Unihertz Atom Part 2

Some further observations on the Unihertz Atom now I've had it for a bit...

1. It's a lot faster than the Jelly Pro, which sometimes felt like a compromise compared to a full sized Android phone. The Atom is as responsive as anything I've used (Samsung Galaxy's and a Sony Xperia Z5).
2. The GPS is miles better than the Jelly. In fact it seems to get a position lock faster than any of the other devices I have access too - nearly instantaneous. This I find quite remarkable considering the Jelly generally took a few minutes.
3. The battery life is excellent - even setting it up with lots of downloads and syncing it still gave me nearly 2 days of use. Overnight with Wifi and 4G on it only dropped a couple of percent. The question is: do I charge every two days to try and preserve battery life considering it's not removable?
4. On a USB PD charger it seems to charge very quickly: 30-85% in under half an hour. It does slow down after reaching around 90% but that's enough charge for a day of operation in half an hour.
5. Fingerprint reader seems to work very well for me. I would estimate that it works first time 90%+ of the time.
6. The Calender widget is not as good as the Jelly one, too much screen space wasted on a small screen. That will need replacement.
7. Even after updates the Jelly is ahead on Android patch level - consequently, I expect more updates soon. 

And now a few more config details now...

1.  Nova launcher works quite well on the Jelly, and now Atom, since it allows you ta lot of flexibility resizing widgets. In particular, it allows you remove widget padding to maximise their size, and I use full screen widgets to make the most of limited screen real estate.
2. I use a dark theme on the phone since I find white-on-black easier to read. 
3. On the first home screen I have a full screen calendar using Simple Calendar Widget which is much more space efficient (and neater) than the inbuilt widget.
4. On the second-through-fourth home screens I have full screen aquamail widgets for each of my main email accounts. These are all set to update every 15-mins and AquaMail is white-listed under Settings|Smart Assistant|Power save manager  to ensure that it is able to run in the background correctly.
5. One the fifth screen I have a full screen BBC News widget, also whitelisted like Aquamail so it updates regularly.
6. On the sixth screen have three widgets running taking up a third of the screen height but at full width: BBC Weather, Music and TuneIn Radio Pro.
7. There are no app icons on any home screens but the dock at the bottom also scroll sideways to reveal new icon sets. I have set it to hold four icons (one is always the Apps button).

This way I can get to all my key info one-handed by just side scrolling the screen with my thumb. Unlocking using a PIN is actually easier than using the fingerprint reader if the phone is held one handed since the button is so low. This is something most phone makers get wrong and I blame Apple for encouraging that design stupidity. The Xperia Z5 Compact with its fingerprint sensor on the side actually worked better for one handed operation (but only for right handers).     

Unihertz Atom Setup

Just got a Unihertz Atom phone to replace (partially) my Jelly Pro. It's quite a bit thicker but an awful lot faster. Hopefully the additional power consumption of the CPU and RAM is covered by the bigger battery. With Android 8.1 the Jelly gives me a day of good usage, which is much better than it managed with the Android 7.0 that it shipped with.

My setup on the Jelly developed over several iterations but I intend to largely replicate it on the Atom so here it is.

First of all, after letting Android update, I need to disable various bits, both to improve battery life and limit the amount of data I send to Google. In the Apps Lis,t I disable, force stop and delete the data of...

• Drive - I'm not going to be working on any documents and presentations on a screen this small!
• Duo - Cute, don't need
• Gboard - Only marginally usable on a device this small
• Gmail - Crap
• Google - If I really need it, I can fire it up in a browser, didn't miss it on the jelly
• Google Pay Movies - Are you kidding me, on that screen?
• Google Play Music - I've got my own stuff ripped
• Keep - Nope
• Maps - I want proper downloadable maps
• Pedometer
• Photos - Not really going to use this for photo viewing 
• Talkback - Not needed
• Trackback - Not needed
• Zello - I want to use the PTT button for something else

I also disable Backup (under the Google section in Settings) since I have Nextcloud for that. The PTT button is linked to the Camera App (under Smart Assistant| Shortcut button) - mainly for taking pictures of receipts for expenses.

Now the Apps that I do install:

• AquaMail - much better than Gmail, especially the widgets and multiple account handling
• BBC iPlayer - Mainly for things linked from the News App
• BBC News - again a nice widget
• BBC Weather 
• Fujifilm Camera Remote - for my X-T20
• CardDAV-Sync - My contacts sync to my NextCloud server, not Google
• DROIDCam - My GPD Pocket doesn't have a Webcam, which is generally a good thing for privacy, sometimes, however...
• FolderSync Pro - Syncs the rest of the stuff on the phone with NextCloud, mainly my music
• HERE WeGo - Downloadable maps and navigation courtesy of the ex-NavTech/Nokia guys
• Minuum - Keyboard/predictive text for small screens/fat fingers
• Nova Launcher - it's just better
• PasswdSafe - No Google/Chrome you're not doing password autofill for me either
• TuneIn Radio Pro - It's got a headphone socket!

Next, I fire up HERE WeGo and start the download of maps for all of Europe and N. America which will keep it busy while I set up email and Next Cloud sync...