Linas.P

I used to be able to justify it when the phones were very innovative, but as of late I can't see much of said innovation. Well I guess it needs to be defined, back in the days of say Galaxy S2, to S3, or S3 to S4, or S4 to S5, there was genuine step in specs screen resolution 20% higher, screen size 10% higher, battery size/life 30% higher, camera +50% megapixels, S5 added water resistance, S6 added metal frame and curved screen and the price was going up slowly almost with inflation. By like £50, sometimes maybe £100. But by the time we got to S10 to S20, there was honestly very little between them, S20 lost 3.5mm jack and that was pretty much it, for the rest you need to look at the spec. sheet with magnification. Then Samsung also switched to "tick tock" release cycle like apple... S20 was pretty much S10, just some features, cut, charger removed from the box, the camera cut out moved from corner to middle. S22 was pretty much same as S21, even externally identical, perhaps 1mm here and there, S23 and S24 again - I struggle to see why do I have to spend £1000 on phone one year and next year to replace it with nearly identical phone. Also as mentioned Samsung followed apple in egregiously overpricing their flagships. Galaxy S used to be flagship at the price of ~600-£700 + inflation, but then they introduced Ultra. So whereas logic says S10 should have been replaced by S20, that is not true, S10 was replaced by S20 Ultra and S20 was basically a step down in quality from S10. That is why when I replaced my S10 with S22 I felt like going a segment down, S22 despite being obviously much more technologically advanced device (because it is 4 years newer) is a solid upper-midrange phone and not flagship. Honestly my S10 is snappier and nicer to handle than S22. S22 Ultra a different story, but it was £1179... Now sure - Samsung does appreciate loyalty, so if you upgrading EVERY YEAR, then they will knock down £400-£600 trade-in. So if you got S23 Ultra in same fashion (trading your previous S22 Ultra), then with trade-in it worked out probably less than £799, then before launch you could pick-up S24 Ultra for £1299-£600 trade in for Z-Fold 5 or £500 for S23Ultra + 512GB free memory upgrade for pre-order + Galaxy Gear watch (worth ~£299), so reasonably speaking your S24 Ultra will cost you £1299-£500=£799 + free memory upgrade that is worth £100 + free smar****ch that is worth £299, so you paying in ballpark (or even less than £600) if you upgrade every year. It was the same when I pre-ordered S22, I got £200 discount for ANY Samsung phone in ANY condition and I just had dead A52 in the draw + Galaxy Buds Pro 2 (which were probably £249 to buy and they are honestly the best wireless earphones I have every tried (they are very loud, very clear, very deep base, good battery life, good microphone, good active noise cancellation, excellent active noise filtering boost - feels a bit like superhuman as you can snoop on conversations across the train it is a little be eerie...). So I paid £799 for the phone + very very viable free earphones that are worth their price. In short - you can always have latest and greatest Samsung phone for ~£600 a year + a lot of various freebies depending on what they have on offer that year, sometimes it is honestly crap and useless, but sometimes it is something you may want to buy yourself, so it could be quite sweet deal. But even then I am struggling to justify £600 a year, as the phones are simply not different enough, or not better enough to upgrade. So I rather pay ~£800 every 3/4 years, to get 6 month old "flagship" and that works out for me as £200 to stay somewhat with the trends. I also still have Note 4 - still works well, but it is unbelievably slow, borderline unusable, I can't believe what updates did to it (it was very snappy and smooth phone at launch). Was considering to even put a custom rom on it with some clean vanilla Android 8 or something, but it would be obsolete either way. Finally - Samsung did innovate with foldable and they did set the new big trend, defined the next step in the smartphone development for sure. However, there is difference between practical innovation and public technology testing. Galaxy Fold was a public technology testing, the device was very rough and fragile at the start and I just can't see how it is worth to pay £1999 to be a test subject (or was it even over £2000?!), I hoped such prototype phones will trickle down into mainstream, but it has barely happen, only about to happen now. So it just shows how much it has changed. I remember they launched original Galaxy Edge, just around the time Note 5 came out, it was probably around £1000, when Note 5 was £600 and Galaxy S5 was £489. It was that sort of prototype - technology showpiece for few fans etc. But next year there was S6 and S6 edge, with the price difference of only £50 and both under £600. So it took Samsung 6 months to bring "future showcase device" into mainstream for affordable price. Fold was launched 5 years ago and Fold Z 5 was still well over £1000... £1649 if I noted correctly... so it is still way way into public prototype testing realm and well too expensive for mainstream and even then S23 Ultra was a better phone overall. So it is a difference between overpriced gimmick and true innovation. I consider that until device is not available at reasonable price for mainstream - it is a gimmick. I think foldables just about to break into mainstream, I bought Z4 Flip as a gift, but again only because it kind of worked out around £650 with discounts for me. Now I guess why it took so long for Samsung to do it ? It is because competition drives innovation, Samsung was way above the curve and there was no real competition in folding screens space, so Samsung could afford to keep the prices high. Hence my hope that Z Fold 6 will be sub-£800 phone once all the rebates, trade-ins and gifts are included and I could finally upgrade.

On iTunes maybe, but to use App Store you must link credit card to it, so basically it is ID check as well... because you can't be just Mr. Joe Blobs with e-mail ihatecrapple@gmail.com. You can indeed create alt-account with all made-up information, log-into App Store, but you can't download any apps, because as soon as you try to do it it will ask for payment method (even for free apps), and obviously once you add credit (or debit card) they know EXACTLY who you are. I had this comical moment with Apple support, because I had issue validating my credit card, because obviously all the info on my account was made-up and when they ask me for my account e-mail address it was something like applesucks8345@mailinator.com. At that point they advised me that "perhaps credit card is not validating because I had made-up info on the account", even thought for credit card I obviously had to enter my real details. So basically there is no escaping all knowing apple spy network... if you want to use their ecosystem.

It is personal choice here, but it could be life and death choice in china. I also know that some chinese who have left china had been harassed based on information china was able to collect on them abroad, in fact I know one person myself who had bought iphone in china (they have segregated icloud etc.) and they were still harassed based on information crapple shared with china. Only once they got iphone in UK they managed to lose the tail (still weird choice to go back to the company that sold you out). For google I just create account for each new device and only use that account with that device. I mean I am sure google can still figure out based on IPs and what not that it is same user using multiple accounts, but at least from targeted marketing algorithm it seems to work. Still (this may be paranoia) but if you speak out loud about your holiday plans in the room, few hours later you get adverts for package holiday to the destination you discussed... well it is still better than be re-educated in one of the china's camps. Ironically - you can hide from targeted advertising by using chinese phones, because their google services do not connect to main google servers, or at least it is not so obvious. So in some sense if CCP can't reach you and hurt you, then as foreign national you may get more privacy using chinese phones. As for crapple - I can just confirm they are horrible, from developer perspective they are horrible to deal with, from user perspective they are horrible to deal with, they basically IDs you personally, because you must give them your credit card details to download even free apps... so you can't be semi-anonymous with them like you can on android and their control freaks as well.

My colleagues are also all on iphones, generally in UK iphones are very popular, certainly way more popular than Globally or in rest of Europe. Not really sure why they are so popular. I personally never liked iphones, just my preference. Bu they also been quite dodgy recently with removing features rather than adding them, also with introduction of Pro... basically if you don't get Pro then you getting "mid-range" phone, for the price that used to be "high-end". Also I just don't like how restricted everything is, basically you buy the phone, but apple still owns it and dictates you what you can and can't do. Just can't live with that. In my experience Samsung provides 3-4 years of updates for operating system, but they continue with security updates for quite a while. I am not sure what they promise, but certainly more than 5 years. At least that is true for their "flagship" devices, so Galaxy S, Galaxy Fold all getting at least 5 years of updates. I guess depends on where one draws the line, but 5 years in my experience were plenty, longer than that and phone becomes really obsolete anyway. As for Chinese phones - they simply can't be trusted, some models may get updates, some may not get-updates... simply the number of different devices they spit out each year means that it would be very hard to stay on top of their all updates for many years. I think 2-3 years if you lucky. The Oppo Find X that I got in 2018 only got 1 update after like 18 months and that was it, over time apps started glitching and crashing on it and by ~2021 it became almost useless. To befair nothing major has failed on it, battery got to maybe 6 hours, also it had sliding camera and it developed the fault where sometimes you would slide camera cover and it would not turn on, but then usually if you close and open it, then it would turn on, not sure if that was software or hardware issue. I guess with time it would have stopped working completely, but had not done so in time I was still using it.

I know you didn't, I am just saying I had constant problems with them.

It is unobtanium guys... Particularly in UK these were never sold and never fitted to the cars, if any exist then they would be imported from US. In US they were available as optional extra and very few were sold. Don't know the numbers, but it will be "high-hundreds or low thousands", meaning miniscule number. Most likely they were fitted to IS350s and they highly sought after items even in US. So if you looking for one - ebay.com or maybe ask around in US Lexus forums like IS.my

Bosch S4... also Vatra (I believe it is same as Bosch just different sticker). Then also Exide, but in UK they tend to be very pricey for no reason. Panasonic is what probably was fitted from factory, but I have not seen any place selling them. Would stay away from Yuasa... this is what you would be commonly offered by places like Halfrauds or KwikFrauds. In my experience you lucky if they last their warranty period.

Well yes - I guess that is my point. I would be happy to participate in experiment if it would be significantly cheaper... it is significantly cheaper in China. So if I visit China like I did in 2018 and I see it for £250, then I would be more than happy to "throw that money away" to marvel at devices from the company that takes risks. I do understand what you saying, but the price of £1700 or £1200 is the price of the tired, tested and reliable device, not prototype which may or may not turn on in 6 months. Also as I said it is priorities - if I still be upgrading every 6 months as before, then that money would be wasted either way and then it doesn't matter, but when now I keep devices for 3 years+ I started valuing how they last long term. But I also understand different people have different priorities, so for some this totally works and makes sense.

Yeah, nowadays they have "high-end" and then "true" high-end. As always we can thank apple for this mess - I think they started it with iphone x, or maybe 11. Basically before you get either Iphone or galaxy S and that was the high-end phone of the year to get, then apple introduced "pro" for like £1500. At first it looked like either you get normal phone or overpay for some gimmick, but now the normal iphone or Galaxy S are actually mid-range, for example I have S22 and it just feels cheap even compared to my previous S10, because the one to get suppose to be £1500 S22 Ultra (or it was 2 years ago at least, S24 just launched now). Well and obvious they have these foldable phone now which used to cost a lot, but again rumours are Samsung is going to get competitive on pricing again. As for foldable phones - they are still fragile. When they were not water-proof I didn't even consider them, but I bought Z4 Flip as present and it was quite good, the special screen protector failed after 15 months, but it was replaced by warranty for free. Screen seems to hold just fine for now and Samsung does £150 subsidised replacements. But foldable phones are still fragile in comparison to normal ones, you definitely need to take extra care with them. I honestly can't care about latest and greatest now, somehow few years back each phone release used to excite me and there was some significant upgrade, but in recent years I really struggle to see what am I getting for extra money. Same applies to both Samsung and Apple - I can't even tell the difference between iphones after 12, Galaxy S likewise... last 3 or 4 are pretty much identical... S21, 22, 23 and now 24 really offers more or less the same package. If anything I probably prefer my old S10 (generally would like to have more compact phone, but there are no more compact high-end ones). As such I just keep the phones until they fail now... had S6 edge, to be fair it had not failed, but got quite slow after 4 years, S10 - I cracked the screen after 3 years (still works fine, just glass has chip) and S22 still going strong after 2 years, so if rumours are true then maybe in 2 years time I will pick-up discounted Fold 6. As for all other brands I personally find them irrelevant, so if android then it is Samsung, if not android then it is iphone... Never found Google Pixel to be any good, Sony, LG, HTC etc. are all pretty much irrelevant now. Motorola is basically chinese company as well and they kind of hang around in mid-range and then there is probably 100 different chinese companies. Generally they have impressive spec sheets, but features are just not polished and do not work half of the time and that is even considering Samsung features are often not fully polished. Also again in my experience they simply fail in less than a year, it starts little by little, but in 12 month it usually turns into brick... sort of maybe camera starts turning off at first, then it doesn't turn on at all, then microphone starts glitching, then people can't hear you anymore and by years' end they stop charging, or holds 4h of charge... or some combination of similar issues. As for malware - 1 it is real thing, but 2 - I kind of agree, there is nothing useful they can find out about me and I am not planning to go to china at any time soon. So it isn't real concern, but it is there. Also perhaps I would be little bit worried logging in into my banking account, they probably wouldn't bother stealing my 2p worth of savings, but I in theory they could if they wanted to. Also also - that is not to say google or apple does not spy on us, the difference perhaps is targeted advertising vs. "re-education camp" in Xinjiang. That said I think my key issue is their quality and "longevity" and their price isn't even that good in UK. For example I bought Oppo Find X in 2018 when I was in China and my girlfriend bought Vivo something... whatever. Point is in China Oppo Find X costed something like £290, whereas here it only launched year later for £899. And similar story for Vivo, it was even cheaper, if memory serves - like £155. So yes - at those prices they are amazing devices and I don't even care if they last 6 months, but at UK price I just never going to pay £1000+ for chinese phone, for one I kind of know they are not worth it, because they actually sell for maybe £250 in china and secondly, they are made to that level of quality. So yeah - if ever needed "burner" phone for some reason, then I may just get one of the cheaper ones for under £200, but I will never regard them as premium devices in the same league as Samsung or Apple.

It does look great and I always wished for smaller thinner Galaxy Fold or Flip, I could even deal with smaller battery if that is trade-off. Recently I was looking at Honor Magic V2, it does look very cool and I like texturing on one side of the phone (almost look like leather texture)... BUT - I just don't trust any chinesium nowadays, Samsung quality is Samsung quality and every person I know who had Huawei, Honor or whatever other stuff comes from China always had issues. They do last ~6Months and then issues starts. I am not even going to go into discussion of chinese malware (it may not be that relevant unless you work for MI6). Now sure - some years back I would replace phone every 6 months trying to get latest and greatest, so 6 months would not be a deal breaker, but nowadays I use my phones for 3-4 years and therefore I started to appreciate Samsung more, they just get regularly updated, updated for at least 3 years and they usually last just as long. Also I heard rumours that next Fold 6 is likely to be £600 phone, so I may as well wait for that.

Clean and reapply the grease on the screw which extends steering column.

Have you checked fuel filter? Also could be some sensor problem where it occasionally reads something wrong and you get drop in power, but generally speaking intermittent problems are the hardest ones to diagnose.

The problem is not shared parts, there is no such thing as "Lexus Part", they are all stamped "Toyota". The problem is that Lexus overall are becoming just rebadged Toyotas, the quality difference is just not there (expect of models I mentioned), sure you can fit optional ML and leather is nicer in Lexus, but fundamental quality is that of nice economy car, not of affordable luxury car that Lexus of old used to be. Also Porsche and Audi comparison is now quite correct. Toyota = VW, Audi = Lexus, Porsche in that sense probably would be somewhere near Century. So no Audi does not cheapen Porsche, plus Porsche still maintains unique engines (except in EVs), unique model range and are better quality... and having some Audi part does not really cheapens it too much. Like having "Lexus part" would not cheapen Century. Now this comparison works for cheaper Audi, indeed A3, A2 and later A4 were quite similar to VW Golf/Polo/Passat and indeed that cheapened them. Hence I never considered Audi to be equal to BMW, MB or for that matter Lexus. Sure upper Audi models were comparable and actually good, but that is because they came with engines not fitted to VW and Quattro AWD system, so despite borrowing some of switchgear from VW they made it up elsewhere. Lexus really doesn't make it up anywhere nowadays, identical engines, identical power, list little bit cosmetically different... kind of similar to Acura really, whereas Acura were just rebadged Honda in US. Original Lexus success stems from providing original well above average quality luxury cars, but maintaining Toyota quality and affordable price. That is basically why Lexus succeeded and why Acura or Infinity failed. Now they coming around and basically saying "we are successful anyway, why bother following the techniques that made us successful in the first place". As for sales - Lexus sales primarily stems from SUV boom, where Lexus do offer some very good and competitive SUVs - NX and RX, those are selling very well, because they are good cars. Even RAV4 won which NX is based is one of best sellers world wide, because it is all around solid vehicle. But in all other segments Lexus is fading away and even in their core segments they are not that much different from Toyota... as I said NX is so closely priced with RAV4, then it is almost possible to call NX a top trim of RAV4 range. Lexus brand itself becoming irrelevant and arguably if Toyota would discontinue it and just sell Lexus cars under Toyota badge they would not lose much. That is what I mean by "fading away".

I am not sure US is indicator for how it will work out in Europe. Driving in US is way more popular than Europe (there are exceptions, but in general true), car culture is much stronger in US, people depend more on cars and fuel is still extremely cheap compared to Europe ($3.07/gallon ~ $0.80/litter). So obviously BEV demand in US will be much lower as there is no artificial constrains on ICE like in Europe. Now overall, some of the challenges will be similar, BEVs struggle to sell in Europe as well as charging network is not ready yet and we reached the saturation point (I have predicted this for years, those who were here long enough would know I was saying this for at least 5 years), basically everyone that has money and off-street parking and does sort of driving that justifies BEV already has one. Most of BEV sales nowadays are replacement, not conversion, because there is no more demand for growth, infrastructure is not ready to accept any more of BEVs. So that is similar and that is why sales are slowing down, but overall Europe is ahead of US in terms of adoption and will be ahead for foreseeable future. Mainly because in Europe it is much more beneficial to own BEV than in US, we have much more arbitrary charges on ICE and state subsides on BEVs than US. Not really... unless you want to die in toxic inferno. But on more serious note, crashing BEV prices are still generally good - some people who may benefit from BEV, but could not afford new one could pick-up one nearly new at huge discount.

Not possible. You can use vaccum pump to suck the oil out of dipstick tube, but both drain plug and oil filter are at the bottom of the engine. At very least you would need to jack the car and get under it and it would suck as well, because oil filter is usually hard to remove. Also I would not recommend pumping method, because engine is designed in such way that all the crap accumulates on the bottom of the pan (saying GS250 I assume you have 4GR-FSE), so by sucking the oil out you would leave all the crap in the engine. On Lexus in general (except of maybe LF-A) the oil change is done from under the car.

I agree - I rather drive in any European country than UK, really dread coming back after every trip. Generally, driving culture in France is better than in UK (outside of Paris), but they do tend to cut you off and checking mirrors is not their thing, but unlike UK they move over after overtaking and do not block the road. No respect for other cars thought, small incidents considered "part of driving".

So that depends on the tyre circumference. As I said if you go for 225/50, then circumference is close enough not to cause issues. Not necessarily, as long as the level of headlights stays correct it would pass. It basically then becomes manual adjust. But you right, that is what I have on my GS300. Some idiot somehow managed to brake actuator and previous owner then fixed it with piece of metal and few screws. Looks really dodgy, but in principle it works.

I think most people replace tyres like for like, very few people I know experiment with the sizes. But from early on I never liked how IS250 handles, my first one was F-Sport with 18", so it is even worse 225/255. I just hate that you come to the corner with RWD car, accelerate mid-corner and it pushes out the front end. It not suppose to be like that. And all that is just tyre widths/grip. Wider summer tyres have more grip in dry, so automatically if you get way narrower tyres in front and way wider in rear - your front will lose grip before rear, despite car being RWD. This is done for "safety", because assumption is that driver is inexperienced and will not know how to handle oversteer. Basically with such rear balance you can push car as much in corners. Again - I assume most of car will have whatever was fitted on them from factory, so they will have 245s in the rear. But that is neither best tyre size for the car, nor really there is any need to stick with it. As for 245/45/17 not being most common tyre size in general... yeah it could be.

For winter tyres 100% 225, they will actually be better for driving in winter, you can also go for 225/50 if you want to keep speedometer indicating somewhat similar speed as before. I had square 225/50 for winter and they were great. For summer, I had 235, 245 and 255 and I probably would go for 225 or 235 in future. Basically, 245 and 255 in my opinion ruins the balance of the car. Lexus did it deliberately, because understeering is considered "safe" by those who can't drive, but I find it just annoying. 225 in front and 235 in rear would give you perfect balance, or as close one could get to it i.e. car would neither understeer, nor oversteer and if you go past the limits all 4 wheels will slide (which in IS250 is not very likely). Square 225 set-up would make IS250 feel like RWD car should and there would be slight oversteer, which could be fun combined with the right skill. And I don't mean it would be unsafe or anything, it is not very powerful car, 225 is plenty to keep it on the road, but the balance will be little bit more natural for RWD, little bit of oversteer. Nice bonus - if you have square 225, then you can rotate the tyres and that means set will last longer as you can wear them down more evenly. Keep best tyres always in the rear. That said 225 will look a little bit silly in the rear on standard wheels and offsets, so 20-25mm hub centric spacer would be nice. Also remember entry-lever IS250 came with 205/55/16... so 225 is really PLENTY for this car.

Little bit harder to do on Autobahn. I was flashed in kind of stupid place also - so it was unlimited speed where I was doing like 230-240, then on long downhill there was a sign for 130, I noticed the sign and let-off (I never brake, only let off and let the car slow down), then 100m later another sign 110 and 25m later bunch of speed cameras. So when I let off it dropped to maybe 180 before the speed cameras. Then probably another 200m later it is unlimited speed again. So looked literally like deliberate speed trap for sole purpose of flashing people. Not sure what were the fines in Germany back in 2016 (I know since then they have increased them), but I can't imagine it would be small for 70 over.

Even before that it was rare to get the fine. I was stopped in Germany once - probably in 2016 or something like that and they wanted to impound my car for unpaid fines. But the fines were 3 years ago and I have acquired the car 6 months ago, so I was good to go. And that was the same trip when I got flashed in France twice and also once in Germany and never got any fines from either. Either change the car or put different plate on it.

Flashed probably for speed, also suspect I passed trough the city which had Crit'Air without registering (which by the way you may need to get). You can't get fines from Europe now. Which is kind of double edge sword - so you don't have to pay them, but if you go back few years later and you have several big fines they may stop you and impound the car. But it has to be many and big fines for them to bother, they won't be chasing you for 1 fine for 12 Euros.

100%... because as I said for them it is not considered an issue. And if you challenge them they will be confused what you want... maybe they will say "pardon" just being nice, but otherwise they will be like "what an ffffing idiot, starts shouting about the scratch... those foreigners are weird... it is just a car, it mean to be scratched". And this is not some sort of "stereotype" from Top Gear or something - they really do not care about cosmetics of the car, they certainly would not be able to comprehend "detailing".

No - it is just like Lexus are. Also if you have ~ 2006 onwards Lexus, it already has 95% of features that even most modern cars lacks. Things like heated/cooled seats, memory etc. Thinking about it - the only thing my 2006 car does not have is little warning light for cross-traffic and lane change. I am retrofitting radar cruise later this year. The TPMS sucks, because it has it, but does not show individual tyres, which makes TPMS redundant and just annoying. And honestly I can't even think of what feature it does not have that new cars do? Traffic sign recognition maybe, but it is such a minor thing, GPS shows speed limit anyway. So really no point of replacing them.

That is correct... It is preventing course of justice in their view. But as I said by now all the devices automatically hide the camera location so won't be an issue. Other note - French will absolutelly smack your car with their doors and don't even look back. It is 100% normal and not considered an issue... it is almost like national hobby to hit each other cars and trade some paint. And I don't mean they do it deliberately, or carelessly or in some bad way - no for them, they just can't comprehend that being an issue, in France it is ALRIGHT to hit other person's car when opening the doors. So beware of where you park. This was mine few months ago and I was parked in the corner of the car park by the beach.