I think Spotify is missing the point. People who care about Hi-Fi, care about the music, which means they care about the artists, which means they likely care about the treatment of those artists.

In my eyes the only real value Spotify adds is their discovery features.

Please don't associate dogs to those people. Dogs deserve better.

Okay, "never would have happened" is an exaggerated statement. But you're talking about the headphone wires breaking. I'm talking about the USBC port on the phone itself breaking. I've never had a headphone jack PORT break. But Ive had 2 phones USBC ports fail from pressure on the plug.

I would much rather have the wire on headphones fail instead of the port on the device itself.

Not sure why, but BT experiences interference when in my pocket. The signal gets choppy when sections of my torso get in the way. Which is always when my phone is in my pocket. So I got USBC headphones/dongle.

On a bike ride, I noticed the audio was starting to disconnect. This happens often on rides and runs since the USBC plug sticks out a lot from the port and slowly wiggles loose. Except this time it wasn't loose. The leverage of the long plug on the short connector damaged the port. This never would have happened with a headphone jack. It has a strong connection that can rotate freely. Now I have a phone that can't charge or play music.

My next phone will be a sony xperia some they still have the jack and still allow the bootloader to be unlocked.

I'm guessing the use of AI is partially contributing to this drop.

Question, do you have a gaming desktop? Could you just get a less powerful laptop and use sunshine and moonlight?

You might want to look into sunshine and moonlight for streaming from your PC to the steamdeck. It means your deck will only sip battery, fans will be whisper quite, and the graphics will be stellar, all for a tiny amount of latency.

Signal is also a great alternative to WhatsApp. Molly for the extra privacy focused.

In order for that feature to work, you need to give google permission to see who's calling you and when activated (and possibly even when not activated) listen to the phone conversation. That data is going back to google servers for processing. Gemini is also feeding off of that data. If you're concerned with the original post regarding WhatsApp data being fed to Gemini, why would you be okay with allowing google to listen in on your phone conversations, all for the small convenience of avoiding spam bots?

If you have voicemail and caller ID, just don't pickup the call if it isn't from a known contact.

If you're also thinking that google isn't collecting data without your consent, they literally just got fined 300+ million for doing exactly that.

A bit more setup is required but I love having a Wise (formerly TransferWise) account for the virtual cards and the low fee currency conversion.

I don't believe that's a pixel specific benefit but yes relocking the bootloader is best for security. The unlocking process is needed to install an alternative OS though.

For those on Pixel devices, check out GrapheneOS. If not CalyxOS or LineageOS

Its important that we have devices that we control. If your phone doesn't allow bootloader unlock so you can install a different operating system, that's a problem. Claims that security is compromised if bootloaders can be unlocked are just companies using a convenient excuse to maintain control over a device you paid for.