Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly • Hacker News Board

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#21

Post by georgemcbay » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 11:48 PM UTC

spbaar wrote: post #11

ilove_banh_mi wrote: post #5

I'm giving up on upgrading my apps for Android. The releases are dividing the market every single year and consequently steadily eroding sales. On the one hand Google's Nexus was released 3 years ago and is now obsolete; on the other hand Apple's iPhone 5s was released 5 years ago and gets to run iOS 12. On top of this, the vast majority of my paying customers use iOS, not Android (a variety of lifestyle and referenc…

Why does this matter? What apis are you using that are not available in Lollipop, which has 88%+ market share. Also, those dashboards are misleading. For the North American market the proportion of older phones is less than half of what the dashboard displays

I'm not the OP, but there are some changes to background execution limits that can have a fairly large impact on older-than-Oreo apps if you build against SDK 26:

https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/background

You've been able to avoid dealing with these changes for a while now by simply building against an older SDK, but Google is in the process of restricting the ability to put any app built with an older SDK on the Play Store. I think you already can't list new apps that use an older SDK, and existing apps won't be able to update to new APKs using older SDKs starting in November.

FWIW, I understand why they made the changes here, and they are user-positive, and just abandoning Android over them seems like an incredible overreaction, but speaking as someone who has been updating an older app to deal with these changes, there are some real pain-points here if you're bringing forward an older app.

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#22

Post by ytwySXpMbS » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 11:49 PM UTC

emidln wrote: post #20

gammateam wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android developers get around 3-5 years before they stop rationalizing the potential and ditch that ecosystem. Apple won this battle. The actual android users that "can't stand Apple and need control" have no clue what they are missing anymore. They haven't looked at Apple since 2013. Unlike Blackberry faithful, Android users really do have great more advanced technology on paper, but look, nobody cares.

Sample size 1 here. I used an iPhoneX for a few months this year. It was my first iPhone, and I loathed the browser lock-in and the lack of automatic contacts sync. The UX is far less consistent than modern Android apps (e.g. the back functionality out of an app). I missed my app drawer as well. The iPhone was free from work, yet I paid out of pocket for a Galaxy S9+ so I could go back to Android.

Making an assumption here, but I assume you loathed the browser lock in because you tried using a different browser, probably Chrome. Thing is, for iOS, you have to drink the koolaid to truly see the benefit. Personally coming from Android it's so nice not being asked which app I want to open a link in all the time, I dont have to think about it. I know that sounds silly because you can choose a default, but it's too many options, I don't want to have to choose and think which option I'm going to want more often as long as it works.

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#23

Post by urda » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 11:52 PM UTC

emidln wrote: post #20

gammateam wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android developers get around 3-5 years before they stop rationalizing the potential and ditch that ecosystem. Apple won this battle. The actual android users that "can't stand Apple and need control" have no clue what they are missing anymore. They haven't looked at Apple since 2013. Unlike Blackberry faithful, Android users really do have great more advanced technology on paper, but look, nobody cares.

Sample size 1 here. I used an iPhoneX for a few months this year. It was my first iPhone, and I loathed the browser lock-in and the lack of automatic contacts sync. The UX is far less consistent than modern Android apps (e.g. the back functionality out of an app). I missed my app drawer as well. The iPhone was free from work, yet I paid out of pocket for a Galaxy S9+ so I could go back to Android.

> and the lack of automatic contacts sync.

Huh? For anyone reading this please know that, sorry, this is completely false iOS supports contact syncing. I've been syncing my contacts from my iPhone since the 3G days.

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#24

Post by matwood » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 11:56 PM UTC

urda wrote: post #23

emidln wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sample size 1 here. I used an iPhoneX for a few months this year. It was my first iPhone, and I loathed the browser lock-in and the lack of automatic contacts sync. The UX is far less consistent than modern Android apps (e.g. the back functionality out of an app). I missed my app drawer as well. The iPhone was free from work, yet I paid out of pocket for a Galaxy S9+ so I could go back to Android.

> and the lack of automatic contacts sync. Huh? For anyone reading this please know that, sorry, this is completely false iOS supports contact syncing. I've been syncing my contacts from my iPhone since the 3G days.

Not only that, but I sync my contacts from my iPhone to macOS through Google (so they work in email also). Anyone who says the contacts do not sync, I have to wonder if they really tried the iPhone.

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#25

Post by izacus » Tue, Aug 07, 2018, 11:59 PM UTC

jdc wrote: post #6

ilove_banh_mi wrote: post #5

I'm giving up on upgrading my apps for Android. The releases are dividing the market every single year and consequently steadily eroding sales. On the one hand Google's Nexus was released 3 years ago and is now obsolete; on the other hand Apple's iPhone 5s was released 5 years ago and gets to run iOS 12. On top of this, the vast majority of my paying customers use iOS, not Android (a variety of lifestyle and referenc…

Why not use an older API version?

Since this year you won't be allowed to do that anymore - since backwards compatibility behaviour allowed app developers to avoid privacy protecting features like runtime permissions.

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#26

Post by izacus » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 12:02 AM UTC

It's rather sad to see how none of the comments here are actually commenting on Android P/Kotlin friendliness.

(Which is available to all Android developers, not only those targeting P - the nullability headers will give you all the benefits even if your app supports older Androids.)

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#27

Post by sidlls » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 12:06 AM UTC

I get why developers would be interested in this, but it doesn't feel like something that moves the needle. It's a decent first step if the end goal is to promote Kotlin to the place Java occupies in Android development and (at the same time) fix some of the issues with the inconsistent and over-engineered APIs.

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#28

Post by scarface74 » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 12:12 AM UTC

euyyn wrote: post #14

ilove_banh_mi wrote: post #5

I'm giving up on upgrading my apps for Android. The releases are dividing the market every single year and consequently steadily eroding sales. On the one hand Google's Nexus was released 3 years ago and is now obsolete; on the other hand Apple's iPhone 5s was released 5 years ago and gets to run iOS 12. On top of this, the vast majority of my paying customers use iOS, not Android (a variety of lifestyle and referenc…

Accounting for installation numbers only, there are about 6 Android users for each iOS user in the world. So targeting API 25 (Nougat 7.1) already gives you access to a bigger number of users. Targeting earlier API versions only increases that number.

- Most apps aren’t targeting “the world”. Assuming your app is targeting English speaking countries, that skews the numbers more toward iOS (still not a majority), then if your app requires a decent level of hardware, that skews even more toward iOS. Now if you actually want to target people who have the willingness to pay....

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#29

Post by urda » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 12:46 AM UTC

matwood wrote: post #24

urda wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the lack of automatic contacts sync. Huh? For anyone reading this please know that, sorry, this is completely false iOS supports contact syncing. I've been syncing my contacts from my iPhone since the 3G days.

Not only that, but I sync my contacts from my iPhone to macOS through Google (so they work in email also). Anyone who says the contacts do not sync, I have to wonder if they really tried the iPhone.

> I have to wonder if they really tried the iPhone.

Especially on HN, where the average reader should know that's been a basic feature, for pretty much the entire lifespan of the device.

It made the entire comment, well let's just say their story doesn't add up.

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#30

Post by skybrian » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 12:54 AM UTC

izacus wrote: post #25

jdc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not use an older API version?

Since this year you won't be allowed to do that anymore - since backwards compatibility behaviour allowed app developers to avoid privacy protecting features like runtime permissions.

I'm not an Android developer but they say supporting older versions should still work:

"Existing apps that are not receiving updates are unaffected. Developers remain free to use a minSdkVersion of their choice, so there is no change to your ability to build apps for older Android versions."

[1] https://developer.android.com/distribute/best-practices/deve...