Why I'm Ditching Android

Notifications, as you rightly mentioned, are a huge problem with Android. Some manufacturers implement battery saving measures which force kill applications so they can no longer process notifications.

I used to work at a team messaging startup Flock and we used to get a lot of complaints from users about missing notifications. We were able to detect impacted users and reduce complaints substantially using duplicate acks from xmpp fcm and app. The details are outlined here in case anyone wants to check out: https://hackernoon.com/notifications-in-android-are-horribly...

Re: Why I'm Ditching Android

#5

Post by orliesaurus » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 2:19 PM UTC

I was hoping the author was going to list alternative stable mobile OSes with privacy and users in mind, or maybe lay down the reasons for starting a project hard forking an existing OS or something...but he literally just said he wants to move to iOS???

Honestly, (and personally) I feel better knowing that I am running an Android ROM with publicly available code on Github than any iOS any day

Re: Why I'm Ditching Android

#6

Post by matart » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 2:20 PM UTC

On the notifications part, I had a Huawei phone for a bit and encountered the same issue. Huawei does some crazy things to keep the battery from draining. It does kill almost all background apps. There are some settings to stop this but it seems like a crap shoot whether it decided to listen to them. I thought android had gone down hill and eventually tested out an S9 and realized it was the Huawei android flavor that did this.

Re: Why I'm Ditching Android

#7

Post by Kirth » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 2:20 PM UTC

A bit painful to read considering the iPhone SE-series is now discontinued. (Despite that the SE is still a very good phone. Wish more manufacturers made devices with these dimensions and polish.)

Re: Why I'm Ditching Android

#8

Post by dagenix » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 2:25 PM UTC

The number of requests sent to Google or Apple seems like a poor metric to judge privacy impact. A single request with my bank account number carries a lot more information about me than 1,000 with my battery status.

Re: Why I'm Ditching Android

#9

Post by wowamit » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 2:25 PM UTC

To say that I'm ditching Android is a pretty incomplete statement - because there is no one Android. It really matter which flavour of Android we are talking about. And which specific device. For example, the bloatware might not be a problem on a unlocked Pixel device.

At this point, both iOS and Android are in pretty stable states. It comes down to individual preferences. Author primarily seems to have an issue with Google, which again is justified.

Re: Why I'm Ditching Android

#10

Post by dep_b » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 2:25 PM UTC

me551ah wrote: post #4

Notifications, as you rightly mentioned, are a huge problem with Android. Some manufacturers implement battery saving measures which force kill applications so they can no longer process notifications. I used to work at a team messaging startup Flock and we used to get a lot of complaints from users about missing notifications. We were able to detect impacted users and reduce complaints substantially using duplicate…

That's a pretty horrifying story about those push notifications. The biggest use case of my customers for creating native apps around web apps for iOS is push notifications, that's immensely huge for businesses. Losing push notifications means your application loses it's value.