Android 11 | Hacker News Reader

Android 11

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61 pointsloyukfai62 comments

The change I like the most is the permission change:

"If you haven't used an app in a while, you may not want it to keep accessing your data. So Android will reset permissions for your unused apps. You can always turn permissions back on."

"Give one-time permissions to apps that need your mic, camera or location. The next time the app needs access, it must ask for permission again."

I wonder if that applies to Google's own apps

Fat chance.

It does. Here is Maps + Location [0]. And here is Google Home + Mic [1]. I just picked 2 random google services that seemed like they would rely on location (Maps) and microphone (Home).

[0] https://i.imgur.com/RSN239u.png

[1] https://i.imgur.com/x5vCg5W.png

But do those permissions get revoked automatically if you don't use the apps for a while? (the "permissions auto-reset" feature)

> "Give one-time permissions to apps that need your mic, camera or location. The next time the app needs access, it must ask for permission again."

I use Bouncer [1] for that. Been using it for many years.

Although it doesn't revoke permanent permission after a while of non-usage, I'd argue it'd be better to revoke the permission if the permission itself (for that specific app) hasn't been granted for a while.

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

Zuck probably sweating right now

As an operating system Android is continuing to get a little more modular, allowing more "user observable functionality" to be updated independent of an OS version upgrade (or waiting on a carrier or OEM to approve such an upgrade). Unfortunately, even more of capability of "Android" is being delivered by the very-closed-source Google Mobile Service (GMS) while the feature set of AOSP is dwindling to being "mere phone without the smarts." At this point what we call Android is about as closed source as Apple's iOS. It's too bad the tribes and factions wanting to build a truly open Linux phone can't bury the hatchet and rally behind a single implementation.

> At this point what we call Android is about as closed source as Apple's iOS.

On iOS you can’t side-load apps. You can only run native code if it has been manually approved by Apple and acquired via their special App Store. There are a handful of exceptions but they have their own limitations.

Android is at worst as closed as Windows, but not more. Some perspective is called for.

Side-loading on iOS is possible: https://www.notebookcheck.net/You-can-now-sideload-unverifie...

And it's always been possible if you have a developer account (and I might be wrong, because I quit mobile development to focus on cloud but I think you don't even need a paid developer account to build and load an app from source code anymore -- but I could be wrong).

Subject to ridiculous restrictions, like an app only lasting 7 days before being disabled.

The OP is talking about Android becoming closed "source". Not about it becoming a closed ecosystem.

GMS however, even though the code is closed, has an open interface. This allows projects such as MicroG and HMS to replicate the functionality of GMS almost to a T, and makes it in practice very possible to have a modern Android phone running a fully open OS and compatible with the vast majority of apps.

I agree it's better than nothing (iOS), but it's correct what OP wrote: important parts of Android are now as closed source as iOS.

True, but these important parts largely have open source interpretations. There's no real reason for GMS to be more Android than microG.

But it means a group of volunteers (which fortunately exists, I depend on them for my phones) needs to keep tracking and duplicating an ever expanding component of Android, without have any say in the direction of its development. It's getting to be more Wine than Windows at this point.

It's problematic at minimum.

That is true.

/e/ uses an open implementation of GMS, called microG. You can combine this with an easily self-serviceable smartphone such as Fairphone 3. It just recently got an update to Android 10.

>At this point what we call Android is about as closed source as Apple's iOS.

Meh. Load LineageOS or GrapheneOS onto a phone without Google Apps, you won't get the same map functionality or on-device voice-to-text. But it's still android and 100% open source.

It sucks they are adding cool stuff to the GApps side, but pretending like this makes the OS as closed-source as iOS is absurd.

Desktop mode. Please, desktop mode already. These devices have as much or more ram and logical processors than my last office computer. Office tasks have been more than capable to be performed on such a device. No third party hack, but native and official support for desktop mode.

Also, i am so tired of renting phones - give us the root account by default. If i would buy a new device, i will want to gain control of it.

Didn’t Samsung offer desktop mode at one point? I think it got canned because no one used it, sadly.

I think it's still supported, as far any software Samsung releases can be counted as "supported" in the first place.

No, their "DeX" solution is still around. It's recently expanded to being capable of being used over both USB and Miracast

They had to can the part of it that would let you boot an Ubuntu image though, due to restrictions in Android 10.

Samsung still does it, but they are a third party thing, support is not native. Some apps just don't work well as a window.

Such a thing implies you have to have a capable monitor and a bluetooth mice/kbd. Adoption will take significant time, but it will come either from current OSes or a newcomer. Remember how Nokia was the definition of reality and Apple came with their smartphone and turned the industry around overnight? Same thing will happen once someone introduces a true universal and responsive device that can seamlessly adapt to all kinds of use cases. It's just a question of when.

> It's just a question of when.

I’m a lot more sceptical. I’m a tech nerd through and through and I can’t really see why I’d want a truly responsive device like that. The things I do on both phone and computer (email, messaging, maps, etc) are on the cloud so it’s easy to switch devices. The stuff that’s more difficult to move (my coding setup) isn’t something I ever use on mobile. I can see the financial argument in favour of it but a laptop style case with monitor, keyboard and trackpad probably wouldn’t ever be that much cheaper than a Chromebook or the like.

Most of the things one does on a laptop - like media consumption, general browsing, etc. can be done on a smartphone. Why should you be forced to switch devices if all you want is the convenience of a monitor, keyboard, and a windowing environment?

It has nothing to do with the financial side of it, it's all about convergence and finally exposing the full capabilities a such a device. Today's smartphones run full desktop OS under the hood, but they are just artificially crippled behind a platform designed to deliver ads.

Whether you will use your smartphone or laptop/pc for a particular task should be a matter of whether the hardware setup (mobile vs. full desktop) can handle it or not, not if it's functionally possible at all.

> Why should you be forced to switch devices if all you want is the convenience of a monitor, keyboard, and a windowing environment?

I don’t think you should be forced to but the things you just listed totally change the way you view and interact with a device, so switching to a different device isn’t really all that different an experience than docking the one you’re currently on.

It’s not that it can’t be done, or shouldn’t be done, but to me the benefits feel very minor. If I’m reading an email on my phone and want to answer on my laptop it’s already exceedingly easy to do so. Docking a device instead of using a different one doesn’t really change that equation.

Samsung DeX, Huawei EMUI desktop. Both let you to use Android in desktop mode (if you own any of those android devices)

I think he wants the APIs that would allow for a good desktop (mouse & keyboard) experience too.

They do.

Chromebooks give you access to apps in a Desktop environment at least.

> Desktop mode. Please, desktop mode already.

> If i would buy a new device, i will want to gain control of it.

You should be interested in GNU/Linux phones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinephone and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5.

(see comments in another discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24411568)

Option one: I'm growing old and crazy.

Option two: all these features encourage people to rely on their phone to manage their notifications/conversations instead of keeping their distractions at a minimum - humanly manageable level.

It can be an extra line of defense. When I had a Pebble I liked that important things (to me) could get through to the watch, the rest was nicely waiting on the phone for when took the time.

All those screenshots look so busy to me, like there's so much going on in these people's lives that they struggle to keep up. I want the distraction device that sits in my pocket to simplify my life, not expose and amplify all the small interruptions as if they _need_ to be taken care of RIGHT NOW or else.

"you can pin conversations so they always appear on top of other apps and screens. Bubbles keep the conversation going—while you stay focused on whatever else you’re doing. Access the chat anytime or anywhere." — Yo dawg, I heard you like distractions...

It's not a critique on Android 11 per se. Just a general aimless rant about the direction we're going with our technological lives.

Yeah, I was wondering if I was going crazy. Even the very first screen was kinda giving me a headache. It was supposed to be exhibiting elegance and simplicity.

But I know enough from a decade of using Android to see all kinds of segments of the interface that have their own special context behaviors and features, with new menu layers and questions and assumptions that I will need to train myself to figure out.

"Bubbles keep the conversation going—while you stay focused on whatever else you’re doing."

Does it get more oxymoronic than this?

It's an (awkward) user friendly spin on what's ultimately a security update.

Previously, if an app like FB wanted a bubble, they'd draw a screen overlay via `WindowManager`. That's the same API often misused to draw invisible layouts over your banking app. Providing a purpose built bubbles API lets Android close the door on the riskier API.

Think of it this way:

1) Now, if you do like bubbles - At least it's all in one bubble rather than multiple apps doing their own thing.

2) If you don't like bubbles - you can disable them all at once.

Without a major dessert name these releases just feel smaller and not as noticeable. My Pixel upgraded this morning to 11 and just another day.

What's the easiest way to replicate the scroll animation they are doing? (the big with the big green circle expanding in height)

I've looked at their source, looks to be a <div> which upon scroll updates the --root-vars (whcih is then used for the transform/scale css ruules)

    --component-position: 0px;
    --shape-position: 714px;
    --image-height: 712px;
    --offset-image-wrapper: 1248px;
    --offset-middle-image-value: 219.667;
    --scroll-position: 530px;
    --opacity-value: 0.507736;

Unfortunately the actual implementation is all hidden in the common.min.js behind the data-android-component-config

{'small': {'easeShape': 0.005}, 'medium': {'easeShape': 0.002}}

I'm just curious if there's any libraries which handle all the breakpoints,animations, style updates without needing to reinvite. For something so face-value trivial, the Google implementation sure has a lot of edge cases I can see they handle in their "setAnimations_" code.

The biggest announcement here seems to be the "Security updates from Google Play"

I don't know if that means Samsung doesn't get to decide when you get updates or if it means "we're delaying security updates from being pushed to AOSP so you better have Google Services installed if you want your vulnerabilities patched in a timely fashion"

If you click on the link it says *for android One devices

which was already the case since ... android 8?

so i'm very confused

I think what's new is that the updates are delivered via the Google Play store rather than as a system update, meaning they don't require rebooting the phone.

It's referring to Project Mainline.

Just as Project Treble separated out the low level device drivers (CPU, modem, camera, etc.) provided by the hardware manufacturers from the OS itself and allowed for monthly Security Updates that didn't require an entire OS update, Project Mainline is separating out almost everything in user space from the lower level parts of the OS so that the former can be updated directly from Google Play rather than from that monthly Security Update.

If you go to Settings->Security, you'll see both "Security update" and "Google Play system update" as two separate entries and corresponding dates, reflecting that.

Edited to add: Project mainline was originally released in Android 10 and there were 8 modules that could be updated via Google Play, Android 11 expanded that by adding 12 more modules for a total of 20.

Does anyone know what efforts Android developers specifically take to address Android's performance on the multitude of low-end Android devices?

I think (?) most people experience Android on low-end / underpowered devices and I wonder whether with these upgrades those devices are left behind.

Those devices never get upgraded to new Android versions so that's not something Android devs worry about. Hardware manufacturers just have to beef up the next generation of low end phones!

(Cue KaiOS eating away all the low end market.)

I'll leave my anecdote until someone knowledgeable shows up. I don't they they've been doing nearly enough. I've been using a cheap Asus (MSM8916 + 2 GiB RAM) for about 4.5 years and have tried every version of Android from 5 through 10 (most of them via CyanogenMod / LineageOS). I always trim down the firmware on my devices as much as possible without bricking it, and still one feels the phone getting slower and slower with every version increment. 7 is the last one more or less usable on this kind of hardware, and 10 really struggles to run and leaves very little RAM for applications to use.

So, even if my vendor didn't stop releasing updates so soon, a less patient user would've tossed the phone right after Nougat was released.

(BTW, fuck you Asus, I'll never buy from you again)

It’s more that buying a high-end Android phone is kind of pointless. As a dev you want to target the largest possible customer base. In practice this means developing with a low-end phone and an older OS version in mind. You could have your app adapt to higher-end phones or newer OS versions with things like optional features, but in reality the market share of those devices is too low to be worth the investment.

In the end, users with high-end Android phones will mainly be running apps that are not designed to take full advantage of the capabilities of the device.

Mmmm I’m not sure if that is always the case. Anecdote: I live in Australia (where probably the share of higher end devices is higher than other countries) and I’ve seen a trend where some Android apps that are made for the Australian market, are only available to higher end devices and listed as incompatible with everything else. In some extreme cases, they are also restricted to one single brand i.e. only latest generation, high-end Samsung models would be supported. I haven’t used Android for more than a year so I’m really struggling to remember what apps did that, if I remember I will reply to this comment later.

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24410575

Upgraded my Pixel 2 today. Amazingly, battery life seems much better.

If you can't record calls with that OS using 3rd party app then it is a deal breaker. That's why I am stuck with early 9 and won't upgrade.

"Built-in screen recording. Finally." -- lol.

Also important: Record with sound from your mic, your device or both.

From a plethora of choice to a duopoly, spyware vs overpriced fragile hardware. Lame

This is a pretty weak update.

Fiddling with quite minor things, while breaking the ability to backup your device even more. Backup is a major black eye in the Android ecosystem for regular users.

Android takes care of your contacts, passwords, wifi settings, browser settings, photos, etc. It requires a Google account but it's astonishing how quickly you can set up a new phone by simply logging into your Google account.

What's missing is better media management for third party apps like WhatsApp and Telegram so important photos and videos are backed up while unimportant ones are ignored and even discarded regularly. Every single family member's phone I've had to deal with has had this issue ("why is my phone out of storage when I barely have any apps installed?!" Meanwhile, WhatsApp is storing 20GB of funny videos).

> Android takes care of your contacts

Google contacts.

, passwords,

Google app passwords.

> wifi settings,

Because you can't not use Google's app for it.

> browser settings,

Google Chrome settings.

> photos,

Google photos.

> etc.

(As long as it's in a Google app.)

> it's astonishing how quickly you can set up a new phone by simply logging into your Google account.

After ten years or so of using Android I finally bit the bullet and enabled Google backups to transfer stuff to my new phone a few months back, and I was astonished at how fucking nothing gets backed up that isn't already in a Google cloud synced app. What's the point? Every single other app I had to manually figure out how to transfer and restore, because all Google doing is to "helpfully" prevent me from backing up my data for "security" reasons.

In my experience a lot of apps back up their data to Google when you enable the Google backup setting. When I transferred to my new phone I had to reconfigure some security apps, but a lot of settings and data was automatically transferred from my old phone through the backup mechanism.

What's missing is alternate backup destinations. I'd like to see the option to backup applications to any cloud provider rather than specifically Google.

Meanwhile, switching to a new Iphone is basically like transfering it to a brand new phone. Quite fascinating.

I find their "Junk files" feature in the new Files app very useful for clearing up space:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

I agree that the Whatsapp photo backup issue is fairly pressing on lots of devices - my partner's phone runs low on storage all the time, and when I clean it out for her it's always because I find that her Whatsapp group chats are eating ten gigs of storage with videos and photos she doesn't care about. But dumping them all is also pretty problematic because she works on the assumption that the ones she cares about will be there.

The big problem is game data backup. The market has bluntly rejected Google's opt in system, and something needs to be done.

Users care far more about the stuff that isn't backed up in Android, not the stuff that is. And far too much backup is hidden behind opt-ins that regular users just skip during backup. It needs to be on by default and opt out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com