Personal blog
In a previous article , I wrote about budget phones being insanely good compared to 10 years ago. Specifically in that post, I took a look at the Optus X Pro 5G , which is actually just a rebranded ZTE Blade A73 5G . There are many other carriers outside Optus (owned by Singaporean telecommunications company Singtel ) that use rebranded ZTE phones, including Telstra, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Verizon,…
Update as of May 31, 2026 : ZTE devices like the one shown in this article may contain spyware. I do not recommend purchasing them. See this 10 years ago if I told you that you can go to your nearest Woolies, which may not be that close if you live outside Australia, and purchase a very usable, low-end midrange phone for just $29, you would laugh in my face. That is because 10 years ago, the best…
Every single day since I got my first smartwatch in 2021, I have worn one every day. At first I thought they were cool, they've got cool gimmicks, they record health data, I can see phone notifications, but slowly, I've started to realise just how pointless smartwatches seem. The whole advantage of my current one, a first generation Google Pixel Watch, is that I can install apps and stuff on it,…
Phones have come a looooong way, even in just the past decade or so. Can you believe the first iPhone released in 2007? That's a whopping 19 years ago! In this time, phones have advanced incredibly. We've got huge screens, almost 7" on some phones, huge batteries, huge cameras, more RAM than some laptops, and even more processing power than some computers! It's really easy to take a modern…
Yes, you read that title right. Dell's support team is TERRIBLE. They're simply unable to grasp Australian Consumer Law, and I am fed up, but first, some backstory (also apologies for all the red flags): 13 months ago, the 1st of January 2025, I got pissed off enough over the Windows Hello Face Unlock feature on my XPS 9500 not working after a firmware update from Dell killed it. Contacting Dell?…
In a previous blog post , I reverse engineered a generic Allwinner V3 action camera, discovering the partition table, how to make custom firmware etc, but I only briefly touched on the camera quality. Since the sensor used in my specific camera, the IMX175, was released around 2014, I decided it would be fitting to compare it to a flagship phone released in 2014, the Samsung Galaxy S5. I went out…
Hey everyone! Happy new year! Recently, I acquired a very strange device, a "4K" action camera that runs Android?? Kind of. Recently, I acquired a very strange device: a "4K" action camera that runs... Android? Kind of. The camera in question is a Cocoon 4K action camera sold by Aldi Australia back in 2019. Based on my research, these cameras have existed since 2016, and you can still find them on…
Hey everyone! I know I haven't posted much this year :( I do have quite a few new things coming soon though! Dell shenanigans Flatbed scanner stuff Allwinner V3/V3S action cameras DJI Osmo Mobile SE But that's coming soon:tm: This blog post is about the new features! Yep, finally, we now have: A real comments system (not utterances), you can sign in with JoshAtticusID, Google or GitHub View count…
Hey everyone! Recently I purchased a new domain, joshattic.us, and I'm happy to announce I've moved my blog over to it. https://blog.joshatticus.site should now start redirecting to https://blog.joshattic.us, and everyone should start linking to the new domain, not the old one.
A few days ago, Google started rolling out Veo 2, their new AI Video generator to a few users, and today, I've gotten access to it. Google first announced Veo 2 at their Cloud Next event, in which Google stated Veo 2 was ready for production & will roll out to users shortly. Being someone with access to Veo 2, I of course had to test it, and I've put some examples down below. Prompt: Create a…
Since my Pixel 8 Pro's screen suddenly stopped working a few weeks ago and I had to switch back to my old Galaxy S9 (story for another time), I've already gotten my replacement Pixel 8 Pro from Google and wanted to share my experience with Google Support and Google Pixel warranty. Getting Started As soon as I noticed that my screen was no longer working, the first thing I did was contact Google…
You've probably already seen it if you're here from the home page (if not check out the awesome new home page), but this is the new JoshAtticus Blog! I plan on continuing to post more frequently here & make various improvements in the future such as moving search, tags, comments, pagination etc to a server, possibly ( not confirmed yet) adding a few non-intrusive ads to make a little bit of money…
WearOS 5.1 has finally arrived for Pixel Watch first generations like mine! With it comes some much needed features & fixes including a big bug introduced 4 months ago back in November and Android 15! Features The only noticeable features that instantly popped out to me are modes (consolidating Bedtime, Cinema and Do Not Disturb modes into one place, but weirdly not in the control panel) and the…
This is my first blog post on my new blog. It's written in Markdown which makes it super easy to add: Lists Bold text Links And it's all automatically converted to HTML!
This post is from the old JoshAtticus Blog and is most likely out of date I'm generally a hardcore Android fan, switching to Android a few months ago. I love using my Galaxy S9 on Evolution X with my Google Pixel Watch, but with iOS 17 and watchOS 10 public release just around the corner, I thought I'd try out the iOS 17 and watchOS 10 developer betas. During my week with iOS 17 and watchOS 10,…
This post is from the old JoshAtticus Blog and is most likely out of date This is my first blog post! I'm planning on reviewing new stuff here (such as my upcoming review on my week with iOS 17 + watchOS 10).