yeah that's what I'm liking with Nothing. a lot of cool niche features that other androids can technically do via third party apps and other tinkering, are just baked into a stock Nothing phone
also the notification lights complimenting the OS's color scheme to help with distractions is such a huge plus for people (me) who struggle with that
s21. My provider is Visible. they're kinda known for having eSIM troubles. fairly commonly mentioned issue in the subreddit
I appreciate the input! compared to other androids you've owned, what stood out for you specifically?
I have an s21 now, and as much as I enjoy the oneUI-specific theming, I've learned to not rely on it too much. especially since the phones we're given at work don't have any of that lol
I mean, even with 256gb of storage, nothing isn't that expensive compared to other mainstream brands
my cell provider struggled so much with my current phone's eSIM activation that they opted to just send me a physical sim lol. i didn't mind since I don't travel much anyway
it's just a personal preference for me if i can have it, and saves me the trouble down the line
I use Island for it now. I just thought it was a neat feature to have baked into the OS. Completely unnecessary for most people but saves me a bunch of clicks when customizing a new phone
Project sandcastle was always a PoC thing to me. On release, only the iPhone 7 was even close to being able to properly house the OS. Most devices would be missing important things like sound and cellular support, and wouldn't be able to use the camera (among other things, some losing out on more than others depending on the exact device, there's a whole spreadsheet that shows what works and what doesn't for all Sandcastle-compatible devices)
Not to mention, file changes on Android using Sandcastle wouldn't save, essentially meaning every time you reboot it's like a factory reset (your iOS files are fine, just the Android bits wouldn't be saved through a reboot)
There was some fork or continuation of this that brought on a bit more progress since then, but I can't remember the name anymore. No new updates from that one for a while either
Xorg is compatible with Actiona
I know that's not a huge reason for most people but I have a lot of automations that run through it
neat! I'll definitely look at a side by side comparison to Zorin (my distro) out of curiosity. always nice finding new rabbit holes to dive into
Update: made the switch. worth it? maybe, maybe not. there are issues, a few visual glitches here and there (gets better with each set of updates, but still), but the proprietary Nvidia drivers being installed out of the box instead of the (apparently) not as good FOSS ones was a plus
Plus, the UI is still clean, and a lot of apps, updates, packages, etc. are installed for you from the welcome screen, so you won't be left googling for things you might need. Also comes with GE proton, Wine, Lutris, Bottles, and a few other things pre-installed so you won't lose hours setting up windows support for games/apps
If you still have apt or snap packages you want to run but can't since Nobara only used rpm and flatpak, you can simply look up Distrobox to get you started (I did this by looking up distrobox in the software store where I found an app that deals with it)
I also like that if you try to mount other existing partitions, it will ask for a password. Usually if I wanted to mount my Windows partition and access something there, other distros will just let me. Nobara asking for a password means no one, in person or via some program, can go snooping around, or potentially try to mess with my other operating systems or other partitions. Nice little security buff
there's a lot of inconsistencies with Nothing, you don't really notice at first but it's hard to unsee