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Comment by nottorp | Hacker News Reader

You change your phone every year?

Because I have this Android phone sitting on my desk for development. When I bought it it was almost as responsive as iPhones (and much cheaper). 4 years later the UI is a lagfest [1].

Meanwhile, my iPhone XS is over 5 years old and almost as responsive as on day one. And I have major version OS updates to blame for the "almost", while the Android one got one major update and was lagfest even before that.

[1] I don't even use it every day, Android development is kind of a side job once in a while.

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> You change your phone every year? Because I have this Android phone sitting on my desk for development. When I bought it it was almost as responsive as iPhones (and much cheaper). 4 years later the UI is a lagfest [1].

As a counter anecdotal evidence: I bought my current Android phone before the pandemic started (that is, more than 4 years ago), use it daily, and it's as responsive now as it was when I first used it. While I don't have any iPhone experience to compare, I feel no lag when using it.

This is the problem many have with android - there’s a massive difference between different handsets

That isn’t the case with an iPhone

I seriously don't understand why performance should degrade so much in time. Do they use crap flash chips in the cheaper models and Android writes so much to them that they run out of scratch space or something?

Your experience seems pretty unique to me.

My family uses Android exclusively (including extended family) and the only cases where performance degraded is with very cheap 10+ y/o phones that could no longer keep up with system updates that now take most of the storage space.

Even those more or less still work after reflashing a leaner FLOSS ROM.

Did you perhaps buy a crapware chinese phone and are receiving bloat/spyware?

Is it because you got used to it? Or maybe it JITs most-used applications? I don't think their experience is unique at all (I also have an Android device for development and it is a lagfest after a couple of years).

> Is it because you got used to it?

No, I know what you mean, I've seen this happen with very cheap (or not cheap but just rubbish/spyware) brands/models that quickly filled the system partition over time with bloatware during updates.

Being cheap, the system partition was already tight on purchase, so the bloat/spyware quickly turns it unusable. The cheaper models tend to have inadequate storage to begin with and install bloat/spyware to subsidize them.

I just don't think it's an "Android" thing, most of those can be revitalized by installing a custom ROM without the spyware (but the crappiest brands are probably not even FLOSS-supported).

What is your device brand+model?

Hmm mine is a Galaxy A21s.

/dev/block/dm-4 3.4G 3.4G 22M 100% /

/dev/fuse 23G 14G 8.2G 64% /storage/emulated

I haven't worked with AOSP in ages, just normal apps. Is root supposed to be 100% full?

Honestly it's been a while for me too and I don't even know how to see the actual device partitions instead of just mounts (e.g. I think in this case your / is just a read-only ramdisk so it doesn't really matter what df says... mine is 100% too.)

I don't even know how this works anymore since I think since Android 10 they use some sort of overlay FS for updates?

I tried installing parted on Termux but it refuses to do so and I have no energy to fight it.

I know it's cliché but... have you tried a factory reset?

> I know it's cliché but... have you tried a factory reset?

I will when it starts to annoy me.

Or I may just get a new phone the next time I need to do Android. This one has 12, they're at 15 now. I may need to be on whatever's the latest on a new project, whenever that comes (not soon).

> Did you perhaps buy a crapware chinese phone and are receiving bloat/spyware?

No, this latest one is a crapware Samsung phone. Doesn't mean I'm not receiving bloat/spyware.

Come to think of it, the Huawei I used before this Samsung degraded less. But I had to abandon them when they got kicked out of google services. Need a full featured phone so I can develop whatever the customer wants.

You're comparing Android (an OS) with iPhone (a phone brand).

90% of people think of a phone as “an iPhone” (various versions) or “an android” (various versions)

Because the hardware isn't so relevant. You have exactly two gatekeepers.

Same here, I have a Samsung XCover Pro bought 4+ years ago that still feels the same as when I got it. The only thing notable is the lack of 5G support, but it's only when I switch between it and my work phone (which has 5G) that I really notice the browser loading times.

I don't. I haven't experienved any lags. My mother has had a samsung m30 for a while and everytime I used it, it was absolutely fine. This was a 4.5 years old phone. I got her a samsung a35 this time.

It's about how many apps you install, my phones get laggy as well, but when I format them they're back to being as responsive as day 1.

It's a development phone. It has whatever I run on it through adb, a few nfc and bluetooth test apps and that's all.

Hm, and it got laggy? Is it running out of space?

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