Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by nly | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

nly

Anyone else just stopped keeping track of what version of Android their phone is on?

I used to know this stuff, but these days couldn't care less.

View on HN

For real.

For me smartphones are just good enough.

They all take nice pictures, they're all fast enough, they all have a nice screen, nice touch controls and nice UI.

It just doesn't matter as much anymore.

The only thing on here that made me go "oh cool" is the extra dim mode, my 4a really likes scorching my retinas at night.

I am almost with you, but there are some things I appreciate:

a. A better quality of pictures even in less-than-perfectly lit scenes. This matters indoors or in the gloomier months of the year.

b. As you mentioned, an extra dim, or on the other hand extra bright, mode of the screen. Trying to orient yourself in blazing midday sun is a horror with some screens.

c. Fast charging is something I thoroughly enjoy.

The dictation looks really good. The main reason I don't use it currently, even though it would be the most natural way to enter text, is that I want my text to have punctuation without me having to be explicit about it. Looking forward to trying this eventually.

Also, given that they have translation and live transcription of videos, live translation of videos was the next logical step. I hope it's available for all audio sources.

that's a good point - shouldn't it include that out of the box? must be hard to accomplish

I stopped caring after Google axed speech recognition when the screen is off on older devices with an update. Now it is a gamble I have to play because of security updates.

IMO, one of the recent updates brought nice feature to AOSP and therefore all vendors: navigation via swipes.

How are you doing in terms of security patches? On a Nokia 5.3 in the Android One certified program, and it's still on the May 2021 security patch. Go figure.

Well, given I have a pixel, I'm pretty good on patches.

I wish google patched their devices for longer, I'd happilly only update every 5-6 years these days, but security doesn't allow for it.

I've been underwhelmed by recent mobile updates. Maybe I'm missing something but the stuff that sticks out is oh, this rectangle is rounded now. New clock face, okay.

I guess floating notifications, but even that is meh. Facebook had those annoying floating faces 5 years ago

I do remember when they were trying to push touchless gestures (e.g. changing the spotify song by waving your hand) which is a perfect example of a feature that pretty much no one wanted. I imagine google had to pay spotify to include that feature. Needless to say

I've been using Android since Éclair (2.1) and Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) was the last version I was excited about. It's kind of like Word and Excel that were "finished" with v6.0 and v5.0 respectively.

This happens a lot with established systems. I also don't know which Linux kernel versions I'm using. Was relevant once, now most changes don't impact me anymore. They are quite specialized. ...

An exception is Windows updates, which tend to break stuff, reset preferences, and introduce user hostile changes.

So are Android updates. It's like they have the same teacher.

I would like to. But the usability and quality of life improvements on each new version of Android are pretty tangible.

I went back to my trusty old OP3 running Android 9 I think, for a bit, and the overall experience took a hit. Everything felt kinda clunky now coming from Android 11, even though I always loved the clean Android implementation of the OP3.

Early on version updates were significant. Big, important changes adding nice features and noticeably improving the user experience (I remember one Android update where they put a lot of focus on improving the UI responsiveness for example).

Mobile OSes are mature these days, there aren't as many (or any) opportunities for sweeping changes that improve the experience. These days I almost dread Android updates because I don't know what they're going to change for no reason that breaks my user flow.

It becomes even more irrelevant, where UI enhancements have already been implemented by manufacturers to improve their OS. For example, Samsung OneUI with Good Lock (Multistar, Navstar,Notistar, Quickstar, Home Up, Clockface) One Hand Operation+, Sound Assistant etc. I am looking forward to how some of the features will be incorporated/improved in the new version(OneUI 4), rather than the stock features of Android 12.

Since 6.0 there were no real changes in android. It will be better if they just concentrate on fixing bugs instead of claiming something was done.

The updates are pretty boring these days. The top feature showing in the system update screen is "Personalized design that adapts to the color of your wallpaper". yawn

I routinely find my iPhone and iPad are one major version behind. Yep, just checked, I'm still on iOS 14. I don't even care about all the new features.

Yep, when updates stopped being available for my Xperia mini a few years ago. Just checked and it's android 9. Still works great. Still nice and small.

It's nice for Google to announce the new version, but it's up to the carrier to decide if I can have it, I guess. And when.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com