Live data from Hacker News

Android 10

android.com

411–420 of 518 posts

Re: Android 10

#411

The way they show and demonstrate gestures, along with the UI at the bottom, strongly suggests that they intend to eliminate the semi-"hard" buttons in favor of gestures. That would save space, give people a bit more control over fullscreen apps, and provide a less "modal" UI where the same gestures always work even if the buttons aren't available (such as when playing fullscreen video). Also, "Get security updates f…

I hope the gestures are better than when they first came out with the "pill". I tried it for a week and it was an awful experience. Maybe it's because I use the double tap on app switcher to quickly get to last app a lot and the pill was really bad for that (slow and would switch to wrong app half the time).

Yes, it's much much better. That one was unfortunately in a half-way between gesture and buttons and felt very unfinished. This one is much smoother and easy to quick switch between apps. It feels a lot more natural, and the bottom buttons are actually gone, saving space.

Re: Android 10

#412

The way they show and demonstrate gestures, along with the UI at the bottom, strongly suggests that they intend to eliminate the semi-"hard" buttons in favor of gestures. That would save space, give people a bit more control over fullscreen apps, and provide a less "modal" UI where the same gestures always work even if the buttons aren't available (such as when playing fullscreen video). Also, "Get security updates f…

9 already implements the swipeable "pill" navigation. It isn't on by default if you upgraded from 8.

This is orders of magnitude better than the pill one, which not only felt unfinished, it didn't even actually get rid of the bottom bar, which seems like the whole point of gesture navigation...

Re: Android 10

#413
post #83

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.

Also as a recent iOS user, I don't understand why. Other than live captions, sound amp and family link, most new features have been on iOS for a while, and will actually improve on iOS 13 (e.g. apps have to ask for location access each time, besides the current 3 options). Seems like they're trying to catch up to iOS.

Android still has far superior notifications, both on the control side and the display side. You also basically named half of the features in "other than" list. iOS is also just getting dark mode too so not "for a while". The only thing they've had for a while is better permission control.

Re: Android 10

#414
post #37

I wonder how many of the features advertised here will make it onto the Android 10 release of other OEMs. In Android 9 for example, the ability to select text via OCR in the recent apps screen was limited to only the Pixel devices for some strange reason even though all Android devices had access to that feature prior to the release of Google Assistant via the Google app. In a similar vein, Digital Wellbeing was offi…

it's available in every platform as google lens app.

OCR text selection is available via Google Lens. What I'm talking about specifically is the ability to select out text from app pages where text selection is not usually possible. For example, say an app had button text or an embedded image, it is not possible to select these unless the app developer made those selectable. In Pixel devices, it's possible to go to the recent apps menu, and select these unselectable texts via OCR. This feature was previously available to all devices via Google Now On Tap but has since been limited.

Re: Android 10

#415

The way they show and demonstrate gestures, along with the UI at the bottom, strongly suggests that they intend to eliminate the semi-"hard" buttons in favor of gestures. That would save space, give people a bit more control over fullscreen apps, and provide a less "modal" UI where the same gestures always work even if the buttons aren't available (such as when playing fullscreen video). Also, "Get security updates f…

I used to really dislike work profile, but I gotta say it has gotten much better over the past few versions. For one, it seems like they're implementing a way for Calendar to share between personal/work in a single view, which was a huge pet peeve. They also allow for custom keyboard on your personal profile in Q which is great.

Re: Android 10

#416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lifetime of most electronics is much longer than 2 years. The only thing I need to replace regularly is headphones.

My Hifi system is 22 years old now, and going strong. Rotel and Infinity built some seriously good stuff back then. I'm afraid of how much it'll cost me to replace it when it eventually breaks, if I can't fix it. Have already refurbished the speaker surrounds once, about 10 years go. Guy at Speakerbits (Melbourne AUS) said the speakers would be worth more than when I bought them, as the mid range quality market just…

Correction: Speakerbits went offline for a while a couple of years and that was talked about - then silently came back it would seem.

Great, at least I know where I'll go if I wear out the current surrounds or anything else.

Re: Android 10

#417
post #50
post #37

I wonder how many of the features advertised here will make it onto the Android 10 release of other OEMs. In Android 9 for example, the ability to select text via OCR in the recent apps screen was limited to only the Pixel devices for some strange reason even though all Android devices had access to that feature prior to the release of Google Assistant via the Google app. In a similar vein, Digital Wellbeing was offi…

Most of them are choice of the OEMs - e.g. Samsung held back Digital Wellbeing on their S9 phone updates so it could market their own reimplementation on S10 series. Everything marketed here is available to all OEMs - Pixel specific features are marketed on Pixel marketing pages.

I wouldn't be so sure to blame the OEM. Read this article [0]. Google dismissed a support ticket claiming that the OCR text selection feature was available only to Pixel devices released after 2017.

The Android Pie page [1] advertises the feature here as a standard Android feature under the system usability enhancements section.

This feature was actually available to all devices before the Google Assistant was released via a feature called Google Now on Tap.

[0] https://9to5google.com/2018/07/05/text-selection-android-p-o...

[1] https://www.android.com/versions/pie-9-0/

Re: Android 10

#419
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I couldnt agree more, it has taken a lot of painful configuration to limit Samsung from butting I to every aspect of usage of my phone, and having damn near every update break that.

The bixby button is an endless pain, thankfully I found bxaction that helps stop it.

Re: Android 10

#420
post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except this feature doesn't add security, it just adds a tool for reducing the usability trade-off of having a long hard password. I think it is very misleading phrasing.

Does the person who scanned the QR code have access to the wifi password after the fact on their phone? From what I remember, there is no way to access saved wifi passwords, you can just modify it but can't see the stored one. This way, if you just have them scan the QR code on your phone (and don't let them photograph it), technically you have securely given the password without them knowing it, right?

If they use the most popular QR code scanner on Android [1], it shows the password in the scanner (IIRC), along with a button to connect to it. There's no acceptably secure way to give someone a WiFi password without ... giving it to them. QR codes are a simple graphical representation of text, they don't encrypt that text in any way. Sharing a password this way is not more secure than them handing you their device and you typing it in - and if you do that you should regard the other person as in possession of your password.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.zxi...

Post reply on HN