Samsung A14 LTE After 3 months

 

Ok, I know I just have the phone for slightly more than 2 months, but let's just round up, ok?

Anyways, this will just be a quick update on how I feel about the phone. To give you some context, I have been using the phone daily for communication, social media and middle-heavy gaming. I got into Clash of Clans again and have 5 accounts in 2 separate clans. That's lots of wars and CNY event tasks to keep track of.

Honestly, the phone works ok for gaming but then I still got frustrated by the phone a lot. The connectivity is really not great. Like it's very slow to switch from Wifi to LTE and vice versa. 

There are a few occasions when I left home when I was watching a YouTube video halfway, when I got to the bus stop, the video couldn't resume playing at all. And I have to reload the video. There are a few times wherebu the YouTube app just freezes when the connection got lost. 

It could be due to the heat, because I have kept the phone in my pocket while walking down to the bus stop, but connectivity is at its worst when the phone starts to get hot.

As for battery wise, I have to charge the phone at least once a day. Battery drains really fast when you game or stream videos. I feel it drains faster than my Poco X3 Pro which is draining fast because I set Live wallpapers for both lock and home screen. I didn't have Live wallpapers on this Samsung phone.

The phone is very prone to short freezes and stutters, especially when opening apps or when waking up the phone from it's sleep.

My final verdict about the phone is just good for very basic usage. Definitely not suitable for GrabFood because the battery probably won't last. The problematic connectivity can make you frustrated when you're streaming videos.

Seems like GrabFood is getting much worst!

 

I have recently turned on my Grab driver app during the New Year period because I was told that the incentives are good.

I must say, the incentives (additional $2 or $3 per order completed) are really good. However, I also realised that the base fare for the orders are TERRIBLE!

Although Grab said that they have revamped their fare system to become fairer by taking into account the distance riders have to travel to pick up the order ... I feel they did that to cutdown the fare. I have started GrabFood as a walker in 2019, I have seen the fare for 1km delivery dropped from $4.40 (or $4.50) to $4.10 now. I have also seen incentives reduced from $20 for 15 orders to $15 and then now to $13. This is the rate for the weekend quest, weekdays quest is reduced even more.

Grab have covered it up very well by making the Quests into daily quest. The Quests (Weekday and Weekend) used to be a 5 days and 2 days quest however, Grab made it a daily quest now.

It used to be you just need to complete 25 orders during Monday to Friday to get your reward, You can do it in whatever way you want - doing 5 daily or rushing the last 2 days to complete all 25 orders, it's up to you. However, it's into a daily quest now. So you have to complete a fixed amount of orders daily to get the reward - it's 6 for somedays and 8 for others)

What I am most disappointed is by "revamping the fare system to become fairer", Grab still sending riders to ridiculously far pickups but then not paying them for that! I have received a few orders (which I cancelled) that asked me to pick up orders from a merchant more than 1.6km away but paying me only $4.10 because the customer location is only 1km away from the merchant. Honestly, I don't see them taking into account the distance I have to travel to pick up the order.

But I guess Grab is just looking to make profit now and if it continue this way, riders/deliver partners' benefits and earnings will continued to be sacrificed. It's no wonder delivery riders are working longer hours now.