Don't worry, those Fediverse stickers were like 4 cents each, not much waste.

On kofola.sk and kofola.cz

Unfortunately, it seems they removed the original posts, and made them again without this image, but it still lives on the website.
Apparently they were getting hateful comments because of it. (They posted it to Facebook and Instagram.)

It's a company most well known in Czech republic and Slovakia for... well... Kofola: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kofola

They have a lot of fans, and sometimes repost things they're tagged in, but I was pretty surprised seeing this one on the right.

kofola.sk

Unfortunately, it seems they removed the original posts, and made them again without this image, but it still lives on the website.
Apparently they were getting hateful comments because of it.

Rants are welcome, even encouraged :)

Feel free to skip the following text

The last 4 phones I had were just a mess. I am starting to loose hope of there being something that would work well. I just recently got a new phone, it's a mess as usual. Maybe what I am experiencing is enough for a warranty claim, maybe it's just a quirk to be dealt with...

Every couple years every newer phone I try is just worse and worse. I thought that maybe once PinePhone and available software gets mature enough..., but at this point, maybe other phones will just get crap enough.

My last good phone was ironically an ultra-cheap Lark Cumulus 5HD. It was just 50 EUR new. No lags, no crashes, swappable battery, a just works experience. 50 bucks...

Chronologically...

Moto G5s Plus

Great hardware, except that focus on my camera was kind-of broken, but I was too lazy to get that repaired under warranty.
But SW, god damn Motorola. Slow buggy mess. Crashes, freezes, battery drain. BUT, I was able to fix it with ✨a custom ROM✨

Poco X3 Pro

If you had any MIUI device, you know. Alarm clock may get ~~killed~~ optimized, ton of bugs to learn working around, built-in ads and spyware. Lots of it, based on blocked DNS logs.
HW - cheap and powerful. Average lifespan of the motherboard being whopping... 9 months. The phone ate 3 of them.

Moto G54 5G Power

Once again, great HW, SW not so much. The 3 button navigation was completely broken in high DPI and what made me return it - non-skippable updates. Just full-screen permanent update notifications. Only option: update. Nope.

Ulefone Armor 24

Few SW issues: Long-pressing dock icons while an app is open crashes "Quickstep", in turn killing navigation (both gesture and buttons...). Alarm clock gets killed most of the time even with all optimizations off.
HW, least I think I should classify it as such: The phone has a chance to negotiate (?) 12V for split-second intervals using QC 2.0 (based on my USB tester) which it doesn't expect, and throws overvoltage error. This happens with all QC-compatible chargers I tried, even the original one when used with OTG adapter.
The original one otherwise uses USB-C with PD, which works, sure. But after using it data transfer to PC via cable is broken until reboot.

I was very much a full-time phone person, but now it's too much. I got a cheap touchscreen ThinkPad and use it with KDE Plasma (wayland). I was doing basically everything on a phone before, now I instead try not to, but with everything being an app, damn.

I'll write what happened in steps as it occurred (the problem starts at steps 4-6, if you want to skip to that):

1. After waking up I noticed my phone was only at 50-something % after charging for 6 hours overnight from 30%. The USB tester it was connected through read constant 1.36A (around 7W). No abnormal heating observed.
2. Assuming this was kept constant, the phone should have received 42Wh overnight. I rebooted the phone, tried charging it turned off, percentage remained the same. "Whatever you say then..."
3. I tried different adapter (Xiaomi). Near-15W for a few seconds, then back to 1.36A. I often see this exact figure, thus I assume the phone learns my charging habits and slows down. I tried changing the time from around 04:30 to 12:30, but this made no difference.
4. I tried the official USB-C PD 66W adapter. Unfortunately, I do not have a USB-C tester, but Ampere app reported >5A and the percentage was indeed going up quickly.
5. I connected it back to the previous adapter, finally getting near-15W at 5V as anticipated.
6. I just put a small fan back on top of the screen (not necessary, but it was on that 66W adapter for a bit before - the cooler the better) as usual and was about to leave it charging, but soon heard a strange notification sound. Upon unlocking I was greeted with the error shown.
7. Glancing at the USB tester, it was erratically jumping between 5V, 6V and 12V, protocol jumping between "Unknown" and QC 2.0.
8. I reconnected it with the same results.
9. I switched to Xiaomi power adapter (the suspicious one being Motorola), no issues observed at first. I assumed power adapter failure.
10. I shortly connected the phone back to the official 66W adapter to asses potential damage. Everything worked.
11. I connected the phone back to the Xiaomi adapter without a USB tester, and once again got the error shown (this time on a different QC-compatible adapter). Re-connecting with a USB tester the issue didn't show up again.

Devices list

Phone

Ulefone Armor 24 (version shipped with Android 14) - 85.14Wh

USB Tester

FNIRSI FNB18

Cables

1. HOCO USB-A (4-pin*) to USB-C data + charging
2. Choetech 240W USB-C to USB-C 2m

Adapters

1. Motorola TurboPower 15W (USB-A)
2. Xiaomi TurboCharge 33W (USB-A*)
3. Ulefone 66W PD (USB-C) - (11V 6A for 66W)

* Regarding the 4-pin USB-A: Xiaomi breaks standards by utilizing USB Power Delivery via 5-pin USB-A with their proprietary cable.

Thanks for any ideas.

Slovakia, 300GB for 13 EUR/month, no texts and calls included. Those are 5 cents I think.
The carrier has an agreement with another one for coverage extension, but with official FUP of 20GB in that network.
This carrier however disregards that and instead allows up to 80GB, but for a few months after enabling 4G from that other carrier the FUP wasn't applied at all.

But it's not all sunshine and rainbows.

It operates on that other network like MVNO, and if your phone decides to stick there, which people report happens a lot, say hello to far lower FUP instead. The carrier's own network is also generally far slower.
I also found a little network issue (tested with 2 phones) where receiving calls are broken in a fairly specific scenario, but I don't know how to report that. To keep it short, if VoLTE isn't available, when switching from 2 of the 4G bands to one of the 2G bands, the call fails to connect after several long seconds of silence on caller end, and no notification of failed call attempt is sent.

I can work around both issues by selecting specific bands as needed manually, but that generally requires root and use of app like Network Signal Guru (inconvenient).
This allows me to decide whether I want more data amount, faster network speed, better outgoing call coverage, or higher chance of receiving a call. Yeah... their network sucks.

I also believe they break the EU roam like at home regulation:

Most plans only have half the data amount it seems they should have, but maybe I just calculated that wrong.
But this plan I have has... ZERO data for EU roaming.

2 x (price of mobile bundle excluding VAT / regulated maximum wholesale cap per GB) = data limit (in GB) when roaming

Hmmm... how does that give a zero.

The Sake Viva! campaign, which is being run by the National Tax Agency (NTA), asks 20- to 39-year-olds to come up with proposals to help revitalise the popularity of alcoholic drinks, which have fallen out of favour because of lifestyle changes during the coronavirus pandemic and among young people.

Taxes on alcohol accounted for 1.7% of Japan’s tax revenue in 2020, down from 3% in 2011 and 5% in 1980.

There was a particularly steep decline in beer consumption, with sales volume down 20% to less than 1.8bn litres.

Night vs day.
Day: People everywhere, nowhere to be alone. The roads are full, more than they should be. You can always hear them, and I am sure smell, and almost taste them too. Oh, look, but the sun is shining strong, the beautiful yellow... piece of shit that burns my eyes full-time, making me see so much I cannot see anymore. Imagine snow, nice, fluffy, cold, yes, but in daylight, a reflector, a mirror of pain, when will that liquefy?
And in summer time, when there is no snow, you might feel positive, look at the sun how it paints the grass and flowers, but it paints you too. You're red, you're hot, you're sweating, there's nowhere to hide, the rays shine everywhere. When did you last drink? Who knows, but it feels like a drop of water landing on your tongue could somehow erase this misery. The more you think about it, the thirstier you get.

Night: Walking through the city, alone. Cool breeze hitting the face, the city lit dim by sodium street lights, but I still wish I could dial them down. There's some white LED lights too, I can see how they're more useful to others, but for me it's a night, I want a night, crave it. In the past they were operated by simple light sensors, you could turn off entire streets by shining a flashlight at them, or so I was told. Not the case anymore.
If only they could all die out. Whether it's orange sodium lights or sharp white LED lights, they're still just trying to bring the day into the night.
The stars. Can't see the stars. Light pollution. Who are the lamps shining for? There's no one anymore. What a waste of power.
But there's still some dark areas.
When my eyes adjust to it, that's great. They feel rested, almost like my eyelids are shut, but I see. I see just enough.
With the lack of light, you realize what it meant. It's not a friend, it's a noise. Loud, persistent distracting noise, whispering right into your brain through the eyes. It whispers, it talks, you step out of the shade it screams, you look at the snow - it shrieks in your brain painfully.
Moon reflects just enough. I can walk comfortably, see the hedgehog and not step on it, yet not enough to see and read the ads.
The light doesn't whisper, I can hear. I can hear the breeze moving leafs, I can hear it move across the fields of grass long overdue for cutting. It was there during the day, but so was the sun, and people and the cars. I was deaf, but now I am not.
And I am alone. Alone in a good way. It feels like the space is mine, the air is mine, it smells better... maybe it's the (lack of) cars.

It gets best when the morning just starts turning up. Still dark, still quiet, still empty and comfortable, but things are starting up at the train station. I can hear a faint soothing roar of idling train long in the distance. I can hear it across the otherwise quiet city.
The sun has risen somewhat, it's illuminating... not yet this part of the planet, but the space above it. Space where the satellites orbit and they reflect the light back down. I can watch the so many dots moving across the still dark sky. I am looking up at them, nobody out to think I am dumb staring at the sky for minutes, of which I am only reminded by the neck pain.
Whistle!
The morning train is ready for departure. The engine sound gets nicer as the train speeds up, then fades away. But it's also a reminder... the day. It's coming, slowly murdering the night.
Light, people, noise, smells... a misery. It's here again, and you are supposed to be happy about it.

Some more pictures:

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