Android and Wear OS are getting a redesign
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More than 10 years later, shopping for an Android phone with the latest OS is a nightmare. Android leadership keeps on getting shuffled around, Google changes priorities every 6 months it seems. Despite Apple flubbing the ball on AI, at least I know that the phone will be supported for at least 4 years.
They will need to improve on their ecosystem commitments if they'd like people like me to switch back.
Google doesn't control what other vendors do; that's the beauty of open source. (You can argue how open Android really is these days but it's still more open than iOS.)
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/01/google-pixel-4as-rui...
https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/15701861
Last time Apple pushed a battery-related software update that avoided shutdowns (good), people had to sue them to get a compensation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batterygate
And let's be honest, inconveniencing me is hardly acceptable, even if the company makes a token effort to put things back to before they inconvenienced me.
Hell, my car has a stupid system that shakes motor mounts apart and burns through ignition coils and spark plugs. Honda won't admit fault because, among other things, it was a fuel-saving boondoggle and they won't back down from lying to customers if it means stepping into the path of an oncoming EPA train.
I'd argue that Android is technically more open than iOS but in practice it isn't. Google have dark pattern and elaborated ways to get Android user to stay in the 'walled Google play service garden'.
Like when you install a third party store and Google play protect warns you it may be insecure.
Or having to press install for every app installed outside of the store, over and over.
The fact you can't get push notification without enabling the Google play services, which is the core framework of the Google data collection happening on every Android.
Every product is going to have issues in one form or another. The question is which issues affect your personal use of the product. I'm too new to Pixel to comment on whether switching to it is a good or a bad thing in my case, but I have been happy with the trade-offs so far. Ironically, one of the reasons why I went with a Pixel was to avoid much of the Google software ecosystem.
All of the above either don't exist on iOS or only exists in the EU.
Personally I've never had issues with Samsung modems and I am honestly confused what people are doing with their phones that require high power CPUs.
Reflashing another os ? What issue does it solves ? It's less secure, they still need the Google play services to push notifications.
Grapheneos may be a bit better but it locks you to only one Android device : pixel. They are overpriced, have quality control issue and run poorly.
900€ for a pixel 9 that use Samsung hardware, overheat when I can get a s25 for the same price, that funnily enough don't use Samsung hardware but Qualcomm :)
I believe 900€ is enough even for an iphone that will run much better than pixel.
> Personally I've never had issues with Samsung modems and I am honestly confused what people are doing with their phones that require high power CPUs.
I couldn't care less too about CPU power, but cpu energy usage and the phone being able to make and receive call is what's been the issue with pixel since the 6.
Many would argue that that kind of fragmentation is also its biggest downfall.
Not a problem with a pixel
> More than 10 years later, shopping for an Android phone with the latest OS is a nightmare
Not a problem with a pixel
> They will need to improve on their ecosystem commitments
Not a problem with a pixel
2021 https://www.vice.com/en/article/google-pixel-bug-prevented-u...
2022 https://old.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/y039zn/i_compi...
2023 https://www.androidauthority.com/psa-google-pixel-911-emerge...
2024 https://old.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/1ano09x/pixel_...
Beware though that the Pixel 9a still uses the old modem and an optical fingerprint reader.
Until the 9a prices drop it probably doesn't make sense to get a 9a anyway, since the 9 is barely more expensive on a discount.
And no, it's not comparable with CD drives at all, those are obsolete and gone even from desktops where space is not really a concern. It's more like complaining about the Macbook Pro 2016 not having USB-A ports. And Apple actually put those back, and I don't need to explain why they are incentivized to not do the same for headphones.
It's a bad alternative to something that wasn't a problem except it took up space and people still talk about it because there's still a need for something better
If not, then that is why I'm not shifting off of them.
I use my built-in headphone jack daily and would buy another phone if it went out.
Comparisons with CD drives I see here are absurd, those drives actually take up a massive amount of space, are obsolete and used by almost no one anymore. Meanwhile headphone jacks are still very widely used. To the people saying "just use an adapter" I would suggest trying your own advice every day for a month, you'll see why it's not comparable.
And saying the vast majority of people don't use wired headphones when wired headphones are actively made inconvenient and incompatible is not a very convincing argument.
The removal was simply unnecessary, comes with no noticeable upside in return and is suspiciously convenient for those companies considering they also sell wireless headphones as the solution.
If so many people are still complaining about it, perhaps it's not because they're dumb but because there is still a real need for it.
> not a very convincing argument
I still believe it either way, but you don't have to.
> If so many people are still complaining about it
I don't think they are, at least not so many relative to the majority of phone users in the world. Tech savvy users are a rounding error in the grand scheme of things.
Surely this is offset by a) having to charge it and b) not being able to replace the battery when it dies
Not to mention a cable can be debugged easily; i don't even know which device my bluetooth headphones is connected to let alone why it's not working as expected.
The reason the jack is gone is that the vast majority of people use wireless buds or headphones. It's the smartphone equivalent of complaining that MacBooks do not have DVD drives anymore.
(I like the stereo jack, but I have accepted that I'm a small minority.)
But, I also don't generally expect apple to make consumer-friendly decisions. The headphone jack invokes about 1/100th the rage that using the app store does.
If you buy something from some other random manufacturer that is using the open source android code then yes you are going to have a different experience since they want to add their "special touch" which invariably is shite.
It's 4 (mid) to 7 years (flagship) for Samsung.
https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-android-updates-114...
I've been using a Moto X4 (8 years old!) with LineageOS for 6-7 years. I'll probably get an open box (for a discount) Pixel soon, and probably put GrapheneOS on it.
I used to have a gear sport, it was fine, held charge for 2-3 days, had more sensors, and was all around a good device, but all watches after were a massive step down, even if they moved from tizen to wear os.
I'll give wearables one more try if someone has a good device to recommend, but as it stands I'd prefer to just spend the extra second to pull out my phone, and for health metrics, wear a more discrete and longer battery life device.
It's not just their own apps that need updating, it's everyone else's, too. Most of which will never happen, so users are stuck in a hodgepodge of several generations of different design paradigms.
Material was fine. So was Material 2. So was Material 3. So is Material 3 Expressive, I guess. Just stick with something!
I've used Android since version 2.3, it was far ahead for a while but got unbearably annoying. I'm not using iOS because of Apple but because of Google.
Both Android and iOS still lag behind Windows Phone 8.1 in UX despite it being dead for 8 years now, and sadly that likely will never change. Too bad Microsoft didn't learn from it either.
I thought it was a joke. Consistency in Windows is long gone.
EDIT: also, I have to say as someone who did a lot of app dev on both iOS and android, I really appreciate the design system that google came up with in terms of codifying and simplifying especially the colors. They came up with a system that was able to distill your themes to something like 6 colors total (in the beginning, things have grown since) and that effectively served a vast majority of use cases and UI paradigms. And the way they categorized them made it really simple as an app dev to understand how and when to use them (also their grid was a much more 'engineering' way to think about things, and so that clicked with me as well)
I feel I'm missing something. Hasn't customizing the quick settings been possible forever?
In fact the only thing preventing me from having the single tap Do Not Disturb in the quick settings is that these same UX people removed the option in the latest version of Android, and buried it in a "Modes" menu for no reason at all.
Super happy to have that back, but good grief, trying to pitch a rollback as an innovative new feature is pretty audacious.
My home page is a calendar that takes up 75% of the screen, and two rows of icons below.
"We presume you don't like clocks but, we asked Gemini and the majority loves it". Sincerely, your Google Design Team
From square icons and sharp Roboto to blobby amoeba-shaped designs and rounded fonts.
Also, Chile mentioned!
My canonical example is deleting message threads out of iOS Messages app. For every row in the list you need to swipe allll the way over to the left, wait for the stupid animation, click delete, wait for the stupid animation, click the confirm. Maybe it would improve if the component was responsive during its animation cycle. But ugh.
"Thank you for your feedback. We see that you don't like disabling features so disabling will be disabled in the next version" Cheers, Google (torture) UI Team
I continue to strongly prefer the Pebble UI after all these years. It just does a much better job with the basics like notifications and alarms. it's not even close.
I'll take cold, basic, and data-full interfaces instead of the wasted real estate in the era of CSS-ifying every user interaction to death.
but i just switched to my go-to launcher, Nova. I've used it quite a bit over the last years.
Haven't tried it, because the Pixel Launcher is fine for me (but yes, I'm in camp "they should make the search bar removable.)
My biggest issue with Google is they aren't convicted in anything they do. They just guess, or try 5 different things, and see what sticks. That makes it a mess for users, as the UX constantly changes.
I also can't understand why Google decided a circular face made sense for Wear. It's good for analogue watches, and garbage for everything else. Try reading a message where words are either cut off, or you're stuck basically using a square inside the circle. It makes no sense other than because Google didn't want to 'copy' Apple with the rectangular shape.
At the time, it had a much bigger screen than an iPhone and gave you more control over the device. It could play Flash games/apps, and let you use the apps/keyboards/etc you wanted without a company's blessing.
Apple is a lot more open now than they used to be, in ways that might have driven power users to Android before.
https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=11410&idPhone...
(Prices listed by GSMArena have no relation to reality for both models.)
There was an Apple store in that mall as well, so we walked in and asked "if we buy an apple product here, and there is an issue with it while we are in a different country, would they help us in an Apple store there". The answer was "well yeah of course why wouldn't they" with a "what's the catch" tone and raised eyebrow.
Needless to say she is now fully switched over. Even after two years, she gets delighted every now and then by how smooth the experience is. I recall many "LOL Samsung could never" events.
My current Pixel 6 is my last android phone due to the UX issues that keep piling up with every single update. Last one I noticed: Turning on bedtime mode is now double (2) the clicks it used to be.
My experience with Apple doesn't sound so different from yours.
The difference is my partner didn't buy her gadgets from a retailer. It was all from physical Samsung stores and under extended warranty. It sounds like an oversight on the retailers side that they didn't 'activate' your warranty for some reason.
But yeah, official stores and Apple Care not being available is a major downside, which is why I'm waiting until Im back to Canada to get an iPhone (it's also quite a bit cheaper on that side of the Atlantic).
One limitation I know of with Apple Care is that if you need to replace your device under warranty, they will need to mail it to you from the country of purchase, but you will get a temporary device while you wait for that. Samsung would never...
But on your topic, my partner has an iPhone and they disable all kinds of features and then wonder why nothing works smoothly. They have a Mac, and airpods, and still don't have anything working together effectively. Just through simple self sabotage
On the other hand, a guy I know well bought a mid-tier consumer Samsung SSD in China a few years ago (970 Evo IIRC), run it into the ground doing video encoding pretty much non-stop, contacted the official Samsung retailer in our country asking for a replacement, and they seemed happy to accommodate him.
YMMV. From my point of view, Korean companies seem much more customer-oriented overall.
All the Apple gear I use belongs to my employer.
You should listen to some Apple development podcasts, grass is not so green on the other side.
There are also plenty of unfinished things, some of them have turned into memes by now.
There is a curious demographic of people that worked closely on/with Android in the early years that have a particularly extreme allergy to it today.
Sundar gets a lot of deserved stick, but Andy Rubin was no saint when it came to guiding development either, as demonstrated by the memory holed Skyhook fiasco. ( https://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/536913/google-android-sk... ) JBQ resigning from the AOSP really was the sign that true believers in the Android ecosystem are simply suckers.
It is such a missed opportunity it's unbelievable. iOS shouldn't be in contention at all.
Maybe because the bugs were known from Android.
Yesterday i had to search, why the photos i took 1 minute ago are only visible on the (i)phone but not on the folder shared with the PC.
Is what I have never, ever heard. I don't what to shit on designers, who also need to justify their job, but it would be cool to see some ACTUAL improvements to important things. Like battery life.
Are we in Idiocracy at this point or what, Google?
Some of you fuckers need to go pick back up The Zen of Palm and re-read it because y'all have no idea what you're shipping these days in comparison.
I always owned an older smart phone, and looking at that new UI I have no idea what some of that stuff does, because it doesn't tell me and the icons have been smoothed and abstracted so much that I can barely tell what they are for.
I think the reason why the UI's are dumbing down is because they people using them are changing. We're talking about people doom scrolling for hours watching less than 60 second clips of ADHD cocaine. We're talking about people who use an LLM and TTS to explain a paragraph of text they didn't want to read.
It feels like there needs to be a split somehow, an Android front-end for those people and a boring consistent front-end for others. Failing that, I would accept a serious Linux smart phone, but it would need decent development to actually get somewhere.
No. We are not changing. But it seems that there are people paid to make changes. Not to improve, just to change. Why does the Messages app needs a new, much worse UI, every couple of months ?
I answer a call on my phone and the audio is routed to my watch, or vice versa, the official weather app claims it can't get my location even though it has access to the GPS (and it's actively being used by Fitbit to track exercise) and wifi positioning. Google Maps on the watch doesn't load results half the time, the other half the time it'll get stuck on "starting navigation" - sometimes unstuck by launching Maps on the phone (despite having offline maps downloaded to the watch) and other times it's just stuck forever. Fitbit will display some static/mock/fake exercise values until the display is woken up when OS-level always on display is disabled but AOD is enabled in Fitbit during exercise. I could go on.
I mean... what if i prefer the older version of the UI? my only option is a different launcher or not updating
I'll keep using Android anyway because I find Apple UI/UX even more disgusting.
Smartphones don't matter anyway. What most people do in high end devices can be done in mid-tier or even shit-tier devices too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprinting_(psychology)#Baby...