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Google, Don't make me hate you

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32 pointsraverbashing39 comments

Uhh that's not Marshmallow behaviour. I think the top comment on the Google ProductForums thread has the answer, it's a 3rd party app problem: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!mydiscussions/nexus...

If you read more than the first inch of that thread, it's clear that this is not a 3rd-party app causing the problem. Indeed, that top post is extremely unhelpful in the tradition of "did you try zapping PRAM?" and other voodoo stupidity. It's a blind answer from someone who clearly does not understand the question. Typical Internet outcome, in other words.

The rest of the thread disagrees with that assessment. (I don't know what's going on either, but I expected to find clarity in that thread, but instead found lots of people reporting this behavior. The original poster turned off all third party apps, and reported it still happened.)

I have a Moto G with Marshmellow and don't get vibration/sound alerts.

From my understanding, this only happens when you are near an open Wifi wich has a 'login' page. (Like in hotels, airports etc..).

If memory serves, Android shows up this notification when it detects the http are redirected to a login page.

I suppose it can get really annoying if you have many of these around you on daily basis.

In Germany, until a few weeks ago, we had the concept of Störerhaftung: Unless you could prove that all users of your WiFi were educated by you about pirating and co, YOU were liable for their actions.

So, every single WiFi had login pages. Everywhere.

And many cities have full WiFi in the downtown area.

Wherever you go, every few meters, a new hotspot, a new login page, a new vibration.

I just turned all WiFi stuff off.

Really?

Needing to use a web browser every time I connected to a network would drive me mad.

There's more to the internet than port 80, dammit!

That sounds as stupid as the Accept cookies popup.

Politics and internet...

Ironically, these still show up even if you block all cookies from being set in your browser. Worse, some terrible implementations use cookies to store your consent... so if you block all cookies, the popups keep coming.

I have to build these on occasion when working with UK clients. How do you suggest a better implementation to not ask again? If you click "don't store my cookies" and I don't store your cookies how do I know not to alert you again? If you clear your own cookies - how do I know you've visited before? My cookie isn't there anymore.

Is it terrible UX? Sure. But law is law and it's a law with the "right idea" (some people are unaware they are being tracked online through cookies!) but "wrong way to go around it". More frustrating than privacy focused as it only serves to irritate those who care about their privacy.

My phone doesn't seem to have the option to automatically connect to open networks. I only spent a couple minutes looking though.

The idea that anyone would ever want to be notified of open wifi networks is bizarre to me. Wherever I go there will be hundreds or thousands of such networks. This might have made sense in 2001 when wifi was novel and rare, but it makes no sense today.

Open wifi notification can be easily disabled in wifi settings since android 4.0. He's talking about the captcha login prompt (which on iOS was even more annoying because it opens modal window immediately).

Yeah but he's not talking about that, right? The captive portal stuff only pops up if you actually joined the network. Does his phone automatically try to join open wifi networks?

Apparently fixed:

https://github.com/android/platform_frameworks_base/commit/4...

It seems odd to me to leave wifi turned on if I'm not planning on using it. I keep all my phone services off unless I'm using them for something. In my imagination, this prolongs the hilariously short battery life of modern smart phones.

If you are setup to automatically connect to known Wi-Fi networks, and you often times are able to, it can actually result in large battery savings.

Transferring data over Wi-Fi is more efficient than going over a cell network. With how many network services exist on phones now days, your phone can spend a lot of time doing network transmissions. Wi-Fi is more efficient for this, thus the savings.

You can see this in good cell phone reviews, they'll have a battery life test for Wi-Fi web browsing and another one for 4G web browsing, the Wi-Fi test will demonstrate a much better battery life.

Another way to think about it, is if you are in an office building that doesn't have cellular antennas places throughout it, then to connect to the cell network your signal has to get through the building material. If there is Wi-Fi available, odds are those antennas are close by and easily reached.

(Of course really noisy Wi-Fi environments can change the math on all this, but I do not know by how much.)

Naturally, it's even cheaper on battery life to turn off both data AND wifi, leaving your device not connecting to anything.

Why use a smartphone then just get a normal phone will last a wrek

how much of an improvement are we talking about?

It is a question of cognitive load. If you turn wifi off and on you need to _remember_ to turn it on when you are in an "I want to use wifi" zone. If you forget then you end up using your data plan.

You could use a geofencing app to handle turning wifi on/off (say at home and work, etc) but then you are just trading battery issues.

Additionally, at least on android, wifi scanning improves location services. At least for me those are important, specifically when I am not at home or the office.

In my experience, being connected to solid wifi will drastically increase your battery life vs. the phone trying to use the cell network for everything, especially if your cell service is noticeably worse than the wifi.

> especially if your cell service is noticeably worse than the wifi.

I’m not sure if that case exists anywhere in the civilized world. Subways and trains all have 3G networks, buildings have them, even in rural areas every 3rd tree you pass is a hidden 3G tower.

I don’t think I’ve seen a place without 3G anywhere in Germany in my lifetime (but I’m only 20)

In more hilly/mountainous areas (like Connecticut or upstate NY or even parts of Pennsylvania) cell service kind of stinks. I've been to plenty of places where I get no service, even outside.

Come to Chicago. In the lobby of my building (granted 40 floors of concrete) I can get any of no signal, 2g, 3g, or LTE - in the same spot minutes apart.

I don't have 3G at work. I work in an office building <100 miles from silicon valley.

A use case for keeping it on is that WiFi can be used to improve your phone's location accuracy ("GPS" services): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_positioning_system

It also significantly reduces the time to get a location, where satellites can take minutes to acquire (at least that was the case, back when I worked with GPS at that level)

If you are on the Project Fi network, Google can use open wifi networks for making calls. You'd need to leave wifi on to take advantage of this.

This is taken care of by google, so I never connect to a network/sign-in, etc.

Can you remember any places or networks where you connected to open WiFi for calling? I'm in the Bay Area and have had Fi for about 6 months, but I can't remember ever seeing this (despite advertised claims).

Edit: To be clear I'm not questioning your statement. Just curious to hear where Fi takes advantage of this.

Two places that I know for sure: 1. Planet Granite in Sunnyvale. 2. Great Mall in Milpitas.

There are several other places where it doesn't use the network unless I explicitly select it though (eg most Philz coffee locations, my work, etc)

I had a Nexus 5 and I have a LG G4, both with Marshmallow and none of both had this behaviour

If you generally enjoy Android, I wish you luck with this, I really do. Hopefully this will not be your straw, your thousandth cut. I hit mine a few months ago.

I used to enjoy my Android phone (well, phones, Captivate, S3, S4, Moto G 4G, one or two others?) but the nits and burrs and expectancy violations and overall UX inconsistencies and flaws just grew to be too much for me.

This past December, I switched to an iPhone. I have never been this happy with a device, ever (I vaguely remember really liking my 19" monochrome X terminal - NCD? - back in the day, and one or two others, but nothing compares to my iPhone in terms of elegance, simplicity, ease of use, and integration).

Some backstory may be important: When I started on Android, I had Ubuntu on an HP laptop. Used to love it. One day, after 7 or 8 years of Ubuntu \([A-Z]\)\1 releases, the nits, etc., and especially Canonical dumbing things down and making it harder and harder for me to have the UX I enjoyed... all these things overcame my love of the platform and I switched to a Macbook Air (I had bought Airs for my wife and daughter in the two precious years and had become envious of their UX - when I would assist them, I would miss the trackpad, among other things, back at my HP).

Within an hour of purchase, I was back to being highly productive, being assisted by my computer, instead of fighting it to get things done.

I maintained a mixed Android phone and Mac computer environment for another few years, until I finally had enough. The myriad minor flaws of the Google UX did me in.

Google does OK. But that's it. They do OK. Only just OK. They simply don't get "complete UX", they leave too many shouldacouldawhydincha's.

I'm this close to abandoning gmail on my iPhone and moving to Outlook (!?!?!? yes, this statement continues to boggle my mind - years ago it was poor Outlook experience that motivated my move to Linux!!!) because I am tired of having to go get my computer to do something that is super easy with gmail in my browser but completely impossible with the gmail app....

I went so far as to go "all in" with iCloud and I could not be happier with the UX. Seamless integration between the computer and the phone, tremendous ease of use, a much better UX.

I don't miss Android, not at all. I miss one game that was Android-only and super clean, that's it. I don't miss the platform.

If I do go Outlook, I bet I won't miss gmail at all either. Pains me to say it, but there it is....

All this hate for Android's crappy work-around, and none for the asinine UX implemented by wifi providers that make such a work-around necessary in the first place?

There's no good, universal solution here, short of never connecting to these blights in the first place.

Just turn off "Network notification" (applies to public WiFi only) in the WiFi preferences? Its an option that has been in Android since forever.

Can you not turn off the auto-connect to open wifi, which I just can't see why you would ever want to do that.

turn off wifi for location based services.

with wifi disabled but enabled for location services, it will try to matchup up where you are based on history of location and local wifi SSIDs.

I wonder why the OP doesn't disable wifi?

I guess that can be annoying if he does need wifi home or at work.

"Every time a bus passes through me"

Maybe a vibrating phone is not his biggest problem...

The classy way to make fun of the error would be to do it in Portuguese.

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