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Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

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Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#721

Post by ulfw »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #712
eloisant wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese phones have great hardware at great prices, unfortunately they suck at software. So unless you want to spend the time and effort to switch to and work with the quirks of LineageOS or similar, you get an overall worse experience.

That hasn't been true for years. Both Oppo and Xiaomi ship with very usable software nowadays, very inspired by Cupertino in the case of Oppo but still ok.

Exactly. I am very happy with ColorOS 16. It looks like a prettier version of iOS18 and that's not a bad thing.

https://www.oppo.com/en/coloros16/

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#722

Post by leetnewb »

siddheshgunjal wrote: post #694
onli wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any iOS advantage with the apps anymore. That was maybe true in the very beginning, during the gold rush time of the app store. But not since then. In which category are there better iOS apps? Browsers? No, strictly worse. Youtube app? No, worse. Texting? Worse or equal (Whatsapp). Podcast client? I assume worse, since there is no Antenna Pod. Social media apps? The iOS variants of those apps are afaik in…

So many amazing open-source developers just don't want to publish their app to app store because of the fees. On android, this is way way easier. If google keeps making this difficult, then i'll just have to switch to linux phone

Probably not exclusive to open source, but at least some projects are running into issues publishing to the Play Store with little/no explanation.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#723

Post by TurboSkyline »

charles_f wrote: post #391

Wait so did this rollback? Initially they were about to forbid any install from non verified accounts, then allow them but just a limited number, this article seems to suggest there will just be extra steps?

Yes, after that they said that there will be an on-device flow to load apps from outside the Play Store after all. They didn’t describe how that will work and I didn’t see it discussed as commonly as the original announcement; I only saw it mentioned by the way in a Reddit thread.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#724

Post by vintermann »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #12

Google's long term strategy with Android is baffling to me. Apple has had better mobile hardware for years. Apple has higher consumer trust. Apple has better app selection (for most people). Apple has been increasingly implementing the core features that differentiate Android devices, like USB-C and RCS. Every Android user lost to the increasing iOS market share is another customer Google has to pay exorbitant fees t…

I think they are worrying about antitrust, and believe (probably correctly, unfortunately) that whether they get hit by antitrust or not is entirely political. There's more than enough evidence, for any justice department which wants to. They're not going to change that by keeping Android moderately open.

What they can do, is make themselves politically useful to whoever will be in charge. Right now the war on general purpose computing is in high gear, due to panic over AI models, social media manipulation and (as always) kids. That's the only ticket to avoid an antitrust crackdown.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#725

Post by quantum_magpie »

ben_w wrote: post #134
karlgkk wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, you’re so wrong about the app situation that it’s almost staggering. iOS apps tend to be more stable, better polished, have better integration with system features (like the Dynamic Island), and even often have more features. This isn’t even an unfounded opinion, it’s a material problem for Google and led them to vastly investing in automated testing and quality efforts App addressable user base is another…

> iOS apps tend to be more stable, better polished It's been a while since I was last using Android, but first-party Apple apps no longer meet my standards for "polished". e.g. type this sequence into the calculator: [2] [-] [4] [=] [x²] [=] The answer should not be negative, but the app says "-4". The desktop Contacts app has been putting invisible LTR and RTL codes around phone numbers for years now, breaking web f…

Regarding the calculator, I get the same -4 in Android, just checked. So they all suck..

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#726

Post by pjmlp »

password1 wrote: post #431
onli wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any iOS advantage with the apps anymore. That was maybe true in the very beginning, during the gold rush time of the app store. But not since then. In which category are there better iOS apps? Browsers? No, strictly worse. Youtube app? No, worse. Texting? Worse or equal (Whatsapp). Podcast client? I assume worse, since there is no Antenna Pod. Social media apps? The iOS variants of those apps are afaik in…

There's a saying in mobile development that in most companies the Android version of the app is a second class citizen. It usually brings substantially less money and so less money are invested in it. As a result the Android team is often understaffed and the app is almost always behind in feature development, less polished and with overall worse UX and more bugs compared to the iOS app. Also iOS still has a communit…

Since Android has 70% of the world market share, and there are countries where iOS is hardly a presence other than the country's elite population, those are quite a few customers they will be missing on.

Maybe they can keep the lights on with those 30%, I guess.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#727

Post by GuB-42 »

burnerthrow008 wrote: post #429
GuB-42 wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest differentiator is price. An entry level Android phone is about $300 while an iPhone is in the $1000 range. And to be honest, anything more than an entry level Android is luxury these days. I say that because that's what I have and I have never felt held down, except maybe for pictures, but it is good enough for my (lack of) skills as a photographer. So, Android may actually benefit from a lack of differen…

The iPhone 16e (came out less than 6 months ago) starts at $600 without carrier subsidy. That’s about half of what you claimed.

I wasn't referring to the absolute cheapest, more of a representative price.

If you want to go cheap, the Samsung Galaxy A17 5G, a perfectly fine, recent phone is $200, which is still a 1:3 price ratio to the $600 iPhone.

And you can go even cheaper than that, as in $150, new, though at that point, we are entering a territory where many people will feel the limitations.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#728

Post by badhackernews »

8note wrote: post #496
hoistbypetard wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about categories overall, but I'm attached to my iPad and won't switch to Android in part because Affinity is not available there, nor is there any near equivalent as far as I can tell. I still think Overcast is nicer to use than Antenna Pod. Microsoft Office apps work much better on iDevices, in my experience. (I know they exist for Android, but I've never had much luck editing there, where it actually…

how do you live without ublock on your browser though? firefox with adblock is the high quality youtube app

[dead]

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#729

Post by ichicoro »

cesarb wrote: post #628
econ wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make the superior picture with my camera but then it sits there on an SD card in the camera. I have to boot a desktop, hope the USB connection works today, find a folder, create and name a folder in the folder, copy the pictures there, find and open something to view and edit the images with, find and open something to upload the images. OR open the camera, take out th SD card, boot up a computer, plug the card int…

> but then it sits there on an SD card in the camera. I have to boot a desktop, hope the USB connection works today [...] OR open the camera, take out th SD card [...] Or open the app on your smartphone ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.co.canon.ic... ), connect to the camera through WiFi, and copy the photos directly.

I don't know about Canon's offering... but Sony's is lackluster to say the least. On my A6000 (and possibly other older models), you can't import RAWs, only JPEGs. Not to add that manual connection to the camera's wifi is a rather "annoying" process, having to go into the camera settings, manually turning on wifi, going into the phone's settings/quick menu to connect to said hotspot, then open the app, etc...

It's just a plain worse experience to just some extremely good phones like the iPhones with pro camera apps

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#730

Post by UncleMeat »

palata wrote: post #245
jasode wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't see any iOS advantage with the apps anymore. That was maybe true in the very beginning, during the gold rush time of the app store. But not since then. In which category are there better iOS apps? I researched iOS vs Android last year so some of my info may be out of date but this is what I collected. Apple iOS exclusives (or earlier app versions because devs prioritized iOS): ChatGPT iOS app -2 months befor…

It seems like a pretty arbitrary list to me... Also Android has a bigger market share in the world than iOS, by a lot.

Market share matters, but spend matters more.

Ads running on premium devices are worth more to apps (and therefore the platforms). Users on premium devices pay more in subscriptions and in-app purchases.

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