Ertio

If you supply an incorrect voltage, it might not run properly at all. It's not like half the voltage means half the speed. Electronic devices are meant to be run at specific voltages.

HD DVDs also used blue lasers, so implementing HD DVD support into a Blu-ray drive would have been trivial for drive vendors. It would probably not have required and hardware changes, only firmware.

Which brand of media and how old are those discs? High quality media should last at least several decades. I have 20 year old recordable CDs and DVDs that are still readable. Disc rot is still better than a HDD head crash because a head crash is a total loss. Optical discs fail slowly, while hard drives and SSDs fail suddenly. This would be a nightmare because it takes away...

Store your film and music archive on a cold storage HDD and you won't have to worry about the SSD failing. HDDs are good for long-term storage if accessed rarely. Optical discs are even more reliable but they have far less capacity per unit, so it becomes more of a hassle. Also, if an SSD or USB stick is worn down, it might refuse further writes. SanDisk and Transcend are known...

Technically, optical discs are the most reliable archival media since they don't have the points of failure that other storage media has, a head crash or controller failure. Optical discs are separate from the drive, so a defective drive can be replaced. But there is a different risk factor. Not a problem with the discs themselves, but external support. In the mid-2000s, we have seen how...

Honestly, if it is like that, I'm fine with it. Much better than burst mode, which I pretty much never used. Unwanted burst shot has also been annoying to me. On earlier phones (until Galaxy S5), holding the shutter button was for focusing by default, and burst mode had to be enabled in the settings. Then, for some years, it initiated burst shot and could not be deactivated. But...

Sure. The new cameras are bigger, better, and there are more of them. But the best camera isn't useful if I miss out a moment because I had to switch to video mode before being able to start recording. Also, the upper picture is an S3 mini, which has separate photo and video modes too.

Except that video is in 4:3 and I have to hold the shutter button to keep recording.

Honestly, that doesn't bother me much. The worst offense is that video is a separate camera mode, and the vertical text mode selector. Also, Apple's shutter button is quite small.

Photo (still picture) and video (moving picture) are a fundamental distinction. I don't expect a dedicated button for macro or panorama or slow-motion, but video recording should not be more than one touch away. All camera modes can be categorized into photo and video. Because the iOS-like carousel wheel has only space for at most four modes, you have to scroll to reach...

Look at this beautiful camera user interface: screenshot credit: geektech.ie On first glance, you might think "did someone leak the camera user interface of the S25?" - no. Long-term smartphone users may be able to recognize this user interface. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the camera user interface of the Samsung Galaxy S4. Yes, the S four from 2013. Notice how you...

Perhaps you use shorter strokes than me while scrolling. I use long strokes. I like to race to the top of the page, not walk on eggshells. I'd prefer to use a scrollbar or a "go to top" button, but many apps still don't have those basic features as of 2024. The pull-to-refresh gesture also interferes with zooming. If you try to zoom in while at the top, it might detect that you were...

I am sure most of you are familiar with the "pull-to-refresh" touch screen gesture. You know, that thing that refreshes when you pull against the top. It goes by several names, including "pull-down-to-refresh", "swipe-to-refresh", "pull-to-reload". The pull-to-refresh gesture, has become a de-facto standard in mobile apps. We have accepted it without questioning how useful it...