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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

#231

Post by marcosdumay »

sorenjan wrote: post #186
nextos wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me crazy, but I think there is room for a third platform. Especially if this platform was bootstrapped in a smart way, for example with an emulation layer to be able to run applications from Android. Or perhaps WebAssembly will make it viable to do more things from a (mobile) browser. I really miss the N700-N9 series with Maemo and Meego. It was so elegant and simple.

One problem with relying on emulation is that Google has moved a lot of functionality from the open source Android layer to Google Play Services, and they obviously wont publish that on someone else's platform. https://developers.google.com/android/guides/overview

You can install those from the Play Store, can't you? If you are going yo emulate Android, it's best to go all in and install the Google services into the emulator too. (Of course, the distributor can't just install it, but he can make the device ready for installing it, requiring only some confirmation.)

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

#232

Post by Zardoz84 »

kd913 wrote: post #180
guitarbill wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows Phone was a shame, but completely Microsoft's fault. I liked the Windows Phone UI/UX, and the irony is that if they had've invested more into something like Xamarin, they could've likely had extremely compelling tooling for big enterprises (like banks) to support Apps on different platforms. But even Skype for Windows Phone took ages to actually land. Or emulate Android apps, like you said. That solves the in…

I loved my lumia 520. It was cheap as chips, fast as hell and at the time more user friendly than whatever overheating droid alternatives were available. I think it was one of the fastest selling phones at the time. I distinctly remember Google making it a right pain to use Google's products on the phone, namely Youtube and Google Maps. In addition I remember a bunch of articles talking about how Google prevented Mic…

Microsoft using Chromium for Edge, it's a bad notice. It only helps Google to get a strong hold on the web and his standards...

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

#233

Post by mixedCase »

Georgelemental wrote: post #92
hellisothers wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does having root on your phone improve for you?

I use a custom ROM on my Pixel phone to strip out all the user-hostile tracking. It works quite well honestly, no major usability sacrifices

SafetyNet?

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

#234

Post by notreallyserio »

rejectfinite wrote: post #34
lumb63 wrote: 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…

- Extremely slow and fragmented upgrade of OS. This resulted in substantially older features and security patches. Samsung phones does 4 years of updates now. - Privacy. iMessage’s encryption (though I stand by that it is gimmicky to only offer for iPhones, and I despise that) has a serious network effect. Apple is also far more transparent in what data they use, how they use it, etc. iMessage? Everyone here (Scandin…

> Samsung phones does 4 years of updates now.

That's really, really poor. I mean it's good for the Android ecosystem but their biggest competitor is at six+.

edit: replaced "almost twice that number of years" with "six+".

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

#235

Post by amiga-workbench »

lumb63 wrote: 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…

I'd accidentally dropped my Mi Mix 2S in the bath and screwed the display, so while I waited a month for a new display & body to arrive from China I grabbed a refurbished Pixel 3a to hold me over. After seeing the absolute state of the Android 12 UI, I'm bailing out to a Pinephone Pro as soon as its viable.

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

#236

Post by doliveira »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #75

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…

This whole green bubble seems to be very much an American phenomenon, I don't think it's the one responsible. Outside the US people just use WhatsApp.

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

#237

Post by marcosdumay »

vidanay wrote: post #211
tomtheelder wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched recently, and honestly have found the experience on iPhone to broadly be worse. There are a few things that are a bit nicer, but the downgrade in the notifications system alone just tanks the experience. That said I switched for mostly privacy reasons, so won't be going back.

I have a company issued iPhone, and the atrocious notification system is enough to assure I will not buy an iPhone personally. If notifications in iOS were ever completely overhauled to the Android model, I would probably jump ship.

Well, I don't really know the iOS system, but Android lets you authorize (or block) each different interface of notifications (like text, sounds, or appearing at the top) for each different application, and you can do that right from the notification itself.

I imagine this is what the GP is talking about.

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

#238

Post by sillyinseattle »

x0x0 wrote: post #91
Workaccount2 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The security upgrades situation on Google is intolerable. I finally have a phone (3axl) that didn't die in a couple years from accidents / abuse / going to the gym in my pocket, and Google is eol-ing it because they've cut off security upgrades. My next phone will be an iphone.

> they've cut off security upgrades

Same reason I switched to Apple last year -- after being android only since original Motorola Droid (2009).

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

#239

Post by vetinari »

mdoms wrote: post #150
kyrra wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Googler opinions are my own. At least they fixed this with the pixel 6 with a 5 year upgrade plan.

No. Google is the operating system vendor. They either fix this with all Android phones or they haven't fixed anything at all.

Google is not operating system vendor for all Android phones.

They release a generic template, other vendors then apply platform kits for the SoCs they use and they release the operating system for their devices. Google has no idea what it runs on, or what is needed to make it run on specific devices. It is the vendor's task.

Mobile devices have no UEFI, no bus enumeration, so the OS image has to be taylored for each device. It is similar to Raspberry or Odroid or similar SBCs: althrough both are arm, you cannot use Ubuntu (or other disto) image intended for one on another.

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

#240

Post by Abroszka »

Zardoz84 wrote: post #228
nextos wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me crazy, but I think there is room for a third platform. Especially if this platform was bootstrapped in a smart way, for example with an emulation layer to be able to run applications from Android. Or perhaps WebAssembly will make it viable to do more things from a (mobile) browser. I really miss the N700-N9 series with Maemo and Meego. It was so elegant and simple.

Firefox tried it some years ago. Same Microsoft, Samsung, etc...

I still miss Firefox OS. What happened to it? To me it seems that it was going well, but it was impossible to buy a phone with Firefox OS.
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