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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

#411

Post by cogman10 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #371
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.

I gave my 6-year old iPhone to elderly relatives and it still gets security upgrades. Google “upgraded” to less than any other mainstream computing platform. Windows gets about 10 years of security updates for each major version, up to 15 if you pay extra.

And that is just for the OS itself.

Hardware wise, you can easily pull out 20 years or longer simply by constantly bumping up the OS version.

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

#412

Post by my123 »

vetinari wrote: post #239
mdoms wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

(disclaimer: I work at Qualcomm)

> Mobile devices have no UEFI

Since the Snapdragon 835, Android devices with Qualcomm processors use UEFI all the way to the kernel.

However, custom UEFI binaries aren't part of the boot flow, with an Android UEFI boot application running instead.

> no bus enumeration

It's device tree instead of ACPI, but apart from that the situation isn't _that_ different from PCs today. We aren't in the ATAGS era anymore. The reflashing interface nowadays is standardised through fastboot too.

> so the OS image has to be taylored for each device

Thankfully a lot of progress has been done on that.

Since Treble, the BSP proper has been untied from Android releases.

Since devices shipping with Android 12, a Google-built kernel with a stable kernel module ABI has been shipping (for a given major kernel + Android version release combo). This allows kernel security updates to be identical across the whole ecosystem.

> althrough both are arm, you cannot use Ubuntu (or other disto) image intended for one on another

That used to be true, but across the whole Android device fleet (even between SoC vendors) it's not true anymore.

However, there's a catch still: there isn't a central update service. So while you might use a custom OS that way, you'll still need to update the vendor partitions (with the drivers, both kernel and user-mode ones) out of band in that scenario to get updates for those.

More info on generic system images: https://developer.android.com/topic/generic-system-image.

This mechanism allows to have universal Android images that work across all of the ecosystem, and can be used for GNU/Linux distributions on phones too if there's motivation to do so.

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

#413

Post by hda2 »

Is it really that surprising?

Android is becoming just as locked down as Apple, but the ones doing the locking down (samsung) are nowhere near as good at software and attention-to-detail as Apple.

That coupled with android phones having unacceptably sparse security updates (6 months/1 year between security updates? Really?), and higher costs (Apple phones over 7+ years are much cheaper than equivalent samsung over 3 years or less).

If I accept that "my" phone is not something I can't control or fix, why wouldn't I buy the cheaper, better-designed phone with better security? Did they really thing that people wouldn't notice?

Google and samsung decided to give up the only competitive they had (openness, standards) by pretending to be Apple. Now they'll have to compete with Apple on everything else (they can't).

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

#414

Post by vmception »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #346
freedomben wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The impression I get is that every iPhone user has heard all the arguments before and understand the accuracy of those arguments and its the android users that lack the self awareness in that area and other areas of their life, This might be the most ironic comment I've read in a long time. 90%+ of users on both platforms are purely religious about their choice, and if there's one thing I can say that most of them…

FWIW that underhanded description of Apple users as idiots who value looks and brand names and can't be trusted with a real computer is... annoyingly old.

In US, iphone possession is 74% of 18-24 year olds, with more planning to when it feels practical/responsible!

its not the early 2000s anymore!

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

#415

Post by cookie_monsta »

Kye wrote: post #269
howinteresting wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed. It's not just convincing all (or even most) of your friends, it's getting them to convince all their friends to switch (and so on)

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

#416

Post by easrng »

Rufhfhs3747rhe7 wrote: post #367
shrimp_emoji wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp? What is this, 2010? It's all about Discord now bb (who refused to be bought by Microsoft BD)

Has Discord become the dominant platform for bilateral messaging anywhere? I've never heard it being used outside of crypto and gaming chat rooms.

I talk to my friends on Discord almost exclusively, though one of the communities I'm in is also bridged to Matrix. I do not do crypto or gaming really.

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

#417

Post by easrng »

bitwize wrote: post #343
postalrat wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are both copying each other.

But when Apple copies your feature, your feature gets better. When you copy Apple's feature, it feels like a cheap knockoff.

Google's swipe typing is better than Apple's clone of it.

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

#418

Post by makeitdouble »

me_me_mu_mu wrote: post #387

I used to be so into specs and customizing my phone until I got an iPhone. I had thought I'm going to feel like a caveman using some phone made for dummys, but honestly the phone just works. At the end of the day why was I installing all those custom apps? The stock experience was kind of shit, and you shouldn't need to overclock your mobile phone to get less laggy UI lol. The iPhone just does the stuff you'd expect…

This is true, but also not the story of iOs vs android, just iOS vs Samsung OneUI.

Samsung is the major provider of android devices in the US, but I am not sure Samsung’s story can be generalized to that extent.

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

#419

Post by notreallyserio »

scarface74 wrote: post #287
notreallyserio wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I just long pressed on a Slack notification and a “reply” text box appeared above the keyboard.

Thanks, I had no idea this was a thing on iOS.

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

#420

Post by makeitdouble »

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…

The iPhone 12 was released end 2020, right before we went into the pandemic. To me it would interesting to know if you made the switch before or after Covid hit full blown (as you mention rebate, I’d assume after)

I know a lot of people who revised their relation to phone during that time (me included), and going for simpler things seemed to be a overall theme. Including those who went the other way and gave up iOS for the Pixel 4a for instance, or even some much smaller “dumber” phone.

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