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Android Oreo

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371–380 of 658 posts

Re: Android Oreo

#371

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…

Yup this is a big annoyance. Earlier ticker type notifications were so much better.

Re: Android Oreo

#372

Project Treble is the most important thing in this release >The biggest change to the foundations of Android to date: a modular architecture that makes it easier and faster for hardware makers to deliver Android updates. With any luck, this will end the huge security/update problem Android has. Right now an update is dependent on the chip manufacturer's drivers, then the OEM adding them to the ROM with their custom "…

Why do you think so? On that page is just this sentence and nothing more. I don't believe in a significant improvment unless Google takes ownership of all OS updates themselves.

Treble is the first step to Google updating devices themselves. Now that drivers are more or less independent from the rest of the operating system, Google has the option to push updates to the OS without having to tailor it specifically for every device

Re: Android Oreo

#373

Nice Marketing coop for an OS where 50% of devices won't get updates. I don't get it. They bring frequent major updates with such important features like 60 new emijis or antivirus software instead of just doing their homework and implementing the number one feature for an OS: Direct OS updates from the OS vendor and nobody else. Don't tell me it's a problem and the driver situation is so difficult. This is just a ba…

Don't think of Android as windows. Think of it as Debian and Samsung and others releasing Linux mint or Ubuntu. Obviously Debian updates will take time to trickle through.

Re: Android Oreo

#374
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would really like to see Google take Oreo as an opportunity to set an example and push the pixel 2 with something like 10 years of support. I am not holding my breath though

That's a pretty unreasonable desire. Technology changes so much in 10 years that it wouldn't be feasible to support a generation of phones for that long. 10 years ago was the original iPhone. How much of a money sink would it have been for Apple to support the original iPhone until now?

Okay, let's say 5 years. I'm still using my first generation Nexus 7, and it's still working fine.

Re: Android Oreo

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely hate those emoji. It's the gradient and outlines, it looks like bad enterprise design. The flat blobs were great.

Yep, new emojis look absolutely awful. They are so out of touch with what their customers want. It's like the emojis were made by some robot or algorithm that is trying to optimize the wrong parameters. I mean, just look at this comparison: http://i.imgur.com/apqo9Ry.png

I suspect the reason for the update was to bring the Android emoji more in line with Apple's, which are generally considered the standard emoji.

Re: Android Oreo

#376
post #144
post #104

Would be nice if they added a switch to disable connecting to open wifi networks. Or at least to realize that the wifi is connected but its waiting for a sign in so internet traffic should still be routed through 4g.

My Android 7 device is pretty good with realizing when the wifi doesn't actually give Internet access, and it then routes data through the 4g/mobile connection instead. Nexus 6, stock Android 7.1.1.

Yup this has been the case since KitKat.

Re: Android Oreo

#377
post #347

All I want is for my stupid phone to stop annoying me with new features I don't want. Google just now suggested with a notification that I should ask its voice thing a question and try it out. Every time I think I've blocked every $_#&#- thing that annoys me, more show up. As of a week ago I now get these Throw notifications that cannot be dismissed or blocked. I also despise apps that insist on being updated and dis…

Google Now is malware that can't be removed and is constantly showing you ads and spying on your behavior (look at the app integrations menu). The best you can do is go through the disable-athon menu, but that only works until the next update. It's an impressive bit of technology though, I've never seen an app so good at telling me exactly what I didn't care about, exactly 10 minutes after I would have cared about it…

Now is optional. I've never used it.

Re: Android Oreo

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used to be that Android distinguished between connected wifi and a internet connection by trying to reach a Google server or something. At least my 4.x tablet used to have a 3-state wifi icon, off (not present), connected (gray), internet (blue).

I would love to have something like this. When I call an Uber/Lyft as I am walking out of my apartment, it always takes forever for the WiFi to disconnect, long after it has lost internet connection. So I constantly get the "Unable to Connect to Network" error, and I have to turn off WiFi and restart the app to actually call a ride. If anyone knows of a solution to this problem on a Galaxy S8 I would love to hear it.

What you're experiencing is different. The WiFi still has internet access, your signals aren't reaching the AP. The phone has no way of remedying this without switching to LTE very aggressively. I'd assume that would cause unnecessary battery drain and unneeded switches for many people.

That said, I haven't needed to restart the uber app to fix this. I just disable WiFi from the notification toggle and the app connects in about a second after that.

Re: Android Oreo

#379
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung actually has a decent track record of updating their software -- my family's Galaxy S5s on T-Mobile (purchased 2014) are actually still receiving security updates, despite being on Marshmallow API level.

Only on the S series, the other ones is a guessing game.

well, he did use an S8 as an example.

Honestly though, I think all of the company use the same strategy. Only the flagship line is the one getting extended support for update

Re: Android Oreo

#380
post #278
post #60

Am I the only one who's really disappointed by the platform's shift in its stance on background execution? I was originally drawn to Android because it wasn't iOS. I wanted to develop on a platform where I could run a service in the background if the user wanted that. Apps that were bad stewards of battery life and phone resources were supposed to be scrutinized by users and removed if they were too poor. You can be…

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…

There is some level of opt-out, but it doesn't work reliably, and your app might still get killed.

Even the K9 team had issues with that, and many other open apps did so, too. I've been trying to work some kind of push messaging into the IRC bouncer for which I wrote an Android client, but the issues with legality (I can't just connect to a third party without explicit opt in), API keys (people who host an IRC bouncer don't want to register with Google), liability (I don't want to relay all messages through a server of my own), Google's ToS (I can't just publish an API key for everyone to use), confidentiality (I can't actually put content into the FCM messages due to legal issues), etc are so problematic that it's basically stalled everything.

I've filed a complaint with the EU, this seems like the only option I've got left. I can't tell everyone running a bouncer to register with Google, I can't relay all messages of all IRC users through a server of mine, and I can't bake in a Google API key into IRC bouncers (as that violates Google's ToS)

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