A while back I noticed a bunch of problems with the Sony Xperia Z Premium. First, one of the external speakers stopped working — put simply, only one speaker produced sound. I also found yellow spots along the edge of the screen, maybe a screen issue. Since mine was a China-market unit, I went to Sony after-sales service. This time the Sony service location had moved to the Erqi Square area of Zhengzhou, on Dehua Street. I don’t think I’ve been here in ages… it’s changed quite a bit.

A package from overseas showed up a few days ago. I was confused — what did I even buy? I haven’t ordered anything from outside Japan recently. Opened it up and it clicked. It was the Dbrand Grip I backed on crowdfunding half a year ago, finally here.

Black Domain on Android is an app that kills rogue apps, aiming for “an Android experience just like iOS.” That’s a bit different from Greenify — Greenify feels more academic, while Black Domain is more practical. I paid for both. In the end I went with Black Domain. Black Domain works without root too. You just have to turn on USB debugging and type a command to start one of its processes. Calling it a hassle is fair, and calling it convenient is fair — basically, every time your phone reboots, you have to find a computer to activate it… So the author of Black Domain had an idea: make a “Black Domain Activator.” It’s a collaboration with some gamepad adapter, but using it is fine anyway, and it’s cheap.

I pre-ordered this one and slapped it on the moment it arrived.

After years away, I paid the Sony tax again: I bought an Xperia XZ Premium. I’ve said the reason plenty of times. I need a phone with a system that leans native, looks good and squared-off, and doesn’t have any weak or outdated spots in the specs… So the Xperia XZ Premium walked into my sights. Native-ish system First Snapdragon 835 in the world with a 4K resolution Squared-off design and a full mirror screen Checked the price and it was even a bit cheaper than a certain Pixel… so I preordered. Before preordering I figured it definitely wouldn’t drop in price, and I thought it probably wouldn’t either, but it seems it still dropped a few hundred bucks. Fuck.

Marriage is happening later and later in Japan, and more and more people can’t find a partner at all. So the country keeps cranking out “get married already” content — dramas, music, anime, manga… games — all trying to sell you on the romance-and-matrimony package and get you dreaming about wedded bliss. Kekkon Shugi Kokka (結婚主義国家) is one of those games. Originally it looks like it was a small doujin title; by the time I played it, it had been polished up and turned into… a mobile game. It’s also been split into several volumes. Volumes one and two are free, the rest cost money — about 250 yen a pop. I only tracked it down out of curiosity, and I couldn’t even finish volume one. Once I heard the later volumes are just parallel-world stories, I shelved it. So this is a view through a keyhole — volume one only.

Disclaimer: I haven’t taken money from any of the links below. If a shop wants to pay me, feel free to do it here. Whether you buy or not is your call—these are just my personal recommendations. Don’t come at me if you buy something and it sucks. And most importantly: if you’ve got the cash, I really don’t recommend using a screen protector at all. The Sony Xperia XZ Premium feels best naked—except it chips easily. Honestly, I’ve always thought curved screen designs are useless except for decorative light effects. That’s why I think Samsung’s various curved-screen phones are ugly as hell—like a piece of crystal-clear soap. I don’t know if anyone else likes square, boxy designs like I do. That’s why I’m willing to pay for Sony phones. I was also willing to pay for the Smartisan Pro—too bad Luo Yonghao wouldn’t give his own system stock Android. But sadly, even though the Sony Xperia series stuck with the square design for a long time, it eventually fell too and started doing curved screens. Based on my experience with the Xperia XZ Premium, this curved screen is completely useless. Maybe the corners feel better to hold, but the flat bottom still digs into your hand a bit. Sure, they added a bevel at the bottom to reduce the digging, which just proves you don’t need curved sides either—a bevel is enough. Anyway, you can’t make the whole thing curved like a crystal soap bar; doing it halfway is worse than not doing it at all. But regardless, the Sony Xperia XZ Premium already has a curved screen, which creates a big problem: screen protectors are a pain.

I’d been using the official Live Case from Google on my Nexus 6P the whole time, and honestly I was pretty happy with it — except it was sometimes slippery as a bar of soap. The Live Case has its shortcomings, though: the top and bottom aren’t protected. If you, like me, sometimes shove the phone into the car’s phone slot, you’ll find out where the problem is — the edges get dinged up easily. So I decided to swap cases, but I didn’t know what to get. Then I saw people on XDA recommending this thing… They call it a Bumper.

Earlier this month I helped a coworker buy a discounted BlackBerry Priv — the one recommended on Smzdm. Based on my coworker’s case, it took a bit over two weeks to reach him via a forwarding service. The price was pretty cheap, or at least not expensive. After it arrived, I got to play with it for a while since I’d helped with the purchase — maybe half an hour or so. Here are my impressions.

Bought a Nexus 5X to use as a car navigation unit. Plugged it into the car charger’s USB port and… there’s the problem. I’m not even asking for “charging rapidly,” but you’ve decided to be “charging slowly”… Thinking it over, it’s simple enough. The car charger I had was a gift. Figured I’d buy a proper one. Since the fast charging supported by the Nexus 6P / Nexus 5X / Pixel C is the 5V / 3A standard and not Qualcomm’s, there’s currently no car charger head that fully hits that spec, so I settled for an Anker 5V / 2.4A one.