Pacific division available for pickings. Ducks done.

Vancouver - Done

Calgary - Done

Kraken - No Playoffs

LA - Middling

SJ - A Maybe team

Vegas - Playoffs but all mirrors no smoke

Oilers - Contender

Division title is a strong possibility. Easy path to WC also possible again. ~9M in cap space come trade deadline.

Sony recently doubled down on their plans to transition to an all-digital ecosystem by January 2028. As this transition shifts from a matter of "if" to "when," the primary points of friction for gamers remain ownership, value preservation, and long-term accessibility.

If Sony wants to successfully push an all-digital console environment without completely alienating their player base, they need to introduce mechanics that mimic and, in some ways, improve upon the benefits of physical media. My goal here is to outline a balanced framework: one that pads Sony's bottom line while remaining genuinely consumer friendly.

(Note: For the proposals below, any reference to a "game" means a digital software license tied to a specific PSN account.)

1. Digital Game Lending

Physical media allows us to hand a game to a friend once we finish it. Sony could easily recreate this dynamic in the digital sphere:

• Account-to-Account Lending: Allow users to lend a digital license directly to a designated PSN user (the borrower).
• Controlled Access: While borrowed, the game appears in the borrower's library with a clear countdown timer. The original owner’s copy remains greyed out and unplayable until returned or reclaimed.
• Publisher Guardrails: Sony could allow caps on loan frequencies or let publishers enforce a window of exclusivity (e.g., no lending for the first 30–60 days post-launch) to protect initial sales.

2. Peer-to-Peer & Retailer Digital Marketplace

The loss of physical media threatens the secondhand market entirely. Sony could establish a controlled digital marketplace to solve this:

• Market-Driven Rates: Allow players to list digital licenses for sale to other PSN users or third-party retailers (Best Buy, GameStop, etc.) at market-negotiated prices.
• Platform Monetization: Sony takes a standardized percentage cut of every secondary transaction—turning a trade-in market that previously yielded them zero revenue into an ongoing profit stream.
• Exclusivity Windows: Publishers could mandate an initial timeframe before a newly released title becomes eligible for marketplace resale.

3. "PlayStation for Libraries" (Public Access Licensing)

Public libraries have long offered physical video games to communities, providing access to people who otherwise couldn't afford the hobby.

• Digital Library Loans: Similar to how libraries license ebooks and audiobooks via services like OverDrive or Libby, Sony could build a specialized licensing framework for institutional libraries.
• Managed Circulation: Libraries buy license packs and lend them out digitally to cardholders under strict concurrency limits and loan durations.

4. PSN Digital Estate Inheritance

If digital libraries replace physical collections built over decades, players need confidence that their investments won't disappear when they pass away.

• Designated Beneficiaries: Allow users to nominate a primary PSN account heir to inherit their digital software library upon their passing.
• Long-Term Ecosystem Loyalty: Establishing clear inheritance guidelines builds immense long-term trust, reassuring players that thousands of dollars spent on digital titles holds real, lasting value.

5. Direct "Digital Trade-Ins" for Store Credit

On physical media, players trade old discs at retailers to offset the cost of new releases or console upgrades. A digital ecosystem eliminates that residual value.

• Direct Buyback Program: Allow players to permanently surrender a digital game license back to Sony in exchange for PSN Store Credit or PlayStation Stars points.
• Balanced Value: Even if Sony offers a fraction of a title's current retail value, it restores the feeling that digital purchases carry real, liquid equity while steering those funds directly back into the PSN store.

6. True Offline Preservation

Physical discs serve as permanent offline media; even if servers go down or an account is suspended, a disc plays offline. Digital licenses currently leave players vulnerable to delisting or server outages.

• Cryptographic Offline Backups: Allow players to download complete offline installation files to external storage paired with an offline "hardware key."
• Perpetual Access: As long as the console holds the local hardware key, the game remains playable without requiring periodic PSN server check-ins or fearing license revocations.

Final Thoughts

Integrating these systems into PSN wouldn't just appease physical media advocates, it would actively drive platform engagement.

Borrowing and library lending act as direct funnels, letting players experience franchises they might never have bought outright, entrenching them in those ecosystems, and ultimately leading to DLC, sequel, or microtransaction sales. Meanwhile, direct trade-ins and secondary marketplaces give Sony cuts of trade-ins they’ve historically missed out on.

If Sony wants us to embrace an all-digital landscape, they need to offer more than just convenience. They need to preserve the utility of buying a game in the first place.

Hey everyone,

​I wanted to share an interesting real-world comparison between two S24 Ultra devices (SM-S928W) that were bought around the same year but charged completely differently. One S24 Ultra is mine and the other my friends.

​We pulled the precise battery stats directly from the Samsung ASOC dumpstate/logcat files via Battery Analyzer. Crucially, neither of us has ever enabled battery protection of any sort on these devices. They both charge straight to 100%.

​Obviously, the sample size here is incredibly small (just two phones), but the contrast in degradation is pretty wild and seems to show that slow charging keeps your battery significantly healthier over the long haul.

​The Matchup: SFC 2.0 vs. 15W Fast Charging

​Phone A (Mine) – Superfast Charging 2.0 Exclusively

​First Use Date: January 30, 2024

​Cycle Count: 991 cycles

​Calculated Battery Health: 92.2% (4610 mAh remaining vs. 5000 mAh design capacity)

​Phone B (Friend's) – 15W Charging Exclusively

​First Use Date: June 29, 2024

​Cycle Count: 722 cycles

​Calculated Battery Health: 99.9% (4997 mAh remaining vs. 5000 mAh design capacity)

​The Extrapolation: What if they had the same mileage?

​Because my friend's phone has fewer cycles, I decided to math out what his battery health would look like if it had been pushed to my current workload of 991 cycles, assuming his current wear-and-tear rate held steady.

​My degradation rate: ~0.0079% capacity loss per cycle.

​Friend's degradation rate: ~0.00014% capacity loss per cycle.

​The Projection: If my friend's 15W-charged phone reached my 991 cycles, his battery health would statistically still sit at an incredible 99.86%.

​Takeaway

​My phone has lost nearly 8% of its original capacity, while my friend's phone has essentially lost zero capacity after over 700 drops onto a 15W charger.

​I love SFC 2.0 and happy to give some faster degradation over time. I am planning to keep my S24 ultra for the long haul and when it reaches 80% I will likely goto an Authorized Samsung repair store like ubreakifix to get the battery swapped.

Edit: Please note, this isn't at all scientific. Many factors contribute to battery health that we did not compare like, when we charge our phones as needed vs over night. How we use our phones, our battery thermals based on useage. The type of work we do and the temperature the phones are exposed to etc.... So just use use this post with a grain of salt. But I would say we have similar use cases and are in the same climate and we both do not game, productivity only. Thanks

One of the few reasons I stick with Samsung was the seamless photos sync to OneDrive. I cannot stress how important this feature was to me and how superior it was to other backup methods. I hate that they are taking it away on September 30th.

The reason why it was superior was because it allowed the album structure in my gallery to reflect as mirrored folders in OneDrive and subsequently mirrored folders on Windows if logged in with the same OneDrive account. This was opposed to Google Photos which just takes all photos and dumps them in chronological order. I hate using Google Photos as my gallery app. I also backup my pictures to Google Photos as well, for the superior sharing and album creation. But nothing beats having a physical copy on your windows computer. Any changes I made on the windows side reflected in Samsung Gallery.

Further the sync allowed me to empty up storage space by removing the physical photos off of my phone and keeping a smaller cached version of the photo on my device. This allowed me seamless access to years of photos without it being on my device in the same gallery album structure. Plus the neat little cloud and device icon allowed me to differentiate what photos were both local on cloud, on cloud only or local only.

I brainstormed and researched for a week what functionality would give me the same benefit. Unfortunately nothing would come close. But here is what I did for others benefit to at least come close.

Note: OneDrive photo backup (where Samsung and OneDrive push you towards does not have the same functionality. It to will dump your photos in chronological order. I need sync and album mirroring.

Maintain Samsung Gallery Album sync and Mirroring to OneDrive:

1. Turn off OneDrive Sync to Gallery

2. Install Folder Sync Pro

3. Add your OneDrive account as a source

4. Create 2 way sync Folder pairs for each album to goto the same folder in OneDrive>Pictures>Samsung Gallery

4.5. Easiest method is to pick DCIM and Pictures Folder from internal phone storage and sync to OneDrive>Pictures>Samsung Gallery>DCIM and OneDrive>Pictures>Samsung Gallery>Pictures if you do not want to setup many Folder pairs.

5. I turned on sync deletions and if conflict overwrite with newest.

6. Note: This is 2 way sync with deletions. Data loss is at risk if phone or windows suffers data loss and those are syncd. I prevent this by also backing up to google photos and using a One way left (phone) to right (My NAS) sync daily with deletions unchecked.

7. I scheduled it for once daily at 11PM

Free up storage space and see cloud or windows only copy:

This was probably the most difficult, and the solution isn't as seamless here. I had to figure out what to do once my phone storage started becoming full, but still maintain a view of my cloud only Pictures if I chose to delete pictures off my phone.

Setup:

I also had to be careful as simply deleting them would also delete them off OneDrive. Mind you they still would exist in Google Photos and my NAS

I had three options.

1. Delete them off phone and use Google Photos to view them. This would also remove them from Windows OneDrive, so not a good option

2. Delete them off phone and use my NAS to view them. This would also remove them from Windows OneDrive, so not a good option and I might as well have just used OneDrive backup

3. I created a new folder inside of OneDrive>Pictures called Samsung Gallery upto MMDDYYYY. In this folder I would copy and paste all the folders and pictures I would delete off my phone from the OneDrive>Pictures>Samsung Gallery from today's date and below. Then they would be viewable using the OneDrive app or any file explorer app connected to your OneDrive account. Many file explorer apps have a gallery view. This step you do not need to do frequently if you do not need to free up storage space. On the next foldersync pro scheduled sync, the deletions i made would sync to OneDrive>Pictures>Samsung Gallery but my preserved "cloud" copies in OneDrive>Pictures>Samsung Gallery MMDDYYYY would be viewable, albeit in another app like OneDrive or file explorer gallery.

Anyways this is what I have done. Is it overkill probably. But I really liked OneDrive Sync with gallery. Sadly I was one of the few who used it, understood it's benefits. I wish Samsung marketed the feature and worked with Microsoft to make it better and more integrated, like shareable albums that would create native onedrive links.

Hey everyone, just wanted to put down some thoughts on how the S24 Ultra is holding up today—especially now that we’ve got the One UI 8.5 update. Honestly, if you have this phone, there is absolutely zero reason to upgrade anytime soon.

Samsung absolutely killed it with this generation, and the fact that they brought nearly all the major 8.5 software features down to the S24 Ultra makes it feel like a brand-new device anyway. Everyday usability is just next level. The Call Screen feature is an absolute lifesaver for weeding out spam, and on-device voicemail is so incredibly handy I don't know how I lived without it. Plus, the new "text to edit" feature in the gallery makes quick, seamless photo corrections stupidly easy.

It really highlights how far ahead Samsung’s AI feature set is compared to Apple. While Apple is still trying to figure out the absolute basics of on-device intelligence, Samsung is out here giving us actual, integrated, practical productivity tools that just work out of the box.

Honestly, looking at what came after, the S24 Ultra is straight-up better than the newer S25 Ultra and S26 Ultra models for a few key reasons:

1. The Industrial Box Design: The sharp, blocky box design of the S24U looks incredibly business-like, premium, and sophisticated. The rounded-off corners on the S25 and S26 models completely lost that presence and just look generic.
2. The Best Colors: The color options on this generation were unmatched. I have the Titanium Violet, and it is easily my favorite colorway Samsung has ever produced.
3. The Bluetooth S-Pen: Having a fully integrated, remote-capable BT S-Pen is the main reason I will likely never upgrade for the foreseeable future. Samsung quietly stripped the Bluetooth module out of the stylus on the newer ones to save space, turning it into a basic inductive plastic pointer. No remote shutter button, no air gestures—major downgrade for power users.
4. Premium Titanium Frame vs. S26 Aluminum Reversion: Samsung completely walked back the premium materials on the S26 Ultra, ditching Titanium entirely and quietly reverting to Armor Aluminum. Taking away the high-end luxury feel while charging top-tier flagship pricing is a massive step backward.
5. Display Comfort and PWM Sensitivity: For anyone sensitive to screen flickering (PWM), the S24 Ultra panel remains much friendlier on the eyes. The newer models still stick to a choppy 480Hz PWM rate, and between that and changes to the glass layers, a lot of people have been noting bad eye strain and headaches during low-light browsing. The S24 Ultra feels significantly cleaner and more comfortable for long-term daily use.

On top of that, the hardware is built to last. I just verified my battery health via ADB, and after over 2 full years of heavy daily use, it is still sitting at a wild 92% health. What makes this even crazier is looking at the S26 Ultra's internal "shrinkflation"—Samsung's official EU labels show they downgraded the battery lifespan rating from 2,000 charge cycles down to just 1,200 cycles before hitting 80% health. The battery cell in the S24U is fundamentally more robust for the long haul. Because this phone is so perfect, my plan is literally just to do a simple battery replacement in another 2 years and keep rocking it.

Performance-wise, it’s still an absolute monster. PhoneBuff just dropped a massive lab-tested speed test gauntlet video comparing the last six generations of Galaxy Ultras (S21U all the way up to the new S26U) using robots for precision. https://youtu.be/YvGea7b3snY?si=3V7RLlfptKNsG2Z5

The data basically proves that upgrading from the S24U for speed makes zero sense. While the older S23 Ultra and below took massive performance hits and slowed down heavily under sustained loads, the S24 Ultra held its ground flawlessly. In fact, in their multi-lap gauntlet test, the S24 Ultra finished only a mere 9 seconds behind the S25 Ultra and was right on the heels of the S26 Ultra. As the video notes, the S24 generation was when Samsung virtually doubled the size of the cooling system, which is exactly why it barely feels any slower than a brand-new flagship under heavy use. Paying a massive premium for an incremental single-digit second gain is just pointless.

And don't get me started on the cameras—it still takes absolutely amazing photos. Now, this is my personal bias and opinion coming from shooting with a limited sample size, but I actually think the S24 Ultra takes better pictures than the S25 and S26 Ultra.

On paper, Samsung didn’t technically downgrade the physical main sensors, but they absolutely messed with the internal specs and tuning philosophy:

• The Exposure and Color Science Shift: With the S25 and S26 Ultra generations, Samsung shifted their tuning to target much higher exposures. They try to forcefully brighten up the shadows and the overall scene. In practice, it frequently over-brightens everything, clips the highlights, and makes the photos look flat or washed out. The S24 Ultra has a much more matured, cinematic balance with rich contrast and deep saturation that handles exposure naturally without blowing out the frame.
• The 3x Telephoto Shrinkage: On the S26 Ultra, the physical sensor size of the 3x telephoto camera was actually shrunk down to a smaller 1/3.94" effective crop size. They're relying heavily on software reconstruction to hit 12MP rather than native, large-pixel optical physics.
• Diminishing Returns on Optimization: Because the core hardware is fundamentally the same, the S24 Ultra has the ultimate advantage of over two years of aggressive software optimization. Samsung has spent years tweaking, patching, and perfecting the image processing pipeline specifically for the S24 Ultra hardware, whereas the S25 and S26 are still working through those artificial-looking growing pains.

Whether it's capturing crisp 5x and 10x zoom details, getting perfect portrait separation, or shooting low-light shots that preserve actual atmosphere instead of looking unnaturally brightened, the photography on the S24 Ultra is just phenomenal.

If you're still rocking an S24 Ultra, hold onto it. With One UI 8.5, elite battery longevity, and hardware that still goes toe-to-toe with the newest flagships, this thing is a keeper.

Edited with Lighroom