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Android 10

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> Now, you can share your Wi-Fi details with guests via a QR code while keeping your password secure.

This is terribly misleading. The format used does contain the password so your password is still being shared:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code#WiFi_network_login

* https://github.com/zxing/zxing/wiki/Barcode-Contents#wi-fi-n...

I'm saying misleading because there is an interpretation of that sentence that is technically correct: Some people might use short passwords so that they can tell them to guests. With this feature, they can use longer secure passwords. In this interpretation, "keeping your passwords secure" would refer to the entropy of the password instead of how shared it is. However, when you normally read this sentence, this isn't the interpretation that comes to your mind.

I guess that some internal document written by people who understood the difference had something like "with this feature you can have now secure passwords and you are still able share them with guests". Then someone without awareness of this difference reformulated it into the current form.

The feature is a bit more than this. In the WiFi share screen, the network password is actually displayed in plain text as well. It does require a fingerprint/pattern/pin to show anything though.

Security is and always has been a sliding scale, despite always referred colloquially as being either present or absent. "Keeping your password secure" in English really means, "improving the security of your password".

Except this feature doesn't add security, it just adds a tool for reducing the usability trade-off of having a long hard password.

I think it is very misleading phrasing.

If the feature makes folks more likely to use a 64 character random password for your Wi-Fi then I'd say it certainly does add security.

Presumably folks will be "sharing" the plaintext value of their Wi-Fi password with friends regardless of whether they use this feature or not, so it appears to neither increase nor decrease THAT aspect of Wi-Fi password security.

I highly doubt anyone is using 64 character wifi passwords because QR codes are an option.

Good luck typing that into your playstation with a controller and your chinese IoT product.

The best solution is still the middle ground between readability/memorability + strength. Or stored in a password library until needed.

Does the person who scanned the QR code have access to the wifi password after the fact on their phone? From what I remember, there is no way to access saved wifi passwords, you can just modify it but can't see the stored one.

This way, if you just have them scan the QR code on your phone (and don't let them photograph it), technically you have securely given the password without them knowing it, right?

If they use the most popular QR code scanner on Android [1], it shows the password in the scanner (IIRC), along with a button to connect to it. There's no acceptably secure way to give someone a WiFi password without ... giving it to them. QR codes are a simple graphical representation of text, they don't encrypt that text in any way. Sharing a password this way is not more secure than them handing you their device and you typing it in - and if you do that you should regard the other person as in possession of your password.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.zxi...

> Does the person who scanned the QR code have access to the wifi password after the fact on their phone?

Yes and this version of Android makes it easy to view saved wifi passwords without a third-party app.

Could they then go and create a QR code to share/decode?

I recently bought a Nokia 2.2, which in in the Android One program. Two main reasons: a removable battery and OS updates for two years and security for 3. At this point, there's very little difference between the hardware of flagships and commodity, especially considering the real-world use of smartphones. I mean, is anyone compiling programs on these things or doing anything particularly intensive? Not really. So given the choice between a $1000 phone and a $140 one, I choose the latter because in 2019 your really paying for the software.

Since Android 9, I really enjoy Android. It feels like a totally different experience with things like split screen, gesture nav, and smart replies. The Android team is doing a great job as of late. I look forward to getting this update. I hope we get to a point where the OEMs stop being the gate keepers of our phone's OSs and these devices become more like laptops, in the sense of being able to run whatever we want.

> a removable battery and OS updates for two years

This provokes me. Are we supposed to be happy with two years? The environmental impact of e-waste and the production of electronics should not be understated. I have a Nexus 5 as a backup phone. It works just as well as my main handset. I know how to duck the G-surveillance and I'm able to keep it alive because I have the knowledge to install roms. Not everyone does. Personally, I much prefer Android over iOS. But when someone asks me what phone they should get I always tell them to buy an iPhone. This is one of the reasons why.

> Are we supposed to be happy with two years? The environmental impact of e-waste and the production of electronics should not be understated.

Can you elaborate on this? Because I'm thinking of the amount of garbage I put in the bin over a period of two whole years, and the size of my phone, its packaging, chargers, cables, and manuals all together is just not even comparable. Even if you add in the environmental cost of the manufacturing I can't imagine it's even a drop in the bucket compared to other waste.

I'm sure it is a good idea to optimize for waste in some respect, but cell phones seem like they must contribute such a minuscule relative amount so as to be safely ignored for now.

plenty or rare earth element https://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobi...

Also plenty of other elements in your smartphone that you wouldn't find in your normal bin

The lifetime of most electronics is much longer than 2 years. The only thing I need to replace regularly is headphones.

Just because OS upgrades stop after 2 years doesn't mean security updates stop. Also technically, 2 years of OS upgrades means 3 years of use since each upgrade last a year afterwards.

Garbage is garbage.

What's interesting is that most people that buy the 140 dollar phones tend to keep them for 3 or 4 years, and people who buy the flagship 1000+ dollar phones, tend to keep them for 1 or 2 max.

Yeah, I’m getting a new iPhone every year on the Apple trade-in plan.

Somehow I doubt that Apple just throws my phone away.

> Are we supposed to be happy with two years? The environmental impact of e-waste should not be understated.

Note it's 2 years of feature updates not 2 years and it turns into a brick. Everything will still work and you'll still get new apps and app updates for far longer than 2 years. Security updates go for longer, too.

Given that Apple are still managing to roll out operating system updates to iPhones that are 5 years old, a potent question is why Google and Android device manufacturers are either unable or unwilling to attempt to do the same. Planned obsolescence isn't just an attack on your customers, it's also environmentally irresponsible.

It's because of how updates work. A good overview is here [0]

Basically for an android phone to get an update, Google, the Carrier, the Manufacturer, etc. all have to update the OS for that specific model, of which there are hundreds/thousands of models of phones.

Apple doesn't let the carriers configure the OS, and is also the manufacturer. They also have only like a dozen models. So they basically get to skip all of the parts that slow down updating your IOS version.

[0] https://www.xda-developers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/HT...

Apple does also cut features when they roll out those updates though. Not all iOS versions are equal.

It is a shame Android's update story is bad, but realistically it also doesn't matter much. Non-enthusiasts tend to not even want major updates in the first place (it's a chore - especially if anything changed on them).

It sucks for app developers a lot more than it matters to the majority consumer.

I checked https://www.android.com/one/ and see monthly security updates are promised for three years.

Note that this is the minimum requirement by contract.

Samsung for example is still updating 4 year old note devices.

> Are we supposed to be happy with two years?

If it was a laptop of desktop definitely not. And initially I wasn't happy with 2 years on a mobile phone because I thought they would age like their bigger brethren.

The reality is none of my mobile phones have aged gracefully. They've all slowed down to almost unusable some time after the 2 year mark, despite me fighting my way past the glue and tape to replace the non-replaceable battery. The really annoying part for me, a veteran embedded programmer who has rolled his own multitasking operating systems, is I have no idea what is causing this slowdown. Nothing I've done fixes it, up to and including including re-imaging the flash.

With my latest phone I've come to accept that I'll be replacing it in 2 years. My previous phone was a Nexus 6P which cost me around $1200, which I planned to have for about 5 years (but didn't). This time around it is a Nokia 8.1 which cost me a tad over $400, so even on a 2 year vs 5 year replacement schedule it would cost me less than the 6P.

The thing that did catch me by surprise is the Nokia 8.1 is a better phone than the 6P ever was - faster, better screen. Do things really move that fast in the mobile space? Maybe they do - everyone is adding bigger and bigger IPU's now. Compare that to desktop CPU's: I don't think they don't have IPU's yet.

Which brings me back to my original point. That 5 year expectation was set by my experience with desktop's. It seems for all sorts of reasons that experience doesn't translate to mobile phones.

> I know how to duck the G-surveillance and I'm able to keep it alive because I have the knowledge to install roms.

This is unconvincing. The Nexus 5 is prone to hardware failure. My ability to install roms didn't help at all when the phone stopped recognizing its own permanent storage.

This. 2 years (and 3 for security) is a joke.

Why do you throw it away after 2 years? It still gets security updates. Perfectly useable for more time.

My phone is going on 3 years. No removable battery, but I followed the iFixit guide and managed to replace the battery anyway a few months ago, since it had lost a lot of capacity. I intend to keep it for another 2-3 years at least.

>This provokes me. Are we supposed to be happy with two years?

As someone who buys a new phone around every 2-3 years, two years is perfect for me. I know the developers are focusing on making the update work as well as they can on just the last two years' worth of hardware, and not "wasting time" on making it work well on lesser/older hardware.

Take "wasting time" here defined as selfishly as possible. If I'm buying a new phone every 2 years, any amount of development time that goes into making sure that update works on 3+-year-old phones is wasted on me, and explicitly means less development time was spent on features that are actually relevant to me.

Honestly, I'd be just as happy if updates were guaranteed for just 1 year (though I'd probably just sit for a year without updates between upgrades), and I'd definitely be less happy if they were guaranteed for 5 years because I feel like a significantly larger portion of development time would go towards backwards compatibility instead of pushing tech forward.

> I feel like a significantly larger portion of development time would go towards backwards compatibility instead of pushing tech forward.

In what ways do you feel that cell phones need to be pushed forward? Phones have been capable of doing everything I want and more for many years now. My biggest complaint is how quickly they become insecure.

Do you just throw away your old phone? Mine become hand-me-downs.

Until her birthday this year, my mother-in-law was using my old iPhone 5S, a 6-year-old phone which still runs the latest iOS. Now she got my wife's old iPhone 6S (4 years old), and my wife has my old iPhone X (3 years old).

Throwing away a phone after 2 years is incredibly wasteful.

I usually sell or give them away to friends that need them, with anything that isn't wanted sitting in reserve in case I ever need a backup phone (I always keep an extra one in my backpack in case my current driver breaks).

The only phone/tablet I've actually thrown away was my 2012 Nexus 7 that finally completely died last year. Everything else finds a home somewhere. :)

I wouldn't mind the lower power that much, but camera is one of my main use cases for phone. Pixel is just so damn good at taking pictures. The cheap phones do have considerably worse cameras, no way around that.

At some point cameras are going to be commoditized as well though, partly thanks to all the investment in computerized photography.

I bought a mid range phone for my parents, they find its camera amazing.

It does not hold a candle to a pixel, but it is adequate. For users that don't feel the need for the best in class phone camera, it is already enough.

I wonder what will be the distinguishing factor in 5 years.

The Pixel 3a is fantastic for that reason.

The Pixel 1 XL has a good camera and you can buy a used one for under $200.

Not to mention they are still getting updates, I'm installing Android 10 now.

Does it still get regular security updates as well? I read they stop those after a couple years as well.

I bought a Nokia 3.1 as a lower end test device, which also belongs to the Android One program. The device is so slow to respond to input in every way that it's become the device I use to test our apps absolute worst case performance on.

Even knowing it was meant to be a lower end device it routinely gets frustrating to use for even the most simple tasks, such as Chrome tab switching, keyboard response and even just plain navigation.

We have had similar, buy not as bad, reactions to other low end device we use for testing.

I genuinely feel sorry for people who use these devices as their primary phones.

I bought a few cheap (under $100) Nokia Lumias back when Nokia was Windows Phone's last, best hope, and it always annoyed me how a cheap Lumia with Windows Phone was in so many ways nicer to use than a mid-range Android phone -- much more responsive to input, less lag, etc.

Microsoft's latest revisions of the WinPhone were software engineering wise the best mobile phone OS on the planet. As you say, it was quick, silky smooth and yet ran on low end hardware with excellent battery life. I gather they achieved that buy tightly locking down how software developers could do things. Perhaps is why their app store was so thin which was major factor in their downfall, but still it was a remarkable effort. I take my hat off to that team.

It as even more remarkable because if you went back a few short years WinPhone was the worst phone OS on the planet. It crashed regularly, a misbehaving app could drain it's batter in no time, and the UI was horrible.

So much for "if you build a better mouse trap them will come" I guess, especially if your reputation is for making crap mousetraps.

Thanks to everything being AOT compiled using full optimizations with their cloud compiler, including .NET code.

Mostly Agree. But Microsoft fucked up both the desktop and mobile trying to make 1 operating system fit all.

> We have had similar, but not as bad, reactions to other low end device we use for testing

Let me guess -- Nexus 5X? I use one as my primary phone, and the slowness is noticeable but usually tolerable.

Hope you have it backed up, because they die sooner or later. For me it was sooner, for my friend it was later. Some soldering problem if I recall things right. A bootloop is the first (and sometimes the last sign).

> Hope you have it backed up, because they die sooner or later

Tangential to your point, but is there anything useful that isn't backed up more or less by default in the standard Android workflow? I get that the privacy-concerned wouldn't use eg Google Photos, but they also likely heavily overlap with the set of people savvy enough to set up backup solutions for important data.

I can confirm that. My Nexus 5X died with bootloop after the warranty was over and all the googling led me to make peace with the fact that it was a soldering issue, hence a manufacturing defect.

I do. This is my 2nd Nexus 5X from craigslist, but when this one dies I plan on replacing it with a Pixel 3a.

The 2.2 specs are better, with exception of RAM which is equivalent. I've never had any performance issues surfing, watching videos, or using apps. I couldn't recommend this phone enough. The review over at ars was good and that's what put it in my radar.

>At this point, there's very little difference between the hardware of flagships and commodity, especially considering the real-world use of smartphones.

Cameras.

Exactly. In 2019 you're paying for software and camera

Would you include screens? I feel like my decisions (between flagships) tend to be driven primarily by screen.

I recently started playing some games on my phone that require 3d rendering. Pretty sure it would struggle on an older phone. The 4GB of RAM I have feels slightly insufficient since the game gets closed by the OS if I switch to another resource intensive enough app.

I'm not going to say you should pay $1000 for a phone, but just because you have no issues with a $120 phone doesn't mean no-one does.

I wish they made something like that in an iPhone SE size. Every phone is just so huge these days.

Samsung DeX (or similar) is a very interesting use case for more powerful hardware. But if that's not something you'd use, then I fully agree with you.

I am setting myself up on DeX as a full blown Intellij IDEA multi language environment but their locked down Linux distro makes me very uneasy...

I am on iOS but if that happens I might migrate! Is this something available today?

It is a beta program, search for "Linux on DeX" for details.

Apps are going to use whatever CPU and memory is available. It's the same reason a chat app can use hundreds of MB of memory on a desktop. Why optimize that lower when laptops ship with 16+ GB these days?

In my experience that $140 phone actually does end up being laggier and less responsive which can be super annoying when scrolling and tapping with your fingers. I'm not a hardware engineer, but somehow this seems to hold true even if the memory is sized the same and the CPUs seem comparable. There must be something deeper in the specs involved that leads to UI slowness.

While I think your comment is accurate, I'd argue that optimization is a better use of money and time than changing icons every 6 months to a year just so that the app looks new.

Honestly, why do icons change so much? Is it some psychological thing? I'm going to get used to whatever layout it is anyway and most popular apps have gone through a few designs and figured out what works. Like HN has not changed its layout. Why change it? Job security?

I think it’s a signal that says “I run the newest OS, so I have fairly recent hardware, so I’m relatively wealthy”, and that sells phones.

But how does this help with applications like Slack? Why not make Slack as light weight as possible so you can get it on more devices? Or Skype? Or whatever app? Those apps still do the layout change thing too.

> I hope we get to a point where the OEMs stop being the gate keepers of our phone's OSs and these devices become more like laptops, in the sense of being able to run whatever we want.

I own a Lenovo x13 convertible. Bios updates come in Windows executables only and whenever there is a Windows update the GPT is reconfigured, wiping my options to dual-boot Linux. It's been a while in the Laptop segment that there was free choice and you really had the feeling to own your device, sadly.

I agree that performance is good enough on 100$ phones, but there are other things, namely camera, battery, screen.

By the way, have you considered the fairphone 3?

> OS updates for two years and security for 3

OS updates for 2 years assuming you buy it on launch day, for the vast majority of owners it will be significantly shorter than 2 years.

Also as a Nokia 3 owner, don't count on those updates actually working, mines been getting stuck in a boot loop when updating for a year now.

Of course one reason you’d want a faster processor is it will “race to idle” faster and increase your battery life (longer life with similar battery / equal life with smaller battery that’s charged quicker):

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/race-to-sleep

Of course there is an optimum between price, workload and battery life that will differ per person.

Race-to-idle only means that it's often more efficient to run a processor designed for a given speed at that speed, complete the task sooner, and then power it down than to run it slower. That's because modern high-speed processors waste a lot of power via leakage just by being turned on. I think it's often still more efficient to design a slower, lower-power processor in the first place, and most modern phones have such processor cores.

I agree. I recently purchased the Nokia 7.1 on eBay ($200) and it does everything I need in a phone and has nice build quality. I feel that there aren't really many applications that utilize the powerful hardware of modern flagships, so I don't see why I should pay the premium for it.

Depends on what you do with your phone. I noticed that even mobile web pages often lag on my 3-year-old (Snapdragon 820) phone. I noticed that most native apps lag on a 4-year-old Galaxy S6. I'm not sure how well new mid-low tier phones do.

That's interesting. My old phone was the OnePlus 3 (I used it up until a few days ago) and it had a Snapdragon 820 running Lineage OS Pie. I can't say I really noticed webpages lagging too bad but I use Firefox with uBlock Origin so that could be it.

https://i.ibb.co/DK0SB5h/Android-One-Removable-Battery.png

Wow that's really not a lot of phones (just 1) available with Android One and a removable battery.

Do I need to reconfigure the entire OS + all applications after every OS upgrade back how it was prior? One of the main reasons I switched to iOS.

Camera on the 1k phone will be better than the 200 phone. Somewhat relevant to the instagram generation...

When phone cameras got reasonably better (Nexus 5X) I started to carry my DSLR less and less and after a while I completely ditched it. I was still clinging to my 5X before the Pixel 3a came out because there wasn't any reasonably priced phone with a decent camera.

The website assets are optimized in a rather strange way. The total page weight of ~20MB is huge for mobile. The images are heavily compressed using WebP lossy with quite noticeable blockiness and washed out textures and fine details, but squeezed into 1MB, yet the videos are only lightly compressed, and make up most of the page weight. Had they been compressed with libx264 at good quality, the page weight would be more than 70% smaller, and there would not be any need to ruin the image quality that much.

The images are awful (at least in Firefox). They are compressed even worse than Google Developer Insight usually recommends. The text in screenshots is barely readable.

The dark theme is uncomfortable for my eyes (ok, maybe it's fault of my poor quality TN matrix, but anyway I don't want to see it). I doubt anyone wants to read white text on a black background.

The letters are gigantic and are optimized for hi-resolution monitors.

Also, as I understand despite new release Google still haven't solved the problem of apps and Google itself siphoning all available data from the phone.

Also I hate how Google manages updates. I had to install a Hangouts app. First, it copied the Google Account details I entered into it, into the phone and now all other apps can access them which I never wanted. Luckily I was smart enough to make a separate account for this purpose. Second, sometimes when I start it it says that it is updating Google Play Services (so I have to humbly wait until Hangouts does its important business) without even asking if I want that or not. Why does the messenger takes a work of a package manager I cannot understand. Probably, because they need to install new telemetry modules even if the user didn't activate Google Play. Very unpleasant impression.

> I doubt anyone wants to read white text on a black background.

I do! Much less eye strain and easier to read for me. In fact, I read your comment in white text on a black background. My eyes are very sensitive to light in general though.

I hope you know that black color light doesn’t mean less light.

* "black color light" does not exist. Light cannot be black.

* Each pixel in an LCD has 3 subpixels (red, green, blue). There is a light source behind the pixels. To display black, white, or anything in between (gray), all 3 subpixels allow an equal amount of light through. What controls the shade is the amount of light allowed through each. For black, the lowest possible amount of light is allowed through.

* On an OLED display, like the one in my phone, each pixel emits its own light and can be controlled independently. A black pixel on an OLED display emits practically 0 light and even uses less power as a result. This is why blacks look way better on OLED displays.

* See for yourself. Use your phone in a dark room and fill the screen with white only and then try again with black.

* You know how black absorbs light and white reflects light? Black does not absorb light because it is black. It's black because it absorbs light.

That's not how light from a screen works

> still haven't solved the problem of apps and Google itself siphoning all available data from the phone.

New apps are required to request privileges like contact list access and location before using them. You can deny them. What other issues do you want to solve?

> Why does the messenger takes a work of a package manager I cannot understand.

It doesn't. You want to use hangouts. In this case GPS is effectively a library hangouts uses to auth/connect to servers. Since it's the critical building block, it updates itself.

Actually, if you stay on the page for a while and scroll up and down, it loads the light/dark alternates for all media on the page, bringing the total weight of the page to about 41MB. Yikes.

Interesting considering one of the top comments on reddit is how smooth and quick to load this page is

Presumably videos don't need to fully load for the page to appear loaded?

It somehow loaded instantly for me on mobile.

Could be using lazy/more intelligent loading on mobile? 20MB isn't great on desktop, but it makes sense you could cope with that where you couldn't on a phone.

wow... 20MB.. I thought my 5MB app was horrible!@

It is. This is just several more steps up the atrocity ladder. Web site weight has majorly outpaced the growth of the average internet connection speed, and we also live in a world where mobile usage is up and many people have usage caps.

I pay per gigabyte with a prepaid plan for my phone, because I'm not paying $40/month for phone service when I can pay less than half that, so blindly clicking a web page and having 20MB quickly used up sucks.

I hear ya. I find the "unlimited data" plans are just far too expensive to justify paying for. My current carrier (Verizon[0]) offers 4(!) different "unlimited" plans starting at $70/mo and going up from there. My Wife and I only have 2GB/mo plans which itself is $35/mo. Our two cellphones have a higher bill than our entire household electric/gas bill and we have a modest sized house with central air/heating and lots of TVs/games/etc.

[0] https://www.verizonwireless.com/plans/

Yes the site crashed my (old) Android phone running Firefox.

First time this has ever happened since I've owned the device... Which is many years!

And yet people still constantly champion WebP, VP9, AV1 or whatever Google pumps out for free.

And if one of the biggest Web company can't do web page well then I guess the rest of the Web Pages get a free pass for not well optimised.

I didn't notice these issues with images, I'm on a Pixel 3a updated to Android 10. Perhaps it's optimized only for Android 10 ;-)

Webp is web scale

They got to somehow justify the need for better hardware I guess... And it appears that the trend is to make everything more and more bloated. Take browsers for example, we used to browse the web just fine on devices that were as powerful as raspberry pi 2 for example, but nowadays we can barely launch a browser on such devices, let alone use it for real.

I wonder how many of the features advertised here will make it onto the Android 10 release of other OEMs. In Android 9 for example, the ability to select text via OCR in the recent apps screen was limited to only the Pixel devices for some strange reason even though all Android devices had access to that feature prior to the release of Google Assistant via the Google app.

In a similar vein, Digital Wellbeing was officially limited to Pixel devices and Android One devices although it could be sideloaded onto other phones (where it ran perfectly fine) running Android 9+.

Most of them are choice of the OEMs - e.g. Samsung held back Digital Wellbeing on their S9 phone updates so it could market their own reimplementation on S10 series.

Everything marketed here is available to all OEMs - Pixel specific features are marketed on Pixel marketing pages.

I wouldn't be so sure to blame the OEM. Read this article [0]. Google dismissed a support ticket claiming that the OCR text selection feature was available only to Pixel devices released after 2017.

The Android Pie page [1] advertises the feature here as a standard Android feature under the system usability enhancements section.

This feature was actually available to all devices before the Google Assistant was released via a feature called Google Now on Tap.

[0] https://9to5google.com/2018/07/05/text-selection-android-p-o...

[1] https://www.android.com/versions/pie-9-0/

... We're getting more and more into an age where mobile hardware doesn't matter anymore, because it's become so fungible. And Samsung will do very badly, because they're hardware is good, but their software sucks so bad.

Comparing Samsung's OneUI and stock Android, I would pick OneUI without blinking.

I used to hate Touchwiz.

It more comes down to the permanently installed crap software they bundle like it’s a 1998 emachine. And the lame Samsung account requirement. And Bixby. There’s that weird rewards program thing where you earn xp for using different features on the phone. The updates are slow. It feels more like spyware than standard google stuff. The whole thing is a pretty terrible experience.

It's not just a question of design philosophy. Samsung software is often riddled with bugs, things don't work, features removed relative to stock android, forcing inferior version on us (like their keyboard...), then on top of it all the crapware, the fake android store, the lack of updates, etc. etc.

Regular consumers appear to have other opinion about bare bones AOSP UI.

I find it quite ugly from design point of view, loaded with an amount of blinding white colour.

Another one: Motorola removed Android's native SIP support for VOIP from the Moto Gs user interface.

I recently found out that Samsung did the same.

Wait, Android has native SIP support? How did I not know about this?

Sadly the crazy useful feature of OCR selection was removed from my Pixel 2 XL which really unnerved me.

Question your OEM. Google actually prefers the phones have a standard set of features but the OEMs want to differentiate.

it's available in every platform as google lens app.

OCR text selection is available via Google Lens. What I'm talking about specifically is the ability to select out text from app pages where text selection is not usually possible. For example, say an app had button text or an embedded image, it is not possible to select these unless the app developer made those selectable. In Pixel devices, it's possible to go to the recent apps menu, and select these unselectable texts via OCR. This feature was previously available to all devices via Google Now On Tap but has since been limited.

The way they show and demonstrate gestures, along with the UI at the bottom, strongly suggests that they intend to eliminate the semi-"hard" buttons in favor of gestures. That would save space, give people a bit more control over fullscreen apps, and provide a less "modal" UI where the same gestures always work even if the buttons aren't available (such as when playing fullscreen video).

Also, "Get security updates faster." is huge; this is effectively saying "no matter who makes your phone, you still get updates".

Deprecating "Device admin for enterprise" makes it much safer to access work resources from an otherwise personal Android device, without giving your IT department the ability to remote-wipe your entire device.

> The way they show and demonstrate gestures, along with the UI at the bottom, strongly suggests that they intend to eliminate the semi-"hard" buttons in favor of gestures.

Yes, that's the case. When you're using gesture navigation the only visible UI left is the horizontal bar at them bottom. Apps adjusted for gesture navigation will also draw behind that line.

Gesture navigation is still an option which might not be enabled by default on all devices, but I strongly suggest trying it out. I used it quite some time with the latest release candidates of Android 10 and once you're used to it, you don't want to go back. Especially the back swipe is really nice.

How the final implementation came to be is covered by an excellent blog post from Google: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2019/08/gesture-na...

Their own charts/graphs on that page show that the new approach is WORSE (by their own metrics) than the 3 soft buttons.

I hope there remain ways to hack the buttons back (in 9.x there was):

  #install a 3rd party launcher (nova)
  pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.google.android.apps.nexuslauncher
  settings put secure gesture_swipe_up 0
  settings put secure system_navigation_keys_enabled 1
  reboot

You don't need any "hack", right in System > Gestures > Navigation, all three options are openly available (100% gesture, 2-button + gesture, old 3-button style). I believe they intent on keeping it all available for sometime, if only for accessibility reasons.

Also, the charts show that it's either equal and better, and there's also the implicit fact that not showing buttons also means more screen space, so even if usability metric is the same, visually it's a win.

I don't understand how 'swipe from the left' can be used as a universal back gesture. Isn't it the case that most apps use that gesture already to open a menu?

Then again I still miss having physical back and home buttons since I upgraded to a newer android phone. It would be nice if manufactures added more buttons to the side of the phone so the other fingers have something to do.

You can swipe at an angle (around 45° up or down) to open the menu, and straight out to go back. Not very intuitive/discoverable, but works pretty well once you get used to it

> I don't understand how 'swipe from the left' can be used as a universal back gesture. Isn't it the case that most apps use that gesture already to open a menu?

That's also discussed in the blog post I linked. tl;dr: Only a small subset of users (3-7%) uses a swipe gesture to open these menus (all others use the hamburger menu) and these users have to adapt now to do different kinds of swipes for opening the menu and invoking the back gesture.

> once you're used to it, you don't want to go back.

Your mileage may vary. I've never learned to get along well with gestures, although I did give them a solid try.

Try smart launcher, and set up your own gestures. I haven't been a fan of gestures either historically, but smart launcher has converted me. Single finger up / down / left / right; double finger up / down / left / right; double tap on screen, and a couple of others.

>Also, "Get security updates faster." is huge; this is effectively saying "no matter who makes your phone, you still get updates".

I have been hearing this for years.

Probably from clickbait sources. Recent talk in the area has been legitimate.

https://www.xda-developers.com/how-project-treble-revolution...

https://www.xda-developers.com/android-q-apex-biggest-thing-...

Android 10 lets you download and install certain security updates through Google Play as easily as an app. That is a first, and it should not be understated.

> Also, "Get security updates faster." is huge; this is effectively saying "no matter who makes your phone, you still get updates".

They say this with literally every release of Android ever. It's just posturing, I'll believe it when I see it.

> strongly suggests that they intend to eliminate the semi-"hard" buttons in favor of gestures.

If that happens, that's an OS that is unacceptable to me. It's bad enough that physical buttons were eliminated in favor of the soft buttons. That bothers me to this day, but I learned to live with it.

Eliminating even the horrible soft buttons, though, would be a bridge too far in terms of reducing usability.

It's a setting, you can keep the soft buttons if you like.

Good to know, but that does rather sound like they're on the chopping block...

I hope the gestures are better than when they first came out with the "pill". I tried it for a week and it was an awful experience. Maybe it's because I use the double tap on app switcher to quickly get to last app a lot and the pill was really bad for that (slow and would switch to wrong app half the time).

Yes, it's much much better. That one was unfortunately in a half-way between gesture and buttons and felt very unfinished. This one is much smoother and easy to quick switch between apps. It feels a lot more natural, and the bottom buttons are actually gone, saving space.

9 already implements the swipeable "pill" navigation. It isn't on by default if you upgraded from 8.

I tried the pill, couldn't manage to get used to it. I just hope they don't go "we know what's best for you" on this one.

This is orders of magnitude better than the pill one, which not only felt unfinished, it didn't even actually get rid of the bottom bar, which seems like the whole point of gesture navigation...

I tried the pill and eventually turned it off. Android 10's navigation seems a lot more fluid, though maybe a little less discoverable.

edit: to be clear, I now have the option for traditional 3 buttons, 2 buttons (pill), and no buttons (all gestures).

I use that today, yes; however, that only eliminates one of the three buttons. On Android 9, you still have a back button and a home button.

I used to really dislike work profile, but I gotta say it has gotten much better over the past few versions. For one, it seems like they're implementing a way for Calendar to share between personal/work in a single view, which was a huge pet peeve. They also allow for custom keyboard on your personal profile in Q which is great.

As a recent iOS user coming from Android, this almost makes me want to go back. I really do miss the Smart Reply and native Google Assistant features. But alas, iMessage pressure is real in my friend's group.

> But alas, iMessage pressure is real in my friend's group.

Man, in my extended family SMS text group, this comes up once every couple weeks. One of us will note they aren't getting a random message, or someone will send a video and the quality will be crap, and the iPhone users will all mention how if we all had iPhones, this wouldn't be a problem.

Cue a few of is getting kind of triggered because it's only Apple's co-opting of SMS on their phones that those people think that's really an Android problem and not some slick marketing on Apple's end to get their users to tell other people how their SMS texting is so much better. Not that we couldn't all just switch to some third party app (or hangouts even), and then we'd all have a comparable experience, but that's entirely lost on most of them, and not worth griping about after the first or second time or you come across as that weird relative that can't just do the easy thing[1]).

I can't wait for RCS messaging. I'm honestly wondering it Apple will support it, or try to segment the text messaging market even more.

1: As if buying a $750 phone is the "easy thing".

Edit: Changed $1000 to $750, since that's the lowest cost I could find for a 1 year old phone, and I don't think buying multiple year old hardware is something you can expect out of someone else, even if it might be my preferred strategy).

> Man, in my extended family SMS text group, this comes up once every couple weeks. One of us will note they aren't getting a random message, or someone will send a video and the quality will be crap, and the iPhone users will all mention how if we all had iPhones, this wouldn't be a problem.

IMO a reasonable compromise is WhatsApp. Rich features like iMessage's but portable and lots of people already use it.

I have never had a Facebook account and I've always been wary of them. I think it's fair to be concerned about privacy w/WhatsApp but I'm torn because it's a very practical solution.

>send a video and the quality will be crap

Isn’t this because sms doesn’t send high quality photos/videos? With imessage you get full quality images, it’s very nice. It’s also encrypted.

>Not that we couldn't all just switch to some third party app (or hangouts even), and then we'd all have a comparable experience

Which one?

Whatsapp and messenger compress images, fairly significantly. Messenger is unencrypted by default. Whatsapp is encrypted, but you have to give facebooks your contacts, and metadata on the convos, which gives away a lot of info.

I use both, and whatsapp does have some better features (voice notes are better, as is search), but I prefer imessage for the image quality and encryption. I also trust apple better with the metadata.

iOS user here who successfully convinced one of my group chats to migrate to Signal. Shaming people into buying an iPhone will never work, but downloading a free app just takes a few days of bugging. Once you get a few people to do it, the rest will fall in line.

Next step is to get my family to do it. My Dad constantly sends video's that get compressed to hell due to the SMS file size limit.

RCS is dead.

The take up amongst operators is really low. And it's unlikely that will change anytime soon as their focus is on the 5G rollout and not on re-platforming their messaging system.

Also the system is unencrypted so you would have to be crazy to use it in this environment.

> I can't wait for RCS messaging. I'm honestly wondering it Apple will support it, or try to segment the text messaging market even more.

I mean, RCS is practically dead (at least in the USA). But even if it does come it'll basically replace SMS with something slightly better. I don't see how it addresses the iMessage stuff. iMessage will likely still send much higher quality images and videos and RCS, AFAIK, can't do some the same features like showing who's typing.

RCS is cool but I don't think it's going to be a game changer in any way. I think it'll just be an incremental update, if it even comes to the USA.

>Man, in my extended family SMS text group, this comes up once every couple weeks. One of us will note they aren't getting a random message, or someone will send a video and the quality will be crap, and the iPhone users will all mention how if we all had iPhones, this wouldn't be a problem.

I don't understand why iMessages is so popular in US, and it is pretty much US and France ( SMS ) only AFAIK. It is like when the world was on ICQ, they had AIM. When the world moved to MSN, they still stuck to AIM.

And just like AIM, iMessages sucks. I tried it many times and the same problem persist. Some users in the group not getting message, message appeared not in timely order, sometimes random message from the past appear. Needs to Recreate group to solve user not getting message problem, which means all previous group messages are in different group. It is slow as compared to WhatsApp. Icons and Packs are far worst, it is as if Apple has never used WeChat, KakaoTalk, Line, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or Telegram.

Then there is huge amount of SMS Notification and Receipt that gets muddles up in the list of conversation. It is a Giant pile of Mess.

Every year I read something about iMessages being popular ( in US ) and every year I tried with my group of friends. And the answer remain the same. And it is so god damn bad most of my friends now refuse to try it again.

Edit: And iMessages does't always Sync on my Mac.

They really ought to have some sort of format for setting up APN properly based on URIs, which could then be put in QR codes on fresh SIM card packages.

iPhones start at $450.

No iOS user thinks its "Android's" problem, but they do know that being on Android is the problem.

iOS = 1 ecosystem.

Android = infinite ecosystems with no cohesion.

One has native capability and consistent user experience which is now better for social interaction. The other has people rationalizing how a non-native app can be used which also wouldn't solve the aforementioned problem of receiving a random type of message, because nobody wants that experience, they want the rich experience that is native to iOS.

The android native experiences described even in OP's blog post won't be available for AGES on most people's devices, and even in that age they won't be reliable features because of custom OS' and devices won't be allowed to support it, based on the preference of those distributors.

iOS users aren't confused about that shitshow, iOS users know that it doesn't matter why, there is simply no consensus to fixing it on android, no path to consensus on fixing on android, and a group of hopeful technology enthusiasts that missed the memo on how android cohesion will never get better.

Also as a recent iOS user, I don't understand why. Other than live captions, sound amp and family link, most new features have been on iOS for a while, and will actually improve on iOS 13 (e.g. apps have to ask for location access each time, besides the current 3 options). Seems like they're trying to catch up to iOS.

Android still has far superior notifications, both on the control side and the display side. You also basically named half of the features in "other than" list. iOS is also just getting dark mode too so not "for a while". The only thing they've had for a while is better permission control.

What is difficult to understand about OP wanting features that iOS does not offer?

iMessage pressure is real for me too. I was considering switching to an iPhone for a while but found air message and have been using it for a few weeks. It doesn't have all the features of iMessage, but core messaging works pretty well and I haven't felt a need to switch to an iPhone.

https://airmessage.org/

This is an interesting workaround.

People forget that part of the point of different colors for iMessage vs SMS was to indicate that iMessage is encrypted and SMS isn't. It's also a handy marketing thing, but there is a technical justification for making a visible distinction.

AirMessage is basically a proxy that strips encryption for Android devices:

"AirMessage leverages the power of your Mac computer in order to route messages to and from Apple's iMessage servers. The server is to be installed on a computer at home, and will pass messages to and from your smartphone to allow the usage of iMessage and other installed services."

I'm coming from the other side, I've been feeling more and more of a desire to go back to Android. I had a pretty gnarly experience where my cellular antenna stopped working and apple gave surprisingly poor customer support. I've had really annoying wifi issues on the latest iphone xs as well as the latest apple tv. Overall, I get the feeling that things in general are headed in the wrong direction and would love to get away from them. I'm pretty married to OS X for development but otherwise I would like to get away. The biggest thing holding me back from switching is messages and the integration between ios and os x. It seems so silly but that's where I'm at.

do you appear as an iOS user to actual iOS users? I can't tell from the website

That's ironic, this page makes me want to switch to iOS for my next phone.

Aside from the annoyingness of the page... Too many things here are patched on top what ought to be core. Eg. Pausing annoying apps. IMO apps ought to default to off in the first place until you turn them on.

Very little detail about these new privacy controls. Sounds like Google-centric lipstick.

Dark theme is exciting; embarrassing it took so long.

Hopefully I'm proven wrong...

FB messenger really solved the cross platform group chat problem for me. Allows for video chat too to replace facetime.

Minor nitpick, but the quality of compression for pictures/video sent over FB Messenger is atrocious compared to that of iMessage. Like, we aren't talking just technicalities, it is very visually obvious and jarring. Same when it comes to video chat, Discord and FaceTime have waaaaay better quality and reliability.

I've got ten year olds who love texting their relatives, and I'm not willing to send my kids into the Facebook meatgrinder yet.

> But alas, iMessage pressure is real in my friend's group.

I've never had this from my friends. I read about this all the time and all I can think is, "Why would I be friends with people who care about that enough to peer pressure me into using an iPhone?"

Seriously. In the meantime, the rest of the world all uses WhatsApp. For group chat it's hard to beat. I use signal with family and some friends but getting people to switch is impossible. And allegedly it has group chat but it's not obvious how that works even to a techie like me. Asking people to switch phone platforms is ridiculous, especially people from poorer countries where an iPhone costs at least a couple months' salary. Lately I've also used keybase with another friend and it seems promising but the user base is almost nonexistent.

Because there are some huge, genuinely great benefits to using it. No one really cares that much but, when the difference between the two experiences is as great as it currently is, it really affects the conversation.

For example, we don't really pressure friends to buy iPhones but we legitimately have a separate conversation group for just iOS users from the main SMS group chat so we can send images, video, or other media at full quality. Most of us are pretty tech savvy too so we're not really keen on using WhatsApp or Telegram or any of the other dirty data apps.

It sounds super common in the US. In the UK, we either settle with Messenger (ugh, but at least it's cross-platform) or WhatsApp.

What kind of circles is everyone in? I didn't realize that tapbacks had a name, and wondered why I'd occasionally see a message like:

A: foo

B: liked "foo"

but I just use either Messenger, Wechat, or Snapchat. The only time I open my SMS app is to view 2FA Codes.

How does the pressure manifest?

I've had a few friends passive aggressively mention I am the reason our group chat is MMS vs iMessage.

Or even worse: I just simply got excluded from group chats. That was the saddest one because when hanging out in person, a friend will mention a conversation from the group chat and I wouldn't know what's going on and they would just awkwardly pretend it didn't happen. Or say they'd add me to the group and never actually do it.

iMessage FOMO is a real thing and the social pressure (in the US at least) is insane.

as dumb as it sounds, nobody likes to be a green bubble

Is there a case for an Apple antitrust in the US due to this issue ? How is it different than MS baking IE into their OS back in the days ?

Consider by not contributing to the Apple Ecosystem you create a better environment for developers and customers.

I know this is silly but losing the dessert codename is kinda sad.

I was bummed about it too at first but thinking about it more, having version numbers will make it more obvious if a device has outdated software to the normal consumer and might put pressure on manufacturers to update devices much faster

I'm so glad about the change.

Sure, K comes before P in the alphabet, but figuring this (and the actual distance) out takes a lot more mental effort than comparing 4.4 with 9.

It also resolves the issue where you need to decide whether 7 is larger than Marshmallow - a question that would make people question your sanity if posed without context.

And to make it more confusing, each release had a separate codename used before the release, so you had Android K, Android Key Lime Pie, Android KitKat, Android 4.4, and API level 19, all meaning the same thing.

Now, if only we could get rid of the separate "API level" designator (or rather, turn it into an opaque enum, instead of using it everywhere)... because 28 should not be less than 10.

It is inevitable that all (popular?) operating systems end up at version 10 though...

If it's any consolation it's internal name is "Android Q" for "Quince Tart".

Maybe it's not too late! Quick, let's come up with a dessert name that starts with Q!

I was rooting for Quindim

Queijadinha wouldn't be bad either

They could have chosen "Quince pudding".

Can't wait to try it out in three years when I replace my eight-month-old phone that won't be getting an update.

Well, why buy from such vendors? It's not like a lack of updates from vendors isn't a well known issue.

Pixel, OnePlus, Nokia.

My 20-month-old Pixel 2 got the update today.

Pixel 1 is also getting Q update, which is now 3 years old.

Serious question: why not iPhone?

Legit answer: go for a Pixel 3a

Nice to see Signal (not the default Messages app) in the Smart Reply demo.

Is it?

I use Signal because I don't want Google reading my messages.

As it was in Gmail and Messages, 'Smart Reply' is done with on-device models, messages aren't sent to Google. Source: https://9to5google.com/2019/04/05/ml-kit-smart-reply/

If you use the build in keyboard they can read your messages.

Does Smart Reply send your messages to Google?

so turn it off?

Looks like they are starting to get seriously concerned about projecting non-monoplistic "fair competition" image. Unfortunately most devs know it's not the case in reality.

Unfortunately?

First thing I noticed too. That's awesome.

Interesting indeed considering it has E2E encryption and RCS does not.

> Android’s new Dark theme uses true black to keep your battery alive longer.

None of the screenshots around the caption seem to use "true black", though!

Note that "true black" saves almost no additional power on an OLED vs a dark grey.

Indeed. But it does look nicer/work better for what black themes are actually good at: Using at night.

So while the additional battery savings between "true black" and grey are within the margin of error, the battery benefits remain for both and the non-battery benefits remain for our eyes.

Do you happen to have a source? I am having trouble finding a source online for this information.

"almost"

How could you even tell without an organic LED screen?

While you can't tell it's "true" black without an OLED, it's clearly a dark grey.

With a photo editor. #000000 or bust!

They aren't on those particular screenshots for some reason but are on the actual phone. I just took my own screenshot and it is indeed #000000.

I wonder if any of the Google apps will support a dark mode. Maps / Gmail are harder to use with all of the white

Neither Maps or Gmail is using Dark Mode for me on the Pixel I updated this morning. Hopefully it'll be added in an update.

Many Google apps already do. It was weird during the Android 10 Beta because Google was releasing apps with partial support for Dark mode which made them hard to use. You'd sometimes get dark grey text on black background, for instance.

It's always nice to see how each Android release compares to iOS. Usually about 10% of the features while releasing to about .05% of the active phones. The vast majority of people won't see these features for another 3 years.

Hoping to be wrong, checked the data. It's been about a year for iOS 12 and Android Pie. According to the latest numbers, iOS 12 is at 84% [1] and Android Pie is at 27% [2].

I also don't think that waiting 3 years will push Pie percentage much higher. Android 6.0 is more popular than 8.0 and 7.0.

I don't envy Android devs... Can't imagine it's fun to develop apps when you have to target OSes released 4+ years ago because 21% of devices still run them. For iOS the "4+ years" number is way below 1%.

[1] https://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/ [2] https://gs.statcounter.com/android-version-market-share/mobi...

It’s 88% for ios 12 now, apple keeps a tally here: https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/

Only 5% are on earlier than ios 11.

You need to factor in price for a fair comparison.

Just at the top of the page there's a screenshot of the Assistant. If you toggle dark mode (there's a floating button at the bottom of the screen to do so) the text changes from "when is my flight" to "what time is my flight".

Did HEIC support ever come to Android? I recall it being announced for Pie I think, but cannot find any evidence of people using it.

I’ve been hoping that Android adoption of HEIC would increase the availability of software to view and manage such files.

From the article (if you scroll down to the Camera section and expand it):

> HEIF Imaging

> Support for new file format (.heic) to save still images.

When does ChromeOS get Android 10? I'm sick of being at 7.X.

I'm not sure I could tell you which version of Android is on my chromeos pc. The apps are each in little Windows. Are some apps not supported because the version of Android is too old?

Google stated they'd scuttled updating to 8 in lieu of going straight to 9. That didn't happen and now we're at 10. I'm a little concerned the train won't ever arrive at the station.

7.1.1 in Settings > Google Play Store > Manage Android Preferences > About

Certain devices such as Pixelbook and Slate received Pie with Chrome OS 72 in February.

Some of the features sound amazing "sound amplifier" sounds like a hearing aid like function. If it has a low audio delay and good function set to filter noise it could be revolutionary. I was looking for something like this in app form not too long ago.

I wonder how gesture navigation will work with some apps.

I wonder which features will make it into aosp/lineageos. I'm missing android smartlock in limeageos. If I could wish for a feature for android it would be "game mode" from oxygenos.

Too bad it the sound amplifier app only works with wired headphones, with Pixel 2 and above not having a headphone jack. So now that they got me to switch over to bluetooth headphones, I have to dig out the USB adapter and an older pair of wired headphones to try it out.

Not sure why some apps such as this hate bluetooth, since this app would be a perfect match with bluetooth earbuds.

Good thing that I won't buy a phone without a headphone jack. I didn't even saw that piece of information. It's probably because of the delay thought, it can get very annoying if you add bluetooth delay to the processing delay. Let's see if we can find more information on that. Maybe it can even remove your own voice

I guess I'm not impressed. - Edit: not a bad release

Live caption on device: Sounds great. Very useful if you are hearing impaired. If you just want captions for the words the are difficult to make out, some AI isn't going to help there. AI's are currently worse than I am at detecting words.

Smart reply: This looks useful. Not having to lose info as you create an appointment or less clicks copying and pasting directions. Yeah, great feature. Good job here.

Sound amplifier: Remember when everyone was up in arms because iPods could boost sound way too loud. (disregarding different source volumes and headphone sensitivity). So everyone limited the power output of their headphone jack. Well, now we've come full circle and we can blast our ear drums the way god intended, it just takes more button presses. This is like yeah, we took away a feature because of hysteria, now it's back.

Edit: Thanks for explaining this to me. This feature does indeed seem useful. Audio that is more clear, being able to hear what's around you, yeah this is great.

Gesture navigation: I hate this. Maybe some people like it. If you are one of those people, I'm happy for you.

Dark theme: I originally though this feature was dumb. Next we'll have gray theme, or blue theme. Battery savings just didn't seem that great. After using this for a while, I like dark theme, in an unexpected way. I find that the black colors are less stimulating and the phone is less of a distraction.

Digital wellbeing: I haven't found these features all that useful. Perhaps someone else makes use of them. I mostly see this as shaming for using the phone too much.

Focus mode: Remember that one android release that made it so you can easily block all notifications from an app. Well, later they made it so you can only easily block a category(can still block all just more presses). Then apps can create as many categories as they want(so you keep getting spammed). This time they didn't do the user friendly release, in order to focus you have to check each app you have installed. Completely backwards like they didn't really want to do this feature.

Family link: I'm not a parent, kids and phones sound like a nightmare to me. I hope this helps you parents. No opinion from me.

This is really quite cynical, particularly about sound amplifier. It should be very useful to the millions of people who are hearing impaired, but haven't gotten a hearing aid yet. (Most people tend to put this off for a while.)

There's some irony that some folks might have gotten hearing loss from headphones in the first place, but it sounds like a useful feature.

It will be useful to me, but there's already a volume button. Would be nice if that just worked, instead of it being nerfed.

The volume limitations only made sense if you never used headphones less sensitive than the oem ones and listened to source audio that was only at maximum volume all the time.

> Live caption on device: Sounds great. Very useful if you are hearing impaired

Many people use their phone in spaces where audio wouldn't be well received (and headphones weren't worn). Examples where I'd prefer captions over audio: when I'm commuting, in a loud space, at work, waiting in a doctor's office, anywhere where I don't want to silence all outside sounds with headphones, but would like to watch the video and read what's said.

With song lyrics and audio books, I'd like to hear and read.

One thing I like on Pie, is after clearing a few notifications from an app that I don't care to see it automatically prompts me to stop showing them.

I've had Family Link on my Pixel2 since 2018 (and my daughter's Moto X4). It has been very useful and is a great app. Strange to list it as a feature for Android 10, but maybe not a lot of people know about it?

Live caption sounds great to me since my wife's family is Russian and I don't speak it very well. We video chat with grandma often and I'm not really involved...

> Sound amplifier

I haven't tried it, but it sounds like this would also be useful if you want to wear headphones to avoid bothering others but you still want to clearly hear what's going on around you.

This should be available for Pixel phones sometime today, right?

Yes, and other Android phones probably never, except some current flagships who'll get it in 6+ months.

Wait a second. The back button is being replaced with a swipe from the left edge of the screen???

What if my phone is really wide? What if I miss that gesture 40% of the time?

On my pixel at least you can select to use the new gestures, the previous pill-style gestures, or the old three icon method. I use the pill-style ones, because I have other actions triggered on edge swipes that I want to keep.

Great to see more attention being put on reducing distractions. The 'Digital Wellbeing' features are great, as well as the name itself.

Is it just my imagination or did that “smart reply” video teaser feature an Apple emoji thumbs-up emoji as an UI element of Android?

You're right. It's the Signal IM app, which seems to use the iOS emoji pack.

Has someone done a thorough deep dive into both iOS and Android's privacy stances as of current writing?

I ask the following since most of my friends just don't know which of the two to trust anymore although they clearly dont trust Google more. Not so much that they would consider getting a Librem 5[1] but are very wary of either OS given the spate of privacy violations in general, off late and given the heightened concerns over the surveillance era we currently live in.

So I ask, have they found conclusive evidence for either iOS or Android to be putting money where their mouth is, exclusively in the areas of privacy and customer data protection?

Or is it just mostly glib statements with not much in the way of substantive deployments to safeguard users?

Sundar Pichai recently said something on the lines of "Privacy should not be a luxury good", subtly taking a dig at Apple.

   "To make privacy real, we give you clear, meaningful 
   choices around your data. All while staying true to two
   unequivocal policies: that Google will never sell any
   personal information to third parties; and that you get
   to decide how your information is used.[2]

Is there any meat to any of this, as of this writing?

Simply put if you didn't mind sacrificing a few bells and whistles which of the two OSes would your next phone have? Android or iOS?

[1] Librem 5 smartphone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem#Librem_5_smartphone

[2] Google’s Sundar Pichai: Privacy Should Not Be a Luxury Good

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/opinion/google-sundar-pic...

Factory images are also available now for Pixel devices: https://developers.google.com/android/images.

It seemed to come to my German Pixel 1 as an over-the-air update straight away as well, currently downloading it. Nice job, Google!

Still, only 10.4% of Android devices are running version 9.

The data I find says 27%: https://gs.statcounter.com/android-version-market-share/mobi...

My dashboards all say 30%+ across apps with a lot of users.

I remember reading somewhere that a future version of Android would be able to tether an existing WiFi connection but I can't find the article. I hope this Android 10 contains this. It's painful to go to a hotel that has a captive portal and not be able to use something like a Chromecast. Would be super useful to sign in once on your phone and then share that WiFi with other devices.

Both my Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 9 do this, they call it Wi-Fi sharing:

https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/mobile-devices/how-do-i-s...

My Samsung S7 did this I think. Haven't seen it on another phone though.

How will Google avoid being sued (like Amazon / Audible is being sued https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-lawsuit/top-u-...) for the "Live Caption" feature?

For example by making it a feature that isn't exclusively used for books?

I suspect it's implemented using the new Playback Capture API (https://developer.android.com/preview/features/playback-capt...) which provides an opt-out, too.

Seems dangerous to opt out of what is arguably an accessibility feature.

Because it works on all apps not just audio books

> So, if a friend asks you out to dinner, your phone will suggest you text "". Then, it’ll also pull up directions right in Google Maps.

"Smart reply" sounds like a privacy nightmare. Now just opening a text causes unsolicited connections to made to Google's servers and other websites containing the contents of your messages. I hope this is something you can easily disable.

It's completely on-device [0]. The prediction models have been shrunk [1] so no connections are made (Google has enabled lots of shrunken on-device models with TF Lite [2]) . I'm not sure why this page doesn't call that out considering how privacy-focused the other features are.

0. https://www.androidauthority.com/smart-reply-android-q-98364...

1. https://www.tensorflow.org/lite/models/smart_reply/overview

2. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.00630.pdf, https://www.tensorflow.org/lite/guide

Just a thought: how's the integration with the Linux kernel going?

I recall reading a few months ago that

1. There are significant differences between the "main" kernel and the one android uses.

2. This was a choice in early development.

3. Efforts are underway to largely undo this, making them as similar as possible.

And as per usual, I can't find the article anymore.

Google were pushing for better upstream usage. For example they are backing Freedreno driver for Adreno (Qualcomm) GPUs.

I wonder if my Moto Z2 Force will get this (probably not), only got Android 9 a couple of weeks ago. If it does get it, then I hope the update will fix the wonky wifi issues that I'm having that weren't present in Android 8...

What you know... The security update for July just dropped and my wifi starts working better. No mention of it in the release notes (just that it's the security update for July)...

The rate limiting of wifi pinging means Google just ripped the heart out of wardriving.

So how much padding is in the release package to make the update sized 1337 Mb ? :P

> HEIF Imaging

> Support for new file format (.heic) to save still images.

What is the advantage of .heic images?

> The MPEG group claims that twice as much information can be stored in a HEIF image as in a JPEG image of the same size, resulting in a better quality image. HEIF also supports animation, and is capable of storing more information than an animated GIF at a small fraction of the size.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Image_File_F...

A modern, patent-encumbered standard brought to you by The MPEG Group™

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Image_File_For...

It's an image compressed with the same compression scheme that h.265 video uses.

It also supports animated gif style short video loops.

compatibility with iOS file sharing

99% of what I do with my phone worked great with all the features of ICS. Today its just very slow and I have to buy a new one.

My Thinkpad has outlasted 3 phones.

I want so badly to nope out of this whole ecosystem.

Don't even mention IOS.

"Contaminant detection:

If moisture or debris is detected in your USB port, a notification will be sent to you and accessories will not function."

"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."

I can't wait until it falsely identifies the dirt and I can't charge my phone any more.

Well, the USB port on my pixel is already useless for anything except charging. Somehow the data connection is broken.

I hope the update still lets me charge..

This new feature fills me with foreboding.

I really miss the days phones came with covers for the USB ports. They were annoying as hell due to my lack of finger nails, but damn the port stayed spotless. Every phone I've had lately the usb port gets so full of dust and crap chargers stopped working properly unless I fucked around and balanced it just perfectly.

Glad to see a big push for security updates directly from Google here, any further details on how this will be implemented and if device manufacturers will screw it up?

Any hope for getting native Graphics API on Android?

Or is it too much to ask and so each native app shall reinvent the wheel by its own?

12 years and no such basic stuff ...

Is there a way to run Live Caption on a command line?

https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/

What are you trying to use it for exactly, like audio on Linux without Android?

Can they PLEASE get Android Auto to work over bluetooth? I want to wirelessly charge in my car and wirelessly navigate too.

AA will never work over Bluetooth because BT isn't a technology capable of reliably streaming a video stream AA requires.

There is a wifi version though, but due to regulation and unreliable drivers, it's not widely deployed.

Done. https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/267568-google-rolls-out-w...

I imagine there's bandwidth limitations over bluetooth. That's why Android Auto (and I think also Apple Carplay?) use WiFi.

Still no way to block network access to an app

Good to see even stronger push for Vulkan. Now the main remaining offenders who still refuse to support it are:

* MS (Xbox)

* Sony (PlayStation)

* Apple (iOS, macOS).

even old google pixel 1 (2016) got android 10!

and there seems to be a re-spin already:

https://developers.google.com/android/images#marlin

The only thing I want in Android next is native call blocking similar to Hiya but integrated. They did a good job with my last request of being able to turn off all notifications. Happy Android user (except when voice assist fucks up then I'm all rage)

(Edit Ok and iPhone like messaging)

Pixel 3 integrates call screening very tightly, which is not quite the same thing, but is in many ways better.

i feel odd about this timing.. why not release it with new pixel phones (like apple does), or there is no new software gimmicky on new pixel phones?

anyways started downloading this for pixel 3a, thanks google!

Sitting happy on a Pixel 1 from 2016. Android gets better and better.

Goddamnit. I just released a on-device speech-to-text app lol.

Interesting. Some of these improvements are great, others are more of a mixed bag. To point out some of the latter:

> heif support

A shame they didn't put their weight behind avif for this one. Maybe there are some "lobbies" at play?

> Live caption

I love it for accessibility. I loathe it for privacy. Local, self-hosted, or bust. Same for Live Transcribe. Awesome and scary.

> Family link

It was about time google shared a tiny bit of the data it has on us, so that we can put it for good use. Of course, this really shows the level of control and insight Google has on us.

> Smart Reply

Some commenters here wrote that this was done locally. I would like some source on this (is training also done locally? Nothing is sent back?). If so, this might be interesting. Otherwise, that's plain scary.

> Keep your data private with more controls

More control is great, but that's still not enough. The app may refuse to launch if denied a permission, we would need an option to "lie" about it. "ad retargeting and personalization", from the screenshot, sounds like preventing apps (or maybe just asking) to use the advertizing ID for such purposes. Of course, they can still do it with everything else.

> Get security updates faster

Everyday Android strays further from the GPL. The way forward should be to help manufacturers play nice (use a few persons full-time for support, promote "mainline" devices to the public as the ones that will always receive updates). I haven't looked into the details, but this sounds like furthering their "trebble" HAL to run (and update) closed-source blobs on an outdated kernel (but who cares, right? because they put less and less stuff in the GPL'ed kernel).

---

My apologies if that reads like a rant. The level of control Google has on our (digital) lives is downright horrifying. I'm honestly pulling all my weight behind free software alternatives to google, both donating and contributing, but that's not nearly enough, as the vast majority of people simply don't care. You know what they say about putting all of your eggs into the same basket? One that will not hesitate to blackmail you to get them back, and maybe taste one or two. And now, how about putting yourself into that basket, for good measure?

I'm quite interested in alternatives such as postmarketos, pinephone, librem 5, plasma mobile, ubports, lineageos, replicant, mycroft, mozilla voice, firefox, peertube, nextcloud, collabora online, openstreetmap, Matrix, and countless others. Most projects lack manpower and funding, unfortunately. Yet most of the ones I quoted are quite likely to succeed, IMO.

> Live caption

>I love it for accessibility. I loathe it for privacy. Local, self-hosted, or bust. Same for Live Transcribe. Awesome and scary.

Uhhmm... Live Caption is running on-device speech recognition model. So it's local only.

>Smart Reply

>Some commenters here wrote that this was done locally. I would like some source on this (is training also done locally? Nothing is sent back?). If so, this might be interesting. Otherwise, that's plain scary.

No, the model is built ahead of time from other sources then downloaded and applied locally. Data isn't sent anywhere.

>Everyday Android strays further from the GPL. The way forward should be to help manufacturers play nice (use a few persons full-time for support, promote "mainline" devices to the public as the ones that will always receive updates). I haven't looked into the details, but this sounds like furthering their "trebble" HAL to run (and update) closed-source blobs on an outdated kernel (but who cares, right? because they put less and less stuff in the GPL'ed kernel).

It didn't work for last 15 years, why do you think it'll suddenly start working now?

This update just bricked my Pixel - are Google even testing these things?

I guess they ran out of new feature ideas ... and release names.

They announced the release name thing a week ago:

https://www.blog.google/products/android/evolving-android-br...

Mobile phones at this point are mature technology (really hard to improve upon).

Wow, the bar at the bottom is a rip-off of iOS

That's equally absurd that a horizontal bar is a rip-off and that Google ripped it off. I've been running my Samsung with only gestures for months now, I can't see a reason to need something like that.

iOS navigation gestures are suspiciously similar to the gestures on the Palm Pre.

iOS and Android ripping each others' good ideas off is good for us. =)

Which bar?

> With Android 10, you’re in control of your privacy.

With privacy being the latest buzzword in the tech industry and all this news about privacy blunders I keep seeing, For Google to market something like this for Android makes you wonder what other nefarious features that have been added to Android that they didn't tell you about.

In terms of privacy, Android 10 instead screams "Upgrade and lose control of your privacy".

Actually there are a number of new privacy-enhancing features in this release. Probably the most prominent is that it will help you choose which apps should be able to get location information in the background. Google obviously has a tricky relationship with privacy, but as far as I know Android 10 is strictly better in that regard.

Entirely agree. We should educate people that privacy is not something a company can "add" to a product or to an ad like Apple and Google claim. Privacy is not just a "feature", this is whole culture, ideological and technological commitment (and sacrifices and extra challenges) you have to do (like at Purism, Mozilla, GNU, etc.) not some marketing buzzword strategy to put on ads to make more sells.

Privacy is not something you can claim, it is something you must prove through 100% full stack open source code and reproducible builds.

Don't be the reason people think 'privacy nuts' are so. A true pivot to privacy would be an exceptionally good thing for Google.

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