Comment by blitmap | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blitmap | Hacker News Reader

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Speaking as someone not at all involved in this space, I'd love for Google to take smartphones waaaay more seriously. I feel like in an effort to make Android easy to adopt and customize they have let the "feel" of Android suffer. I hate bloatware on every new phone. I hate that phones differ so greatly. Something invaluable to me on an iPhone is the switch to silence alerts.

I wish Google would define a "standard" like Intel has with what is and what isn't an "Ultrabook". As in, to be a "Nexus" phone it must have a minimum resolution of ..., it must last for x hours of video playback and x hours of wifi use, it must have the damn alert-killing side switch, it must have a camera of a minimum quality (megapixel/zoom/can record at 1080p@60hz), etc...

Google should be defining what an Android phone is in terms of hardware; define a brand other makers can adopt so customers can trust the standard to at least cater to those needs. And that isn't even getting into how fucking awful the Google Play store is. What a malware magnet.

Sorry this is somewhat off-topic, I just feel this is how Google has lost us and why we seek alternatives.

I think Goog is trying to compete with Apple with quantity and, bear with me, not quality.

Famous quote: "quantity has a quality all its own".

How many non Apple phones run iOS?

The strength of Android is that you can customize it. Some people like Touchwizz. I prefer oxygenOS.

> Something invaluable to me on an iPhone is the switch to silence alerts.

OnePlus's phones have that, and it's great. Of course, OnePlus also have some nasty privacy failures … but then, Apple have some nasty openness failures.

I'd love to be able to just buy a decent phone, with a replaceable battery (because the batteries fail first), which I, not some vendor, own.

That's exactly what the Android One (and previously Android Go) standards where all about, they set minimum hardware standards and experiences. They then guarantee updates for two years, etc...

The focus of Android One seems to be running an unmodified Android? I don't think there is an emphasis on a minimum hardware spec. The phones showcased there do impress.. https://www.android.com/one/ Is there a requirement for how long the phones are supported with software/security updates?

If I were to add to the brief spec I defined above I'd also require speakers at both ends of the phone for stereo output, and require keeping the 3.5mm jack (yay S9?). I still think Samsung likes to make slippery bar-soap phones that I cant hold.

I still don't like how permissions are done even on LineageOS - I wish I could grant access to the camera for an app "for the next 5 minutes".

Now I'm really off topic. I shall diminish ~

Guaranteeing updates for X years is an empty promise unless they also guarantee the maximum delay in adopting upstream (security) updates and releasing them, with reimbursement in case of failure to comply.

The first generation of android one's phones (the ones that released in India and Indonesia, powered by mediatek mt6582) have this. They even sometimes have the monthly security update early (for example, the November update is rolled out in late October).

Sadly, the newer generation does not have that. Google given up the update to the vendor, which in turn do what they do best, not updating the goddamn phone.

Android Treble is, at long last, decoupling Android OS porting from the cycle of BSP support. It's only for Android 8+, so the impact won't be widespread until later this year and into 2019. But this should enable vendors to lengthen their update support more independently of the underlying kernel and driver support.

https://source.android.com/devices/architecture/treble

Large parts of Android-the-OS is implemented in middleware running on the same runtime as Android's apps, which should have made this kind of portability possible earlier in the development of Android. But here it is.

Google is funding FuchsiaOS, the source is copyfree and there are Wayland calls in the tree.

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