Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apk.sh is a Bash script that makes reverse engineering Android apps easier

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 90 posts

Re: Apk.sh is a Bash script that makes reverse engineering Android apps easier

#41

Post by hansel_der »

tpush wrote: post #11
black3r wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i used to be an android poweruser in high school and college, I rooted my phones, played around with lots of custom roms, had a terminal emulator and full power of arm debian installed in a chroot environment, tried different keyboard apps, launchers, and all other customization possibilities... then I started working full-time and had way less free time and realized 99% of the time I now use my phone to read news si…

Why the switch, though? You can check the news and take quick photos on an Android, too; The vast majority of Android phones aren't being used for tinkering.

i would say that ios is the better un-tinkered experience because less will go wrong and if it does, there is not much you can do anyway.

probably the same reason why it's never the year of the linux desktop.

Re: Apk.sh is a Bash script that makes reverse engineering Android apps easier

#42

Post by black3r »

freedomben wrote: post #14
black3r wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i used to be an android poweruser in high school and college, I rooted my phones, played around with lots of custom roms, had a terminal emulator and full power of arm debian installed in a chroot environment, tried different keyboard apps, launchers, and all other customization possibilities... then I started working full-time and had way less free time and realized 99% of the time I now use my phone to read news si…

This is fascinating, I really want to understand. Was Android (even stock) insufficient for reading news sites and quick photos? Or is iOS much better for you at those tasks? If that's all you need, then I would consider both Android or iOS sufficient, but I don't quite get why you'd give up so many options and capabilities to switch, unless iOS is much better at reading news and taking photos. Maybe an analogy to he…

iOS's UI/UX is far more responsive and consistent in reaction times and input latency than Android. I suspect Android's use of Java to be the main culprit, but not really sure on that...

For browsing, it means that even phones which perform better in CPU bound benchmarks than my old iPhone 11 have random UI stutters & non-smooth scrolling in browser mostly while content is still loading, and these make me miss-click somewhere where I didn't want to, frequently enough to notice (compared to iPhones where it rarely happens)... 120Hz displays on Android make the UI smoother, but random janks & stutters still happen a lot more than on iPhones...

When I'm taking photos most of the time I want to take a good picture as fast as possible, sometimes I want to take more in quick succession, this is also somehow easier on iPhones from my experience.. (although I admit it's been a long time since I held a top-tier Android phone, my only contact with Androids is with my friends & family phones which are mostly Xiaomi/Huawei/OnePlus priced around 300-400€ which is half the price of my iPhone)

Also, switching to a newer iPhone is seamless compared to buying a new Android, and UI/UX/Settings don't change much with new versions, compared to Android version updates (although from what I've heard this has gotten better in Androids recently)

In your analogy I'd be talking about a power drill that just makes me work faster because it's better designed and more intuitive to use, even though it might have less RPM and less bits support.., if I did a lot of drilling just on Philips and Flathead and it saved me enough time, it would be worth the saved time I can use for other stuff...

Re: Apk.sh is a Bash script that makes reverse engineering Android apps easier

#43

Post by BoorishBears »

black3r wrote: post #42
freedomben wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fascinating, I really want to understand. Was Android (even stock) insufficient for reading news sites and quick photos? Or is iOS much better for you at those tasks? If that's all you need, then I would consider both Android or iOS sufficient, but I don't quite get why you'd give up so many options and capabilities to switch, unless iOS is much better at reading news and taking photos. Maybe an analogy to he…

iOS's UI/UX is far more responsive and consistent in reaction times and input latency than Android. I suspect Android's use of Java to be the main culprit, but not really sure on that... For browsing, it means that even phones which perform better in CPU bound benchmarks than my old iPhone 11 have random UI stutters & non-smooth scrolling in browser mostly while content is still loading, and these make me miss-click…

This right here is it for me. I was the same, in high school there was a 50/50 chance if on a given day the rom I had installed could actually make phone calls, but I didn't mind... but obviously priority change over time.

Switching the iPhone I was struck by how damn smooth everything was. Years of XDA tweaks couldn't touch my iPhone 6 out of the box despite specs I had always seen as inferior.

My tongue in cheek saying will always be: I'll switch back to Android when you can rotate an app correctly.

For those not familiar with Android internals, the UI "framework" the OS provides doesn't support that basic use case. Phones are fast enough that it can be hidden with an animation, but unless an app explicitly signs out every view is torn down and redrawn in a new orientation.

It's a tiny thing, but to me it's the iconic symptom of Android vs iOS. That's a decision Android made to support devices with 256mb of RAM, but never prioritized improving on, and now Android UX is stuck with that nit for eternity.

Re: Apk.sh is a Bash script that makes reverse engineering Android apps easier

#44

Post by Group_B »

tommieb wrote: post #39

Reminds me of the old days of running this tool - kitchen sink, https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/kitchen-android-kitchen-v... those days of cyanogenmod/rolling your own rom based off Gingerbread 2.3.7 and hacking... happy memories :)

You recommend any projects that are similar to this and up to date?

Re: Apk.sh is a Bash script that makes reverse engineering Android apps easier

#45

Post by dec0dedab0de »

Waterluvian wrote: post #3
danuker wrote: post #2

Scripts like this empowering the end-user is why I consider the Android ecosystem superior.

*superior when evaluated against one of many different criteria for what’s important to many different users. (A good time to remind tech people: 98% of users are not our user persona)

I think 98% is a bit high, but even if it were true the desires of the masses only matter if you're trying to sell something. I think it's safe to just assume that all opinions and suggestions on hn are for a technical audience.

Re: Apk.sh is a Bash script that makes reverse engineering Android apps easier

#46

Post by quacksilver »

danuker wrote: post #9
black3r wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i used to be an android poweruser in high school and college, I rooted my phones, played around with lots of custom roms, had a terminal emulator and full power of arm debian installed in a chroot environment, tried different keyboard apps, launchers, and all other customization possibilities... then I started working full-time and had way less free time and realized 99% of the time I now use my phone to read news si…

Among the top 5 deathbed regrets is working too much. Many indicators of quality of life face diminishing returns past a $30k/yr (2005) threshold.

Is it more socially acceptable or expected in society to say 'I worked too much' rather than 'my family and wife were dull and annoying and took up loads of time, I wish I had got better at my passions / done more research instead' or similar platitudes?

I imagine some people who genuinely think stuff similar the latter won't say it, and others may have it written off as deathbed delirium / psychosis and ignored if they do

Re: Apk.sh is a Bash script that makes reverse engineering Android apps easier

#47

Post by petodo »

freedomben wrote: post #14
black3r wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i used to be an android poweruser in high school and college, I rooted my phones, played around with lots of custom roms, had a terminal emulator and full power of arm debian installed in a chroot environment, tried different keyboard apps, launchers, and all other customization possibilities... then I started working full-time and had way less free time and realized 99% of the time I now use my phone to read news si…

This is fascinating, I really want to understand. Was Android (even stock) insufficient for reading news sites and quick photos? Or is iOS much better for you at those tasks? If that's all you need, then I would consider both Android or iOS sufficient, but I don't quite get why you'd give up so many options and capabilities to switch, unless iOS is much better at reading news and taking photos. Maybe an analogy to he…

I'm on Android since 2011, but reasons I'd go for iphone would be phone dimensions, consistent photo quality and long updates

Android seems to fixed only one of them (updates) while becoming more and more locked as iOS, quality photos with good shutter speed are offered only by pixel with bad availability in most of the world and pretty bad VFM besides A models

Post reply on HN