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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 24th, 2023

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  • About the alternatives to Google Maps…

    Navigation apps are a dime a dozen nowadays, and it really all depends on what you want to get out of it.

    In order:

    Organic Maps

    It uses OpenStreetMaps, which are waaay better than GMaps with finding the nice things of life that are not paid. Such as trails (if you’re in hiking) finding a water fountain in an airport, a public toilet in a town… But no traffic info whatsoever. It’s 100% offline.

    Magic Earth

    Very good driving and general Navigation app, very pricacy friendly, has crowsdourced traffic information, IIRC you can opt out of contributing if you want (they only keep your data for a couple hours anyway). It’ll get you to where you want to have dinner, but won’t help you choose where.

    HereWeGo

    A bit more tracking but still Dutch, so not too bad. Has crowdsourced traffic info, and integrates TripAdvisor scores for restaurants. It’s the only alternative I’ve found with some degree of reviews.





  • Put in a SSD and you’ll be surprised how far it can get you.

    My father is still using a 13 year old 14" Dell I gave up 6 years ago. He’s even using it with windows 10, and having a SSD it works almost bearably well. They keyboard broke, and with the laptop not being Win11 compatible, he asked for an upgrade.

    I got him a 6 year old Thinkpad, but I’ll install Mint and give him a VM for the few SWs he needs Windows for.





  • You sound like someone who’s never used a HRM before. Chest straps are simply the HRM design that’s been around the longest, and is the most accurate and responsive.

    All chest straps have exactly the same limitations if they don’t work for you or your use case I’m sorry to hear that. You bought the wrong product, and a different vendor would have made no difference at all.

    Just wash it well and resell it on eBay, I’m sure you can recoup a good fraction of your loss.

    By now also the LED based readings, which you get from either a wristwatch or an armband seem to have reached a decent level of performance, so that may serve you better.




  • Are you me 8 months ago? I was using Mi Band 8 while looking at maybe eventually buying a Garmin Instinct type watch. Then the Xiaomi died during a quick swim in the sea in early october and I pulled the trigger on the Instinct 2S solar.

    The Garmin is great, it’s so superior to the Xiaomi in literally everything that it’s not even funny.

    So you have a difficult choice, between European (Polar) at the cost of having to use their App, or Gadgetbridge, and then Garmin is really the best choice by far from almost any angle.



  • At some point we should have a serious discussion about what does it even mean to be a European company, to put in focus a common idea, even if it has blurry edges and if it doesn’t translate neatly in all situations.

    We’re discussing smartwatches, and Suunto gets shut down for being headquartered and operated from Finland BUT owned by a Chinese holding.

    At the same time Garmin is a Swiss corporation, but run from Kansas, so that’s not European.

    And all all all smartwatches are made in China anyway. Maybe I should make a post.




  • Depending on budget and preferences.

    The closest to your Fossil is probably Withings (French)

    The two most serious brands for sport watches Polar and Suunto (both Finnish)

    Of you want something more affordable that looks reasonable, you can look at Nothing/CMF.

    At least some of the Withings and Nothing CMF are compatible with Gadgebridge, an open source alternative to the manufacturer’s apps.


  • tl;dr it works really great for me, but there is no complete guarantee for the future, if that’s not acceptable stay away.

    So far, yes, at least for me. Telegram, WhatsApp, Netflix, banking, you name it. I have apps from three different banks, and they are perfect. Even the itsme app of the belgian government works a-ok. But there is no guarantee that this will always be the case.

    Notably Revolut has embraced enthusiastically the new Play Integrity system, and does not work at all on any third party ROM since late autumn. I was not a customer, but it has pissed many people off.

    It is not impossible that this might happen with more banks in the future.

    The App of my German mutuality didn’t work at the beginning (refused to log me in due to “issues with my device”) but after a later update now works fine. Who know how long that will be.

    Some Google things you simply loose, such as Google Pay, I also have had very mixed success with Chromecast.

    Android Auto works, but refuses to use any other navigation app than GMaps and Waze. I tried installing Mapy, HereWeGo, Organic, Magic Earth… But it doesn’t work. I half understand the reason, but I haven’t figured out a solution yet.

    I also couldn’t get Slay the Spire to work, I guess it depends on some Google Play Games feature. That’s probably for the better, I already spend too much time playing Shattered Pixel Dungeon, which is an open source roguelike available on F-Droid. Highly recommend.