Android

1. Go to Settings.

2. Go to the General tab it scroll to the bottom.

3. Click Apps*.

4. Scroll to desired app and click it.

5. Click Storage.

6. If the app is movable, Change will be present. Click it.

7. Click SD card.

8. Click Move.

Note: Screenshots are of an LG G4 with Android 6.0 (Marshmallow).

*Apps then Application manager on the SGS5.

Moto G5 Plus

Moto G Plus (5th Generation)

My last phone, a ZTE Nubia Z11 Mini, was and forever will be a piece of crap.

“This phone teases you with its 64 bit octacore processor, 16mp camera, and 3gb of RAM, but it’s terrible. It randomly loses application data (apps occasionally start as if they’d just been installed). If you want notifications or accessibility services enabled for an app, you have to lock it so the phone doesn’t close it. You have to explicitly allow apps (such as add-ons to other apps and apps that run in the background like Tasker (as examples, Tasker won’t perform tasks and Greenify’s paid features won’t work without this)) to start automatically or they won’t work. There’s no Google calendar support. No way to directly access Google Settings out of the box. The power button is on the side near the middle–the perfect place for you to accidentally shut off your phone by holding the button for 10+ second. The camera sucks if the subject isn’t less than two feet away. The screen randomly shuts off. It’s dual SIM, but if you want to use two SIM cards, you can’t use an sdcard–it’s either two SIM cards or one SIM card and one sdcard. It doesn’t have NFC. Netflix works fine, but you can’t install it from the Play Store (though that may be a Netflix issue).”
–My official review

So I got a new one, a Motorola Moto G5 Plus. It seems promising, so far and it seems to use the unaltered AOSP (vanilla) version of Android. A few minor things I don’t like: no menu button, “back” is on the wrong side, I can’t take out the battery, and the alarm volume starts at 1 for about half a second before ramping up to the actual volume–nothing I can’t deal with.

Android 8 (codename Oreo) Notifications

  • Possibly the best feature Google has implemented. As of Android 8 you can change the notification settings for every app individually based on categories wherein you can configure its visibility and sound.
  • This feature has to be implemented in the app’s code for this feature to work; however, each app has an on/off option regardless.
  • I have yet to figure out what “allow notification dot” means.

Edit: the notification dot is the number on the app icon on the homepage (ie unread count on the Messenger icon).

While not the worst phone I’ve ever had (that honor goes to the ZTE Nubia Z11 Dual Mini), it’s up there. Not only is it Samsung bad, it’s even bad for a Samsung. Despite all options for “optimization” being disabled, it still closes background apps even if they’re locked; even if the battery is 100% and plugged in. You’d think a phone that explicitly allows one to lock apps would honor that, but no…no it does not. It has its own shitty version of Google’s Play Protect which aggressively removes permissions from apps that aren’t explicitly opened by you, such as Tasker or alarms which do not need to be opened by the user unless something needs to be updated, created, disabled, or deleted. It gets hot sometimes. Unlike most modern Android devices, you can’t use an sdcard as internal storage. If you move an app to the sdcard and it gets updated, you have to move it again. Multitasking is a joke; you can’t switch between apps to transfer info between them (such as text from LastPass to Chrome) because the app just restarts and clears all the form fields; that’s not how multitasking works, Samsung. It uses a lot of stripped down versions of already available Google apps such as Galaxy Store, Samsung Pass, Samsung Internet, Calendar, the aforementioned Play Protect, Messages, and Contacts, which only work on Samsung devices; so if you want to use Samsung Pass on other non-Samsung devices, you’re shit out of luck. Wi-Fi needs to be toggled often because it loses connectivity. The camera sucks unless fuzzy is what you want.

Nubia Z11 Mini

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Prologue

I got a new phone recently. It’s made in India and some of the English text is awkwardly worded. It’s not without its weird quirks, but well worth the incredibly low price ($180).

Quirks

  • Can’t directly access Google Settings. You have to make a shortcut using an app like QuickShortcutMaker (look in Google Services Framework).
  • Can’t manage trusted places or devices for Smart Lock.
  • Doesn’t sync Google Calendar out of the box. You have to get Google Calendar Sync from ApkMirror and install it (no need for root, just install it). Reboot afterwards.
  • Smart Powersaving Mode sucks. It’s far too aggressive, you should turn it off.
  • There’s a hidden multi-user feature which can only be accessed by making a shortcut with QuickShortcutMaker (look in Settings). There’s no way to switch users without unlocking the phone and switching from that hidden menu and only stock apps are available after seeing up a new user, so you have to reinstall QuickShortcutMaker and make a new shortcut to said hidden feature to be able to switch back.
  • Disabling notifications in the stock calendar app doesn’t work, so if you use a different app for that and you don’t want both apps to notify, you can simply deny Calendar access to Calendar in its permissions.
  • I have yet to find any way to block phone numbers.
  • It’s dual-SIM, but you can’t have two SIM cards and an SD card. You can either have two SIM cards or one SIM card and one SD card.
  • The battery is not removable.
  • If you use a third-party launcher, you have to make it default again in the system settings every time your launcher updates.

Perks

  • There are more options for per-app notifications.
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  • 64-bit, eight cores, and 3GB of RAM.

Tips

  • Long-click Back to show recent apps.