Android 8.1 Oreo
blog.google
blog.google
Right?
[0]: https://github.com/xlab/android-go [1]: https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/Mobile [2]: https://www.android.com/versions/oreo-8-0/go-edition/
Google's just been in some kind of a brain freeze lately... they still can't get a useful chat client that everyone uses (i.e. like whatsapp, or viber even), they royally screwed the pooch by removing the 3.5 mm jack on the Pixel 2.... had screen issues with it as well...
Somebody is asleep at the wheel at Google.
This is probably the first feeler in the new Android OS being go and moving towards a native go on android solution replacing java...which declaws the Oracle judgement entirely..
Looks like Android native is heading to Go from Java..
I'm curious as to the performance differences of Android and "native" iOS apps. Their primary languages are both compiled down to native machine code and they're both garbage collected. Any performance differences that exit would appear to be minor. In fact, considering the iPhone CPU's are about twice as fast you would think this performance gap would be greater, yet it is not. Now, I realize speed tests between these platforms isn't an accurate metric in measuring app performance, but it is interesting nonetheless how an Android phone with a CPU half as fast can so easily beat the best of what Apple has to offer.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/12/google-releases-andr...
For me the first NExus 7 tablet was a prime example of what happens, released - ran fine, Android update and became darn near unusable, and then dropped.
Android today needs 2 gig of ram to work, less and the cracks show. Tomorrow it will be more.
This is always a repeated cycle in operating systems, they bloat up, then eventually have a cycle of removing the fat. Windows been thru this cycle many times.
But calling it Android Go Edition, may sound cool as a marketing buzz, but utterly distracts from what it is as well as confusing given GoLang. More so as todays entry level phones where only a couple of years ago, premium specifications. Things move on and progress, but the amount of artificial obsoletion of mobile phones today by Android at a consumer level is frankly scary and avoidable. Two years from new to being forgotten is a recent change in mobile phones and without custommade roms, unavoidable as you effectively get forced to buy a new phone, just to stay secure.
Why can't they have LTE editions for phones.
The Nexus 7 2012 had degrading NAND performance because Asus skimped on the chip quality. No Android update could've prevented this.
Hopefully some day some Chinese company will notice this huge pile of money left on the floor.
People would literally install the OS on the SD Card and run inverted storage to avoid the issue.
This is exactly what I thought. I was expecting to read something about how they rewrote the apps with Go, and how they improved compilation times or any other thing.
The Nexus 7 first gen also had nand that ate itself; writing over the OS just amplified this effect. I was able to upgrade it really well once I switch to a file system that worked well with the nand. F2fs.
For context; My nexus 7 now runs significantly better than my ipad mini of the same year.
Because planned obsolescence makes them money.
I worked at Microsoft during Windows 7 & 8. There was a strict edict that minimum hardware requirements would not be increased and we were expected to improve performance on the same hardware.
Have you actually seen windows get worse over the last ~9 years since vista or is this an impression that's just too hard to shake?
W7 performed great and W8.1 (I skipped 8) only improved upon that speed and power efficiency. W8.1 with Classic Shell and before Metro spread throughout the system was my favorite OS-stays-out-of-the-way Windows.
Disabling desktop composition (the Desktop Window Manager/Aero) was a supported option on Windows 7, but is not an option for W8 and above. Windows 8 also requires NX and SSE2 support, which leaves out 2003/2004-era P4 and Athlon XPs.
Interestingly, disabling compositing doesn't mean increasing system requirements, because Windows 8 can do it in software. A GPU will improve your experience, however.
It's win10 enterprise LTSB but still damn impressive.
And well, he specifically said that operating systems go through bloat and debloat phases over and over. XP to Vista was quite a step towards bloat. 7, 8, 8.1 partially debloated that again. 10 with its telemetry and increased online focus seems to chew on that, again.
But even then, it's not like Windows is a miraculous feat of efficiency. There's functionally equivalent Linux systems with down to a quarter of the resource usage.
If Microsoft put any effort into some tooling people could use (without taking a week off work to study to learn how they work, what claims in the documentation are true vs lies, etc) discover wtf is slowing down their system and why, they might get a bit more respect from the technical community.
Right now it looks like the most popular cross device ROMs are projects like LineageOS and OmniROM, which are excellent ROMs with plenty of compelling features over stock Android, but the modifications they make to implement those extra features do incur a non-trivial cost in terms of resources needed to support newer versions of Android.
I'd be completely willing to give up all of the extra features they offer if it means I can get a cross device ROM that tracks major Android updates much more closely (ideally weeks in delay instead of months).
Maybe something like this already exists?
So many people call their custom ROMs 'stock' when they are anything but :(
As for LTS editions, you can't have those because the bsps for the chips in those cheap phones eol sooner than the "long term."
It will look like a toy, and Hacker News will dismiss it, until they realize that teenagers are using it to write AIs and send functions via SMS and do all kinds of things that require no real computer power, just that the system was designed for such things from the start and the developer prioritized them over “running arbitrary android applications” and “multiprocess architecture” and “allowing web sites to run stupid code” and other things that are inconceivable to omit.
OEMs are refusing to push updates specially to the lower end phones. So stop giving them reasons to keep releasing new phones.
Android Go is meant for low end, slower connectivity devices aka "upcoming markets". I wonder if Android Go does less profiling etc. Android Go was announced half a year ago on Google I/O 2017. Here's a few sources: [1] [2]. Quoting:
"Android Go will be launched with Android O, but will be an integral part of every Android version in the future. Every Android device with 1 GB of RAM or less will be able to use Android Go. Several key points of the operating system will be optimized and tweaked to take changed specs into account:
* Android Go will have a new data counter, which will allow for better monitoring of data consumption.
* Data Saver will be enabled by default.
* The Play Store will be included with all available apps, but Android Go customized apps will be highlighted.
* Gboard, Google's keyboard app, will have new translation features.
* Google apps will be optimized for weaker chipsets and slower networks."
Keep in mind 1 GB or less means according to the article on Google Blog: 512 MB - 1 GB. So anything less than 512 MB RAM won't fly.
Data Saver [3]:
"To optimize for Data Saver mode, apps should:
* Remove unnecessary images
* Use lower resolution for remaining images
* Use lower bitrate video
* Trigger existing “lite” experiences
* Compress data
* Respect metered vs. unmetered network status even when Data Saver is off
Conversely, to work well with Data Saver, apps should not:
* Autoplay videos
* Prefetch content/attachments
* Download updates / code
* Ask to be whitelisted unless background data is truly part of core functionality
* Treat whitelisting as a license to use more bandwidth"
I'm not sure whether Data Saver mode uses Google proxies.
The article on Google Blog is actually a decent read as well. It explains how on 8 GB flash storage, 50% is available with Android Go, and apps are 50% size.
Its unclear to me how Google benefits from Android Go apart from happy customers. I'm giving some hints throughout my post but nothing conclusive. The name is also confusing given their programming language, Go.
[1] https://www.androidpit.com/what-is-android-go
[2] https://www.androidauthority.com/android-go-773037/
[3] https://source.android.com/devices/tech/connect/data-saver
Basically, Google said, "With this awesome new thing, you the consumer can continue to easily get updates for years without having to wait for the OEMs to push updates!" and the OEMs said, "Yeah...we don't think we want to support that."
[0]http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/11/26/phones-updated-suppo...
Also, Treble doesn't allow you to get updates "without having to wait for the OEMs", it just makes it easier for OEMs to update Android, since they no longer have to rely on chip manufacturers (e.g. Qualcomm) to provide updated drivers for the new OS version.
"Shipping" is the keyword. So OEMs can get around that trivially by shipping the phone with Nougat and promising to update to Oreo very shortly thereafter, thereby bypassing the requirement. Look no further than the recently launched OnePlus 5T:
http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/11/21/oneplus-confirms-won...
I would not be surprised if they intentionally did it this way just to get around the Project Treble requirements.
> Also, Treble doesn't allow you to get updates "without having to wait for the OEMs", it just makes it easier for OEMs to update Android
This is true, but it could also allow one to more easily flash ROMs onto the device without the usual unlocking the bootleader process, which would in theory let people then put a ROM onto their phone that's still getting updates, a la LineageOS. OEMS, predictably, probably see that as a drawback.
It is up to each OEM to choose to update, or not.
Also, there are many OEMs that only now are starting to sell new devices with Android 7, who knows if and when they will bother to move to Android 8.
If those are the two choices, I think it's better to have everyone on a different flavor of the current release. At least then users have a better shot at getting security updates and app developers don't have to target quite as wide a range of API levels.
I would love this on my Note 3.
The "tuned Play Store" looks like it just has a new featured pane but if it actually ships with performance enhancements I can't understand why they would not ship them to the defualt Play Store. Mine is terribly laggy on my Nexus 6P.
It seems to me that if you want to make apps for users with Golang, you would make webapps. If you're making webapps, you don't need to put Go on Android.
Wouldn't it just make sense to optimize the original version? Having multiple naming conventions seems like an invite to confusion.
Thought Android is trying to replace Java with Go...especially they keep call this a Go Edition.
> https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/5/16736260/google-android-o...
Facebook has Messenger Lite in these same markets. It doesn't do all the stuff Messenger does (like video chat), but it's a better experience for people with worse devices or worse connectivity.
On one side, I'm thankful that slimmer versions of platforms (seemingly like this Android Oreo) emerge to help bring in "entry-level" or even lower-powered devices to leverage modern-day (digital) benefits. I believe this helps avoid needing to constantly buy ever-newer devices, because the older devices can still be used effectively, for longer. I saw this with MS Windows: it used to be absolutely necessary to have a pretty beefy machine to run the minimalist of MS Windows Vista. But recently, can now run Windows 7 or 10 on more modest machines...leading to a bit more longevity of machine usage, savings on hardware purchase costs, and hey, yes, a tiny less negative impact on the environment (by reducing constant new "junk" tossed into junk yards, etc.).
...But on the other side, I wonder why didn't these platform producers - Google and Microsoft alike - create these slimmer platforms to begin with? The benefits of a slimmer platforms are nothing new, and don't seem like some weird set of concepts. That is, i don't think its unfair of me to ask these Googles and Microsofts of the world: why didn't they think of this sooner, why don't they always think of this sooner? A slimmer, more optimized platform that allows for broader use among that many more devices...duh! Then, I wonder, well, there's got to be some incentive for why these companies fill some versions of their platforms with ungodly amounts of bloat, right? Is it some shady alignment with other partners, where ideal performance for consumers is only a secondary goal (to say, the higher goals of benefiting a partner)? Is it some sort of dark, planned obsolescence, to get people to buy a new device every couple of years? Is it simple incompetence of key leaders of relevant platforms, who could common sense into the near-future? Or, some tangled combination of all of the above?
I think the answer lies somewhere above my pay-grade.
They did, mobile OSes started about ten years ago for devices whose power was but a fraction of what we have today. Stuff just got added over time. One could argue iOS had the more efficient approach in that their OS and apps were made in a native language instead of on the JVM (and it took about five years for Android to catch up in terms of performance and UX), but the main thing is that Android used to be slimmer.
At one point you have to either strip out 90% of the features that were added over time, or start from scratch. It's an example of feature creep, bloat, bitrot, all that stuff.
Google Go - the language
Android Go - the OS
I really wish Google had thought of this name better. The best name that Google has ever come up with for India is Tez, the payments app.
It means "fast", so has good recall. And there is literally no SEO competition.
"google go" can now mean: - Go, the programming language - Alpha Go, an AI playing Go, the game - Android Go, whatever this is
Am I forgetting something?
Which is probably better for a non tech user. Nothing worse than, I can't take more pictures where is all my space gone.
Building for billions https://developer.android.com/develop/quality-guidelines/bui...
_go_ogle?