Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 9:25 PM UTC

hellisothers wrote: post #59

lawl wrote: 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?

I use https://github.com/sriharshaarangi/BatteryChargeLimit to keep my battery healthy so my phone stays functional longer.

Oh, and some scripts to fake input events so I can automate apps.

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

#262

Post by skinnymuch » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 9:26 PM UTC

cercatrova wrote: post #216

I'd use iOS if they let me install whatever apps I wanted ("sideloading" as a term feels weird, as if they deign their users to load apps on the side, by their good graces. No, it's our hardware, we should be able to run whatever we want). Android lets me do that, so I use it. No way I'd be without Vanced (rip) and other such apps. Android also has more interesting form factors, such as the folding phones, which Appl…

Do you have a folding phone?

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

#263

Post by asddubs » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 9:26 PM UTC

fsa3d4uyuiy wrote: post #45

finiteseries wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari has extensions you can get from the App Store including ad blockers, overlay removers etc

Does it also have extensions like redirect to old.reddit and such? If so, then it sounds like it would allow more user control than the latest versions of firefox of android, is this really true?

the API for content blockers is more limited, so it's not going to be as good as ublock origin, but yes, they do exist

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

#264

Post by tyingq » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 9:26 PM UTC

I think this is mostly related to the higher performance of iPhone models where you can finally buy a used one that doesn't feel sluggish.

That is, a sub $200 used iPhone is now very usable, where it hadn't been in the past.

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

#265

Post by Kye » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 9:26 PM UTC

tomComb wrote: post #256

Kye wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a place to check in settings. The last one was years before. I don't know how it's done now.

No, that's just for the security updates that must be applied as full firmware updates, usually because they are in the kernel. Google has been progressively redesigning Android over the past decade to the point where they can do all non-kernel security updates immediately and silently via the play store. It's a much better way to do it IMO.

So to be clear: I have no clue about any of this. I like not having to think about what's going on under the hood. I've never had to since getting an iPhone.

It sounds like what you're saying is Google has only continued to shuffle ever more vital functionality into the Play store since I left Android, which negates the often claimed benefits of an "open source" operating system. If all the important stuff is in a proprietary blob attached to a proprietary platform, I might as well stick with the one I already know that's never given me any trouble. I'm not going to root my iPhone or install a custom OS, so that's irrelevant to me.

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

#266

Post by Silhouette » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 9:26 PM UTC

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.

Four whole years?

It should be outrageous that we might consider such a short period acceptable for devices as expensive and otherwise long-lasting as a high-end Samsung phone. That it is not really surprising at all is a sad reflection on how normalised shipping insecure connected devices with inadequate support has become.

Obviously we don't yet know how to build 100% secure devices of this complexity but we are talking about some of the biggest businesses in the world here. There is little excuse not to require (by law if necessary) essential security updates for a much longer period given the reasonable useful life of the hardware and the rest of the software on it.

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

#267

Post by notreallyserio » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 9:28 PM UTC

MBCook wrote: post #255

notreallyserio wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android notifications can be more interactive. They're you perform quick actions like reactions to slack messages or archiving emails. Basically the things you can do on an Apple Watch but not the iPhone.

That’s up to the developer, the APIs have existed for 2ish years I think. I reply to texts and Slack messages through notifications. There are limits, but it’s not display only like it used to be.

I have yet to see a single interactive notification. What settings do you have to configure to get Slack to let you reply from a notification?

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

#268

Post by vetinari » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 9:29 PM UTC

coolsunglasses wrote: post #136

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…

My iPhone 13 Pro Max has 120 hz, so that feature is available. I don't mind that it was Android only for a bit, very little on that platform can actually render a non-static UI at that rate.

> very little on that platform can actually render a non-static UI at that rate.

you would be surprised, try it sometime.

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

#269

Post by Kye » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 9:29 PM UTC

howinteresting wrote: post #161

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…

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.

Either you have especially pliant friends, or you've never tried to do this.

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

#270

Post by technothrasher » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 9:31 PM UTC

tomtheelder wrote: post #85

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…

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 switched recently from years of Android usage simply because the car I wanted to buy only supported CarPlay. I could either give up Android or give up the car. I chose to keep the car. Now that I’ve had the iPhone a while, there seem to be about the same number of annoyances in iOS as there were with Android, they’re just different. I think I’d give the edge to Android, iOS is slightly more annoying, but not enough to worry about switching back.