Why I'm Ditching Android • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I'm Ditching Android

#131

Post by bootlooped » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

paulie_a wrote: post #62

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…

Apps developers seem to think their notifications are more important than they really are. Yet somehow the time sensitive notifications don't show up. but it's awesome I was notified and interrupted throughout the day about a new ___. I personally have cancelled paid services and uninstalled apps because of that abuse. And yet useful apps have issues with notifications even without battery saving measures. It's not j…

It's been possible to turn off notifications on an app-by-app basis for at least 2 years. The settings are pretty granular in the newer versions of Android, you can set it so that an app does not interrupt you in any way, and you'll only see the notification once you unlock your phone.

However, if a single app is mixing in, say, 5 frivolous notifications with 2 critical ones, I don't think there is any OS-level way to deal with that.

https://www.howtogeek.com/204187/how-to-disable-app-notifica...

Re: Why I'm Ditching Android

#132

Post by amanaplanacanal » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:24 PM UTC

I'm also thinking about ditching android, for a completely different reason.

I want a premium phone. I like good cameras, and big fat CPUs. So I've been using Samsung phones for a while. I currently have an S6, which I have been pretty happy with. But it has come to my attention that it has received its last update about 6 months ago. Samsung only sends updates for two years.

Having an internet-connected device that no longer gets patches? Seems like a terrible idea to me.

Apple supports their phones for 5 years. So that's the direction I'm currently looking.

Re: Why I'm Ditching Android

#133

Post by wdr1 » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:25 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…

Funny.

I never used Flock & would get spammed notifications (via SMS) from them.

My 2012 Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/wdr1/status/255454270160244736

It later which switched to email wherein the justification was "growth strategy."

Re: Why I'm Ditching Android

#134

Post by poisonborz » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:30 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #132

I'm also thinking about ditching android, for a completely different reason. I want a premium phone. I like good cameras, and big fat CPUs. So I've been using Samsung phones for a while. I currently have an S6, which I have been pretty happy with. But it has come to my attention that it has received its last update about 6 months ago. Samsung only sends updates for two years. Having an internet-connected device that…

Just ask around what great experience it is to use new os/apps on a 5 year old phone.

Re: Why I'm Ditching Android

#135

Post by lostmsu » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #132

I'm also thinking about ditching android, for a completely different reason. I want a premium phone. I like good cameras, and big fat CPUs. So I've been using Samsung phones for a while. I currently have an S6, which I have been pretty happy with. But it has come to my attention that it has received its last update about 6 months ago. Samsung only sends updates for two years. Having an internet-connected device that…

Use a postmarket Lineage OS?

Re: Why I'm Ditching Android

#136

Post by lvalenta » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

013a wrote: post #87

jeremyjh wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like 20% of Apple's revenue is payments from Google for sending them search traffic from Safari and Siri. edit: This is wrong, I can't find the source for that now but probably it was referring to 20% of services revenue. Its only like 5% of total revenue: http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-eng... edit2: This was the source[1], they quoted 24% of services revenue: [1] https://www.bloom…

20% is a huge overestimation. Apple's revenue in 2017 was $239B [2]; Google paid them somewhere between $1B and $9B [1]; 0.5% to 3%. [1] http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-eng... [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/revenue

Interesting is though how the number's been growing over the years, even though the amount of sold devices's been rather stagnant. Google pays a lot per customer, while Apple allows to use DuckDuckGo and others. I wonder how long will Google feel it's that valuable for them (and what a percentage of users'd swich to Google even though other search engine would be default instead)

Re: Why I'm Ditching Android

#137

Post by eyko » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

realusername wrote: post #124

rando444 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pardon my ignorance, but why do you see this as an Android-only problem? Surely every possible operating system suffers the same problem, no?

No, only Android suffers of these hacky issues because Google allows manufacturer to customize Android way too much. Android is the modern equivalent of Windows XP themes if you want to compare.

Or Linux distributions.

Re: Why I'm Ditching Android

#138

Post by lvalenta » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

poisonborz wrote: post #134

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #132

I'm also thinking about ditching android, for a completely different reason. I want a premium phone. I like good cameras, and big fat CPUs. So I've been using Samsung phones for a while. I currently have an S6, which I have been pretty happy with. But it has come to my attention that it has received its last update about 6 months ago. Samsung only sends updates for two years. Having an internet-connected device that…

Just ask around what great experience it is to use new os/apps on a 5 year old phone.

I think this issue is likely to be diminished as the performance difference's not been improving that much lately (X and XS having similar CPU performance) - we have come to a point of smartphone evolution where yearly additions to a performance will not be the reason to upgrade -> therefore I don't expect new iOS versions slowing devices significantly.

Re: Why I'm Ditching Android

#139

Post by lvalenta » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

hso1 wrote: post #82

sergiotapia wrote: post #35

I made the opposite move last month. Ditched my iphone 6+ and went with a Samsung Galaxy S9+. Apple soured me with their bullshit around throttling the CPU to make the battery last the same. No wonder my phone was performing like shit. But here's the bad news, this new phone I got is still not so hot. I still run out of battery despite working from home and only using the phone for google maps and calendar/slack when…

I managed to get Google Maps working on my Nokia 3310 3G

Did you? How long was it loading? :-))

Re: Why I'm Ditching Android

#140

Post by JimGuns » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 5:58 PM UTC

I am not sure how people are figuring this out now. It's only common sense given googles business model and their history that your android phone is nothing more than a tracking and data generation device. I am sure Apple has it's flaws but Google uses Android to double down on selling your info.

Be smart, pick up an old Blackberry 10 device and use its Android emulator.