u/KayYesR

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I wanted to share my experience with Desertcart India because I found a lot of scary posts online before ordering, and maybe this helps someone in the future.

I ordered the PGYTECH MagCam 2 phone grip from Desertcart because I simply couldn’t find it anywhere in India. Before ordering, I spent a lot of time checking the seller, ratings, and whether it was actually being sold by the original brand. In my case, the seller was PGYTECH itself, which gave me some confidence.

The product itself was around $60, and with shipping/customs/etc. the final amount came to about $110. Expensive, yes — but still cheaper than some first-party accessories for my phone.

The funny part is that the free accessory I got arrived first as a separate package, while the main product was delayed in Delhi for days. For a while I genuinely thought I got scammed and paid $110 for a $25 accessory 😭

But the tracking still showed the second parcel in transit, and today both packages finally arrived. Ordered on April 29, delivered on May 13.

So overall: Desertcart worked for me, but only because I researched the seller properly before buying. I wouldn’t blindly order from random listings there. If it’s something unavailable in India and you’re careful about the seller, it can actually work out.

Hope this helps someone searching about Desertcart years from now like I was.

Hey everyone, I completely reworked my Vivo X300 Pro macro photography tutorial based on the feedback and suggestions I got from the comments on my last post here.

I tried to make this version much cleaner and easier to follow:

• shorter and straight to the point
• much better audio quality
• screen recording style walkthrough
• clearer explanation of which lens to use
• how I manually adjust focal length
• lighting conditions that help for macro shots
• all using the default Vivo camera app

This time I used a simple pen example so it’s easier for anyone to try it themselves on their own phone.

The techniques should work on most Vivo X series phones from the X100 onwards.

Would genuinely love more feedback from Vivo users and mobile photography enthusiasts here. I’m still learning and trying to make useful camera-focused content that goes deeper than the usual quick camera reviews.

https://youtu.be/iXiq-AI6WlY

Hey r/geology,

Quick update from the geology PhD student who's been making things in his spare time.

A few months back I shipped Fieldometer (a phone-based field tool for strike/dip/GPS) and then Optical Mineral Identifier (a petrography tool for thin section work). Both ended up genuinely useful, both got real feedback from this sub. The Optical Mineral Identifier post actually got taken down by automod the first time and the r/geology mods reinstated it after a second look , sincere thanks to that mod, it mattered.

Anyway, after Fieldometer, u/Thrillington89 dropped a comment suggesting I should make it into a QField plugin instead of a standalone app. Best suggestion I've gotten on Reddit. So that's what I've been working on.

Field'o'Meter is a QField plugin that captures strike, dip, dip direction, and GPS straight into a GeoPackage point layer in your QGIS project. Two-step workflow: phone flat with long edge along strike for step one, phone flat on the dipping surface for step two. The plugin samples sensors for two seconds with median averaging and outlier rejection, reports a ± uncertainty on every reading, handles declination and hemisphere correction, and warns you when geometry pushes the dip-direction calculation into mathematically unstable territory.

The whole point is to cut out the notebook to GIS transcription step. You walk out of the field with data already in your project.

Honest disclaimer: I'm still testing this. It's working on my phone with my test projects, but every QField build is slightly different and every Android device is slightly different. It's almost certainly not perfect yet. If you try it and something breaks, I want to know that's how it gets better.

Smartphone magnetometer accuracy is hardware-limited. Best case calibrated and no interference, you're looking at ±2°. Realistic fieldwork conditions, ±2° to ±5°. With nearby metal or poor calibration, much worse. So treat it as a fast supplement to a Brunton, not a replacement for publication-grade readings.

Free, open source. Credit also to the swaxi/compass plugin for the gravity-vector math, and coastalrocket/quick_capture for the feature-creation pattern in QML.

Links in the comments.

Big thanks again to u/Thrillington89 for the idea, and to the r/geology mods who keep this place running fairly. This sub is one of the better corners of Reddit and I appreciate it.

Thankyou for the upvotes last time, here is some more.

Edited in Vivo native gallery app. Absolute beginner in photography.

Hey everyone, I recently made a 30-minute video about the Vivo X300 Pro cameras, but instead of talking about image quality alone, I focused mostly on the camera app experience, usability, limitations, missing features, and small details I noticed during actual use that most reviewers never mentioned.

The title and thumbnail are intentionally a bit clickbaity, but the video itself is pretty balanced honestly. I actually love this phone and think the camera hardware is incredible. I just wanted to discuss the software side and the things Vivo could improve.

Would genuinely appreciate feedback from other Vivo users here. Also let me know if I should make more videos on the device and what features/topics you’d want covered next:
https://youtu.be/OY3R4aUkg-E

Hey r/geology,

I'm a geology PhD student working on the Western Ghats and got tired of fumbling with paper notebooks and separate apps for strike, dip, and GPS. So I built Field'O'Meter, an Android app that does all three in one workflow.

What it does:

Captures strike using the phone's compass

Captures dip using the accelerometer (just tilt the phone against the plane)

Logs GPS coordinates with multi-reading averaging for ~3-5m accuracy

Uses Open-Meteo's terrain API (Copernicus DEM) for accurate elevation when online

Saves everything to a table you can edit on the fly

Exports as CSV that you can open in Excel, QGIS, ArcGIS, or anywhere else

On accuracy:

GPS is most accurate with internet (network-assisted positioning + terrain elevation lookup)

Works offline too, but elevation falls back to raw GPS altitude (±15-30m vs ±1-3m online)

Horizontal coordinates are good either way

Status: Currently in open testing on Google Play. It's free, no ads in the testing version. If you have an Android phone and do any kind of field mapping, I'd love your feedback — especially on the strike/dip calibration in different rock types and edge cases I haven't thought of.

Honest disclaimer: smartphone sensors will never replace a Brunton compass for precision work, but for reconnaissance mapping, student fieldwork, or quick checks, it's been working well for me in the field. Happy to answer any questions.

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I was about to buy the Vivo X300 Pro from Cell Smart Cafe for around 94k. Posted here and got a bunch of replies saying it’s a bad deal and I should check offline.

Didn’t want to. I hate dealing with people and my past offline experience wasn’t great. But enough people pushed me, so I gave it a shot.

Went around a few stores. One quoted 92.5k.

I was suspicious. Asked them multiple times if it’s brand new, sealed, unused. They opened the box in front of me, I checked IMEI on the box and phone, everything matched.

Payment was chaos. UPI hit the limit halfway through, had to send the rest from my dad’s account. Somehow managed to complete it.

Got home expecting something to be off. But no. Brand new unit. Warranty untouched. Fully clean.

Also, I was convinced all the camera hype was sponsored nonsense. But after using it, yeah… I was wrong.

Coming from an S21 + Buds + Watch setup, this genuinely surprised me. I used to blindly stick to Samsung ecosystem, but that illusion already started breaking when my OnePlus Buds connected faster than my Galaxy Buds. This just sealed it.

Huge thanks to

u/Eastern-Clock-43

u/Midnight-Compiler

u/Routine-Band-9250

u/Coffee--Enjoyer

u/Zestyclose_Coat434

You guys basically forced me to step out and it paid off. Saved money and got a legit device.