User:Donald Trung/Elephone P8 Mini

This is a general information ℹ page 📃 about my Elephone P8 Mini as both a camera 📷 for Wikimedia Commons photography and how well I could use both it and Google Android for uploading to and editing Wikimedia Commons as well as some general background information ℹ and some opinions.

In November 2018 I bought an Elephone P8 Mini, it’s a Chinese mobile telephone 📱 with 64 GB of internal storage and 5 GB RAM, despite these rather high end specifications I bought it for “a lower-mid-range price”. It has a 16 MegaPixel camera 📷 and runs Google Android. My primary motivation for purchasing this device was obtaining a device which runs Google Android as it is a supported operating system, despite all of its shortcomings compared to Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile in regard to editing Wikimedia projects as it’s clear that Google did not have the more productivity oriented people in mind while they designed this operating system but more on that later.

Elephone: The company, coverage of Elephone on Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, and some general information ℹ

Elephone is a Chinese multi-national corporation specialised in the production of mobile telephones 📱, it sells its products worldwide to various demographics (including both “high-end buyers” and “low-end buyers”). Originally I had never even heard of the company “Elephone” before my contact mentioned this to me, though the majority of his ware consisted of Oukitel devices, another brand I’ve never heard of. I drove to Vriescheloo to meet up with him for his ware as I had previously met him on the Little All Saints’ Market (Low-Saxon (Oldamster-Gronings variant): Lutje Adrillen) where I was interested in purchasing a Sony VAIO laptop 💻 from him with 500 GB internal storage and 4 GB memory for € 80,- (eighty Euro’s), however as I finally found the time to make an appointment he had already sold this device but then my wife showed in obtaining a mini-laptop so I did still contact him and my wife purchased a Danish Acer Aspire One from him, as the device proved less than workable I contacted the contact again for another laptop and also my own desire to purchase a device running the Google Android OS. The bloke mostly offered Oukitel mobile telephones 📱 and had one (1) Elephone mobile telephone 📱 for sale. Initially I only knew of Elephones that ran the EleOS but after seeing that it ran Google Android 7.0 I bought the device, initially my Elephone P8 Mini was set up in the German language and appeared to have a lot of bugs but after factory 🏭 resetting it the device did not seem to have any bugs whatsoever (meaning that they were probably added by the previous owner) and immediately booted in the English language. I made a few test pictures and out of curiosity clicked on the “w:en:Elephone” link 🔗 in the metadata to find the screen below, after that I started to further investigate other Chinese multi-national corporations and found this:

After being attempted to be created the “w:en:Elephone” article was “salted” after being created three times with a year apart from the first to the second creation and it was “salted” after the third attempt, the “salting” admin basically said “this large multi-national corporation will never be notable enough for the English-language Wikipedia”.
The “w:en:Oukitel” English-language Wikipedia article has also been deleted 3 (three) times but unlike the “Elephone” article wasn't “salted”, interestingly enough there are Oukitel articles on half a dozen other language versions of Wikipedia which may or may not play into this.
The English-language “w:en:Ulefone” article is likewise “salted”, this seems to be a trend among corporate articles...
The English-language “w:en:Doogee” article has got to be the worst offender, it’s recreations were only months apart but it wasn’t originally “salted” as “admin-only” (which as I rarely see write ✍🏻 any actual content rather than just delete means “never to be created again”), in fact it was “salted” as “template-editors-only”, but then in 2016 was “resalted”/”re-salted” with the excuse that a group trusted users 👥 aren’t “trusted enough”, despite there being no creation by them warranting a deletion, this is rather odd as it severely limits who is and isn’t allowed to create content related to A LARGE 🤪 CHINESE MULTI-NATIONAL CORPORATION, if this concerned someone’s aunt’s homemade phone-cover business 🕴🏻 I'd understand it, but this goes too far.

It is clear that for whatever 🙄 reason Wikipedians don’t think that a famous Chinese multi-national is “notable” enough while small local sports teams and every game that they've ever played are for whatever reason, but honestly I’ve never heard of either Elephone or Oukitel either before my contact in Vriescheloo, Westerwolde informed me about them but to my surprise 🎊 almost everyone I asked about them seemed to know what these names meant which means that those companies achieved “household name” status in rural Groningen but not at the English-language Wikipedia, Oukitel is the worst offender because as of writing ✍🏻 this it has five (5) different Wikipedia articles in different languages. I have no brand loyalty to anyone so I’m not particularly that insulted that every time ⌚ I upload a photograph taken with my Elephone P8 Mini that it links to a “salted” Wikipedia article, but do find it a disappointment because apparently whether or not free knowledge about a given subject is allowed to exist depends on the whim of Wikipedia admins with no regard to the actual notability of the “salted” subject, the common myth is that Wikipedia sysops have no inherent ability to actually affect the content of Wikipedia but this is a nonsensical notion for the ability to <strike<eternally indefinitely ban human beings from participation and <strike<eternally indefinitely “project” pages from creation essentially means that this information shall never be made free for anyone, it is in fact this that makes sure that Wikimedia projects can never become “the sum of all human knowledge” unless a change in mentality occurs, in fact websites like the Facebook and Google’s YouTube are more likely to become “the sum of all human knowledge”, it is also this mentality that dispels the myth that Wikimedia projects aren’t ruled “top-down” or that “all users are equal” as a whole class of users can decide on a whim whether or not a page is fit for inclusion without any prior debate. Despite not having an English-language Wikipedia page finding information about “Elephone” in English is quite easy and a simple Ecosia search 🔎 will find you all you need to know.

After reading 📖 and discovering this fiasco on the English-language Wikipedia I decided to rectify information about Elephone on Wikimedia Commons, because unlike a Wikipedia, the Commonswiki has no standards of notability, I mean literally none, there are more otherwise non-notable people trying to get themselves OFF of Wikimedia Commons than ON it. Elephone being a Mainland-Chinese company I had my doubts about this telephone, not hardware-wise as despite making the world’s worst smartphones just a couple of years ago the People’s Republic of China is now responsible for creating its best, so I didn't really expect the device to be bad, but I knew what I was getting myself into as it was quite cheap so I didn't expect it to be “that” good either. The bloke who sold me the device did so for € 70,- (seventy Euro’s) and he claimed that “even in China” the device wasn't ever sold cheaper than € 130,- (one-hundred-and-thirty Euro’s) so I essentially had my hands on “a world premiere”, I know myself to be a very naïve person so I expected it to be a rather good telephone, I wasn't disappointed. Though the device does leave room for several improvements.

The Camera 📷

The Elephone P8 Mini’s camera 📷 is... “Good enough”, note 📝 that for me it just had to be better than Microsoft's Nokia Lumia 730 Dual SIM which is not exactly a high standard, but it manages to only barely do that, either this means that a Carl Zeiss (or Carl Zeiß) lens is amazing on even a mid-range device or that Elephone hasn’t invested much in the Elephone P8 Mini’s camera 📷, either way my verdict is “good enough” as to me the differences tends to be in the software 👩‍💻 and not really that much in the hardware, while my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL phablet made amazing photographs with a great focus and “a lossless zoom 🔍” prior to the camera 📷 receiving some random glitches after me overusing it, both the Elephone P8 Mini and Microsoft's Nokia Lumia 730 Dual SIM produce photographs that get rather blurry if you look at anything other than “the big picture” so although the Elephone P8 Mini is a major improvement quality-wise, it just basically proves that “today’s low-range smartphones are slightly better than yesteryear’s mid-smartphones”. The differences that are most influential on Wikimedia Commons are the recording of the geophysical location in the EXIF data and the ability to move files 📁 from the device into the cloud ☁.

Now let’s look into how I moved files 📁 from my wife's French best-friend’s Microsoft's Nokia Lumia 730 Dual SIM’s internal storage (wow 😲, those are a lot of possessives) to the cloud ☁, ever since Microsoft got under the leadership of Satya Nadella (Malayalam: സത്യ നദെല്ല) it has been going into a downward spiral for consumers, and despite moving everything to the cloud ☁ it reduced Microsoft OneDrive’s gratis internal storage from 30 GB (thirty gigabytes) to 5 GB (five gigabytes), after only a month of Wikimedia Commons-only photography my wife's French best-friend’s Microsoft's Nokia Lumia 730 Dual SIM’s Microsoft OneDrive storage storage was completely full, also as I simply can't delete ANYTHING I forced myself to even after the file had been backed-up to Microsoft OneDrive to first 🥇 move them to my wife’s mini-laptop and then move them to MEGA Privacy, like Microsoft, Google has also cut the amount of Google Drive’s storage space, however while Google Drive now also only has 5 GB (five gigabytes) of (gratis) storage for new Google-accounts, it offers unlimited storage through Google Photos (previously Google+ Photos) which allows me to remove the files from my Elephone P8 Mini without deleting them. Well, this might seem trivial to someone else, but I’m a digital hoarder and I’m incapable of deleting anything, so I have to find loopholes in order to be able to move files without deleting them in one way or another. Another major software difference are the file sizes, the photographs I uploaded to Wikimedia Commons made with my wife's French best-friend’s Microsoft's Nokia Lumia 730 Dual SIM were generally somewhere between 1 MB (one megabyte) and 2,5 MB (two-and-a-half megabytes) while photographs taken with my Elephone P8 Mini tend to be between 3,5 MB (three-and-a-half megabytes) and 7 MB (seven megabytes), as I have very fast internet this isn’t an issue but I do see different file sizes. The most important advantage of this larger file size is that these files are in fact physically larger and allows people to see more details (even though they’re just as blurry as the photographs taken on my wife's French best-friend’s Microsoft's Nokia Lumia 730 Dual SIM).

The lighting is just as rubbish on my Elephone P8 Mini as with my wife's French best-friend’s Microsoft's Nokia Lumia 730 Dual SIM which means that I can’t take photographs after a certain hour of the day and will have to wait for the sun ☀ to take certain photographs and I can only take them from certain angles depending on the physical position of the sun ☀ from my perspective. Personally I like the fact that the Elephone P8 Mini records the location, this is also something I “enabled” on my wife's French best-friend’s Microsoft's Nokia Lumia 730 Dual SIM but for whatever reason it never recorded it. The Elephone P8 Mini doesn't consistently record the geophyisical location of a photograph either, it tends to record it some of the time, or just randomly after a certain photograph and then for all following photographs without me changing any of the settings. The focus of the camera 📷 doesn't seem that consistent either, but it's miles better than most older models.

Editing ✍🏻

Now the ability to edit Wikimedia projects using Google Android is… less than optimal and actually a major reason why I cling on to my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL phablet despite its irritating shortcomings (such as rebooting basically 50% (fifty percent) of the time I try to unlock it… yeah…), the ability to make notations or drafts such as this essay is also severely less optimal on Google Android than it is in Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱, in fact this has more to do with the way that the keyboard 🎹 works and the general software than how the website renders, although that also seems to be an issue (but more on that later). The ability to copy and paste is rather awkward to put it mildly… But let’s first look at the present state of mobile editing as a whole on Wikimedia projects before going anything further into the specifics of Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱 Vs. Google Android, mobile editing is a severely neglected aspect of the technical side of editing on Wikimedia projects, in fact you’ll have to settle for what’s basically less than half the functionality with a literal tag that marks it “a special type of edit(ing)” as if it's more prone to abuse. As usual it's always easier to destroy than it is to create and this is no different on mobile 📱 platforms, but while using the Desktop 💻 editing interface you can edit the entirety of pages this is literally impossible if a page has more than a single section marked by “==” on any Wikimedia project. Also note 📝 that I am writing about mobile 📱 editing using the mobile 📱 browser interface and not the Google Play apps (which I do not own). Now mobile 📱 editing has made some improvements during the past year but it’s by no means “acceptable”, I assume that mobile 📱 editing is probably the worst at Finnish-language Wikimedia websites but here at Wikimedia Commons it has somewhat improved, historically a Mobile 📱 UploadWizard (NOT THE WIKIMEDIA COMMONS GOOGLE PLAY APP) was the cause of “a selfiepocalypse” around half a decade ago which was apparently so traumatising for people involved in Wikimedia Commons at the time that the mere thought of Mobile 📱 editing gives that Vietnam flashbacks and triggers their PTSD, but as time passes more and more people try to utlise their mobile devices to directly upload their images and / or other files 📁 to Wikimedia Commons so the demand keeps rising and while the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) seems to have disavowed themselves from helping improve the mobile editing environment, a new generation of volunteer developers are rapidly improving the Mobile 📱 editing capabilities as they too keep running into these issues. Now that y’all have some understanding of the cultural situation as of December 27th (twenty-seventh), 2018 it's time to take an objective look at how bad the current situation is for us mobile 📱 users depending on the platform.

On Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱 I mostly edit and draft edits in Microsoft Outlook (an e-mail 📧 client built into the operating system), I have an amazing keyboard there designed for maximum productivity, in fact while using Microsoft Windows on my phablet I do not even miss Microsoft Windows on a laptop 💻 because the experience is extremely similar and one can be very productive. There is “an extra black line” between the keyboard 🎹 keys and the rest of the screen on Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱 devices that features both “a Microphone” 🎤 for speech input and “a clipboard” 📋 for copying and pasting content, if you highlight text and the keyboard isn't activated then you can still copy text, this doesn't mean that the text renders perfectly or that it actually gets copied (I often have to copy a text multiple times before I can paste it), but the copying and pasting capabilities are superb. If a webpage contains a lot of text then this slows the device down and might even cause the browser to crash 💥, on my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL phablet editing a Wikipedia article like “w:en:Vietnamese cash” (version as of writing this / Mobile 📱) is nearly impossible. However if I first copy that entire list 📃 and then paste it to Microsoft Outlook to then edit the changed I want to implement to then copy it after first 🥇 sending it to myself and then pasting it after selecting the entire list... Not exactly optimal. Usually I have to create draft articles to see how these changes actually look when they’re being implemented in “WikiCode”. In fact at any given time I probably have half a dozen “e-mail 📧 drafts” that I have in my e-mail 📧 inbox 📩 working on these different edits, I usually name them “[subject][number of the draft]” (for example the exact draft this sentence was written in is called “Editing 5.” And if this were to be “a backlogged drsft” I would name it “Editing 5.A.”, “Editing 5.B.”, “Editing 5.C.”, “Editing 5.D.”, “Editing 5.E.”, Etc. Usually after five (5) days or so). Now having a Microsoft Lumia 950 XL phablet it tends to crash 💥 all the time, oftentimes all text in an e-mail 📧 draft in Microsoft Outlook then gets deleted and I would have to start “from my last save point”, now in a day my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL can crash 💥 usually around 12 (twelve) times an hour if I use this device intensively which means that I have “to save” (send an e-mail 📧 with the planned edits to myself) a draft after every few sentences or “minor subject” or face losing a lot of time ⌚ invested. Note 📝: This is also the reason why “Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱.” Often appears at the bottom of longer edits made by me.

Now Google Android would seem like the perfect solution for most of my editing woes as it is actually a supported operating system where bugs get fixed, however it's very evident that Google Android is more focused on content consumption than content creation, however this could also be said about the “mobile 📱 interface” of any Wikimedia website. Now drafting e-mails in either Google Mail 📧, Google’s Mail 📧, and/or Microsoft Outlook, now in that case I actually have to edit the mobile 📱 website, now thus isn't an optimal editing environment but it’s not like I have much of a choice. For some reason while editing on Google Andoird (as of writing this) the interface displayed on Google Android seems like “an older version” compared to the mobile 📱 interface found on Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱, which is odd as the majority of mobile-users use Giogle Android. Now copying and pasting a text using my Elephone P8 Mini is likewise less than optimal to say the least. And even highlighting a text seems to be a bit of trouble, for these reasons I choose not to use my Elephone P8 Mini for much editing other than using the MediaWiki Upload Wizard for simple uploading (unless the Mobile 📱 editing interface would improve), even in this respect importing images from other websites isn't as easy on Google Android as it is in Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱, in this day-and-age people are becoming “prosumers” (consumers as well as producers) and mobile devices have made this more of a reality than ever before, however Wikimedia websites seem to lack behind embracing mobile-users.

Another important limitation is that when I use the Microsoft Swiftkey keyboard 🎹 (or any other keyboard 🎹 for Google Android for that matter) I would often miss a large amount of diacritical marks, for example now I use the Microsoft Windows keyboard 🎹 “ENG (US)” and the character “e” gives “3”, “é”, “ê”, “è”, and “ë” while on my Elephone P8 Mini I have English, Dutch, Danish, and Vietnamese installed for Latin script and I am still missing the “è”, characters like “ß” or “Ñ” aren’t even there to begin with, not even common Vietnamese-language characters seem to be present in THE VIETNAMESE(-LANGUAGE) KEYBOARD 🎹, I have to hope 🤞🏻 that the autocorrect by whatever reason knows what diacritical mark I'm referring to in order to be able to type in it, characters like “ü” and “ö” which I need for German placenames seem to be completely absent unless I copy them from another webpage first. This isn't a minor limitation either as this basically means that I wouldn't be able to contribute in Vietnamese without constantly having to go back 🔙 and retouch some incorrectly placed diacritical marks. All I can hope 🤞🏻 for is that the Microsoft Windows Keyboard 🎹 will somehow find its way into Microsoft's SwiftKey Keyboard 🎹.

Original publication 📤

Sent 📩 from my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile 📱. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 19:23, 29 December 2018 (UTC)