Cell phones survey
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@scottalanmiller said in Cell phones survey:
@tim_g said in Cell phones survey:
I also cannot find any apps that "are" malware.
This one statement might be the key here. If we make one assumption, that you are seeing malware but not realizing it is malware - presumably because it is apps you are not interested in (DuoLingo is not a likely target for malware makers to make the app) it is easily there all the time and you just have no need to filter it out.
It's a reasonable assumption that malware apps use two main criteria to get good results:
- They choose apps missing from the Windows Store, not ones that are there from real vendors so there is no vendor to complain about it.
- They choose apps that are most likely to be used by less technical people who are more anxious to do something fun than to verify if the app is legit or not. Both making their infection rate higher and their chance of being reported lower. Although we've seen that MS doesn't respond to reporting anyway, so that might not be a real issue for malware makers.
Given those logical ways that malware would be targeted, it's apps like Facebook (recently pulled from certain Windows Phone platforms) or SnapChat or who knows what the hipster teenagers use to share food porn these days that are really big targets. Things where people will install them without thinking. Or apps that those people will pay for, without thinking. And apps for the elderly, maybe. Whatever those would be.
You are not likely a target candidate. You are risky. You would likely spot a malware app and you are more likely to report it. Both things that they want to avoid. You are anything but low hanging fruit.
So there is every reasonable chance that the issue here is that you use apps that tend to exist in the store and don't tend to use apps that are likely to be malware and you are not doing activities that cause you to notice malware. That doesn't mean that there is still malware, but all other references suggest that it is still there just like before, but it does mean that there is little reason to feel that just because you have not noticed it to assume that much has changed. That there has been some change, sure, but much? It would take very little change to create a very reasonable situation where the store could still be full of malware, even paid for and promoted malware that you do not see.
Remember, target marketing has come a LONG way in the last three years. Knowing how to make sure only people likely to fall for malware apps ever see them is a pretty trivial bit of intelligence for the store's search system to have. And that kind of intelligence would already be automated on platforms like Google or Facebook, so it's no stretch for it to be in the Windows Store. Even if it wasn't designed for that purpose, effective AI advertising campaigns would cause that to happen organically.
I did a quick check for Snapchat, not a single app with that name or anything similar.
I gotta get going now... Not ignoring you but gotta head off for the night. I'll catch up tomorrow.
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I have a Motorola Moto GP, I think. It does the job, and when I kill it it's cheap to replace.
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@fuznutz04
try to make it :
- Android and from vendor or model that does not mess with the Android OS much
- 2-3 GB RAM, depending on your multi-tasking
- Equivalent to Snapdragon 625 and higher
- USB Type C for future goodness
- Vendor/Phone has good OS update plan
When i look for smartphones this is what majorly look for. I cant say brands like Motto or LG or HUAWEI just like we do with laptops we dont buy DELL or HP we buy an i5/8GB RAM/...etc and we start with fresh install.
I like Android cause of the competitiveness and you are in platform that guarantees everything will work.
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Just to throw my hat into the ring:
I have a Xiaomi Mi5s Plus and love it, the price is a definite bonus, plus the large storage capacity means it doesn't matter about no external storage (I have the 128GB and 6GB RAM model).
Not had any issues with it that I can remember, beats the Pixel in my experience and is far cheaper too
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@scottalanmiller said in Cell phones survey:
@tim_g said in Cell phones survey:
My next phone will most likely be Android because I want an Asus phone and want to get off o lf Win10 mobile before it crashes. If it doesn't then maybe ill come back in a few years.
I'm thinking about a ZenFone 4 for my next one. I've been burned by Androids (not Android itself, but every phone I've tried) but Asus has been so good to me, I feel good about testing one of their newer phones. I like the look and the features and the vendor. I want to get away from iPhone, but so far, have found no viable alternative. but I'm hopeful.
I'm not traveling heavily right now, so have an opportunity to test an Android again without the dangers of being stranded like I've been in the past when I foolishly tried that before.
If I have to buy a phone I think I'm getting a Oneplus. From everything I've seen they are awesome.
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@tim_g said in Cell phones survey:
@scottalanmiller said in Cell phones survey:
@tim_g said in Cell phones survey:
I also cannot find any apps that "are" malware.
This one statement might be the key here. If we make one assumption, that you are seeing malware but not realizing it is malware - presumably because it is apps you are not interested in (DuoLingo is not a likely target for malware makers to make the app) it is easily there all the time and you just have no need to filter it out.
It's a reasonable assumption that malware apps use two main criteria to get good results:
- They choose apps missing from the Windows Store, not ones that are there from real vendors so there is no vendor to complain about it.
- They choose apps that are most likely to be used by less technical people who are more anxious to do something fun than to verify if the app is legit or not. Both making their infection rate higher and their chance of being reported lower. Although we've seen that MS doesn't respond to reporting anyway, so that might not be a real issue for malware makers.
Given those logical ways that malware would be targeted, it's apps like Facebook (recently pulled from certain Windows Phone platforms) or SnapChat or who knows what the hipster teenagers use to share food porn these days that are really big targets. Things where people will install them without thinking. Or apps that those people will pay for, without thinking. And apps for the elderly, maybe. Whatever those would be.
You are not likely a target candidate. You are risky. You would likely spot a malware app and you are more likely to report it. Both things that they want to avoid. You are anything but low hanging fruit.
So there is every reasonable chance that the issue here is that you use apps that tend to exist in the store and don't tend to use apps that are likely to be malware and you are not doing activities that cause you to notice malware. That doesn't mean that there is still malware, but all other references suggest that it is still there just like before, but it does mean that there is little reason to feel that just because you have not noticed it to assume that much has changed. That there has been some change, sure, but much? It would take very little change to create a very reasonable situation where the store could still be full of malware, even paid for and promoted malware that you do not see.
Remember, target marketing has come a LONG way in the last three years. Knowing how to make sure only people likely to fall for malware apps ever see them is a pretty trivial bit of intelligence for the store's search system to have. And that kind of intelligence would already be automated on platforms like Google or Facebook, so it's no stretch for it to be in the Windows Store. Even if it wasn't designed for that purpose, effective AI advertising campaigns would cause that to happen organically.
I did a quick check for Snapchat, not a single app with that name or anything similar.
I gotta get going now... Not ignoring you but gotta head off for the night. I'll catch up tomorrow.
So a little about the Snapchat stuff. I had an HTC WP 8 device. Snapchat never released an app for WP. There was one developer who released a few apps (Snapchat, Instagram, 9Gag, and some others) using the APIs for the actual apps. Instagram finally released a "beta" (it was literally beta for like 3-4 years, it may still be) and his was better than the official app. For some reason MS pulled the Snapchat app and left the others.
I had a WP 8 and a WP 8.1 device. I loved the integration of social apps into 8. If I wanted to post something to Facebook I could just use the people hub (not that but whatever it was called at the time) and post without opening Facebook. It was the same with a few other platforms. When 8.1 hit they removed that feature for some reason. 8.1 had weird issues where I would get multiple of the same app running in the background and stuff wouldn't get laggy and jerky. It was just a worse experience overall.
However WP 8 had no VPN ability at all unless you had some corporate thing set up and when they finally released it in 8.1 I think it was only l2tp and IKE. I ended up just giving up on the platform.
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Again, another thread hijacked by @scottalanmiller, who should have forked this thread a long time ago as a different subject.
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@scottalanmiller said in Cell phones survey:
@tim_g said in Cell phones survey:
My next phone will most likely be Android because I want an Asus phone and want to get off o lf Win10 mobile before it crashes. If it doesn't then maybe ill come back in a few years.
I'm thinking about a ZenFone 4 for my next one. I've been burned by Androids (not Android itself, but every phone I've tried) but Asus has been so good to me, I feel good about testing one of their newer phones. I like the look and the features and the vendor. I want to get away from iPhone, but so far, have found no viable alternative. but I'm hopeful.
I'm not traveling heavily right now, so have an opportunity to test an Android again without the dangers of being stranded like I've been in the past when I foolishly tried that before.
It still amazes me that travel is so terrible with androids. I believe you 100%, it's just amazing that they could be that much worse.
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@quixoticjeremy said in Cell phones survey:
@scottalanmiller said in Cell phones survey:
@tim_g said in Cell phones survey:
My next phone will most likely be Android because I want an Asus phone and want to get off o lf Win10 mobile before it crashes. If it doesn't then maybe ill come back in a few years.
I'm thinking about a ZenFone 4 for my next one. I've been burned by Androids (not Android itself, but every phone I've tried) but Asus has been so good to me, I feel good about testing one of their newer phones. I like the look and the features and the vendor. I want to get away from iPhone, but so far, have found no viable alternative. but I'm hopeful.
I'm not traveling heavily right now, so have an opportunity to test an Android again without the dangers of being stranded like I've been in the past when I foolishly tried that before.
It still amazes me that travel is so terrible with androids. I believe you 100%, it's just amazing that they could be that much worse.
It's not that travel with androids is terrible - it's that Scott's experience with Androids is so unreliable that he's not willing to risk traveling with one.
I traveled with my Nexus 6P this past June to England, Belgium and France. I bought a T-Mobile plan (which I quickly canceled when I got home since it didn't work in Nebraska almost at all) that worked reasonably well in Europe. The only place I had an issue was downtown Brussels - I had near zero cell reception and no internet access - that was very odd.
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Wow.... this thread exploded/derailed fast.
As expected, this is a mixed bag. Thanks for the opinions and suggestions on new phones. I didn't know about a couple of those Android models.I'm going to attempt to limp along until the next phone models come out next month and then make a final decision.
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I've heard good things about Cortana, and that was one of the major points why people liked their Windows phones. I just had the chance to use Cortana to set up new PC at work, and it's just dumb. I asked her to change time zone to EST, nope, she tried to open settings panel for me to change it, which froze. I asked her to uninstall McAfee, nope, she tried to search for something. Finally I told her to get lost, she went quiet after that, she got that part right. It's a safe bet to assume she's just as dumb on phone. Even NYPD is replacing their Windows phones with iPhones right now.
I can't say much about droid phones, but every single user at work had issues with IMAP email setup, droids would lose settings randomly, or would simply refuse to work claiming password was incorrect - I'm looking at you Samsung. Besides almost every droid phone has so much crapware, just like every brand name PC. Before that phone ends up in your hands, it goes through 3 or 4 different vendors, hardware manufacturer makes the hardware, Google makes the OS, then you get 3rd party crapware, and finally cellular operator loads their own crapware. And then you cannot even get updates for it. How do you assure quality product in the end? There are exceptions of course, like Google Pixel, but that's small fraction of droid phones.
Iphones just work. You deal with Apple only, from hardware to software, even 3rd party apps are controlled by them.
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@scottalanmiller said in Cell phones survey:
@tim_g said in Cell phones survey:
My next phone will most likely be Android because I want an Asus phone and want to get off o lf Win10 mobile before it crashes. If it doesn't then maybe ill come back in a few years.
I'm thinking about a ZenFone 4 for my next one. I've been burned by Androids (not Android itself, but every phone I've tried) but Asus has been so good to me, I feel good about testing one of their newer phones. I like the look and the features and the vendor. I want to get away from iPhone, but so far, have found no viable alternative. but I'm hopeful.
I'm not traveling heavily right now, so have an opportunity to test an Android again without the dangers of being stranded like I've been in the past when I foolishly tried that before.
I was considering the ZenFone 4 Pro: https://www.asus.com/us/Phone/ZenFone-4-Pro-ZS551KL/
That thing is a beast. It would be a huge hardware upgrade to my Lumia 950XL. There's some bonuses to using Android that I like, such as a decent smartwatch link I've been eyeballing for a while, among a few other apps I don't need, but could like to have.
I'd still prefer Windows 10 Mobile on that Asus hardware, because I just enjoy the interface and experience so much more compared to Android, and the Windows 10 Mobile store is actually quite pleasant now. The Windows Store prior to Win10 (8 and 8.1) does not at all reflect on how it is now, regardless of how you feel about it. I've been using it hard since November of 2015. (almost 2 years now)
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@dashrender said in Cell phones survey:
@quixoticjeremy said in Cell phones survey:
@scottalanmiller said in Cell phones survey:
@tim_g said in Cell phones survey:
My next phone will most likely be Android because I want an Asus phone and want to get off o lf Win10 mobile before it crashes. If it doesn't then maybe ill come back in a few years.
I'm thinking about a ZenFone 4 for my next one. I've been burned by Androids (not Android itself, but every phone I've tried) but Asus has been so good to me, I feel good about testing one of their newer phones. I like the look and the features and the vendor. I want to get away from iPhone, but so far, have found no viable alternative. but I'm hopeful.
I'm not traveling heavily right now, so have an opportunity to test an Android again without the dangers of being stranded like I've been in the past when I foolishly tried that before.
It still amazes me that travel is so terrible with androids. I believe you 100%, it's just amazing that they could be that much worse.
It's not that travel with androids is terrible - it's that Scott's experience with Androids is so unreliable that he's not willing to risk traveling with one.
I traveled with my Nexus 6P this past June to England, Belgium and France. I bought a T-Mobile plan (which I quickly canceled when I got home since it didn't work in Nebraska almost at all) that worked reasonably well in Europe. The only place I had an issue was downtown Brussels - I had near zero cell reception and no internet access - that was very odd.
I don't get how traveling with Android is bad. My wife uses Android and we were in Sweden for 3 months.. it was just fine. The hardware sucks because it's so old (Note 3 and all the issues that come with that) and there's never any free space, but Android and the apps gave no issues at all.
Does he drop Androids on the ground more often or something? What's traveling do?
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@scottalanmiller said in Cell phones survey:
The entire store was designed around delivering fake products (malware) to me. It was a platform designed for malware, and nothing BUT malware.
You say things like this - I just shake my head. I want to argue - but it's fruitless. I'm sure you have a reason that you believe that the store is designed around delivering fake products that I simply don't understand.
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@marcinozga said in Cell phones survey:
I've heard good things about Cortana, and that was one of the major points why people liked their Windows phones. I just had the chance to use Cortana to set up new PC at work, and it's just dumb. I asked her to change time zone to EST, nope, she tried to open settings panel for me to change it, which froze. I asked her to uninstall McAfee, nope, she tried to search for something. Finally I told her to get lost, she went quiet after that, she got that part right. It's a safe bet to assume she's just as dumb on phone. Even NYPD is replacing their Windows phones with iPhones right now.
Wow - while asking Cortana to do those things (change timezone, uninstall an app) are definitely cool ideas - I don't believe any personal assistant does those things right now.
At least Cortana tried to get you to the setting page, not sure why it froze.
Does Siri do any of these things?
I think your ask is currently unrealistic (primarily on the uninstall an app front). Will we get it some day, sure.
Did you try the other things that Cortana can do? send a SMS message? start a phone call? add a calendar entry? create a reminder? -
I like LG Android phones. They are not bloated with software and is pretty close to vanilla android, far better than Samsung in my opinion. Also, you can get a good smartphone at a low cost from LG. The LG Stylo 3 Plus is really cheap on T-Mobile but has good specs.
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@dashrender said in Cell phones survey:
@marcinozga said in Cell phones survey:
I've heard good things about Cortana, and that was one of the major points why people liked their Windows phones. I just had the chance to use Cortana to set up new PC at work, and it's just dumb. I asked her to change time zone to EST, nope, she tried to open settings panel for me to change it, which froze. I asked her to uninstall McAfee, nope, she tried to search for something. Finally I told her to get lost, she went quiet after that, she got that part right. It's a safe bet to assume she's just as dumb on phone. Even NYPD is replacing their Windows phones with iPhones right now.
Wow - while asking Cortana to do those things (change timezone, uninstall an app) are definitely cool ideas - I don't believe any personal assistant does those things right now.
At least Cortana tried to get you to the setting page, not sure why it froze.
Does Siri do any of these things?
I think your ask is currently unrealistic (primarily on the uninstall an app front). Will we get it some day, sure.
Did you try the other things that Cortana can do? send a SMS message? start a phone call? add a calendar entry? create a reminder?Why unrealistic? Most software can be uninstalled silently through wmic, so why wouldn't Cortana do it? I don't know about Siri as I hardly ever use it, but I use Alexa a lot, she can order pizza for example, which is a lot more complex task than uninstalling software. Changing time zone should be dead simple too, I will test it with both Alexa and Siri when I get home.
As for other things, no, I was setting up a PC, so none of the above tasks are relevant, but both Alexa and Siri can do those too. -
@marcinozga said in Cell phones survey:
@dashrender said in Cell phones survey:
@marcinozga said in Cell phones survey:
I've heard good things about Cortana, and that was one of the major points why people liked their Windows phones. I just had the chance to use Cortana to set up new PC at work, and it's just dumb. I asked her to change time zone to EST, nope, she tried to open settings panel for me to change it, which froze. I asked her to uninstall McAfee, nope, she tried to search for something. Finally I told her to get lost, she went quiet after that, she got that part right. It's a safe bet to assume she's just as dumb on phone. Even NYPD is replacing their Windows phones with iPhones right now.
Wow - while asking Cortana to do those things (change timezone, uninstall an app) are definitely cool ideas - I don't believe any personal assistant does those things right now.
At least Cortana tried to get you to the setting page, not sure why it froze.
Does Siri do any of these things?
I think your ask is currently unrealistic (primarily on the uninstall an app front). Will we get it some day, sure.
Did you try the other things that Cortana can do? send a SMS message? start a phone call? add a calendar entry? create a reminder?Why unrealistic? Most software can be uninstalled silently through wmic, so why wouldn't Cortana do it? I don't know about Siri as I hardly ever use it, but I use Alexa a lot, she can order pizza for example, which is a lot more complex task than uninstalling software. Changing time zone should be dead simple too, I will test it with both Alexa and Siri when I get home.
As for other things, no, I was setting up a PC, so none of the above tasks are relevant, but both Alexa and Siri can do those too.Unrealistic because they just aren't things that have been made available yet. You couldn't order pizza on the day that Alexa was released, hell, not for years after it was released, but they added that feature and today you can.
So as I already mentioned - in the future I fully expect you to be able to do that. And assuming MS can ever actually get a decent Windows Store - you should be able to install software that way too.
Cortana is a personal assistant, more attune to secretary, at this point. I don't expect more secretaries to be able to install/uninstall software on my computer.
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@dashrender said in Cell phones survey:
@marcinozga said in Cell phones survey:
@dashrender said in Cell phones survey:
@marcinozga said in Cell phones survey:
I've heard good things about Cortana, and that was one of the major points why people liked their Windows phones. I just had the chance to use Cortana to set up new PC at work, and it's just dumb. I asked her to change time zone to EST, nope, she tried to open settings panel for me to change it, which froze. I asked her to uninstall McAfee, nope, she tried to search for something. Finally I told her to get lost, she went quiet after that, she got that part right. It's a safe bet to assume she's just as dumb on phone. Even NYPD is replacing their Windows phones with iPhones right now.
Wow - while asking Cortana to do those things (change timezone, uninstall an app) are definitely cool ideas - I don't believe any personal assistant does those things right now.
At least Cortana tried to get you to the setting page, not sure why it froze.
Does Siri do any of these things?
I think your ask is currently unrealistic (primarily on the uninstall an app front). Will we get it some day, sure.
Did you try the other things that Cortana can do? send a SMS message? start a phone call? add a calendar entry? create a reminder?Why unrealistic? Most software can be uninstalled silently through wmic, so why wouldn't Cortana do it? I don't know about Siri as I hardly ever use it, but I use Alexa a lot, she can order pizza for example, which is a lot more complex task than uninstalling software. Changing time zone should be dead simple too, I will test it with both Alexa and Siri when I get home.
As for other things, no, I was setting up a PC, so none of the above tasks are relevant, but both Alexa and Siri can do those too.Unrealistic because they just aren't things that have been made available yet. You couldn't order pizza on the day that Alexa was released, hell, not for years after it was released, but they added that feature and today you can.
So as I already mentioned - in the future I fully expect you to be able to do that. And assuming MS can ever actually get a decent Windows Store - you should be able to install software that way too.
Cortana is a personal assistant, more attune to secretary, at this point. I don't expect more secretaries to be able to install/uninstall software on my computer.
Not years, months. Echo has been publicly available since June 2015, pizza ordering became available in February 2016, perhaps even earlier than that.
Cortana was released even before Echo was available to prime invitees.
