I want a phone that can text and give me GPS for driving and the battery lasts a month.

Hmm. Not bad, This could be solved by insuring the same customer locks remain in place throughout the transaction. Or at least at the beginning and end of the transaction. Like repair shops cant unlock phones for the reason of "forgot password" as that is not a repair issue.

I guess the better question to ask would be does apple tech already have this? If so what is the difference to a guy with 15 minutes of training but branded an "apple genius" unlocking my phone compared to a guy with 20 years experience in his own repair shop doing it?

This title is broken

You want the SL series. Stands for "Speechless" . You can get the One, the Roam, and the ARC in SL versions, (the Arc might be a Costco exclusive)

My 7 Plus is still going very strong. The battery isn't quite as great as it once was, but everything about it works just fine still. I easily get more than an entire day of charge unless I run any GPS app (turn-by-turn driving instructions, which I seldom do). Granted I am not a power-user when it comes to phones, but I'm probably average in my usage and it's easily the most long lived mobile device I've ever had. Maybe I just got lucky.

Good luck finding individual chips that apple won't allow to be sold

You dont need to buy anything to unlock a phone right now. Those tools already exist is what i was getting at. Plus pawn shop aint the best example. All i need to do to get around anything a pawn shop looks into is factory reset the phone and remove the sim.

Without being in the same lan, how do you cast to Google home devices? Or do you just not use that?

Once they set it up, they can listen in from anywhere. However, they still need to be within wifi-range to set it up. If anybody does this, it will likely be a neighbor or somebody with a reason to target you. I can't imagine people driving around trying to do this to random devices.

I can see some upsides. But the one friend who was demonstrating it for me had similar issues like you had. He said he had everything set up really well for a while, then it stopped working perfectly. He re-adjusted it over and over. Then eventually instead of fixing it, he just started turning lights on manually like before. I think he started having troubles when they added more stuff to it, and it just plain didn't work with his new TV.

He already made it, he's pissed

That's why all my IoT devices are on the guest network which only gives them internet access and blocks them from seeing any other device on the LAN. If one gets compromised, they can't reach anything else on my network.

This is where they shine. When my hands are covered in batter and I need to set a timer, voice is awesome. It's also nice when a recipe has step-by-step instructions you can trigger by voice. The intercom functionality is kind of nice too. It's an easy way to get people to come down when dinner is ready.

All my lights are smart lights and I generally control them through my google home devices, it’s convenient to just say “hey google turn on the hallway light”. Or my fan or air purifier, it’s nice not having to get up to shut them off or turn them or look at my phone to shut the smart plug off when I’m still half asleep in the morning. I’m having issues with my new tv, but previously I could go “hey google skip 1:30s of this show” to get through intros. It’s obviously not for everyone, but I enjoy the convenience of controlling my home with just my voice.

I don't think I'm making myself clear.

I'm not talking theft from a shop. I'm talking theft from person. From car. Right now pawn shops (at least where I live) only take phones you can prove are unlocked. If anyone can just buy the stuff to unlock it thefts could go up.

So does the Echo Show and Echo Dot. I'm not sure about the other devices.

Disagree. This is exactly the kind of thing I would have been trying as a teenager against my neighbours…

Finally, someone focuses on battery life, instead of raw power

>The problem is that mfgs will default to saying it heightens injury allowing them to only sell assemblies, which often cost ~75% of the hardware, making repair by 3rd party companies unprofitable.

Not only unprofitable for the repair businesses, but unviable for the consumer, thus making the law entirely toothless.

i have the paranoia where i don’t believe the switch is honestly cutting the mic lol, i will just continue to not have one of these. standard battery powered bluetooth speakers haven’t led me astray yet

Well if my iPhone is stolen, I want to ensure the thief cannot just take it to a repair shop and unlock it and get a nice free iPhone.

Today they get sent to shenzhen and sold for a tiny fraction of the value for just the parts, making stealing iPhones far less profitable.

If stealing iPhones can net you a unlocked phone by using some master security pass/reset, iPhones would be targeted by thieves like car cat converters, as we are talking about $500 value of phones vs $50 value of parts.

They will call it a "feature".

It's artisanal, he's using spices

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Honestly these Google speakers have physical mic kill switches on them. If you're paranoid, you leave that shit off.