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

#441

Post by stjohnswarts » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 6:52 AM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #266

rejectfinite wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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% sec…

I mean that's twice as long as it was before? It's only 4 years if you buy it on the release date :) . I'm sticking with iphone for now.

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

#442

Post by bengalister » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 6:52 AM UTC

I really don't understand the hype for the iphone.

I own a oneplus 8t on Android 12, I particularly like the 120Hz display and the very fast charging (65w). When my battery is almost dead I can get to 30% in just a few minutes. Android 12 has been a big improvement, it is really snappy and good looking (Android 11 was already good). I bought the phone 550Euros, and during the last black friday it was sold for 350Euros. The camera is ok makes decent enough photos.

I tried last week-end my mum's iphone 13 and was really disappointed. She was not aware of faceid so I set it up with her, and the forced swipe up after unlocking the phone is annoying. On my phone, the fingerprint scanner is almost instantaneous and I get directly to the last opened application.

Also I saw that the phone gets constant ads for Apple products (we disabled notifications): Apple pay, Apple watch, Apple TV, etc. really annoying.

For me the main selling points for the iphone are the good camera and apple ecosystem integration. But the latter means that you are stuck with Apple hefty prices.

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

#443

Post by stjohnswarts » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 6:54 AM UTC

goosedragons wrote: post #352

GeekyBear wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The $399 iPhone SE is currently on it's sixth year of OS updates.

Android phones don't break even if they stop getting updates. Big popular apps like Firefox, Kindle, etc. work on old versions of Android like 6.0. $400+ is still a steep upfront cost to a lot of people.

I consider phones that don't have constant security updates as broken as I do a lot of banking and personal communication on my phone. Iphone updates IOS for years and years and I kept my last iphone for 5 years,probably will keep my iphone12 for a similar amount of time barring something catastrophic; it won't be from "desire to get the latest and greatest"

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

#444

Post by stjohnswarts » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 6:56 AM UTC

modeless wrote: post #373

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…

Apple has fooled you. iMessage is not end-to-end encrypted as advertised. If you use iCloud backups then all your messages can be read by Apple and by extension law enforcement. If you decide not to use the only allowed cloud backup option for iPhones, then your messages can still be read by Apple on the other end when your friends have iCloud backups enabled. Apple has not end-to-end encrypted iCloud backups of iMes…

Most of us on HN aren't stupid enough to put critical, life changing data through icloud server platform, but for day to day messagng imessage is fine. Most of my techie friend circle use signal anyway.

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

#445

Post by stjohnswarts » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 7:01 AM UTC

grumpyprole wrote: post #19

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…

But the iPhone only "just works" if you completely buy in to Apple's ecosystem. E.g. if you want to buy some FLAC music files from somewhere else, it won't "just work" anymore. Android is still the lesser of two evils in terms of allowing more choice on its platform.

What? I just downloaded a flac file and it played fine on my iphone? I've never even tried it before. Am I doing something wrong?

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

#446

Post by danielEM » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 7:03 AM UTC

my123 wrote: post #412

vetinari wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Hey @my123

> 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.

> 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.

So assuming my bootloader is unlocked, have a GSI compliant phone, what is the remaining work I would need to have done in order to get it working under linux (and by working I mean all devices - including cameras and etc)?

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

#447

Post by lizardactivist » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 7:09 AM UTC

MBCook wrote: post #305

lizardactivist wrote: post #219

Android may get an upswing once it finally adopts Fuschia with a "classic" Android compatibility layer (at least that's what I think they will do). But they will certainly have to push for devices with longer support than 3 years to keep that upswing.

Could you explain your comment? I don’t really follow android development. Was Fuschia the new OS Google was writing from scratch? Why do you think that will make a big difference?

Yes Fuschia is the new OS from Google, and I believe (and I may be wrong) they will eventually use this as the basis for newer versions of Android, together with a compatibility layer to provide a smooth transition.

From what Google, and other knowledgeable people who have studied the project (it's open source) say, the big differences will be in performance, memory efficiency, and security.

I'm not knowledgeable about the internals of the current Android, but to me it has always seemed like a big pile of bolted-on technologies, unable to perform efficiently in any area. But I could be wrong.

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

#448

Post by fsflover » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 7:12 AM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #283

fsflover wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you get almost everything you'd want from a mobile OS (minus games) You forgot reasonable support time: Proprietary drivers prevent you from upgrading the Linux kernel, and the device becomes very insecure and outdated within few years.

No, I did not. I am running the Fairphone, which is guaranteed to be updated for 7 years.

My Pinephone and (soon) Librem 5 are guaranteed to have support for the lifetime.

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

#449

Post by fsflover » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 7:15 AM UTC

stjohnswarts wrote: post #427

criddell wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google seems like they have lost a lot of their Android enthusiasm. I could see them making a deal with Microsoft for Android.

Does google have enthusiasm for anything anymore other than ads and search? Maybe cloud services? I would be afraid to use anything but open source tools on their cloud service given the kill rate they have for products...

> Does google have enthusiasm for anything anymore other than ads and search?

Does google have enthusiasm for anything anymore other than ads?

Fixed that for you. More info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31094407.

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

#450

Post by scruple » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 7:32 AM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #81

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…

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've had an Android device since the G1, then the G2... I'm currently on Project Fi with a Pixel 4a. When this phone no longer suits me, I'll also be moving to Apple hardware. At some point, and it's subjective / an individual choice but, enough is enough.