Use pidgin. I'm pretty sure trillian hasn't been updated in 10 years and pidgin offers full encryption.

Trillian. Jesus Christ

KP wth is with your obsession with encryption?

Send me your entire text and email history and you'll see!

KPew obviously trying to screw us all. WTF is this???

There is a niche for super cheap low spec unlocked phones that, by virtue of being cheap, sell a lot of units.

That is a terrible argument for there being a strong market for expensive high spec small devices. Strong enough to justify it's existence.

This is a multi hundred billion dollar industry, if it was smart to make one then companies would be doing so right now.

Keep in mind Samsung officially has three flagship devices, Apple has two, LG has three I think, Sony has at least two, moto/droid has three and Microsoft has like fifteen or something ridiculous and between them they represent virtually all of the smartphone market in the developed nations yet there isn't a small phone amongst that group iirc. Maybe I overlooked some windows phone that is top spec and sells like ten units a year.

Even China is starting to trend large, if i had time to research I bet I'd find the flagships from huawei and oppo are 5" or bigger now.

My work is that much money being invested in so many types of devices with so much data to hand hasn't equalled one small flagship device of a small size. It is only logical to conclude the market for one is super niche that it would barely break into profit, if at all.

I mean Samsung makes goram flip phone Androids and LG has bendy phones and there are phones that turn know tablets (sort of) so it's not like they arent trying ideas out. They are looking for the next phablet, a device no one realised they wanted, not the next generation of a 4" screen.

br your interest in privacy and security is inspiring and refreshing.

I recommend not saving your password.

(douche meter explodes)

I'm a convert. My old Galaxy Nexus had terrible battery life but it was no big deal because I didn't mind carrying around a bunch of batteries. Yeah the whole charging merry-go-round wasn't perfect, and the cheapo batteries I would buy on amazon never really lasted, but it wasn't a huge deal.

Now I have a nexus 6...upthread KB4Z had recommended some of the Anker external chargers and I got the 16000 and the 3200. Thumbs up. I don't use them much because my battery life on the phone seems great and no matter what I do it's hard to burn through a whole charge in a day, but for me the external chargers are plenty. If I was only going to get one then I'd def get the 16000.

The most useless phone thing I've ever bought was a wireless charger, but I might not be cool enough for it.

Totally appreciate the work that dukemagic, Phill, saw, KP, and other thread regs contribute itt. I'm not really a phone guy but it's nice to know that every year or two I can just read this thread for an hour and feel enough on top of things to make a decently informed buy. Thanks!

You can't make it your default sms/mms software, other people you text also have to use it.

I understand why...

I couldn't believe how fast this software was. Message delivered/received/read notification was near instantaneous. It was entertaining to set messages in a secret chat thread to auto-delete after 30 seconds and watch them disappear, see notification on both ends that I'd done a screenshot during chat, etc.

Now to get all my contacts to download it...

yeah the interface is really good and you don't have to be the senior cryptographer at Google to figure it out. I got my little brother to set it up on his own and he's a nub.

That's sort of the "real" biggest draw to crypto.cat, telegram, textsecure and whatever else is out there and coming out. PGP is great but good luck getting anyone to ever set that crap up. These take little convincing to all but the most stubborn people.

Hai

I just bought one of these for my tablet recently, definitely recommend it:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00QRQZQR...tooth+keyboard

It took me a long time on and off to find a Bluetooth keyboard I actually like. its not perfect, its American layout, the cut copy and paste shortcuts ar not only on different keys to xcv they arent even in that order. Also the shift key should be longer, I need a good shift key on the right more than arrow keys because of touch typing but I figure I will eventually get used to it. Backspace is in a kinda goofy spot too.

Despite the smaller size than my Chromebook keyboard, which I love typing on, it's just big enough to be used for full touch typing. Its good enough I plan to give away my Chromebook to my g/f and just do all my computing on my tablet an phone now.

I'm a fan of the Lenovo S6000 bluetooth keyboard ($15-$25). The bluetooth is super reliable and the rechargeable battery lasts months. I just leave it on. It has a slot that holds most reasonably thin tablets upright while typing. It also functions great for typing with it and my tablet on my lap.

The knock I have against it is that it doesn't have the Windows function keys (F1-F12).

It will sometimes go on sale for $15 with free shipping from the Lenovo outlet site.

http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-S6000-B.../dp/B00D69R50K

did you read my post?
If i want to text a picture
and want to add text
and rotate the device
textra does not rotate( infer that the picture has already been inserted in the text)

I have contacted them about this, and they have acknowledged "this is and issue" and we are working on it" for two years.
So my point was..its a feature id like to see resolved as before i pay for the product and in the mean time what the best current or are there any up and coming SMS apps?

so, is it fair to say that price is more important than size, at least at the present time?

if we are talking devices actually being used in the world, a majority is under 5", and a majority of new devices being sold is still under 5". yes, cost is one of the reasons. the other is large phones are difficult to use for a large percentage of users due to their size.

which is why, i think, apple split their lineup into iPhone 6 and 6+. because it was smart to do.

now it just sounds like conjecture. yes, more money is being invested into phones that can do more stuff. 6-12 months down the line, all that stuff will fit into a smaller factor with the added benefit of being cheaper. if the consumers prefer it, they will choose that option much like they do now.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/new-produ...t-in-2015-mwc/

i am counting the following under 5" phones.
Galaxy S6 mini (also edge comes at 5.1")
Sony Xperia Z3 Compact
HTC M9 comes in at exactly 5" (while the M9+ is 5.5")
so does the Xiaomi Mi 4i
even newcomers like Hudl and Ubuntu are under 5"
Huawei flagships are 5.2 and 6.8 for the max version

i am listing everything here because i want to avoid inadvertently commenting on which device will be a commercial success or flop. the point is consumers have shown that size can get too big, and a lot of bigger phones are just that.

and here i thought i was showing some good will by actually doing minimal research into the topic, rather than sweeping generalizations.

Hey guys. Pretty much a newb when it comes to phones. Only use it to call, text and listen to music for the most part.

I have a Samsung Galaxy S4. Had it about a year and last night I got a message saying I needed to upgrade the software to lollipop 5.0. So I did thinking it was just going to update the hardware as it did with phones I had in the past.

However it changed all of the themes and colors on all of my launch screens to these ungodly pastel oranges, greens, baby blues etc...

Is there any way I can get the interface I had back. I looked at some theme apps, but most of them have bad reviews. Ads, bloatware and the like. I can't find anything in the phone settings where I can change any of this.

Short of uninstalling the update, which I don't even know how to do that, I need some help.

Thanks

Short answer is no, you can't get the interface you had back. What you are seeing as "ungodly" is what Lollipop is supposed to look like (I know, I think it's ugly too).

And no, you can't uninstall the update (at least not with your self-professed level of expertise).

I think there are themer programs available that don't suck but I'll leave listing them to other more-knowledgeable folks. I'd recommend just getting used to it.

I'd like to add on to this - besides the fact the new interface looks horrendous... just a couple things I noticed:

-horrible color scheme
-can't preview texts on lock screen anymore or drop down menu to preview them without opening them

And I'm sure there's more. I'd find more if the thing didn't crash every 5 minutes. My phone is basically shot from this update. Takes 3 minutes for a text to send. MMS messages don't even appear. I can't remove apps I want to anymore. When it restarts it tells me google play services can't be connected. If I try to add a widget the touchwiz crashes. And if i try to use go homescreen the phone resets and gets stuck on the verizon boot screen. sSame thing happens when i go into my app manager and try to clear cache or delete some old apps to free up space for this massive sized update.

I realize this is an older model, but i had no problems with it. Now it seems like I'm being forced to go upgrade. I'm pretty damn pissed off.

I don't know if anyone can help, I'm not really looking for that as much as I just want to know if this is happening to anyone else.

This is probably a dumb question, and only like, half Android, but this seemed like the right place to ask.

I have an Android phone and a Mac laptop. I would like to accomplish the following, with as close to no ongoing maintenance as possible.

1. Automatically sync my phone's photos to someplace on the internet. The place on the internet should have reasonable sharing functions (not that this is exactly rare).
2. Automatically sync my phone's photos to my laptop.
3. Ideally, I should be able to set up an auto-sync to my network attached USB drive in my house. (obviously not an Android question.)

I believe that I can do this pretty simply (well, all except 3, which I haven't thought through yet), like this:

1. Set my phone to auto-sync to Google Drive, where I have a pile of storage
2. Set my Google Photos to show photos that exist in Google Drive (this might be automatic now?)
3. Set up Google Drive on computer
4. Point Photos app at Google Drive folder (this isn't really related to earlier goals, but makes it so that I can use that app for photo editing)

Then I just have to figure out how to sync the network USB drive?

Does this make sense, or is there a better option anyone uses?

Thanks for the feedback, albeit not the feedback I wanted to hear. I was afraid of that. At least it still seems to function properly. But it's like a group of 6 year olds programmed this and their dad said "yeah, people are gonna love this!" and released it.

1. activate auto-backup to google+ photos.
2. set up google drive on your computer and set it to include your pictures

done
(you can also do backups automatically to dropbox and then it works the same)

the usb network backup: i assume you can do this with time capsule, but i don't use a mac. but that's the first step to look at imho


@conz: you should reset your phone. that's completely NOT normal.

Trontron,

Ty. Seems like it's even easier than I thought! Unfortunately drive doesn't seem to have consumed all the photos I'd synced to g+ previously. I guess I'll download and upload. Not it's cool to see they cleaned this up, instead of requiring people to use lol Picasa to manage g+ albums.

Edit: oh, cool. Seems like they will migrate for me in a couple weeks. So I won't do anything drastic for now. Unfortunately (for other people I guess, as it won't effect me), seems like this will sort of end the free storage for smallish pictures people got in g+, and all pictures will count against storage quota.

I thought Dropbox did this when I had an S3.

Yea I was gonna say dropbox too, I feel like that system works as desired with no setup. Just tick an "auto upload to Dropbox check box somewhere" and that of course syncs with your computer automatically.

I also have an S4 that is asking me to download lollipop. I should not do this, right?