Samsung’s Galaxy S series smartphones grab most of the headlines since they’re the company’s flagship-class phone that typically feature the best hardware Samsung can put in your pocket (even if that hardware sometimes doesn’t run as fast as it could). But the company’s best-selling phones are actually in the wallet-friendly Galaxy A series. And now Samsung has launched two new Galaxy A-branded phones with big screens and high-res cameras… but without 5G support.
In other recent tech news from around the web, it turns out you can try Valve’s new Steam Deck user interface without holding an actual Steam Deck in your hands. It just takes a little work to access the new UI using the Steam game client on any Windows or Mac PC.
The folks behind security-hardened Android-based operating system GrapheneOS are releasing some security & privacy-focused apps to Google Play, allowing you to run them on just about any Android device. And Microsoft has completed is acquisition of Nuance and released an update to the command line Windows Package Manager (those last two aren’t related).
Samsung introduces two new budget 4G phones. The Galaxy A23 and A13 both have 6.6 inch LCD display, 50MP primary cameras 5,000 mAh batteries and 25W charging. The Galaxy A23 has a faster processor and more RAM & storage. https://t.co/TGsQOMy9fs
— Liliputing (@liliputingnews) March 4, 2022
You can try out the Steam Deck user interface on any computer running the Steam client on Windows or Linux. You just need to make a few small tweaks to launch Steam with the new UI and you can always revert to the original design. https://t.co/FQ2TKu9LQX
— Liliputing (@liliputingnews) March 4, 2022
GrapheneOS is a security-hardened version of Google Android. Now the makers of the OS are releasing security & privacy-focused apps to the Play Store so you can get some advantages without installing a custom ROM. Secure Camera and Secure PDF Viewer. https://t.co/UnPEYbLhMb
— Liliputing (@liliputingnews) March 4, 2022
Windows Package Manager 1.2 brings improvements for ARM64 devices, easier translation of error codes, and other updates to the command-line utility for installing Windows applications from Microsoft’s repository. https://t.co/GswX1iJm7K
— Liliputing (@liliputingnews) March 4, 2022
Microsoft has completed its $19.7 billion acquisition of Nuance, makers of the Dragon line of text-to-speech tools, among other things. The deal was first announced almost a year ago to bolster Microsoft’s conversational AI & ambient computing tech. https://t.co/eaG98mQtUs
— Liliputing (@liliputingnews) March 4, 2022
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I find it interesting that about 80% of the products on Liliputing don’t run Windows and don’t have Intel processors. Maybe only 20% have WinTel inside?
I hope the Graphene team comes out with some more apps like that. I’m looking for a new Video player app, and also a File Explorer app.
I swear I can’t find good options for these two things that last more than 6 months before they turn into privacy violations, or they start doing really annoying stuff.
I miss the days when MX Player and ES File Explorer were trustworthy
I’ve long favored file managers from F-Droid, though some are also available through Google. They’re open source and the repo reports things like tracking. Perhaps you have other needs or concerns that are beyond my awareness, but I’m not aware of privacy violations with file managers I’ve used. I’ve used Amaze, which seems to no longer be open source, and Ghost Commander. Ghost Commander is a dual-panel manager which was weird to understand at first, but I ended up really liking it. Selecting versus executing a file is done by tapping it on the left or right side of a file or folder within its own panel. Copy or move sends files to the other panel. And there are other managers beyond those two.
I’ve been slowly trying the file managers on Fdroid. I hadn’t tried Ghost Commander yet. I just tried it, I like the concept. I’ll try it for a while