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Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

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Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#121

Post by oska »

yurishimo wrote: post #74
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are completely different. One of them lets you have the sexy blue text boxes in iPhone group chats, and the other makes everyone see you with the green box of shame.

Unless you live outside of the US in which nobody gives a damn and they all use WhatsApp. After moving, I only get sms messages from the doctors office and my friends back in America.

> Unless you live outside of the US [...] and they all use WhatsApp

This is such a ridiculously incorrect over-generalisation. China, Japan & Russia are obvious counter-examples, plus many others.

Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#122

Post by nukem222 »

bfrog wrote: post #88

Android is going to go closed source. There's no benefit to Google when a Chinese company takes Android, guts the Google parts, and shoves it on a cheap ass phone for a market with a few billion people. Maybe longer still... I could see Google fully jettisoning the "other" phone makers and going all in on its own hardware to boost profits further. The iPhone is highly profitable, wouldn't you as a Google share holder…

> There's no benefit to Google when a Chinese company takes Android, guts the Google parts, and shoves it on a cheap ass phone for a market with a few billion people.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! This might give them more credibility.

Anyway, I think we're a half decade past where android source has been worth stealing: China now has strong domestic competition.

Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#123

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

sho_hn wrote: post #113
Yeul wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I play videogames and I can tell the difference between 60 and 120herz screen. Always amused me that a so called premium device had worse hardware than a flagship killer. Apple apparently finally caught up with their latest phone?

Almost anyone can tell the difference between 60 and 120 Hz. Seriously, if you haven't upgraded your desktop PC to a higher refresh rate screen yet: It's the biggest "feels like a new computer!" upgrade since we swapped HDDs for SSDs and the days when your new CPU was 2.5x as fast as the old one. There is no turning back after having experienced the buttery smoothness, and the impact is IMHO higher during regular usa…

I upgraded to 144 hz on my primary monitor in 2016 and it's absolutely noticeable and makes things feel so smooth.

Last week I went to 240 hz and while it's noticeably even smoother, it wasn't nearly the upgrade, so there's certainly diminishing returns. Though I did go from IPS to OLED and THAT is really nice.

This is usually the point where someone will chime in and say something dumb like "The human eye can't see more than X frames per second" which is just hogwash. It's not about individual frames, but the fluidity of motion. At 60 fps, an object moving across the screen is moving 4x as many pixels per frame as 240 fps. When you get used to 240 fps, 60 fps feels like it's strobing.

Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#124

Post by reactordev »

singularity2001 wrote: post #117
nvllsvm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I - a Pixel 7 (GrapheneOS) user - would hate that, doing so would essentially put Android on equal footing as iOS and would give me a serious reason to consider switching to an iPhone. Apple's hardware is just so much sleeker, faster, and better than Google's mediocre Pixel line.

Apple's hardware is just so much sleeker, faster, and better than Google's On the other hand I was recently testing a friends pixel phone and was shocked by the speed and integration of Gemini.

It’s important to compare apples to apples. Certain phone models have different CPU’s etc. I’d love to see a benchmark of iPhone 16 Pro Max vs Pixel’s top of the line model.

Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#125

Post by kccqzy »

fblp wrote: post #69

Keeping android open source would be a helpful antitrust defence when some of Alphabet / Googles other products dominate markets (chrome, search). I wonder if they're now less worried about anti trust under the current administration.

Google has had a strategy of keeping some parts of Android open source for the benefit of the world, and other parts closed source inside Google Play Services. However European regulators continue to rule that Google Play Services itself is the leverage Google uses to lessen competition. If regulators have antitrust concerns with just one proprietary blob, there's really no incentive to make Android truly open. Opening up the rest of the Android literally doesn't help with antitrust.

Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#126

Post by homarp »

oska wrote: post #121
yurishimo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you live outside of the US in which nobody gives a damn and they all use WhatsApp. After moving, I only get sms messages from the doctors office and my friends back in America.

> Unless you live outside of the US [...] and they all use WhatsApp This is such a ridiculously incorrect over-generalisation. China, Japan & Russia are obvious counter-examples, plus many others.

i don't think China uses SMS though.

Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#127

Post by izacus »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #91
cbdumas wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm just a tech philistine but I find my Pixel 8a and my wife's iPhone to be basically indistinguishable in any meaningful way.

The camera - the only reason I would buy an iPhone is for the better camera. Sure, the Pixel 8a camera is not bad for the price but it's still noticeably worse. The kind of difference you notice when someone with an iPhone shares photos with you. Apps and the whole phone experience are a sh*tshow on both sides and I hate both with a passion. I'm still waiting for a decent linux experience on a phone - possibly with s…

Pixels have been beating iPhones in camera quality for years now on pretty much every blind test. Even the cheap ones.

Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#128

Post by jeffbee »

rs186 wrote: post #58
ironman1478 wrote: post #6

This headline really is misleading. The source will still be released, it just means that the work leading up to a release will be in private. IMO, there's nothing wrong with that, since it's likely that a lot of the intermediate com mediates are likely just noise.

"likely just noise" It's always noise to people that don't care, but matters to people who rely on AOSP, including third-party ROM developers.

You are saying that non-Google parties are reliant on AOSP being developed in the open on a public Gerrit instance? In what way?

Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#129

Post by sho_hn »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #123
sho_hn wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost anyone can tell the difference between 60 and 120 Hz. Seriously, if you haven't upgraded your desktop PC to a higher refresh rate screen yet: It's the biggest "feels like a new computer!" upgrade since we swapped HDDs for SSDs and the days when your new CPU was 2.5x as fast as the old one. There is no turning back after having experienced the buttery smoothness, and the impact is IMHO higher during regular usa…

I upgraded to 144 hz on my primary monitor in 2016 and it's absolutely noticeable and makes things feel so smooth. Last week I went to 240 hz and while it's noticeably even smoother, it wasn't nearly the upgrade, so there's certainly diminishing returns. Though I did go from IPS to OLED and THAT is really nice. This is usually the point where someone will chime in and say something dumb like "The human eye can't see…

I recently bought a 240 Hz OLED monitor as well, but to my dismay the 80 Gbps data rate mode is actually optional in DisplayPort 2.1a. Even though I have a DP2.1-capable GPU (9070 XT) and monitor, it's not possible to do 4k 10bit HDR at 240 Hz with DSC off. Since I don't want compression to be on I've compromised to sticking with 180 Hz, which as you say due to the diminishing returns above 120 is still plenty.

Still quite frustrating that the display industry did it again in specifying a standard that makes most of what's interesting about it optional, so everyone can print it on their boxes without delivering the expected value.

Re: Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week

#130

Post by parliament32 »

reactordev wrote: post #124
singularity2001 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's hardware is just so much sleeker, faster, and better than Google's On the other hand I was recently testing a friends pixel phone and was shocked by the speed and integration of Gemini.

It’s important to compare apples to apples. Certain phone models have different CPU’s etc. I’d love to see a benchmark of iPhone 16 Pro Max vs Pixel’s top of the line model.

It's not going to be possible because Apple hasn't come out with an equivalent to Gemini. It would be like if Siri also had full LLM conversation capabilities, and access to all your documents/email/etc, and direct integration to run web searches, analyze web pages, etc. And it's fast enough to have a real-time conversation[1], as if you were speaking to a human on the phone. Oh, and that's on my Pixel 7, which is two years behind.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ks21fpjH9M

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