Tsikbal: from my perspective

Google just announced that it would extend the guaranteed OS updates for Pixel 6 and 7 series , from the original 3 to 5. That are great news, since means that those Pixel devices will have a longer life span, and could mean other smartphone manufactures that use Android could consider to follow suit. To be honest, it is also great news for me. I decided to go with a Pixel 7a, and knowing that I'm guaranteed to get Android 18 makes it that much better prospect for the next 3 years. If the next 3 OS updates go as well as the update from Android 14 to 15 did, I'm looking forward to keep my Pixel 7a for at least 2 years. While I'd like to see some big updates with each of new update, I rather have each to bring small updates that actually make my smartphone user experience better. For me, the big updates are just the cherry on the cake.

After upgrading my Pixel 7a to Android 15 almost a month ago, the biggest improvement I've seen in the user experience side has been a longer battery life. Normally on Android 14  by about 8:00 PM, I had about 30% of the battery left. Now, it normally has about 50% with a normal use on workday, on weekends it could be around 40% with heavy use of WhatsApp , social media , and Spotify . Not to mentions between 3 or 4 hours of Bluetooth  while I stream music or podcasts on Spotify. I also feel the Bluetooth connection with my earphones a lot more stable, and the connection feels faster. In general, the user experience feels better with no major downsides so far. The upgrades from Android 12 to 13 , on a Motorola phone, and from 13 to 14 , on a Nothing Phone 1 , were really good. Yet, they didn't feel as good as the upgrade on the Pixel 7a. Though the one on the Nothing Phone 1 comes close but not enough. To be honest, unless something changes in a big way, the only two phone...

After a couple of weeks giving mechanical keyboards a try, I must admit why people who use them recommend them so much. Typing on them really feels nicer, and the sound they make is quite something. I have come to like mechanical keyboards so much, that I decided to get three of them. A 60% one for the laptop I use mainly for media consumption, and a couple of 80% percent ones for work at my home office and for work . I decided to get these particular keyboards, because my laptop is from the same brand, and so far it has been quite a great value for my money. So much so, that if all goes as it gone so far when I've to replace it, I'm most likely to choose another one of the Machenike laptops. Specially since they play nice with Linux Mint , which is my go to Linux distro . And so far, the keyboards have given my no problem at all with Linux Mint, actually they have worked like a charm. Though I could try to dive even deeper, I don't feel like I need to because they cover ...

Growing up in the 90s consuming a lot of sci-fi media, it feels rather strange that some of the tech described on sci-fi has become a reality. Things like smartphones , wireless headphones , video telephony , are some of the technologies that sci-fi predicted for example. While smartphones, and tablets, don't really work as they were envision, are now devices that are commonplace. For example, tablets were envision as capable to do one thing while the tablets we got can be used for multiple things. The same goes for smartphones, so much so that they have replaced digital cameras, telephones, and media players. Also computers have become smaller, rather than larger as some people believed when the first computers came to be. It was predicted that people would have computer terminal  that would only be capable of sending the inputs to a central computer to be processed and displaying the results. Computers ended becoming smaller, and capable to process much more information faster...

After a couple of months, I decided to get a mechanical keyboard  for my home office. The laptop I use at home for media consumption, and some light Internet browsing, has given me some trouble with keys getting stuck since new, so I got an entry level wireless mechanical keyboard to see if all the hype I've heard about them is something I could get into. So, I decided to go with a Machenike K500-B51W  with brown switches. It is a 60% keyboard, and although for a keyboard for a more professional use I'd rather use bigger one with a number pad, for the intended use I've of it has been proven to be quite a nice fit. The main reasons I choose the K500-B51W are its size, that Machenike has proven to me that it makes good products with the L16A laptop I use as my daily driver, that is relatively cheap, and that it is a wireless keyboard. My first impressions of it, are pretty good. I still need to get used on to it, but so far it has been quite a great experience. To be honest,...

I've been an avid user of Mozilla Thunderbird email client on my laptops, for about a decade now. Specially after I started using several emails , which make managing them through a webmail  impractical. A few years ago I started to check my emails though my smartphone more often, and the email apps I settled on while usable didn't actually measured with I came to expect using Thunderbird. I knew that team behind Thunderbird was on their way to create an app for iOS and Android, but it was a work on progress. Until this week, when the app was release as a beta for testers on the Play Store . After digging around a bit, I found that it was stable enough to give a try. So far, it has been quite a great app for me. It just works, while there are some features missing. The main one I'm looking forward, is being able to sync it with my desktop app. I do that with Firefox , and find it useful for my user case. Being able to both apps seamlessly is quite useful for me, since I c...