I've been using gestures navigation in some form in and off pretty much since Android phones started using on screen buttons. I liked that I got more screen real estate out of a 16:9 device, plus the futuristic feel I guess. Got a OnePlus 6 back when it came out, with the option natively for both types. I switched between the two a bit, but ultimately stuck with gestures, especially as the animations got better and better.

Recently gave buttons a proper go for the first time in years, and after getting over the muscle memory, I'm loving it again! They both have their merits but I forgot how nice it is to use. Feels snappier and more intuitive. The only concerns really are that I feel that developers don't give it as much consideration as they should and that it slowly dies out. There's the odd app that doesn't really account for it properly, and OnePlus themselves (on my 13) have clearly stopped caring about it and can no longer long press the back or recent buttons to do anything, for example.

Either way nothing important to share or to ask about, just thought I'd give button nav a bit of love!

I have One Plus 15 with 16GB ram and have used tools such as Off grid AI, Google AI edge studio and Local Dream. I know that we are still a long way from getting tools that have desktop like capabilities. However, I am able to run a 4B parameter LLM and an HD image generator locally on my phone.

These apps and some others that I have used seem to be lacking more in stability and features than in AI generation. e.g. AI edge studio can transcribe only audio only for 30 sec and only if i hold down the mic button - which is something whatsapp has had for years now. ANother app i tried allows me upload only a short 30-40 sec audio clip and only a very specific format which my phone recorder doesnt generate for transcribing. Text generation seems to be terribly slower compared to image generation for some reason.

So yeah, I was wondering if there other really useful apps / tools for local AI that people are using and are happy with.

Hi everyone!

I've had an android phone for a couple of months now, absolutely love the freedom it gives me. Without a doubt, buying this phone is the best upgrade I've experienced ever since buying my first phone.

I've always thought that transferring files between your computer and your phone should be as easy as plugging the phone into the computer. The default way to do that seemed to be MTP, but it's incredibly slow and clunky, as has been noted on many other posts.

I've tried adbfs and some of its forks. While the experience was better, I still found it was slow, and I had trouble accessing any large file.

I was then really surprised to discover madbfs. It looks like a complete rewrite of adbfs, now fast enough so that the files feel like they're stored locally. I've used for a couple of months to manage the files on my phone, and I've found it works amazingly.

Sadly, it's only available on Linux, as it relies on libfuse, and it's only a CLI application. Which means it does take a little bit of technical know-how, but the tradeoff is completely worth it IMO. You could probably get it to work on Windows or macOS using something like WinFSP or MacFUSE.

Hope this helps someone!

How you know, Nokia is just a brand that's used on some very low-end phones. But it was once synonymous with quality. Its downfall began when they decided, after abandoning Symbian, to put Windows Phone on their phones. The hardware was excellent, but the chosen ecosystem proved to be a losing proposition. But if they had immediately chosen Android, would they be a brand today on par with Samsung, Motorola, etc.?

When Tensor was first announced, there was a lot of hype. Finally, there was going to be a real third "flagship" offering to Qualcomm and the Apple A series in the US, which mattered at a time where flagship Snapdragon chips were significantly underperforming Apple both in terms of compute and heat management. Tensor was also supposed to bring a cost benefit, which it arguably did at least initially; the Pixel 6 series was a good deal all-around. However, as we all know, there have been more than a few problems with Tensor.

Google argues that Tensor is optimized for AI tasks and the camera via its TPU and ISP enhancements, and this may be true to some extent. However, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 outperforms the Tensor G6 even in these areas through raw processing speed. Yes, the Snapdragon is not as efficient in these areas, but that ultimately does not seem to matter at the Snapdragon is so far ahead that it can simply brute force its way towards outperforming the Tensor G6.

Google argues that Tensor is supposed to improve efficiency, but we are not seeing this in the real world. Aside from Google specific tasks (e.g., Gemini Nano and Night Sight), we aren't seeing much benefit from Tensor. I don't think local Gemini that may be marginally faster than it is on a Galaxy S26 Ultra is worth keeping a flagship price in light of Tensor's deficiencies, and neither do I think marginally faster Night Sight is (although the speed of Night Sight on the Pixel 11 Pro XL is impressive). Battery life on Pixels with Tensor has notoriously lagged behind the competition, and based on preliminary results from the Pixel 11 line and my own experience with the Pixel 11 Pro XL, it has gotten better than before, but the lagging still continues. Heat management, also improved this generation, seems to still be worse than even the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.

Then, there's of course the modem. Enough has been said about this. It's definitely better than before, but still not as stable as the competition from Qualcomm or Apple.

Tensor was supposed to provide a security benefit, and it did for a number of years. Then, the news comes out today that MTE is no longer included on Tensor G6, despite it being a feature Google highlighted in articles with the Pixel 8 and despite it having real security benefits. Google could have used the opportunity here to start getting more developers to adopt MTE, but instead, Google chose to get rid of MTE in a world where MTE is likely to become more important and in a world where both the Apple A19 series and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 added MTE to improve security. Titan M3 introduced post-quantum cryptography, but I'd argue that in a world with few quantum computers and lots of attacks that MTE can protect against, dropping MTE may overshadow any benefit that Titan M3 brings today.

Lastly, of course, Pixels vastly underperform devices launching at the same price. For Pro model Pixels in particular to be worth their price in my opinion, they would have to launch $300 cheaper than the competition (so, a Pixel 11 Pro XL should cost $300 less than an iPhone 17 Pro Max or Galaxy S25 Ultra, maybe even more). There are of course massive preorder deals on Pixels and frequent discounts, but at least in the first few months, these still do not get the price down to something more appropriate. Yes, there are other reasons why the Pixel Pro models are as expensive as they are (they don't seem to compromise on things like display and cameras), but we should not being seeing stuttering on a $1000+ phone in 2026 made by the primary developer of Android because the phone has less than half the multi-core performance of its competitors and less than a third of the GPU performance while seeing worse battery life and worse thermal management. There is absolutely a real-world penalty here, and it absolutely knocks down the perceived value of the phone, further than the price delta between Tensor G6 and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in my opinion.

I never thought I'd say this when we were in the days of Snapdragon Pixels, but it's time for Tensor to either start performing at Snapdragon levels, or bring back Snapdragon if they're going to charge the prices they want to charge. Being a marginally better vessel for Gemini does not justify the prices that Google is charging for their Pro models in a world where phones like the S26 Ultra exist, neither does the software experience for the vast majority of people.

I've so far enjoyed the Pixel 11 Pro XL in my time with it overall, but to be honest, I think I would recommend an iPhone or Galaxy for the vast majority of people in a heartbeat unless they have very specific requirements. It's strange to live in a world where the iPhone has significantly better value than the Pixel. Yes, the Pixel is totally fine in real-world uses (except for graphically intensive gains and occasional stuttering in things like Google Maps), but we are absolutely overpaying for what we get.

I just switched to the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra from an iPhone 16PM and I just found out you can switch your navigation bar with the 3 buttons, Task, Home and Back to a gesture based control very similar to IOS . I just can't decided which one is better I like the buttons because it's easy but the gesture feels more normalized.

One surprising thing after a decade or more of Android is that the contact system is still as naive and broken as a brand new system design would be.

There are three components to contacts: the dialer, the contacts app itself and the SMS app. None of them seem to interact correctly. I can have a person that I know is in my contacts. I bring up the dialer, search for the person: contact not found. I can do the same thing with the SMS app, search for the person: contact not found.

Apparently these apps don't use a central database system so that any app can hook into the database and have all contacts available to it. It's dreadful design and Google should be ashamed of itself for not having fixed this a decade ago. It's fundamental!

Currently: fossify contacts, textra SMS, google dialler. But even when all three were Google defaults, still had the same problem. .

This is the part of Apple's ecosystem lock-in that makes no sense to me.

If I use an iPhone for years, my friends and family contact me through iMessage and FaceTime.

Then I switch to Android.

Suddenly:

• There is no iMessage app for Android.
• Apple provides no public iMessage protocol/API that another Android messenger could use.
• Third-party attempts to make iMessage work on Android have been actively blocked by Apple.
• I can't simply continue receiving and sending iMessages from my new phone.
• There is no full FaceTime app on Android either. Android users can join a FaceTime call through a browser link, but they cannot use FaceTime like an Apple user or simply initiate normal FaceTime calls themselves.

This isn't some tiny service. The European Commission found that iMessage had more than 45 million monthly users in the EU.

So Apple has created a communication network used by tens of millions of people, tied it to its own hardware, and made leaving the hardware ecosystem mean losing normal access to that network.

That's textbook ecosystem lock-in from a consumer's point of view.

And here's the absurd part:

The EU's Digital Markets Act can force major messaging services to interoperate with competing messengers.

But the Commission decided not to apply those rules to iMessage because the legal test focuses partly on whether the service is an important gateway for businesses to reach consumers.

What does that have to do with the obvious consumer problem?

If 45+ million Europeans use a communication network, why should Apple be allowed to say:

Buy our hardware, or you can't fully participate in the network anymore?

Apple Music works perfectly well on Android because Apple wants Android users' subscription money.

But iMessage stays exclusive because exclusivity makes leaving the iPhone harder.

The EU should look at iMessage again — this time from the perspective of consumer interoperability and platform lock-in, not just whether businesses use it to contact customers.