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Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

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Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#161

It's been mentioned before in other articles, but I don't think it can be understated how much iMessage makes it difficult to be the "odd man out" if you're on an Android phone. And it's not just about teenagers, and it's not about "green bubbles". I recently went on a vacation with friends, 4 other folks on iPhones and me on an Android. Our group chat experience almost made me consider getting an iPhone. The inabili…

You could just ask everyone to install Signal or even WhatsApp? They're friends of yours, so it seems like the least they can do for you.

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#162
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>people have just resorted to ostracizing android users by co-opting iOS' "green bubbles" as a scarlet letter. What does this mean?

iOS messaging has end to end encryption by default, when that is enabled the messages are shown within a "blue bubble". When this is not possible, it falls back to sending normal SMS, which can be read in plain text by third parties in the middle and has no encryption, when that occurs messages are shown within a "green bubble". Therefore, messaging android users shows a "green bubble". People know its both an androi…

Hmm, I have never heard anyone mention "knowing its... unencrypted" I doubt most iOS users would care about that, realistically. Note that the experience is bad in both directions (at least for me in Signal on Android I get to endure a lot of 'so and so loved whole-text-of-previous-message' instead of just a heart emoji - I see that GOOG has improved things Messages recently to parse those, at least)

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#163
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pick your poison. The only reason I'm still on android is because at least I can (still) have root there. I'm saying still because of safety net. But if apple let me have root, i'd probably prefer an Apple over Google. Mobile phones and their user hostility is a cancer. I'm seriously considering using a full GNU/Linux handheld for mobile things i can do in a browser, and keep an android phone for app garbage tha…

What does having root on your phone improve for you?

Not the OP, but for me this is a matter of principle. If you don't have root on your device, it isn't yours, its the manufacturer's, and you're simply renting it. I rarely if ever actually use my root access for anything, but I guess I'm just philosophically opposed to buying a device designed to ensure I don't control it. Doubly so for a device that's so critical and enmeshed in my private life.

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#166
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does having root on your phone improve for you?

A few example of the top of my head: - DriveDroid to boot a PC, I haven't used a USB stick to boot off in... years? - /etc/hosts - Viper4Android for system wide EQ - Messing with user hostile apps such a firefox when they disable your addons although they still work, proven by the fact that I was able to make them work again as root Edit: more things - Wireguard kernel module - Adding a CA to the trust store to MITM…

> - Adding a CA to the trust store to MITM yourself

This is possible on iPhones isn't it? I definitely remember Fiddlering my self a few years back on my iPhone.

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#167
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iTunes has not been required for years now.

How do you get music files into the Music app other than through iTunes?

You do it with Finder these days; iTunes is dead.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT210611

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#168

I've been heavily considering getting an iPhone because of how terrible the Android experience but my problem with Apple is that you are either fully in their ecosystem of you aren't a worthy enough customer in their mind. I have no desire to use iCloud or Apple mail or have an AppleID. I just want a small phone that gets updates, has maps, and has a decent music app.

I'm sorry, but I fail to understand your argument here.

Either you are Edward Snowden or Elliot, there is no written rule to use every single Apple services in order to use iPhone.

I've been using iPhone for almost a decade and the only feature I only ever use is Find My Iphone for obvious reason.

> I just want a small phone that gets updates, has maps, and has a decent music app.

And what stops you for doing that in iPhone?

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#169
I was an Android person, mainly because I didn't want to spend >400 on a device (my OP3 lasted 5 years for 400 eur, ran Lineage). But there were no high end smaller smartphones. I got an iPhone 12 mini (2x what I normally paid), after getting used to it, I just feel there isn't a big difference between the 2 OSs. I like the high end feel, good cam, but Android phones of that price have that too. All my fav apps are there (with the exception of Gadgetbridge). It just works well for a self hoster (Home Assistant, NextCloud, don't even need davx5 for web/caldav), just as well as Android.

Re: Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years

#170
post #7

I’m not surprised. I used Android devoutly, had a Galaxy S4, then an S8 when that started showing its age. I upgraded to an iPhone 12 when AT&T ran the promotion to get a free one. I wanted to keep liking Android. The amount of time I spent arguing vehemently that Android was superior made the switch hard, but several factors came into play for me: - Extremely slow and fragmented upgrade of OS. This resulted in subst…

Long time Google fanboy here, and I'm honestly a hair's breadth away from buying an iphone 13. I have had nexus/pixels phones since the gnex. I have evangelized android to for almost as long. I did ground work for google by pushing people into google's services. I have a day 1 pixel 6 pro. I pay for cloud storage and yt premium. But to me google is just falling apart. I feel like they have lost their technology drive…

Googler, opinions are my own. I don't work anywhere near phone stuff.

I assume your friend has tried all the debugging on this page? https://support.google.com/messages/answer/9363493?hl=en My wife's phone keeps failing to connect and we have to do the carrier services reset to make it work. A terrible solution to me requiring factory resetting your phone.

But even then, I have a friend that was never able to get RCS to work on his phone, and he spent multiple hours with Google support trying to figure it out. There is something wrong with his account on Google and the carriers side (he tried multiple phones, and it never worked). The RCS team definitely has some corner cases to work out getting everyone activated, because it leads to really bad stories like this.

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