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Android 10

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Re: Android 10

#501

Post by thirdsun »

derefr wrote: post #258
vitobcn wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, in most countries (and outside the US especially) WhatsApp has already won the network effects battle, and it's the default messaging app in any smartphone. Even people with iPhone will all have WhatsApp installed.

Interesting; in whatever cultural bubble I'm embedded in, every group chat (even among five friends without any shared purpose) is its own Discord server.

I doubt that includes family, co-workers or neighbors, right? Here in germany WhatsApp is so ubiquitous that beside various friends circles you'll likely have groups for family, work, (sports) clubs, or your fellow kindergarten parents, etc.

It's the default form of mobile communication here.

Re: Android 10

#502

Post by makomk »

leokennis wrote: post #490
alistproducer2 wrote: post #206

I recently bought a Nokia 2.2, which in in the Android One program. Two main reasons: a removable battery and OS updates for two years and security for 3. At this point, there's very little difference between the hardware of flagships and commodity, especially considering the real-world use of smartphones. I mean, is anyone compiling programs on these things or doing anything particularly intensive? Not really. So gi…

Of course one reason you’d want a faster processor is it will “race to idle” faster and increase your battery life (longer life with similar battery / equal life with smaller battery that’s charged quicker): https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/race-to-sleep Of course there is an optimum between price, workload and battery life that will differ per person.

Race-to-idle only means that it's often more efficient to run a processor designed for a given speed at that speed, complete the task sooner, and then power it down than to run it slower. That's because modern high-speed processors waste a lot of power via leakage just by being turned on. I think it's often still more efficient to design a slower, lower-power processor in the first place, and most modern phones have such processor cores.

Re: Android 10

#503

Post by rstuart4133 »

cwyers wrote: post #313
jcknight wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a Nokia 3.1 as a lower end test device, which also belongs to the Android One program. The device is so slow to respond to input in every way that it's become the device I use to test our apps absolute worst case performance on. Even knowing it was meant to be a lower end device it routinely gets frustrating to use for even the most simple tasks, such as Chrome tab switching, keyboard response and even just…

I bought a few cheap (under $100) Nokia Lumias back when Nokia was Windows Phone's last, best hope, and it always annoyed me how a cheap Lumia with Windows Phone was in so many ways nicer to use than a mid-range Android phone -- much more responsive to input, less lag, etc.

Microsoft's latest revisions of the WinPhone were software engineering wise the best mobile phone OS on the planet. As you say, it was quick, silky smooth and yet ran on low end hardware with excellent battery life. I gather they achieved that buy tightly locking down how software developers could do things. Perhaps is why their app store was so thin which was major factor in their downfall, but still it was a remarkable effort. I take my hat off to that team.

It as even more remarkable because if you went back a few short years WinPhone was the worst phone OS on the planet. It crashed regularly, a misbehaving app could drain it's batter in no time, and the UI was horrible.

So much for "if you build a better mouse trap them will come" I guess, especially if your reputation is for making crap mousetraps.

Re: Android 10

#504

Post by ksec »

mrguyorama wrote: post #473
ansible wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. If you're not getting updates from the chip vendor, you're going to have a hard time moving to later version of Linux, for example. It would cost a lot of money to port new software to the platform, and then the question is... who's going to pay for it? If everyone still using a Nexus 5X chips in $50 USD to fund continued development, then maybe that could continue. But it is easier at some point to just…

The phone originally sold for $400. Is that really not enough money to fund software development for 4 years or more?

Yes and No.

1. If it was really $400, the problem is most ( pretty much all apart from Apple ) gives plenty of Retail margin and incentive to carriers. That means on average it is highly likely not even getting $250 out of it.

It is like those Flagship Samsung and Huawei phone, their pricing strategy is always $100 lower than comparative official iPhone price, except they are often retailing for 20% lower. Compared to Apple, you could hardly find any decent discount on iPhone, and iPhone has much lower margin for Carrier and Retail, from low end of 10s to even single digit percentage.

2. Only if it is sold for 100 millions unit +. And Google didn't even manage 10. You need Scale for it to work. That is why iPhone is unprecedented, when was the last time you saw a product in its segment taking 20% of shipment and 80-90% of industry profits?

The answer often to all these question is simple, paid up, and find enough people to paid up, in business terms this means market fit. Unfortunately apart from small bunch of people on HN, no one is willing to paid extra $50 - $100 more just for Software update, they expect it to be free, or they would rather not update at all.

Re: Android 10

#505

Post by ksec »

vladdanilov wrote: post #138

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…

And yet people still constantly champion WebP, VP9, AV1 or whatever Google pumps out for free.

And if one of the biggest Web company can't do web page well then I guess the rest of the Web Pages get a free pass for not well optimised.

Re: Android 10

#506

Post by ksec »

kbenson wrote: post #44
garysahota93 wrote: post #23

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. 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.

I don't understand why iMessages is so popular in US, and it is pretty much US and France ( SMS ) only AFAIK. It is like when the world was on ICQ, they had AIM. When the world moved to MSN, they still stuck to AIM.

And just like AIM, iMessages sucks. I tried it many times and the same problem persist. Some users in the group not getting message, message appeared not in timely order, sometimes random message from the past appear. Needs to Recreate group to solve user not getting message problem, which means all previous group messages are in different group. It is slow as compared to WhatsApp. Icons and Packs are far worst, it is as if Apple has never used WeChat, KakaoTalk, Line, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or Telegram.

Then there is huge amount of SMS Notification and Receipt that gets muddles up in the list of conversation. It is a Giant pile of Mess.

Every year I read something about iMessages being popular ( in US ) and every year I tried with my group of friends. And the answer remain the same. And it is so god damn bad most of my friends now refuse to try it again.

Edit: And iMessages does't always Sync on my Mac.

Re: Android 10

#507

Post by rstuart4133 »

unicornporn wrote: post #293
alistproducer2 wrote: post #206

I recently bought a Nokia 2.2, which in in the Android One program. Two main reasons: a removable battery and OS updates for two years and security for 3. At this point, there's very little difference between the hardware of flagships and commodity, especially considering the real-world use of smartphones. I mean, is anyone compiling programs on these things or doing anything particularly intensive? Not really. So gi…

> a removable battery and OS updates for two years This provokes me. Are we supposed to be happy with two years ? The environmental impact of e-waste and the production of electronics should not be understated. I have a Nexus 5 as a backup phone. It works just as well as my main handset. I know how to duck the G-surveillance and I'm able to keep it alive because I have the knowledge to install roms. Not everyone does…

> Are we supposed to be happy with two years?

If it was a laptop of desktop definitely not. And initially I wasn't happy with 2 years on a mobile phone because I thought they would age like their bigger brethren.

The reality is none of my mobile phones have aged gracefully. They've all slowed down to almost unusable some time after the 2 year mark, despite me fighting my way past the glue and tape to replace the non-replaceable battery. The really annoying part for me, a veteran embedded programmer who has rolled his own multitasking operating systems, is I have no idea what is causing this slowdown. Nothing I've done fixes it, up to and including including re-imaging the flash.

With my latest phone I've come to accept that I'll be replacing it in 2 years. My previous phone was a Nexus 6P which cost me around $1200, which I planned to have for about 5 years (but didn't). This time around it is a Nokia 8.1 which cost me a tad over $400, so even on a 2 year vs 5 year replacement schedule it would cost me less than the 6P.

The thing that did catch me by surprise is the Nokia 8.1 is a better phone than the 6P ever was - faster, better screen. Do things really move that fast in the mobile space? Maybe they do - everyone is adding bigger and bigger IPU's now. Compare that to desktop CPU's: I don't think they don't have IPU's yet.

Which brings me back to my original point. That 5 year expectation was set by my experience with desktop's. It seems for all sorts of reasons that experience doesn't translate to mobile phones.

Re: Android 10

#508

Post by Mindwipe »

kbenson wrote: post #481
Mindwipe wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point was specifically in response to Google's claim that RCS is a "gold" market for RCS where they have already completed the rollout. They haven't. They have the support of one carrier with roughly 20% market share, and about 3 - 5% of Android devices. There isn't really any reason to surmise that is going to improve, and Google's boasting here is very silly. RCS is a dead end product in every non-US territory,…

> They have the support of one carrier with roughly 20% market share, and about 3 - 5% of Android devices. According to Google (in the articles I read and shared here), whether the network provider supports it is irrelevant because they are supplying their own server in those cases, so it should just work. If you're in that region I'm interested to hear what you experience is if you have access to an Android phone an…

Either the provider has to support it or the SMS app on the device has to (TBH the provider support also requires some level of integration with the SMS app but that level is more common).

Google has rolled out a provider independent implementation to it's own SMS app, but that SMS app has no marketshare.

My experience is that, without going and hunting out an app to install, my Samsung handset has no support. I have a number of test devices, some of which do have support and a few even have support by default, but those have no marketshare.

Re: Android 10

#509

Post by dkonofalski »

viraptor wrote: post #362
dkonofalski wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp, though, is still owned by Facebook and, therefore, has all kinds of privacy concerns. Last I heard, the encryption wasn't e2e and used a key that was generated by the app. If that's the case, then Facebook has a copy of that key.

The key has to be generated either in the app or on some server. There are no other choices really, unless you use only ephemeral keys - and that gives you secrecy but doesn't validate the other side. (And you can still copy that key) WhatsApp is e2e on all devices since 2016 and uses open whisper, which is the same encryption as signal. Regarding the key - you have to trust the app it doesn't share it with the app a…

>it's true for iMessage as well

Are you sure about that? I was under the impression that, according to the security white paper released by Apple, that the key is generated on-device in the Secure Enclave and that Apple never has access to it. The Enclave itself also doesn't have network access so there's no way for that to be transmitted anywhere by any other means except for physical access, which is also limited in the hardware.

Re: Android 10

#510

Post by dkonofalski »

shaklee3 wrote: post #431
dkonofalski wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there are some huge, genuinely great benefits to using it. No one really cares that much but, when the difference between the two experiences is as great as it currently is, it really affects the conversation. For example, we don't really pressure friends to buy iPhones but we legitimately have a separate conversation group for just iOS users from the main SMS group chat so we can send images, video, or other…

What are the great benefits? As far as I can tell, Google voice + Hangouts has all the features and more.

>Google voice + Hangouts has all the features and more

Most of the features and a boat-load of data and privacy concerns to go along with it.

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