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Android Oreo

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Re: Android Oreo

#301

Post by Spivak »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #187
bluGill wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can change that: don't buy a new phone every six months, and buy from a maker that supports your phone longer. Maybe you cannot get the latest, but when you support the companies that support their phones for more than a few months you support that business model which in turn ensures that someone who updates their phones exists. You might have to leave the major names behind, and might have to skip a few feature…

> You can change that: don't buy a new phone every six months, and buy from a maker that supports your phone longer. I cannot change that. The ~5,000 I have spent on smartphones and laptops in the past 10 years is hardly enough. My buying choice, yours, and the GP's are just not strong and valuable enough to cause a manufacturer to pander to our desires. The economies of scale and the greater money available from the…

That's not really true on Laptops. Apple, Lenovo, and Dell all make sturdy high-end upgradable repairable laptops. Not the kinds of products you'll see at your local West Fry though.

Re: Android Oreo

#303

Post by quiq »

komali2 wrote: post #143

Going to take advantage of an Android thread here to ask something that has driven me crazy for ~3 years: How do I disable "pop-down" notifications? i.e. facebook messenger, on receiving a message, drops down a little message box from the top with that message. It stays there for about 2 seconds and then disappears... unless further messages in that chat appears. The only way I can disable this is by muting that chat…

I believe the feature you're talking about is "Heads Up Notifications" introduced in Lollipop (5.0). Go into Settings > Notifications, find and turn off Heads up. Then you'll just see the icon in the top bar, but no drop down.

Re: Android Oreo

#304

Post by kyle-rb »

rothbardrand wrote: post #288
izacus wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The reason is they simply cannot do it. It's very different shipping a high end phone in units of 100 million vs shipping a high end phone in units of 500,000. This is why most android high end devices are really tiny market share. They can't compete with Apple-- AT VOLUME. Apple's supply chain is where they are hugely competitive. This goes for Samsung etc. So on android, genuinely high end phones are prestige items…

The Nexus line are the phones that are manufactured by various other device makers. I think the Pixel is actually made directly by Google.

Re: Android Oreo

#305

Post by nfriedly »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #293
nfriedly wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have a One M8; mine is currently rooted and running CyanogenMod. (I keep meaning to update to LineageOS but haven't gotten around to it yet.) Rooting is nice, and I believe it's important from a philosophical standpoint, but I probably won't with my next phone because the features I want are getting built into the OS, and I am missing several apps that just refuse to work when they detect they're running on a…

The only reason I root my phone any more is for an adblocker. Which the iPhone conveniently has built in... It will probably be my next phone.

Yea, I use Firefox + uBlock Origin on Android, which doesn't require root, so I'm covered there either way. (Annoyingly, the regular Firefox on iOS doesn't yet support adblocking, but I think that will be changing soon.)

Re: Android Oreo

#306

Post by nomel »

dcow wrote: post #276
klondike_ wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be good for power users, but for the average user it's a disaster. How many people actually read the app permissions when they install something? Most apps request background privileges and if you don't like that your only other option (until recently) was to not install the app. Users blame Android when Facebook and other popular apps started eating all their battery by running in the background. Google's…

Yeah I understand why we're in this situation. I'm lamenting the fact that it's reached this point. Maybe I'm a minority but I don't think my apps are the hottest shit around and I try to make an effort to be a good steward. IMO engineers should push back when product asks for things that clobber system resources. However the few bad examples should not ruin it for the use cases where you really do need something run…

What are these apps doing in the background? I've always assumed they're collecting/streaming device and user metrics. Running apps, location, WiFi SSIDs, etc. If that's the case, then a reduction in data collection could mean a reduction in metrics/income.

Re: Android Oreo

#307

Post by avar »

dcow wrote: post #259
avar wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of that page indicates that you can't use the platform like that? They just say "more control over how apps run in the background". Presumably you can still give your users a good reason for why you need to run uninterrupted in the background and they can approve it similarly to how they now approve other permissions.

The way this is implemented is that the system will kill any background services your app has after a grace period, just like iOS. In order to have a background service that "good reason" equates to a persistent notification in the tray and icon in the status bar--which nobody agrees is a good product experience.

Why is that not a good experience? Now I need to dig through Settings to find all these background services. If they're important enough to be running constantly they're important enough to take up some space to prominently show me that they're running.

Re: Android Oreo

#308

Post by catdog »

dcow wrote: post #287
catdog wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in Android 7 you can explicitly allow this for a specific app. This question can even be triggered by the app itself (e.g. Conversations and Signal ask you to do this if they can't use GCM). This is hopefully still possible. > It's the turning of an era for Android, and my interests have moved elsewhere (from an app platform perspective, embedded Android is still vialble since everything you ship runs as a s…

Can you point me to the relevant info? This is news to me (and sounds exciting). No doubt we've seen it coming for awhile. But I'm still sad to see it finally come to this, at least ideologically. iOS is a closed ecosystem that's been opening up. Android was an open ecosystem that's becoming more locked down.

[1] Seems to do the trick but I don't do Android dev so I don't know any details about this.

[1] https://github.com/siacs/Conversations/blob/2b9cdde558ed96c2...

Re: Android Oreo

#309

Post by nomel »

nfriedly wrote: post #113
0x00000000 wrote: post #69

Android 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…

> zero reason why my browser should need to ever [...] use the accelerometer/gyro It might not be a good reason, but I made a game a while back that used tilt input instead of arrow keys on mobile: http://nfriedly.github.io/space-jump/

A bit related, do ad companies use the tilt/gyro to guess if someone is actually looking at the video? It seems they could adjust payout based on if there was an actual view, or at least get some metrics on which ads people actually pay attention to.

Re: Android Oreo

#310

Post by nomel »

kevincox wrote: post #129
sarnowski wrote: post #98

Wondering if the following feature is enabled by default: "Wi-Fi Assistant Auto-connects you to high quality open WiFi and secures your connection with a VPN back to Google." I really do not want to tunnel my whole traffic through Google's servers.

I don't know if it is on by default but if enabled it will connect to "High Quality" open networks. If it does this it connects the VPN. So the VPN is "required" by this feature but you can turn it off globally, or manually connect to networks where you don't want to use the VPN.

Doesn't this violate the computer fraud and abuse act, for unauthorized accessing to a networks without permission? More specifically, piggybacking [1]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_piggybacking

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