"Coming to a device near you" Yeah, but not on my device. I didn't even get Android 7 :)
It says "a device near you", not "your device". ;)
Isn't his device the nearest near device to him?
Android Oreo
171–180 of 658 posts
Re: Android Oreo
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
The catch is that you can buy an Apple phone everywhere, but for instance Google decided simply to not offer the Pixel in my country. Also, they stopped updating my Nexus 4 long time ago, something that Apple does not with their devices. Hence, I am not "succumbing to Google marketing" again. I have now updated to a Moto, which used to be a Google company. Let's see how long it takes to update...
Yes, the limited availability of Google Store and Google hardware in general is a huge failing of the company. I really don't understand why they so commonly fail to bring best Android devices to markets with most Android penetration - they're practically giving the market share away to Apple's aggressive price cuts lately.
My understanding is that it is not enough to ship the device to a country, you also need an very large ad push and deals with local operators in order to actually sell it.
However, it should be mentioned that the pixel was sold in even less countries than the previous generation ..
Google really need to step up its game.
Re: Android Oreo
#173Android has really been annoying me lately. Maybe I didn't care before but now that I can't root my phone I am forced to deal with it. Still can't disable or customize to stupid "share" menu that puts you one click away from accidentally sending something to a stranger you contacted once on sms or facebook messenger or email. Still can't revoke certain permissions from apps (like vibration). There is zero reason why…
> Maybe I didn't care before but now that I can't root my phone I am forced to deal with it.
Why not?
Re: Android Oreo
#174I know programming within the constraints of mobile devices isn't easy and I want to take nothing away from the release, but when you are still used to Desktop computing it's kind of funny to see how seemingly trivial nice to have features like picture-in-picture or notification dots get all hyped up in the press release.
Re: Android Oreo
#175The most interesting part is the way they are planning on tackling fragmentation in O onwards with Project Treble [0] If your device ships with O it should be running an immutable semantically versioned HAL. In essence you should be able to be able to flash AOSP on every new device. No matter what the vendor does. Edit: I can see it now, in the technical specs of each device you will see a list of HAL Versions. The n…
So you'll still be vulnerable to kernel bugs but most everything else will get regular updates? A bit better I suppose.
I think the idea is that you can update the HAL portion as well, and the system on top of it can be verified to have not problems with that HAL independently (and you can wait for that or or just update the HAL as available if you think it's important enough).
Since it's semantically versioned, you can theoretically have fairly high assurance of what updates might cause problems and what should purely fix a bug that doesn't affect normal functionality.
Re: Android Oreo
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just like you have to buy an Apple phone to get Apple updates immediately, you need to buy a Google phone to get Google updates immediately. Pixel and Nexus rollout is starting nowish (and beta participants are already getting the OTAs). This is really not a secret at this time anymore and should be taken into account when you succumb to Samsung marketing. Everybody else will be probably 4-6 months late.
But Apple supports iPhones for 4-5 years. Google has said they will only support their flagship Nexus and Pixel phones for no more than 2 years. For a $700 device this is unacceptable.
Apart from what Ironlink said below, there's also the fact that Google and Apple support mean different things.
For Apple, updates often mean some subset of the full operating system updates, or a crippled version.
Whereas Google updates tend to be all of nothing - meaning if your phone does get the update, it gets all of the features of that particular version.
This seems to have changed somewhat with moving a lot of the stuff to Play Service (and now obviously with Project Treble), so you get the best of both world (in theory)...
Re: Android Oreo
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
The sad thing is that it shouldn't be on Google to force them. It should be Google to enable them and the users to "force" them. They have argably been enabled for a while, but Treble is making it even easier. Hopefully this pushes the needle over the line for at least some OEMs/teclos.
In Germany there are quite a few stores still selling budget Android 4.4 and 5.1 devices, which people keep on buying.
Same is in Bulgaria. And when you ask them "Hey actual version is 7.0. Why you use outdated OS with vulnerability? How you buy that devices?" They told "I have seen 7.0 there was nothing new."
But no one want to get computer with Windows 95 (or 98) anymore. Just Android 4.4 is "OK".
Re: Android Oreo
#178"new emoji" is an OS-level feature now. Welcome to 2017.
Well, there was a lot of distaste for the previous style, it's a pretty notable difference to users. (For the record, I liked the original "blobs" and will miss them.)
I didn't think I'd miss the blobs until I saw these new ones. The new ones are embarrassingly bad. Maybe it's just me, but I feel Koreans and Japanese do much better emojis.
Re: Android Oreo
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
But Apple supports iPhones for 4-5 years. Google has said they will only support their flagship Nexus and Pixel phones for no more than 2 years. For a $700 device this is unacceptable.
Apart from what Ironlink said below, there's also the fact that Google and Apple support mean different things. For Apple, updates often mean some subset of the full operating system updates, or a crippled version. Whereas Google updates tend to be all of nothing - meaning if your phone does get the update, it gets all of the features of that particular version. This seems to have changed somewhat with moving a lot o…
I’m fine with receiving years and years of security updates. I paid for the features I got. Anything new is a bonus. But an up to date secure OS is non-negotiable.
Re: Android Oreo
#180"new emoji" is an OS-level feature now. Welcome to 2017.
And perhaps for the final time. Google has released a support library[1] to put the onus back on individual app developers to integrate support for new emoji, and it is compatible all the way back to 4.4 (Kit Kat). [1] https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/look-and-feel/...
Does that make the new emoji a non-feature for Oreo?