The best photo smartphone of 2024 comes with Android

Yeah bro, this isn’t the 90s. You don’t need to insert stacks of DOS floppys.

It could be a different stratum of society. Maybe like politicians and businessmen. They say ~5% of Indians have iPhones, but I only know two people with iPhones (and one was second-hand).

I don’t think SMIC refuses to sell to non-Chinese companies. Nokia mostly uses Unisoc chips, which are made in China (not sure if by SMIC).

But if they did, it would be a pretty serious problem, since I don’t think SMIC even has a viable competitor in the entry-level smartphone chip market.

They have microSD, audio jack, okay chip (Snapdragon 4 Gen 2) and RAM (4-8 GB), replaceable batteries and screens, and HMD has pledged spare parts for seven years. That’s a good start, but it’s a bit overpriced for its specs and currently only available in Europe, so it probably won’t sell very well.

Apple is leading in a lot of countries despite Android being the dominant OS, because the Android userbase is divided among different manufacturers. See China, for example.

I mean, the biggest (or rather, only) reason I still use WhatsApp is that it works with (other people’s) WhatsApp.

Oh right, some of their assets were frozen, due to non-payment of tax. I thought you meant freezing all assets and kicking them out of the country, like what happened to Huawei.

To some extent, these might be routine tax evasion investigations. But there is definitely a pattern of certain Indian companies getting favourable treatment over foreign competitors. Whether this is a deliberate move, or just politicians shaking up businesses for hush money, I do not know.

It could just be small sample size giving a wrong result. These are based on website hits, not official sales figures.

Grey is ‘I couldn’t be arsed to look up this country; it’s tiny so I hope no one notices’.

Apple has ‘won’ a lot of countries with just 20-30% marketshare, because the Android market is so fragmented. Look at China, for example.

Major markets. The arrangement is whatever LibreOffice chose, which for some reason is reverse alphabetical order. Oh well, at least World comes first.

India has not frozen Xiaomi’s assets as far as I know. They got a pretty big fine for tax evasion (they said they were paying the tax in China, but weren’t, or something like that).

its attempts to stir up a China vs India culture war

All the viable alternatives to Xiaomi (Oppo, Vivo, Realme, etc.) are also Chinese, so this doesn’t really matter. Now these companies are challenging Xiaomi, but they’re doing it by offering comparable performance to price ratio and better cameras. Also, Xiaomi has conceded to our demand to set up some local manufacturing. Low-end phones are now assembled in Chennai, Bengaluru and Noida, although the components are still imported.

Edit: First sentence is incorrect, as pointed out below.

1. There are Terminal emulators. They can’t do everything, but they’re okay.

2. They used to have freely unlockable bootloaders but it is becoming harder and harder with newer models.

1. Why? Android is Linux.

2. Xiaomi allows bootloader unlocking, so you can install a ROM that gives you root access.

Voting is about choosing good candidates well before it gets pared down to 2 options.

In the US, yes. I was making a general statement. A voting system can be set up in multiple ways, but if it forces people to play lesser of the two evils then it is broken and needs to be changed.

Voting is about choosing good candidates (or parties, or policies). If your system doesn’t let you vote, then you should consider changing your system.

Gold having 1 more is weird because you would expect no silver if two have gold and therefore a difference of 2.

Vinesh Phogat was disqualified for being overweight during the weigh-in of the 50kg women’s wrestling final. Her opponent got gold, and both losing semifinalists got bronze.

It became a big controversy in India because she had been <50kg for every match until then, and she had previously protested against the wrestling federation - which chose her dietician and other staff - for covering up sexual assault cases.

The older models were also very repairable and customisable. Most newer ones aren’t. This is a problem for some users.

I know this is increasingly accepted, but …

To be fair, in English most adjectives can also be used as nouns. I suppose I should have said that in this context, using it as an adjective is inappropriate.

System76 and Framework are mostly North America and Western Europe. Pine64 might sell in Australia.