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Comment by wasyl | Hacker News Reader

As an Android developer I can say that a good chunk of Android-related talks on Google I/O is just not interesting to me, like those about Wear OS, Android Auto, machine learning etc. I don't use them professionally, and it's unlikely that I will in the near future, they're just not that popular (who owns a Wear OS watch?). Other than that there are lots of simple tutorial-like presentations, so it's much faster to just read relevant article/documentation instead of watching a video. The rest talk either talk about stuff that's already been announced _or_ preview-alpha-01-unstable libraries that won't get stable for another year or so. Just feels like a waste of time.

I'd guess WWDC is more exciting because the stuff presented is instantly relevant in the ecosystem, as majority (?) of the iPhone users will get an update and will benefit from the new APIs etc.

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As a fellow Android developer, I feel the same way. Things you mentioned don't interest me either. And now they are (again) pushing large screens, but I'm not convinced Android has any future there (that boat has shipped).

Meanwhile, things that are important to me are not addressed. For example, improving the Play Store relations & process, improving Java (desugaring?) or even just JUnit 5 support....

When I use my phone, I have one basic desire: keep the battery from degrading, so I don't have to buy another device. Yet, Google's 'Adaptive Battery' stuff is not flexible for even the most basic scenarios. And if you're developing, the phone will be plugged in 100% of the time and charged to 100%. I just want to stop charging at 80%, why does this have to be so hard?

So when Google showcases their A/R filter of highly rated chocolates during the keynote, I am not impressed, the phone can't even charge my battery the way I want (and lets not go into Photos app curated "best memories").

> now they are (again) pushing large screens, but I'm not convinced

and even if I _wanted_ to implement support for larger screens, product will push back because the investment is not worth it for the few people who would use it. Same with foldables, good luck explaining why multi-week effort is worth it because some people might have a foldable. Half of _nice stuff_ on I/O _maybe_ will become relevant in couple of years

As an Android dev, I find that I/O often has negative value to the developer, and none to the users.

Anecdote: I tried to implement Paging3. First, the architecture was quite rigid and did not fit the way we handled our data. We spent days modifying the data and every component related to fit Paging. After all that work, we got it to work, only to find a "To do" error when using String IDs as pages as opposed to incrementing an integer.

Also if you had invested time into learning Paging2, you'd have to throw away all that effort with Paging3.

The more recent Material 3 is sexy, but the "easy" tools introduce a lot of ugly imperative boilerplate into my theme code. It smells hacky, as if it was not properly designed for this use case.

So my impression is that I/O is really just there to get alpha/canary testers.

> The more recent Material 3 is sexy, but

It might be sexy, but I can't comprehend how Google can call it _stable_ when it doesn't even specify a text input layout component. Like, do apps not have user input?

> (who owns a Wear OS watch?)

I was gifted a Mobvoi TicWatch 3 GPS and it works well with my Pixel 2. It's my first watch in decades, let alone smart. It's been paramount in my efforts to fight back the gluttony and sedintary lifestyle that snuck in with full-time WFH.

I like the integration with Fit, Maps, and I don't pick my phone up and get distracted along the way just to reply to a few messages. Google Assistant works well. Can take my calls while in the pool with it.

Best gift I didn't know I wanted in a long time.

Your results may vary, I am a simple man.

I've a TicWatch Pro (2018 release I think?) and I absolutely hate it, well thats not true. I hate WearOS on it. The watch itself is lovely, its the software that lets it down, constant lagging, freezing, unresponsive touches etc.. I came across a XDA post on optimising it by disabling animations and removing lots of the bloatware on it, and thats improved its performance a good bit. Compared to my girlfriends Apple Watch though, it feels like I'm using severely outdated tech (Not 4 year old, more like 14 year old)

Have you had the same experience with the Pro 3? I'd be interesting in upgrading if it was better.

There are some videos that do this comparison in a mostly non-scientific manner if you'd be interested to see the performance differences of a snapdragon 4100 to a 2100/3100 [1]. There's even a few videos compare Apples to Mobvois [2]. Again, fairly non-scientific. Was interesting to note that in video [2], the reviewer even goes into depth on how the TW3PG (phew) performs while connected to an iOS device (spoiler alert: he doesn't hate it!).

Since I'm a full Google boy, I couldn't entertain the idea of trying an Apple Watch even if I wanted.

I didn't search far and wide, so I'm sure - as with everything - people can cherry pick reviews one way or the other. These were the first two I found that weren't "IT'S YA BOI WATCHMAN666 COMING AT YOU WITH A SPONSORED VIDEO" when looking.

At this point, I'd maybe wait to see what the official Google Wear OS watch will look and act like - purely because it's an OEM watch for Wear OS, "surely destined for greatness" (lol), but feature-for-feature, ounce-for-ounce, and kwhrs-to-kwhrs, the TicWatch Pro 3 GPS has really impressed me. I was waiting around for the Google Pixel Watch or whatever they'd name it, when I was gifted this one.

The only negative experience I had was Google Assistant (yes, on my watch) wouldn't speak out loud with my Pixel 2XL phone's language was set to English (Canada). I had to set it to English (US) for my watch to speak results to me.

It should also upgrade to WearOS 3 "in the second half of 2022" (no citation on this one)

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zBICoXBbLg - side-by-side comparison to SD4100 vs SD3100/SD2100

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmSarvfv3YY - Feature & Compatibility Comparison, GW3, TW3PG, Apple Watch 6

Best of luck in your travels

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