Technology Android

[masta247]

So Adaptive Display doesn't give the best colors and aesthetics? That's what I've had it on for a while, but I'll give Photo a shot. That menu always confused me and Adaptive just sounded like it was the best option to use.

It does strike the best balance between color accuracy and aesthetics. Photo mode is the color accurate one. I was making a point that Samsung leans towards colors that pop out of the box, as opposed to accuracy, but it also provides the accurate mode. Apple usually goes for a single mode that is calibrated to simple be accurate.
I personally like Samsung's tuning towards accurate, but more pleasant colors. That's what adaptive mode does.

What about in non-gaming situations? I've heard people praise the iPad Pro's 120hz screen. I think Apple named it True Motion, or something like that. They said the benefits were huge in scrolling performance. That they noticed the difference in everyday usage when scrolling through menus or websites in the browser. Everything seemed instantaneous and that the text scrolling was still readable.

120hz means GPU renders twice as many frames per second compared to a regular 60hz screen. It's literally double the work, akin to doubling the resolution in terms of GPU load.
It is more smooth and feels more responsive, which is why it's a thing amongst competitive gamers. It is better in regular usage, my point is just that imho it is not worth it on a small, battery-powered device. Your GPU does twice the work for diminishing returns, as stable 60hz feels smooth enough in most cases.
I guess Apple simply decided they have enough spare battery life on the iPad that they can add it, but without it the battery would last longer due to less wasted GPU cycles. I think it's too much of a trade-off on a phone, which is why the iPhones don't have it. Battery-life wise it is almost twice as much of a hit as moving from a 1080p display to 1440p.

I did the Force Render for 24 hours. Noticed nothing. No performance boost and battery life seemed to be the same. I'll just disable it.

Interesting. Probably that setting didn't change behavior of most of the apps that you use.

 

[masta247]

As a side note, I was considering pasting all the Pixel 2 XL (and to some degree regular Pixel 2) controversies, but there are way too many by now. I think it is safe to say now that it is the most troubled high-profile phone launch in history of Android, and second in terms of consequences only to the Note 7 (which had a single issue, albeit much more dramatic). Frankly, if Google was Samsung, and considering the amount of hardware issues with the Pixel 2 Xl alone, that phone would have been recalled by now. In the meantime, Google isn't dealing too well even with the simple, software ones. It's a shame.

The problem for Google is not only how low they have fallen quality-wise, but from how high they did, considering the insane asking price for the Pixels and the only justification for it being that quality was now guaranteed directly by Google. Not only was it a high price to pay for it, but it turned out that Google is having more quality issues than an average low-profit-margin OEM does, and isn't dealing with them too well.

 

[masta247]

Also in the big tech news, a lot of shit is happening, and I don't even know where to begin so I'll be brief instead.

Intel will be using AMD GPUs integrated into its next generation of processors:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1200...with-amd-radeon-graphics-with-hbm2-using-emib

but will develop their own discrete GPUs, with head of GPU of AMD moving to Intel:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1201...ete-gpus-hires-raja-koduri-as-chief-architect

It seems like Intel signed a deal with AMD showing a middle finger to Nvidia and then fucked both Nvidia and AMD over by snatching AMD's head of GPU division to make completely new products that will compete with both companies on a market it never did before.

In terms of high-end and mainstream computing, more has happened in 2017 alone than for the whole past decade. It started with Ryzen, and now it seems like Intel is pissed that it had to do something and is going all out.

 

[dilla]

It does strike the best balance between color accuracy and aesthetics. Photo mode is the color accurate one. I was making a point that Samsung leans towards colors that pop out of the box, as opposed to accuracy, but it also provides the accurate mode. Apple usually goes for a single mode that is calibrated to simple be accurate.
I personally like Samsung's tuning towards accurate, but more pleasant colors. That's what adaptive mode does.




120hz means GPU renders twice as many frames per second compared to a regular 60hz screen. It's literally double the work, akin to doubling the resolution in terms of GPU load.
It is more smooth and feels more responsive, which is why it's a thing amongst competitive gamers. It is better in regular usage, my point is just that imho it is not worth it on a small, battery-powered device. Your GPU does twice the work for diminishing returns, as stable 60hz feels smooth enough in most cases.
I guess Apple simply decided they have enough spare battery life on the iPad that they can add it, but without it the battery would last longer due to less wasted GPU cycles. I think it's too much of a trade-off on a phone, which is why the iPhones don't have it. Battery-life wise it is almost twice as much of a hit as moving from a 1080p display to 1440p.




Interesting. Probably that setting didn't change behavior of most of the apps that you use.

I'll have to find time to do more than just skim the article but this seemed like a pretty dumbed-down explanation if the IGZO tech: https://android.gadgethacks.com/how...ay-tech-achieve-120-hz-refresh-rates-0181023/

As for the apps I use, I don't game much on my phone. Or at all, really. Definitely not something that is GPU intensive. So I likely wouldn't have noticed a difference, good or bad.

 

[Casey]

Pixel 2 XL issues are overhyped.

Plenty of people aren't having issues.

I'll report back in a week or two when I have mine

 

[dilla]

More on screen tech: http://appleinsider.com/articles/17...ark-mode-saves-nearly-60-battery-over-3-hours

So Samsung is going to put this display in the S9, right? Or something similar that is at least better?

 

[masta247]

More on screen tech: http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/11/10/extreme-test-shows-oled-iphone-x-with-dark-mode-saves-nearly-60-battery-over-3-hours



So Samsung is going to put this display in the S9, right? Or something similar that is at least better?

Which one? This is how Samsung's OLED displays worked since the first Galaxy S 8 years ago, even more savings could be had with dark tones back then as the "on" pixels were less energy efficient.
On OLED displays, whichever pixel is not displaying anything is completely off and is not consuming power. This is also why always on displays on OLED displays don't consume much power, with only a small bunch of pixels being enabled.

On your S7, if you change your theme to dark you will see significantly improved battery life too, unless you use your phone for mostly bright colored content/apps.

 

[dilla]

Which one? This is how Samsung's OLED displays worked since the first Galaxy S 8 years ago, even more savings could be had with dark tones back then as the "on" pixels were less energy efficient.
On OLED displays, whichever pixel is not displaying anything is completely off and is not consuming power. This is also why always on displays on OLED displays don't consume much power, with only a small bunch of pixels being enabled.

On your S7, if you change your theme to dark you will see significantly improved battery life too, unless you use your phone for mostly bright colored content/apps.

Yeah, I get the reasoning behind OLED displays being good on battery for darker colors. People have been looking for dark themes for a long time on the S7 sub. I use Twitter and Reddit with dark themes but some apps like ESPN and IG are light themes. I actually disabled the Samsung Themes app/service with a package disabler, just considering it as bloat, but it may help to get my OS menus and stuff like that on a darker theme.

Thing is, if my screen is on for a longer time, it's because I'm streaming something. So the black theme isn't going to help much since I'd be using the streaming service's UI instead. HBO is good for that, I guess, but lol @ Hulu.

Still, I thought this new display took the battery saving to another level, regardless of OS. iOS is pretty colorful and I'm not sure you can change the themes without jailbreak. But I'll look in to a dark theme from the Theme store by Samsung.

Masta, you have an S7 right?


Anyway, Android might do away with apps that request Accessibility permissions: https://www.xda-developers.com/google-threatening-removal-accessibility-services-play-store/

Despite not being rooted, I still use apps that require those permissions, like Greenify (on occasion) as well as apps that require ADB commands too, like GSam. It'd be pretty shitty for them to that. LastPass users are especially upset with it.

 

[masta247]

Masta, you have an S7 right?

I am still on the S6. I bought my girlfriend the S7, thinking I'll get on the S8, but it just wasn't worth it. I don't think any flagship phone ever since was.

I recently replaced the battery on the S6, as I was replacing the charging port anyway. I found that the original battery didn't age as much as I had thought, I gained maybe 15% battery life by switching to a completely new battery, and that's on a 2.5 year old phone with pretty daily charge cycles.
As a side note, me doing this to stick with a 2 'generation' old phone shows how dry the smartphone market feels to me. I remember how hard it was not to spend money on the newest and coolest flagship phones just a few years ago. Not now, as my S6 feels like a brand new phone.

As far as dark colors on OLED - I watched the whole season of black mirror on a 9 hour flight and was left with 40% battery left. It's cool how little power video watching, especially on mostly dark videos drains. In case an episode was particularly dark, it felt almost like my phone had been on stand-by in terms of battery hit. I had the episodes available offline, however, since I was on a plane.

 

[dilla]

I am still on the S6. I bought my girlfriend the S7, thinking I'll get on the S8, but it just wasn't worth it. I don't think any flagship phone ever since was.

I recently replaced the battery on the S6, as I was replacing the charging port anyway. I found that the original battery didn't age as much as I had thought, I gained maybe 15% battery life by switching to a completely new battery, and that's on a 2.5 year old phone with pretty daily charge cycles.
As a side note, me doing this to stick with a 2 'generation' old phone shows how dry the smartphone market feels to me. I remember how hard it was not to spend money on the newest and coolest flagship phones just a few years ago. Not now, as my S6 feels like a brand new phone.

As far as dark colors on OLED - I watched the whole season of black mirror on a 9 hour flight and was left with 40% battery left. It's cool how little power video watching, especially on mostly dark videos drains. In case an episode was particularly dark, it felt almost like my phone had been on stand-by in terms of battery hit. I had the episodes available offline, however, since I was on a plane.

lol I will have to try how long my battery lasts using downloaded video as a tester. Currently, I stream video every few days to watch a couple of shows before bed. Sunday nights are heavy on the streaming because most of my shows air that night and I always use LTE. It's funny that I get the best SOT when I do something intense like streaming on LTE and I can hit about 4 hours SOT. It tends to depend on the amount of data used, which makes sense. If I use official streaming apps like Netflix and HBO and Showtime, the episodes tend to use more bandwidth compared to using third party links from apps like Terrarium. Which would make sense if proper apps used HD but I was watching SD, shitty quality on Terrarium. But I'm not. A 720p video from Terrarium still seems to use 80% of what the same show on Netflix or HBO would in terms of bandwidth. I'm sure there's some loss in audio and video quality but it's not noticeable. The smaller file size and slightly less battery consumption, however, is more noticeable.

I'm guessing you downloaded the episodes and weren't using in-flight WiFi. I'm curious to see what offline video player usage would net me in terms of SOT.

Going back to what I said about streaming video to get the best SOT, my hourly drain is typically under 4% per hour, and can dip to 1.7%, as per GSam, if I let it sit for a few hours and not touch my phone. But something still drains battery, even if ever so slightly. Which means even if I don't use my phone for more than 15 minutes today after taking it off charger at 8 AM, I would be nervous about going 24 hours without putting it on charger and being comfortable it would last for even a majority of day 2 off-charger. Basically, 36 hour battery life with maybe 2 hours of usage.

I could never figure out what was causing battery drain, even when Doze was enabled. GSam battery says the Google App and Androids OS are top consumers but I can't figure out individual processes that are doing this without root.

 

[dilla]

So the Razer has some poor battery life, according to some: https://www.androidcentral.com/razer-phone-review?amp

Kinda like what you said with a 120hz screen.

Someone on Reddit said GSM Arena switched to 60hz and still had poor battery life. Might be a bigger problem than just the screen, then.

 

[dilla]

https://www.androidauthority.com/4nm-processing-node-812959/

Too technical for me but sort of reaffirms your claim that Samsung is the best in terms of hardware in the mobile market. You're not the only one that says this but to be this far ahead of the competition, they've got the chipsets and screen game on lockdown it seems.

On another note, I'm assuming you guys use WhatsApp a ton. I use it every few days for those that I know that don't use Hangouts, which is just a few people. My battery life hasn't changed too much from the norm but I am seeing WhatsApp waking my device a ton. Like 700+ daily. And I might only get 10 or so messages a day on it from one person.

I've gone through all the settings and nothing there hints at there being some sync service or something else that just keeps waking my phone. Is that normal? It was number one with over 1000 wakes yesterday, and it usually is number one every other day but with fewer wakes, like 500-700 in less than 24 hours. Next after that is Google App and Services, two separate processes, that might do 500-700 combined on a typical day. I use Hangouts a lot more daily, usually 100+ messages a day and those wake locks are much lower down on the list.

So what's up with WhatsApp waking itself so much?

 

[masta247]

https://www.androidauthority.com/4nm-processing-node-812959/



Too technical for me but sort of reaffirms your claim that Samsung is the best in terms of hardware in the mobile market. You're not the only one that says this but to be this far ahead of the competition, they've got the chipsets and screen game on lockdown it seems.



On another note, I'm assuming you guys use WhatsApp a ton. I use it every few days for those that I know that don't use Hangouts, which is just a few people. My battery life hasn't changed too much from the norm but I am seeing WhatsApp waking my device a ton. Like 700+ daily. And I might only get 10 or so messages a day on it from one person.



I've gone through all the settings and nothing there hints at there being some sync service or something else that just keeps waking my phone. Is that normal? It was number one with over 1000 wakes yesterday, and it usually is number one every other day but with fewer wakes, like 500-700 in less than 24 hours. Next after that is Google App and Services, two separate processes, that might do 500-700 combined on a typical day. I use Hangouts a lot more daily, usually 100+ messages a day and those wake locks are much lower down on the list.



So what's up with WhatsApp waking itself so much?

There's something up with the latest update. My phone warned me twice now about background battery drain by Whatsapp. Never happened before, as historically Whatsapp always was an amazing performer and hands down the most efficient messaging service. Something must be up.
Hope Facebook is not fucking it up. It's not like Whatsapp received (or needed) any meaningful updates for.. the past few years!

Regarding the Razer phone, it seems like they just don't have enough experience there. Surely the 120hz screen doesn't help, even though the battery issues seem to be mostly caused by something else, like software.

And yeah, there's something about Samsung that no matter what they do, they somehow end up doing really cool stuff ahead of their competition, better quality and more affordable. I admire them for that, especially as they are in more hardware markets than any other company, and delivering top notch stuff in all of them. They usually compete with companies that are experts in a given field, and still often deliver the better product and for cheaper. Even their vacuum cleaners are apparently great quality and best bang for the buck, lol.

 

[masta247]

Glad to see AMD awarded as brand of the year and Ryzen as best PC component. Since making the best products and being perhaps the most fair company in the industry dominated by one of the worst corporations in the world is apparently not enough, I think they need such recognition to fight their uphill battle against Intel's money:

http://www.amd.com/en-us/press-releases/Pages/amd-named-brand-2017nov13.aspx
https://wccftech.com/amd-wins-best-...dia-gtx-1080-ti-wins-best-gpu-tr-awards-2017/

“AMD redefined what gamers could expect from their PCs this year, which is a major factor in winning the reader-voted award. In doing so, it beat Samsung, Apple, and Intel,” said Evan Kypreos, Editor of Trusted Reviews, at its 10th annual Trusted Reviews Awards. “The award tops off a sterling year for the company, which boasted a 300% profits increase in its most recent earnings report thanks to huge sales of its new Ryzen processors.”

In its coverage of the PC component of the year award, Trusted Reviews wrote: “AMD’s Ryzen chips were first launched in March this year. In the intervening months they’ve changed the landscape of the processor market, bringing huge and relatively affordable multi-core power to PC gamers worldwide. The Ryzen 3, 5 and 7 chips all received Recommended awards in their Trusted Reviews reviews, which is no mean feat in such a competitive market.”

 

[dilla]

There's something up with the latest update. My phone warned me twice now about background battery drain by Whatsapp. Never happened before, as historically Whatsapp always was an amazing performer and hands down the most efficient messaging service. Something must be up.
Hope Facebook is not fucking it up. It's not like Whatsapp received (or needed) any meaningful updates for.. the past few years!

Regarding the Razer phone, it seems like they just don't have enough experience there. Surely the 120hz screen doesn't help, even though the battery issues seem to be mostly caused by something else, like software.

And yeah, there's something about Samsung that no matter what they do, they somehow end up doing really cool stuff ahead of their competition, better quality and more affordable. I admire them for that, especially as they are in more hardware markets than any other company, and delivering top notch stuff in all of them. They usually compete with companies that are experts in a given field, and still often deliver the better product and for cheaper. Even their vacuum cleaners are apparently great quality and best bang for the buck, lol.

Well, even in the past, WhatsApp would occasionally pop up at the top of my wake list, despite using the service to send maybe a dozen messages, usually in a short time frame. I wouldn't use or check it every hour or two like my texts or Hangouts.

I have disabled all Facebook apps including the Oculus app that came pre-installed. Messenger included. Just Instagram and WhatsApp as standalone services from Facebook. But I wouldn't be surprised if the latest updates for WhatsApp are starting to tie in all of Facebook's services together and having FB and Messenger disabled is causing issues. That sucks.

 

[Casey]

Telegram performs better than WhatsApp these days, IMO.

 

[dilla]

Telegram performs better than WhatsApp these days, IMO.

Yes, but wouldn't that require everyone to get on board with Telegram now? It's hard enough to get people to use Hangouts, which is what I have used since 2011 or so. People were dead-set on FB Messenger then. In the past few years, it has been WhatsApp and that's successful globally.

Telegram isn't new but it's probably the newest service out there that's popular. I'm not sure moving people from WhatsApp to Telegram is going to happen en masse.

Although I will say that Discord has picked up quite a bit and I've started using it for Reddit subs that have their own like the Android and Apple sub as well as BPT.

I still think this Tech section would benefit from a Discord, possibly the entire site with the dozen or so members we have. We'd keep this thread going in a live discussion format. It would kill the forum but we'd be able to chat without much restriction.

 

[masta247]

Yes, but wouldn't that require everyone to get on board with Telegram now? It's hard enough to get people to use Hangouts, which is what I have used since 2011 or so. People were dead-set on FB Messenger then. In the past few years, it has been WhatsApp and that's successful globally.



Telegram isn't new but it's probably the newest service out there that's popular. I'm not sure moving people from WhatsApp to Telegram is going to happen en masse.



Although I will say that Discord has picked up quite a bit and I've started using it for Reddit subs that have their own like the Android and Apple sub as well as BPT.



I still think this Tech section would benefit from a Discord, possibly the entire site with the dozen or so members we have. We'd keep this thread going in a live discussion format. It would kill the forum but we'd be able to chat without much restriction.

Whatsapp's Achilles heel is surely Facebook ownership. While Facebook became a success sort of by accident, everything they touch seems to turn into poop, yet they have the money from the biggest user base out of all social media platforms who are there just because everyone else is, not because Facebook is doing something right. I am afraid that they might fuck Whatsapp up, although technically it is an amazing messenger, and it would be hard to integrate Facebook into it as it was used by masses of people who outright refused to use facebook messenger.

Technically FB Messenger is a heavy and clumsy tool, compared to the tiny Whatsapp that literally just polls once in a while for messages and the only data transfer and processing happens when the messages are sent or received. The battery use spikes are likely correlated with times of having poor internet connection/signal, as Whatsapp would be checking for internet and trying to resend/re-receive complete message until successful. Facebook just gives you an error in such insances saying it can't be sent and would not attempt to receive messages until it "reconnects" (which is also why I prefer Whatsapp).


The future problem will surely be monetization. Facebook makes money on ads, yet Whatsapp is not making any money on itself anymore, as it's free and not ad supported, and Facebook killed the yearly fee, making it free for everyone, yet leaving its business model something to think about in the future. One day that future will come and users might not be happy, depending on what Facebook comes up with.
For now it's great, I feel like Facebook knows that Whatsapp works best due to its technical superiority and simplicity, and they are kind of afraid of touching it, funding it from other areas of their operations. Maybe it will last, or they figure an un-intrusive way? I remember they tried to add a feature last year or so, got boo-ed and stopped touching it ever since, and I guess that's what most of Whatsapp users want. I use it because it's simple, secure, and just works really well in all regards. I'm happy everyone is on it too.

Discord owns and has access to your communication for any reasons, including the right to sell it - I would never use it.
Telegram has no legit encryption. I'm not talking on-device encryption, but it's not a problem to obtain messages on their path or from Telegram servers. It's what Whatsapp was in its early days, except with no user base, and Whatsapp already evolved to be better AND has users. Except Whatsapp never claimed to be something it's not, which is what bothers me with Telegram - they claimed they are safer than other messengers while being amongst the least secure ones using very simple, basically unencrypted communications. If I wanted anyone's Telegram messages, I'd go to Freelancer.com, pay someone 20$ and have it, that's how bad it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(messaging_service)#Encryption_scheme

To be fair it's a little better than Whatsapp was before it introduced full end-to-end encryption, where you could get whole conversations as pure text by re-routing traffic from the wi-fi hotspot. I could do that at home and read my girlfriend's messages by logging in to the router from a Linux virtual machine. Now Whatsapp's encryption is top-notch, while Telegram did not move one bit.

To me it doesn't matter as not that many people use Telegram, and I have doubts of it ever competing with established messengers, and I have a feeling it is more likely to be a one-hit wonder that will die out, a little like Gtalk.

Technologically speaking, the crown and userbase belongs to Whatsapp and Line, with Facebook Messenger being a contender in terms of pure userbase, but is technically completely garbage.

 

[dilla]

Whatsapp's Achilles heel is surely Facebook ownership. While Facebook became a success sort of by accident, everything they touch seems to turn into poop, yet they have the money from the biggest user base out of all social media platforms who are there just because everyone else is, not because Facebook is doing something right. I am afraid that they might fuck Whatsapp up, although technically it is an amazing messenger, and it would be hard to integrate Facebook into it as it was used by masses of people who outright refused to use facebook messenger.

Technically FB Messenger is a heavy and clumsy tool, compared to the tiny Whatsapp that literally just polls once in a while for messages and the only data transfer and processing happens when the messages are sent or received. The battery use spikes are likely correlated with times of having poor internet connection/signal, as Whatsapp would be checking for internet and trying to resend/re-receive complete message until successful. Facebook just gives you an error in such insances saying it can't be sent and would not attempt to receive messages until it "reconnects" (which is also why I prefer Whatsapp).


The future problem will surely be monetization. Facebook makes money on ads, yet Whatsapp is not making any money on itself anymore, as it's free and not ad supported, and Facebook killed the yearly fee, making it free for everyone, yet leaving its business model something to think about in the future. One day that future will come and users might not be happy, depending on what Facebook comes up with.
For now it's great, I feel like Facebook knows that Whatsapp works best due to its technical superiority and simplicity, and they are kind of afraid of touching it, funding it from other areas of their operations. Maybe it will last, or they figure an un-intrusive way? I remember they tried to add a feature last year or so, got boo-ed and stopped touching it ever since, and I guess that's what most of Whatsapp users want. I use it because it's simple, secure, and just works really well in all regards. I'm happy everyone is on it too.

Discord owns and has access to your communication for any reasons, including the right to sell it - I would never use it.
Telegram has no legit encryption. I'm not talking on-device encryption, but it's not a problem to obtain messages on their path or from Telegram servers. It's what Whatsapp was in its early days, except with no user base, and Whatsapp already evolved to be better AND has users. Except Whatsapp never claimed to be something it's not, which is what bothers me with Telegram - they claimed they are safer than other messengers while being amongst the least secure ones using very simple, basically unencrypted communications. If I wanted anyone's Telegram messages, I'd go to Freelancer.com, pay someone 20$ and have it, that's how bad it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(messaging_service)#Encryption_scheme

To be fair it's a little better than Whatsapp was before it introduced full end-to-end encryption, where you could get whole conversations as pure text by re-routing traffic from the wi-fi hotspot. I could do that at home and read my girlfriend's messages by logging in to the router from a Linux virtual machine. Now Whatsapp's encryption is top-notch, while Telegram did not move one bit.

To me it doesn't matter as not that many people use Telegram, and I have doubts of it ever competing with established messengers, and I have a feeling it is more likely to be a one-hit wonder that will die out, a little like Gtalk.

Technologically speaking, the crown and userbase belongs to Whatsapp and Line, with Facebook Messenger being a contender in terms of pure userbase, but is technically completely garbage.

I've never heard of Line, but after installing Telegram, I saw that only one person I knew had it installed. So I deleted it. I looked in to comparisons between WhatsApp and Telegram and found that WhatsApp was considered to still be more secure because of the encryption, though it used terms and depth to explain stuff I was not familiar with. But it seemed simple enough to say that WhatsApp still offered superior security as well, which is what I thought initially Telegram was known for and better at.

I still have the wake issues with WhatsApp. I did a test for 25 hours off the charger and a SOT of 2:50 or so and saw that WhatsApp had 1700ish wakes. Google was behind but by a few hundred. Maybe just a hair over 1000? Not even Play Store or Play Services. The Google App.

My battery life isn't terrible but I wonder if my idle drain would be much less if WhatsApp and Google App weren't combining for nearly 2000 wakes in a regular day's usage.

 

[masta247]

I've never heard of Line,

Line is amongst the biggest messengers in the world after Facebook, Whatsapp and a bunch of Chinese ones like WeChat. It is the most popular messenger in East Asia. I don't think anyone non-East-Asian uses it in the US, but it's a good messenger. I have to use it in Thailand as nobody uses anything else.

Also, Facebook has over 2 billion active users, Whatsapp around 1.2 billion, with Line reporting 600 million with the other best being in a completely different ballpark (300 million for Skype, Viber and a bunch of others). Snapchat or Google never reached 200 million, Telegram has below 100 million users.

I find it hard to recommend new messengers as everyone is already on Facebook and Whatsapp, and while anyone could have a fair point that Facebook Messenger is quite garbage, there's already Whatsapp for you, which is actually a great messenger with nothing to complain about. I partially wish everyone just stuck to one platform so I wouldn't have to download another one just to reach a person or two. If someone uses something weird, I just don't talk to them. I worked at a Korean company and a lot of people there used Kakao Talk, as that's the Korean one, and it's completely shit also. Most of them moved to Whatsapp and everyone was happy.

Regarding the wakes, it's probably checking for messages and wakes the phone for split seconds. I also wish messengers didn't do that as frequently as they do when the phone is idle. That said, I still feel like something might have been messed up since the last update as I'm still getting pop ups that Whatsapp is draining my battery, and I've never had those before.