I have two phones. Before, it was a Nexus 6P and a Nexus 5X—one on China Mobile, one on China Unicom. Right now the Unicom one is Sony’s XZP, so for the Mobile line I picked the OnePlus 5. OnePlus 5: OxygenOS leans stock. Snapdragon 835—honestly, at this point if it’s not a Snapdragon 835 I don’t even want to use it. Chinese full-network support, plus warranty. Supposedly the warranty service is good. Build quality is solid. I watched that foreigner’s bend test video—the OnePlus 5’s materials are impressive. Then again, OnePlus has always been a spec-stacking factory. The OnePlus 5 still meets my few requirements for a phone—except the screen… but since it’s a secondary phone I don’t care about the screen. So I bought it.

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 I need a phone with a system that leans native, looks good and squared-off, and doesn’t have any weak or outdated spots in the specs… So the Xperia XZ Premium walked into my sights.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.

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.

I sold my year-old Google Nexus 9 and, as a replacement, imported the latest Google Pixel C. The reason was honestly that I wasn’t all that satisfied with the Nexus 9—screen too small… build quality so-so… maybe that was it. More than that, though, I think the Pixel C just appealed to me more. The import went smoothly, but Google still shipped the keyboard and the tablet separately, which meant I had to deal with two forwarding orders. The keyboard ended up getting taxed too. I don’t think it should have been, but the forwarding company declared it proactively. They had a tax receipt, so I let it go. I’ve used the Google Pixel C for a fair amount of time—not short, but not long either. I’ve honestly written quite a bit on it: reports, and every blog post from the last one of last year up to now. I figure that gives me the right to have an opinion on this thing.

I’ve played a few Chinese-made galgames, and most of them really aren’t much to write home about — heavy imitation, that fake Japanese flavor. I don’t know Japanese, but I play the originals all the time with a dictionary and my imagination, and I still think Chinese-made galgames should have more local flavor. It’s not like you can’t survive without the Japanese formula. After all, Chinese RPGs proved that years ago. Most of the Chinese galgames with that loud chuunibyou imitation-Japanese vibe, I just read the description and pass. Never mind quality — if you’re that busy copying Japan, why would I play yours? I’d rather just play the Japanese originals. Am I wrong?

After getting the Nexus 6 last year, some things satisfied me and some didn’t, so when the Nexus 6P launched this year I kept hesitating about whether to upgrade. The things I wasn’t happy with: The screen was too yellow. It’s an AMOLED panel, and supposedly not even a good Samsung one, which is why it took me forever to adjust after switching from a Sony Xperia Z1. Battery life was a bit of a mess. With the Moto 360 sipping power over Bluetooth, I barely got through a day, and sometimes had to top up around noon. No LED notification light. The Nexus 6 actually has one, but Android disables it by default, and even if you turn it on you apparently need a paid app to make it work. Ridiculous. The biggest thing making me hesitate was this: the Nexus 6P does fix those complaints, but not in a way that leaves you feeling reassured.

I’ve known about NFC for ages — my Sony Xperia Z1 had it way back — but I never really used the feature. Okay, not entirely never. I tapped my China Construction Bank card with it once and saw some card info through Alipay, and that was it… I’d seen NFC tags around too, Sony made some I think, but at the time it felt like a solution in search of a problem. Still, one of these pointless things eventually landed in front of me as a filler item on a JD order. Might as well try it.

Last year I bought the first-gen Moto 360, swapped the band later, and it turned out great. I wore it for a full year and honestly it changed my life a little. Now the upgrade, Moto 360 2nd, is here — redesigned lugs, better battery life, more customization options, and an official China release. I wasn’t really unhappy with the first gen. Battery was enough for me, and the second gen’s “a bit over a day” feels awkward anyway — you still have to charge it at night… The main reason I bought the Moto 360 2nd is… looks. I hated the black first-gen Moto 360. Plenty of people saw it and said it looked like plastic. So while I was kicking myself for not buying silver, I kept refreshing the Google Store until the silver version came back in stock, ordered it and shipped it through a forwarding service. Arrived without a hitch.