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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

Because using stock Android is like the phone version of year of Linux Desktop.

It is so ugly from UI/UX perspective, that almost everyone ends up installing a theme anyway.

Then Google only does the minimum in features, and their software is crap.

For many years, if you wanted proper music software, Samsung phones with their custom real time audio SDK were the only option on Android ecosystem.

Same applies to the quality of Vulkan drivers.

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I may be in a minority here but that simple UI/UX design is the one of the main features that gravitate me towards stock android. I like the simplicity of that UI and all other themes look like chaos on my screen (that's just me). One point that I agree on is Google should definitely add useful features in their stock android. The sweet point is something like Oneplus's OxygenOS. It is close to stock android with added features and some UI tweaks (though they're going off that route lately). But, from UI perspective I think it is atleast top 2 for me (other one being OxygenOS).

I don't think you're in minority. Parent is one of the few people I've heard to prefer something else over stock.

I guess you need to spend more time away from FOSS friendly bubble.

Stock Android UI is ugly? Now that's a first.

I've harbored the suspicion those who prefer "theming" their phones are not detail oriented. That or they're fine with the trade-offs.

For example I've always noticed inconsistencies and jankiness with anything that's not close to stock Android. Be it Samsung's TouchWiz or others, all are like a cheap veneer of dross over stock Android. They all just feel so tacky.

Samsung TouchWiz has been dead for several years now, their OneUI is in what, third iteration now? From aesthetic and usability point, it is indeed nicer than stock android.

i suppose thats a matter of taste .. i moved from stock android to s20+, and i agree its not as bad as previous samsung touchwiz era :)

but then i declined most of the samsung apps - google already has all my data and i dont want to share it with samsung on top of that, and then samsung also included third party services such as a dialer app which i didn't use because of the (lack of) privacy policy

overall i'm looking forward to getting back to stock android!

I prefer Samsung apps over Google's for the simple reason that they do not insist on uploading my stuff anywhere.

E.g. Google Photos had two choices for the cloud service: start uploading now or upload later (and nagging meanwhile). There's no option for not interested, don't bother me anymore. Samsung Gallery asks for OneDrive once, but is fine with declining and not bothering me anymore.

Yes, the dialer does use third party service for screening the calls; it asked you about it, and when you declined, it respected your choice (I've declined as well).

Yes, quite ugly full of eye burning white

There's a dark mode in the last 2? 3? versions? The main problem with Android wrt visual jank is now that lockscreen doesn't respect the night light, that night light fades in after unlock instead of being on immediately and that the automatic brightness has feedback loops that make brightness spike when display turns on or changes to white content (sensor detects phone light as ambient and turns up the brightness, over and over).

> It is so ugly from UI/UX perspective, that almost everyone ends up installing a theme anyway.

Sources? Because I see no substantial difference and I deliberately bought phone with stock Android as it has just Google garbage, rather than both Google garbage and phone manufacturer garbage.

The anecdote data of everyone I know that keeps buying devices like Samsung, Huawei and Xiomi.

Xiaomi sells also devices with stock Android, the same goes likely for other mentioned companies

They do sell such devices yeah, yet what most people buy make use of MIUI, likewise for the other vendors.

Do you seriously belive a xiaomi phone isn't siphoning off your data to other servers than the usual google servers?

So it's probably more accurately described as stock-appearing Android ..

Most "tech" youtube reviewers often say that an Android customization is good because it is minimalist and is close to stock Android. It is often praised also because it adds only a few features that stock Android doesn´t have. But over the years these missing features have often been integrated.

I use an iPhone, but in my opinion the stock Android looks and feels much better than the launchers that manufacturers put on. Especially the latest versions of Android look great.

What does Samsung audio do better than other phones? I still own a mp3 player because not even those shitty beats phones did a close to clear sound experience.

Ps: i never used a theme. All i want is stock android o.O

Samsung Pro Audio used to be the only low-latency audio API on Android devices. AFAIK it was a very thin wrapper over JACK. Of course, using it often crashed the app, and then Samsung first declared it deprecated and then didn't port it to 64-bit runtime.

Because eventually AAudio was created, by the time 64 bit Android started to matter.

Is AAudio really low latency, or "low latency" in the same sense as low latency modes in Android Audio and OpenSL ES? It's surprisingly difficult to find actual numbers that would compare between these three.

In the sense that OpenSL is out of the game, and AAudio is good enough for Samsung to drop their Audio SDK.

Now if you compare it with iOS, it still isn't going to win the race, neither in ms nor in tooling.

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2021/03/high-perfo...

"Good enough for Samsung" is very, very low bar.

It could have been removed too because app developers didn't use it, because they couldn't make it stable or because they couldn't make it work together with mic permissions.

Anyway, I'm interested in numbers, and specifically whether switching from Android Audio or OpenSL to AAudio brings any significant improvement.

What the hell is Android Audio?

I suggest you to educate yourself in Android audio subsytems.

It's a name that's sometimes used for AudioTrack, AudioRecord and related classes under android.media. Does that collection have an official name? I would also suggest that you learn some manners.

Well, as someone with Android development experience I never saw it mentioned like that anywhere.

I guess this means you don't have any idea about the actual latency difference. It's okay to not know things, you don't have to be a jerk about it.

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