Android Smartphone Nightmare: Unanswered Questions#\#

[BvU]

Swapped my nokia clay tablet -- an excellent phone, by the way -- for what is called a 'smart phone' (A71). No good as a phone but you sure can do a lot of other things with it. If you know how. Finding out how is a nightmare. Swamped with counter-intuitive, no control (or out of control) instruction and examples that carefully avoid exactly what you want. Perfect way to kill a lot of time

Installed PF app but can't get it to start on unanswered threads. Anyone?

And $\TeX$ing is a laugh if you need three taps to get a backslash

And preview doesn't show the processed $\LaTeX$ no matter how hard I whack it !

And ... (unintellegible mumble grumble from an oldtimer) ..

Any good advice or tips (other than blabla for dummies -- it doesn't work) ?

$\$

 

[Ibix]

The PF app isn't supported any more and never did LaTeX (...which is why it's not supported). I'm surprised it even works any more. You have to use the web page. The soft keyboard is rather clumsy, yes, but mine at least has a programmable key (mine's the full stop to the right of the spacebar) that you can long press to get a menu of symbols (mine now includes $\{} which aren't on the keyboard). And I think there was an option I had to set to have the alternate symbols for each key be displayed by default.

Stick with it. It'll take a bit of getting used to.

 

[berkeman]

Installed PF app but can't get it to start on unanswered threads. Anyone?

I believe that the PF app was deprecated at least a year ago -- just use a browser to visit the PF website.

EDIT -- @Ibix beat me to it.

 

[anorlunda]

I hope @Ibix and @berkeman 's help got you straight on the PF app.

But on the positive side, you should browse this thread. It might wake you up to the very many things you can do with your new phone.

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/what-do-smart-phones-partially-replace.932077/

 

[BvU]

The 'oldtimer grumble' wording gave it away: sheer frustration with the feeling of loss of control over such a puny device. Powerful as it may be...

Gone are the days we could check the VMS operating system source code in the drawer of microfiches that came with the 11/780 (very low serial number )

Thanks for the link (fun!).
On the bright side: $\TeX$ works on posts, just not on previews.

Who knows some day I might even want to learn how to program such a nifty thingy. After all, a good programmer can write Fortran in any language

$\$

 

[Ibix]

LaTeX should work on previews, but I think it doesn't work when there are no posts on the page with LaTeX. MathJax is lazy loaded, and previewing doesn't trigger the lazy load. But if it's already there due to earlier LaTeX then you're good.

 

[symbolipoint]

Swapped my nokia clay tablet -- an excellent phone, by the way -- for what is called a 'smart phone' (A71). No good as a phone but you sure can do a lot of other things with it. If you know how. Finding out how is a nightmare. Swamped with counter-intuitive, no control (or out of control) instruction and examples that carefully avoid exactly what you want. Perfect way to kill a lot of time

Installed PF app but can't get it to start on unanswered threads. Anyone?

And $\TeX$ing is a laugh if you need three taps to get a backslash

And preview doesn't show the processed $\LaTeX$ no matter how hard I whack it !

And ... (unintellegible mumble grumble from an oldtimer) ..

Any good advice or tips (other than blabla for dummies -- it doesn't work) ?

$\$

Do not use smartphone for online forums. Use a good ordinary personal computer with either wired internet or wifi internet. You want to be able to use a normal good mouse, and a normal keyboard with real buttons.