41–50 of 258 posts
I put lineage on two devices and I must say it's shockingly refreshing to be able to have some say in how much Google you get. I am used to the idea of OEM and carrier bloatware but it's surprising how much unwanted Google software appears in a stock image. On lineage I am pretty happy with the "nano" set of OpenGApps which is about the amount of Googleyness I want. I install a few more from Play on top.
Dropping Android for iOS is a joke.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Although probably not push itself as a mechanism, this interfering trend is so bad that for a time I could not find a timer or alarm that would actually ring at the right time. I have one now, but there should have been zero instances of failure to notify for a timer .
IMO the blame belongs mostly to the thingies that kills apps so hard that Android blacklists them, and won't start them again until the user explicitly does it. That Android has that blacklist is understandable; that "battery savers" get innocent apps added is IMNSHO offensively shoddy.
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…
I do not envy the job of an Android developer.
And given the author's interest in FOSS...
Really interesting Lineage failed. He claims apps kept nagging about the lack of Google app support. How pervasive is that? Could he have just found a couple app alternatives rather than throwing them all out at once?
It's hard to disentangle whether the problems we have are with our phones, with the OS, or with the app ecosystem.
(Quick edit for clarity.)
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…
You have notifications, that are not important, so low priority.
But equally you have notifications that are important, those should be sent and logged message queue style, so they stay on the send queue until processed and processing acknowledged by the client.
RCS (the Android attempt at iMessage) is STILL not a real-world thing. Txt messaging and MMS on Android is still an absolute joke. My Samsung S8 has, what, a 12-megapixel camera (I never look at these specs anymore) that can take incredible pictures and videos but if I want to send them to someone I have to jump through a bunch of hoops. Upload them to dropbox, share it, send my friend the link, hope they click it vs it just playing in their messaging app.
If I send that video via text message it gets compressed to a 500kb blurry mess. I frequently have to explain to people that Androids don't take terrible pictures, my phone takes amazing pictures. The problem is when I send them to you I'm limited to the maximums of text messaging because phone providers haven't rolled out RCS. It also doesn't help that the Snapchat app back when I used to use it just took a screenshot of our camera app. That further shouted, "Android sucks at pictures, what a peasant phone!"
Tmobile has RCS now but it only works between Tmobile Android users who are using the stock messaging app. They might even need a recent phone with a specific version of Android, I'm not sure there. They rolled this out in June 2018. 2018! How long has imessage been around? And I still have never seen it actually kick in because 90% of the people I txt are on iphones. I also HAVE to use the built-in Messaging app to get this because the RCS API wasn't (not sure if it is now) public so other messaging apps couldn't send over RCS. If I use the Samsung messaging app then I lose the web messaging feature that the Google Messaging app gives me. The Google Messaging app is terrible, though, it doesn't even have the ability to click a person's name and see all of the media shared between us like the good messaging apps do. I have to literally scroll and scroll and scroll to see a picture that I've been sent.
There are all these tradeoffs just for messaging. Do I want an easy web experience so I don't have to pick my phone up every time I get a text? Then I lose the file library when you click a contacts name. Do I want RCS? I'm not even sure which Messaging app to use for it. It's either Samsung Messaging or I need to download Tmobile messaging.
I don't follow it but I don't believe ATT/Verizon are even going to roll out RCS, I believe they have their own implementation coming (somedayTM). Unless their "Advanced Messaging" is just RCS. Will that work with Tmobile users? Or will it just be between ATT customers?
I have plenty of other complaints about Android lately. Privacy, per-app notifications are a mess.
I LOVE the customization of Android and the lack of it is what I dislike about IOS but I'm to the point where I just want a smooth UX.
edit: Before I get the "Use Whatsapp/etc" that's just not an option. Google Hangouts was SOMEWHAT ubiquitous between my friends a few years ago and was great but if I'm taking pictures of my house for a contractor, or shooting pictures of my Jeep offroading to random Jeep friends and what not I'm not going to go "Are you on WhatsApp?" each time. I know these limits are because of carriers and not Google/Android specifically.
Honestly, who really cares that much about what smartphone you have these days? You have one with a good enough battery and the same apps as anyone else, and the speed is all fast enough to not notice. At this point the technology has converged.
I don't see any reason to pay $1000 for a phone these days, and I probably could have gotten the same experience from the Moto G at $200.
I just want a phone that:
- can last the entire day - can run a browser reasonably well - has decent reception - will get security updates for at least 2 years (expected lifetime of batteries)
I don't need a fancy camera, next-gen graphics, or super high DPI screen, I just need a phone that's reasonably reliable, and even the bottom tier phones are more than capable.
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.
These days I can't even begin to work that out. There is easily a 100x more traffic and every single time I ran a capture I would find a whole bunch of new hosts being contacted that have no business talking to my phone. And I just use my phone for email and messaging. Not a big app user.
Honestly, who really cares that much about what smartphone you have these days? You have one with a good enough battery and the same apps as anyone else, and the speed is all fast enough to not notice. At this point the technology has converged.
Sure, which is why we're seeing a shift towards choosing a phone based on your personal/philosophical/marketing beliefs about how your personal data is treated instead, which is what at least part of this article talks about in justifying the switch.
So which is it, Apple is grossly over-priced or inline with what a decent Android phone costs? And then the author goes on to complain about the data firehouse back to Google and bloatware. Are we yet seeing that price is not always measured in dollars? I don’t mean to pick on the author, I guess it’s just interesting to watch the process of coming to this realization.
But the notifications, holee-shit. That seems like one of those “under a full moon...” reports, but others here confirm. I’m so speechless, I don’t even have a snarky Apple fanboi comment.