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Android 10

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Re: Android 10

#341
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... We're getting more and more into an age where mobile hardware doesn't matter anymore, because it's become so fungible. And Samsung will do very badly, because they're hardware is good, but their software sucks so bad.

Comparing Samsung's OneUI and stock Android, I would pick OneUI without blinking. I used to hate Touchwiz.

It more comes down to the permanently installed crap software they bundle like it’s a 1998 emachine. And the lame Samsung account requirement. And Bixby. There’s that weird rewards program thing where you earn xp for using different features on the phone. The updates are slow. It feels more like spyware than standard google stuff. The whole thing is a pretty terrible experience.

Re: Android 10

#342

As a recent iOS user coming from Android, this almost makes me want to go back. I really do miss the Smart Reply and native Google Assistant features. But alas, iMessage pressure is real in my friend's group.

> But alas, iMessage pressure is real in my friend's group. I've never had this from my friends. I read about this all the time and all I can think is, "Why would I be friends with people who care about that enough to peer pressure me into using an iPhone?"

Seriously. In the meantime, the rest of the world all uses WhatsApp. For group chat it's hard to beat. I use signal with family and some friends but getting people to switch is impossible. And allegedly it has group chat but it's not obvious how that works even to a techie like me. Asking people to switch phone platforms is ridiculous, especially people from poorer countries where an iPhone costs at least a couple months' salary. Lately I've also used keybase with another friend and it seems promising but the user base is almost nonexistent.

Re: Android 10

#343
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fallacious argument. Imperfect solutions can still be superior to the unmitigated problem, and they are in this case. You're essentially arguing that unless the solution is perfect, they shouldn't even try, and I'd point out you haven't justified or even tried to justify that black or white point of view.

In this case, yes. I think it's better to use light apps at a low brightness level than to use dark apps that might or might not blast a white screen at you. I think that flash of light is terrible for your eyesight, much worse than constant light apps.

I'm inclined to agree with you that sustained periods of darkness that include rapid change of light level may be less healthy for the eyes than consistent levels of overall brighter display with such shocks, but I'd like to see some research to back it up.

Re: Android 10

#344

The website assets are optimized in a rather strange way. The total page weight of ~20MB is huge for mobile. The images are heavily compressed using WebP lossy with quite noticeable blockiness and washed out textures and fine details, but squeezed into 1MB, yet the videos are only lightly compressed, and make up most of the page weight. Had they been compressed with libx264 at good quality, the page weight would be m…

I didn't notice these issues with images, I'm on a Pixel 3a updated to Android 10. Perhaps it's optimized only for Android 10 ;-)

Re: Android 10

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a few friends passive aggressively mention I am the reason our group chat is MMS vs iMessage. Or even worse: I just simply got excluded from group chats. That was the saddest one because when hanging out in person, a friend will mention a conversation from the group chat and I wouldn't know what's going on and they would just awkwardly pretend it didn't happen. Or say they'd add me to the group and never act…

If you've got friends who have time to complain about it, but not the time to move conversation to WhatsApp/FB/line/telegram/WeChat/...anything and prefer to exclude you, are they really friends? This honestly makes me angry when people say they're pressured into buying a high cost device.

>not the time to move conversation to WhatsApp/FB/line/telegram/WeChat/

None of these are an alternative to iMessage. They all either are missing key features or require you to deal with unencrypted communications or relayed encryption.

Re: Android 10

#346
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But alas, iMessage pressure is real in my friend's group. Man, in my extended family SMS text group, this comes up once every couple weeks. One of us will note they aren't getting a random message, or someone will send a video and the quality will be crap, and the iPhone users will all mention how if we all had iPhones, this wouldn't be a problem. Cue a few of is getting kind of triggered because it's only Apple's…

> Man, in my extended family SMS text group, this comes up once every couple weeks. One of us will note they aren't getting a random message, or someone will send a video and the quality will be crap, and the iPhone users will all mention how if we all had iPhones, this wouldn't be a problem. IMO a reasonable compromise is WhatsApp. Rich features like iMessage's but portable and lots of people already use it. I have…

> IMO a reasonable compromise is WhatsApp.

Yeah, having thought about it when this comes up, there's a very real trade-off between what people are willing to use because they've heard of it or might actually have it, whether that app/service will stay around or keep similar features in the future, and whether it's associated with a large org that may farm the data for personal information about you in some way (even if that's just your location).

Something like Signal seems good, but I imagine it may be a pain to get some of my extended family to adopt it (or to make sure things send using it).

WhatsApp would be good in that people have heard of it, and if they have Facebook it's probably easy for them to integrate with, but people are much more likely to have relative's phone numbers than service profile links, meaning they might opt to not use it in many cases.

Really, it needs to be ubiquitous on phones for it really to be a viable replacement that will be used 9 out of 10 times. That leaves RCS as an upgrade to SMS, but who knows if we'll ever get that. I know people complain about how it doesn't actually raise limits enough, but going from SMS to a limit fo 105 MB for videos and more features (even if not on parity with current systems) is a huge step, and I think the only one likely to achieve even close to the same deployment as SMS, and then only if Apple supports it too (assuming US networks actually get on board).

Re: Android 10

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as dumb as it sounds, nobody likes to be a green bubble

I've never heard of this until today, but green is my favorite color. I am confused how two functioning adults can care about this. It sounds like an unreasonably childish thing to care about. If someone has different phone then you and they want you to change to appease them then tell them to deal with it.

The color is simply an indicator of an inferior system. It's not the color itself that people care about. They care about the encryption, quality of media, timestamps, delivery receipts, etc.

Re: Android 10

#349

It's always nice to see how each Android release compares to iOS. Usually about 10% of the features while releasing to about .05% of the active phones. The vast majority of people won't see these features for another 3 years.

You need to factor in price for a fair comparison.

Re: Android 10

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've got friends who have time to complain about it, but not the time to move conversation to WhatsApp/FB/line/telegram/WeChat/...anything and prefer to exclude you, are they really friends? This honestly makes me angry when people say they're pressured into buying a high cost device.

>not the time to move conversation to WhatsApp/FB/line/telegram/WeChat/ None of these are an alternative to iMessage. They all either are missing key features or require you to deal with unencrypted communications or relayed encryption.

WhatsApp, signal, matrix has e2e. It's not an exhaustive list either - there are tons of solutions to choose from. What are the other key features?
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