
BoxheadTim GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
2/16/20 10:57 a.m.

In reply to RevRico :

Well, there was a reason that I mentioned in the original post that some of the requirements were the ability to take certain actions without involving any cloud providers. While I do believe that Android is more "third party tracker friendly" (and I also believe Google does more personalised tracking), these days one pretty much has to acknowledge that everybody including (and especially) your own dang cell provider is tracking you in some way or other.

One of my reasons to try and stay with mainstream hardware is that you stand a better chance to find repair parts for them, even if the manufacturer doesn't want to sell them to you (yeah, like Apple). I suspect that the same goes for Motorola and maybe also LG, though, but maybe not Xiaomi or Huawei.

BoxheadTim
BoxheadTim GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
2/16/20 10:59 a.m.

In reply to bluej :

I was one of the early OnePlus adopters and unfortunately that experience put me off big time. A friend of mine who has a current OnePlus and has some issues with the phone also kinda confirmed that the customer service is as "good" as it was when I had one.

Curtis73
Curtis73 GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
2/16/20 11:03 a.m.
RevRico said:
Curtis73 

LG, Moto, Samsung... you're paying for the prestigious name, the expensive TV commercials, and free bloatware.

Since permanently leaving Samsung in 2011, I've had nothing but LGs and Motos. On Sprint and Fi. No bloatware from either, WAY cheaper and more capable than Samsung, and on Fi anyway, monthly updates through both brands.

Samsung is really trying to turn into the next Apple as far as locking down devices with fancy useless garbage, while at the same time stripping away standard things top sell you more expensive and jankier hardware down the line, like a wireless charger our berkeleying airpods (ugh yea, no more headset jacks, go buy $160 pair of easily lost cordless headphones instead. berkeley you Apple and berkeley everyone supporting you in this bullE36 M3), and really should be avoided.

Let's not pretend Apple isn't data mining as bad or worse than Google, they've just got better publicists.

Very true.  I think half of the bloatware is the phone maker, and the other half is the carrier.  I'm on Fi as well with my Pixel.

And also true about Apple.  They mine just as much information, but make you think your data is safe, which is why so many people pay through the nose for proprietary nonsense.

Curtis73
Curtis73 GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
2/16/20 11:06 a.m.
BoxheadTim said:

In reply to RevRico :

Well, there was a reason that I mentioned in the original post that some of the requirements were the ability to take certain actions without involving any cloud providers. While I do believe that Android is more "third party tracker friendly" (and I also believe Google does more personalised tracking), these days one pretty much has to acknowledge that everybody including (and especially) your own dang cell provider is tracking you in some way or other.

One of my reasons to try and stay with mainstream hardware is that you stand a better chance to find repair parts for them, even if the manufacturer doesn't want to sell them to you (yeah, like Apple). I suspect that the same goes for Motorola and maybe also LG, though, but maybe not Xiaomi or Huawei.

I read a very interesting article.  The global value of data has surpassed the value of oil.  More money has been made knowing what your shoe size is than the crude oil that has caused the world to be in wars for the last 100 years.

I'm also not sure what you mean about repair parts.  Other than screens (which are easy to get across the board), what is repairable on a cell phone that doesn't cost five times more than just buying a new phone?

Dr. Hess
Dr. Hess MegaDork
2/16/20 11:15 a.m.

The battery, Curtis.

 

I have a Galaxy S7Edge and I'm pretty happy with it. 

BoxheadTim
BoxheadTim GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
2/16/20 11:30 a.m.
Curtis73 said:

I read a very interesting article.  The global value of data has surpassed the value of oil.  More money has been made knowing what your shoe size is than the crude oil that has caused the world to be in wars for the last 100 years.

That sounds about right, although the wealth seems to be very much concentrated in a few companies overall, with a bunch of intermediates getting crumbs and people like us mostly getting mined.

I'm also not sure what you mean about repair parts.  Other than screens (which are easy to get across the board), what is repairable on a cell phone that doesn't cost five times more than just buying a new phone?

Battery, as the good doctor mentioned. Other mechanical parts that wear out - for example I still have a Nexus 5 somewhere that has a worn out power button, which at the time you still could get. A lot of this depends on how hard the manufacturer makes it to get into the phone though and what other shenanigans they play. There are some that require screens (and IIRC, in some cases batteries) to be coded to the phone before they work properly. Usually that requires software or hardware that you can't easily get outside the manufacturer's repair shops and Shenzhen.

From a GRMer perspective, the lack of repairability bugs the crap out of me, but that's a different rant.

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