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Comment by sssparkkk | Hacker News Reader

tl;dr version: having the 'low space' warning on your Android phone results in the rejection of SMS messages. Even when there's actually e.g. >10mb of storage available. The bug has been present since 2009 and appears not to have been fixed yet by Google.

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appears not to have been fixed yet by Google

Or by anyone whining on the bug tracker who say this issue is ruining their life.

I really don't think that the "if you're not happy about a bug, fix it or shut up" mentality in open source projects is very helpful. Obviously solving issues like this is considerably more difficult and time consuming than complaining about them and many people complaining about them don't have the time and/or skills to solve them. However, they are real, existing issues that bother users and not complaining about them will not make them magically go away. This, over time, can lead to the alienation of the users and can seriously hurt the project.

In my opinion this mentality is more helpful than spamming bug tracker with "YOU SUCK FOR NOT FIXING THIS!!111eleven!" which seems especially common with Android's bugs. I even assume that such comments actually hamper fixing of respective bugs.

Just treat it as "+1 I'm affected too". Could be written better, but it at least shows the number of people affected / annoyed by specific bug.

The problem is that nobody from google seems to read these bug reports.

No, the problem is google doesn't make enough money off android to devote more resources to the project. Droid has more technical issues (supporting more platforms) than iPhone but generates less profit. That formula inevitably leads to less development resources and a worse product.

Right, and Symbian is the best mobile platform because Nokia has invested the most 'development resources' in it.

Also if you add all the open source developers of things like the Linux kernel, Android has way more ppl working ot it compared to iOS.

Just the term 'developer resources' shows you know very little about software development.

I think that part of jrockway's point is that at least some of the people complaining on a bug tracker, have the skills to help.

It seemed more like he was trolling to me.

Everyone who complained on this bug paid for Android as a commercial product.

I may be a master Linux debugger, but I'm not about to debug every little appliance/automobile issue I have because there's a bug in it's embedded Linux subsystem.

I never thought I'd see the day when people would use OSS as a defense for a commercial product not getting fixed. Especially when I suspect that the component involved isn't actually open source.

You most definitely didn't buy Android from Google. The OEM bought Android from Google. Then your carrier bought the phone with Android from that OEM. Then you bought the phone from the carrier.

By the time it gets to this point; what's in AOSP and what's on your handset are only very distantly related.

On the other hand, if you are running AOSP on your phone, then you did that all by yourself after cloning it from their public git repository.

Remember, Google is not to blame for bugs in Android. Your carrier is. (And most of the time, they're the ones who break it. This case is probably something that can be solved by Google, but apparently the OEMs and carriers are not prioritizing it above adding NASCAR apps and changing all the colors. And that is who is getting your money.)

So, you have to be able to fix bugs in Android if you want to use it? I somehow doubt that Google wants to sell Android phones only to the 20 million developers in the world who could (theoretically) fix bugs.

Well, they don't sell Android phones. The carriers do. Google benefits from you doing Google searches on the phones, which is unaffected by this.

Basically, Google has no incentive to fix this bug, but the people complaining about it do. So they should do the fixing if they actually want it fixed.

(Technically, the OEM or carriers should fix this bug, and they are probably working on it Behind The Scenes.)

I know that Google doesn’t sell phones and you know very well that I know that. Don’t patronize me.

Your opinion seems to truly be that you can expect no reliable help from Google when you encounter a bug in Android which is pretty mind-blowing to me. I don’t think that Google is quiet so deaf.

This makes sense to me. The carriers are supposed to be giving you support. It's like the Windows that comes bundled with your laptop; you can't call Microsoft for support, you have to call the OEM. Same for Android phones.

Android development is done only by Google. When they're ready, they release a new version along with its source code.

Have you tried sending them a patch? They accept them.

There are also a number of third-party Android distributions (CyanogenMod, etc.) that accept patches and do nightly releases.

If there is a bug in Android, and it is "ruining your life", it's your fault for not fixing it.

It is a commercial product that someone has paid for. Google (or one of the handset manufacturers) should fix it. Just because it is open source, does not mean users have the responsibility to fix bugs.

What about people whining about the people whining? You could fix the bug and shut everyone up!

I get the low space message with what seems like a fairly limited number of apps installed, caches cleared and as much as possible pushed to SD ... what is the actual capacity there? HTC Incredible in my case ...

This app is great if you're rooted. https://market.android.com/details?id=com.aac.cachemate.demo... Otherwise, I find AppBrain great to be able to easily see space usage and move stuff to SD. I have a Samsung Galaxy Spica (not S, a european phone), and the limit is at about 15 MB when I get warnings. That's hundreds of SMSes... Then again, the Gmail cache eats MBs like a dog eats dogfood: easily 3MB.

AFAIK, HTC Incredible has a bug that makes this warning appear even if you have 800MB+ of free space. The joy of forks… http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/is-your-droid-incredible-lo...

Similar situation here, I recently freed up several mb's as well; but nonetheless started to receive the low space notification again a few days later (not having installed anything in the meantime).

The fact that this subsequently results in missed SMS messages is inexcusable IMO.

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