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15 Years of Android Memories

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Re: 15 Years of Android Memories

#21

Post by cglong »

petepete wrote: post #19
cglong wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the understated innovations of the iPhone was bringing awareness of the phone manufacturer to the masses, disrupting the relationship between customer and carrier. Android provided (and still does) a way for carriers to regain some control in that relationship. One example is Verizon's Droid campaign, which was so successful that "Droid" became a genericized trademark for any Android phone for a decade: https:…

This is incredibly US-centric, the line between manufacturer and carrier is much clearer just about everywhere else in the world.

Well yeah, the comment I was replying to was about the US :D

Re: 15 Years of Android Memories

#22

Post by [deleted] »

anotheronelost wrote: post #3

Missing from 2014: pushed out Lollipop release to OG Nexus tablets, destroying performance, leaving only those technical enough to downgrade with any way to keep using the devices. 2023: pushed out Android 14 update, removing access to any additional profiles used on the devices. TBF they still have time to deal with this one, but their response so far has been terrible. And yet I still buy the damn things because th…

[deleted]

Re: 15 Years of Android Memories

#23

Post by grumpyprole »

psbp wrote: post #4
anotheronelost wrote: post #3

Missing from 2014: pushed out Lollipop release to OG Nexus tablets, destroying performance, leaving only those technical enough to downgrade with any way to keep using the devices. 2023: pushed out Android 14 update, removing access to any additional profiles used on the devices. TBF they still have time to deal with this one, but their response so far has been terrible. And yet I still buy the damn things because th…

Android 14 has been a buggy mess for me on the Pixel 7 Pro. It's confounding that Google is still pushing out buggy Android releases.

Pixel phones are the bleeding edge though. You are basically beta testing for the other Android vendors.

Re: 15 Years of Android Memories

#24

Post by carstenhag »

With all its flaws and lets say "quirks" because we are doing with Google here, I am happy to be an android developer and make good money with it (Germany).

I usually compare my situation with my iOS colleagues. When I find a bug or documentation issue in a Google library that is still maintained properly, after creating a bug on their issue tracker, you usually get a real person to properly analyze your issue within 1 month, maybe it's even fixed in that timeframe if you are lucky.

Sometimes you think a library is maintained and officially it is so, but they say development has stopped because of other priorities. Or "basic" features take years to be implemented. If you know the right person on Twitter you might be able to get it moving internally.

My iOS colleagues can submit private bug reports but chances are super low someone is ever looking at it. There's no community around it, it seems.

Re: 15 Years of Android Memories

#25

Post by walteweiss »

carstenhag wrote: post #24

With all its flaws and lets say "quirks" because we are doing with Google here, I am happy to be an android developer and make good money with it (Germany). I usually compare my situation with my iOS colleagues. When I find a bug or documentation issue in a Google library that is still maintained properly , after creating a bug on their issue tracker, you usually get a real person to properly analyze your issue withi…

What about the difference in pay checks and difficulty of the development? E.g. I know many iOS developers that are, how to say that, very far from being techy, geeky or whatever name we’d use for the community. Some of them aren’t even aware about what git is (yet they use it somehow), but their pay check way higher than the one Android developers have. Also (if they work for a company) they’re given all the needed devices (e.g. a MacBook Pro, iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad, if needed). I haven’t seen an Android developer that is treated like that. And for me it looks like Android developers need to know way more, yet they’re under appreciated.

Re: 15 Years of Android Memories

#26

Post by doix »

hulitu wrote: post #8

> our mission has always been to bring computing to everyone Yet if you try to do computing on Android, you hit a wall: file access is absymal from a user point of view (virtual folders ?). Text editors are terrible. The only thing existing are some BASIC interpreters, terrible to use. Combine this with the unaccessible GUI (small scroll bars, widgets too big or too small) and everything tells you to go away and neve…

I used to SSH from my moto droid to my university lab and work on my bus commute.

Back when I cared, I would root my phone and install custom roms and had basically a fully functioning Linux environment. iptables worked and I would block network access to certain apps.

It's been a long time since I used to mess around with this stuff, but file access was fine. I'm not sure what the case is now, but it was possible to access pretty much all the files on the phone. Apps had their own folders mounted in /data/ and you could mess around with their files easily.

Android is much more of a computing device than a microwave or an iOS device.

Re: 15 Years of Android Memories

#27

Post by saagarjha »

> We always celebrate each Android release with a statue. I remember them arriving by truck to the Mountain View office, and Tracey Cole (Android’s first administrative assistant) would send a message to everyone in the building asking for help to unload it. Then the next year, we’d add another statue and continue to just find space on the lawn. Pretty quickly it got crowded and we didn't know what to do with all these statues! I'm happy to report we've now found a good home for them in Mountain View, and that we have continued our tradition of statue unveilings with each release.

It is quite unfortunate that they’re no longer publicly accessible :(

Re: 15 Years of Android Memories

#28

Post by rtpg »

Android existing is obviously good but I still wonder about the original sin of it being Java based. Latency on so many things always gets me (I still remember how an iPhone SE would routinely outperform a top of the line Galaxy for Google Maps), and I know “Java slow” is more of a meme than anything but I can’t help but imagine that it must affect every project (especially vendor stuff which might be competently made but not made with performance in mind)

Re: 15 Years of Android Memories

#29

Post by fomine3 »

petepete wrote: post #19
cglong wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the understated innovations of the iPhone was bringing awareness of the phone manufacturer to the masses, disrupting the relationship between customer and carrier. Android provided (and still does) a way for carriers to regain some control in that relationship. One example is Verizon's Droid campaign, which was so successful that "Droid" became a genericized trademark for any Android phone for a decade: https:…

This is incredibly US-centric, the line between manufacturer and carrier is much clearer just about everywhere else in the world.

Manufacturer and career relationship was very strong in Japan ,because career was a new service developer and order what to make. iPhone did great here too.

Re: 15 Years of Android Memories

#30

Post by baz00 »

taspeotis wrote: post #17
anotheronelost wrote: post #3

Missing from 2014: pushed out Lollipop release to OG Nexus tablets, destroying performance, leaving only those technical enough to downgrade with any way to keep using the devices. 2023: pushed out Android 14 update, removing access to any additional profiles used on the devices. TBF they still have time to deal with this one, but their response so far has been terrible. And yet I still buy the damn things because th…

Don’t forget you can’t call emergency services if you had Microsoft Teams installed. Also you still can’t call emergency services due to some other bug? One year they forgot December existed in the Contacts app. Also wasn’t their permission model terrible from the start vs. iOS’ fine grained prompts?

Also Google Pay stops working half way through a journey across London meaning you end up in a massive human pile up.

SMS messages stop getting received suddenly at least once a quarter usually when I'm in the middle of fucking nowhere and need to so a 2FA bounce requiring a reboot.

And that time it destroyed the filesystem on an SD card resulting in the loss of two weeks of irreplaceable holiday photos in Australia.

Travel advice for Android users:

1. Take a DSLR/mirrorless and use that. Or upload all your shit to OneDrive or something at every available WiFi hotspot.

2. Use actual debit/credit cards rather than rely on Google Pay.

3. Write down all your bank details and credentials on paper using a simple cipher (shift left/right a few digits / alternate).

Still I'd rather travel with an Android device because I'm less likely to get beaten over the head and getting it stolen because it's 3 months' salary where I am travelling.

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