Android 16 is here
blog.google
blog.google
Curious what other folks are feeling. A lot of these tools seem like useless frivolity.
Meanwhile, I have family who constantly get confused whether the iOS phone icon is FaceTime or the “real” phone; and I have to do multiple taps instead of one to make a FaceTime call—and Apple is busy making Liquid Glass, for what?
Now all the low hanging fruit is gone they are less exciting. The photogrammetry api stuff added to iOS probably took 100x the dev effort of adding folders and copy/paste, but gets far less excitement.
That's me on a good day; I fuckin' hate smartphones (hardware and software-wise), lol. I have pretty much given up on a slab-style pocket computer (6-7 inch, essentially a deshittified, Samsung XCover-series smartphone on steroids, e. g. S-Pen, exchangeable batteries, audio jack, 1-2 USB-C ports, mSD card slot, lotsa memory, phone-functionality is second fiddle) or a small detachable (8-9 inch, also EMR-penabled, essentially an updated, miniaturized HP ZBook x2 G4 with Nintendo Switch-like capabilities for docking and attachments for a variety of controller options and the keyboard). :(
1) a bare (ala Pixel) foldable with S-pen and without large external displays to get cracked and complicate things
2) a rooted linux-computer-in-your-pocket that can be plugged into a usb-c hub and happens to have a SIM card/cell modem to work as a phone.
...but until then I just get by for years and years on whatever mid-tier phone happened to be the smallest form-factor and best-camera-for-$ at the time my last one became unusable.
Something I have long said when talking about operating systems is that I consider them tool boxes. The same kind of tool box a carpenter would have.
I don't "use" the OS per se. I use the OS to hold my tools in a manner that makes it easy for me to access them.
So, it's like a carpenter's toolbox where he carries around his saw, hammer etc. and can easily grab them when he needs them. He doesn't need to hear about Hammer v2.0 AI-edition or any of that shit!
I don't need my toolbox doing anything other than holding my tools and fucking right off out of my way!
Personally I feel like phone OS releases need to slow down to a 2-3 year cycle and lock in on bug fixes.
My iphone 16e has some of the most glaring bugs I've seen in an iOS release in quite some time (Slow motion capture crashes the camera app unless you set it to 120fps first in settings, 240fps is broken).
I feel like we could all use a break from the update cycle for software to actually get patched and optimized.
I think we grew up with technology advancing rapidly and expensive tech from previous year being outdated, but now we came back to baseline where technological advancement is just small fixes stretched over a long period of time.
Yep. Honestly can't name a single major new smartphone feature that I would consider a dealbreaker that wasn't available 10 years ago.
The last things that made me excited about a new phone was contactless payments and Android auto, but both are pretty old now.
Now it's just a slightly different ui and maybe a bit better camera when I got a new phone.
They are not that old and we still don’t have proper dashboard integration. I would like directions there rather than on the central console.
Plus there has been nice features trickling to user from release to release.
I like that you can easily use your phone as a clock with a magnetic dock. Translation and text selection in screenshot were nice. Search from picture highlight is great.
Phone screening is nice. Hold for me is nice too. Chat apps have improved by leaps and bounds since Covid. Productivity is now okay-ish at least for joining meetings and reading things.
As someone that plug his phone to a dock from time to time, convergence is nearly there but some things still need polish. I really wish we could get a better version of Office for example.
It’s not ground breaking but meaningful incremental improvements have been there.
At some point, we will have something similar on a newer version of Android that we will want and that we can't have with an older version. I don't know what it is yet but i am sure there will be something at some point.
I haven't used it yet but the refraction effect on Liquid Glass feels like it could be amazingly good at creating a sense of layer separation. Static content it's maybe not going to be awesome at, but as soon as the there's motion, the non-linear motion around the bend of the glass, for me, seems to create a very easy perturbance of regular motion that it feels like eyes, in their radar like way, instantly know of, without having to look closely and interpret.
It's just as bad to click a button you don't want to, when you're merely trying to scroll, or highlight text, or click another button.
Making a button's clickable area larger than the button itself can be desirable in limited circumstances, but it's not a general-purpose solution.
Ex: a.fn-link { padding:10px 18px; margin:-10px -18px; }
You can set a (pseudo) element as an invisible enlargement of that button but then you will get accidental taps.
I updated my Galaxy S21 to Android 15 and I hate it. The new design occupies TOO MUCH space, I could check almost all my notifications (I only have 3-4 apps that send me notifications) with a quick scroll from the top, but now a single notification occupies like 1/5th of the screen, making it much more difficult to take a look at all my notifications at once.
The other stupid thing, they moved the media playback to the quick settings panel and made it a tiny widget on the lock screen, on the bottom, where you barely pay attention to it. I removed this widget thinking it would restore the old functionality, but I was wrong. Now, whenever I listen to music, I cannot control playback from the notifications panel or the lock screen, I must manually open Spotify and control it from there.
I don't know what drugs UX designers are on but I can safely say this is not convenient for the user and we didn't ask for it.
> I must manually open Spotify and control it from there
It seems like they did it on purpose, the purpose being the management of your attention.
Apple now is entering their Windows XP design era. Once things get too gaudy they will introduce Flat Glass or pretend like they invented straight lines and sharp corners. But at least that seems to have a personality.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Aero
While many express nostalgia for Aero in Windows 7, Microsoft dismissed it in fairly harsh terms:
'Microsoft called the Aero interface it once championed and poured so much love upon "dated and cheesy".'
https://www.theregister.com/2012/05/21/windows_8_aero_dead/
The thing with [Microsoft's] dictated GUIs is that they all end up on the trash heap.
Some people have affinity for a GUI aesthetic. I liked Motif and CDE. Ripping them away for the garbage pile is a supremely foolish thing to do, as it can drive users away.
Apple, and Microsoft, will surely add more to this pile shortly.
> So basically, Microsoft's claim of Aero being "cheesy" "and "dated" are just lies to cover up the fact where the original Surface RT is not powerful enough to handle them.
https://old.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/38vyn7/the_true_re...
Is Windows XP universally understood to be bad design? I remember it as somewhere between blandly unremarkable and slightly pleasant.
I cannot understand why they gradually abandoned that, as it was clearly a competitive moat in terms of usability.
I've seen how computer illiterate or elderly people were able to navigate skeuomorphic designs with relative ease. Right now, they can't tell what is a button or a field and what isn't.
While the technology to create 'alive' skeuomorphic elements now exists, that wasn't the case a few years ago.
Older skeuomorphic designs were static/rasters which were clunky to either mix these static elements with animated elements (for example the iOS 7 menu title transitions) or to have transparency (how can you have transparent leather/velvet?).
Liquid Glass is actually an extension of the foundation laid by iOS 7.
Many parts of the iOS 7 transition guide might as well have been written for Liquid Glass:
- "Make sure that app content is discernible through translucent UI elements—such as bars and keyboards—and the transparent status bar"
- "Examine your app for hard-coded UI values—such as sizes and positions—and replace them with those you derive dynamically from system-provided values."
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Us...
You'd think this is just a little thing, but it can really mess with you if you need to change focus and - of course - every application will 'haha!' you in a different way.
It has nothing to do with skeuomorphism really, but at least skeuomorphism seemed to give everyone an idea of what they were shooting for at least.
I disagree that skeuomorphic can't be used by power users. Just throw a bunch of keyboard shortcuts in there.
The space around a block style tab-bar/navbar is wasted anyway, might as well show some of the content. Most apps were doing it anyway. Seeing a system tabbar/navbar was getting rare in “good” apps.
I wouldn't judge the new Android until I tried it on a phone either.
That's also my impression, iOS 26 looks like some UI's were peer-reviewed and thrown back with the note "Not gaudy enough, it's not enough glass! Remember, the theme is 'Liquid Glass', Management wants to see traces of this on every screen!"
Control center, however, sucks.
Like the grandparent I'm much more excited by Material Design 3 Expressive.
Looking at the new iOS screenshots, I'm surprised that those reasons apparently aren't obvious to Apple designers.
Hope they improve on some of these issues.
Turns out "pretty" matters -- a lot -- in UI. Sucks for those of us who found Windows 9x, NEXTSTEP, or AmigaOS as the pinnacle of usability, but users find themselves more comfortable with a UI that looks modern even if said UI has other detriments like lack of affordance.
So expect Android Device Vendors to expand their theme engines to support more excessive GUI eyecandy than even before, "liquid glass" will be the minimum
The odd thing about this journey is, that once you're used to the simplicity of Material Design, adding such liquid/glass/leather/concrete/... elements to the rendering just degrades readability.
My guess is that Apple now cranked up the eyecandy again for everyone to follow, to then tone it down in the coming years, again appearing more "mature" than others. And in the end we will settle on something close to Material Design again, with more z-axis separation (more shadows, floating,...) and liquid state-transitions (changing elements affecting other nearby elements)
But hey, it's everyone's individual journey.
Which none of the current OSs do (except Linux without SystemD or BSDs, with a custom WM)
I don't particularly mind it myself, but I get where some power users would get irked by it. This article does a decent job of explaining why; https://www.infoworld.com/article/2251761/linux-why-do-peopl...
Quickly scanning GrapheneOS's posts I couldn't find any detail about the technical challenges. They'll probably post about it in the coming months
GrapheneOS currently only runs on Pixels because they're only one Android phones with a reasonable security architecture.
This is really important for me. Currently, hearing aids will turn to full duplex during calls, and be used as both input and output.
- Audio quality will be much worse, since the bandwidth is split between the two channels. This is obviously bad if you're already struggling to hear.
- Listening to music, for example, the volume controls on the hearing aids simultaneously turn surrounding sounds down and the music up, or vice versa. In "phone-call" mode, however, the phone hijacks the volume control so if you're struggling to hear on a call in a noisy environment there's no way to increase the volume without simultaneously amplifying the surrounding noise to painfully loud levels.
- As mentioned in the article, the microphones are designed to make me hear other people but not myself, making other people complain about my sound a lot. The best I can do is to say "sorry - either you'll hear me like this or I won't hear you at all"
This was designed for people using BT headsets of course, but hearing aids are not headsets.
On Linux I can just pick which microphone I want to use and which mode to use for Bluetooth. It's worked flawlessly for the last decade. To me, that's being "user friendly", good UX, or whatever you want to call it.
On Windows, you can go deep into some ancient, almost hidden, settings and disable the microphone on the BT device. On macOS, you can do the same using the old Audio MIDI Setup tool. It will periodically reset itself of course, like anything related to a11y on macOS. Not sure about iOS, would be interesting to know.
Glass is a pain in itself and "preparing for a future in spatial computing" is such a bullshit line when the spatial computing future is still 5-10 years away at minimum, and will not be achieved with Apple Vision, at least not in the current shape and form.
Meanwhile, Material Expressive is trying to force a 2020 graphic design trend onto mobile apps. It literally feels like designers at google just wanted to do something new and modern, so they went with a bland corporate "modern design" aesthetic, that reduces UX in name of UI - even tho they are like oooooh users found this button 30% faster, it would be well fucking expected, since highly-paid designers have just redesigned the thing.
Meanwhile, apps will continue to be made in their own style.
Apple will release liquid glass support with 26 and we'll see it appear in new apps. At the same time, Google will probably do a partial release of the new material components for developers, where a giant part of components will lack features described by the design spec, a bunch will be missing, and a bunch will be utterly unusable because Google can't create a good DX to save their lives.
That's the point. Apple is years behind on that stuff
let me guess: Advanced Protection will continue to gain features that restrict the freedom of users in the name of security and some time from now it will be mandatorily enabled for everyone. classic google!
PS Let me make a guess for the future. Android Desktop mode will improve and people will ditch Windows and instead plug their phone into a USB-C dock that connects it to keyboard, mouse and display. (I'm on Linux myself, but I see people moving to Android from Windows)
Samsung already learned lessons from that journey, Google did not.
Also, the Android strategy is to not compete with Android vendors on OS features, they rather collaborate to make them contribute improvements back to the OS.
This strategy makes the project faster, cheaper, reduces fragmentation, removes a competitor (!), and most of all reduces brand-stickiness within the Android ecosystem (--> if Samsung DeX gets merged into Android, Samsung users can switch brands easier).
Why would Samsung want this? Why would they actively reduce their own competitiveness by giving away distinguished features?
Google applies different levers here:
1. Google is making your feature a commodity: Samsung is aware that Google plans to implement a native version of the feature, with or without Samsung. Google will make the feature available to ALL competitors of Samsung. Samsung get's the chance to shape it WITH Google or will later be forced to ensure compatibility with it (because it's not sustainable for Samsung to coexist with AND compete against an ecosystem used by ALL other Android vendors)
2. Google offers to take over some tasks: Google creates media attention for OS-Upgrades, creating pressure for Device-Vendors to adopt the new OS-version as soon as possible. The more a vendor deviates from the generic implementation, the more time & resources (and money) will be needed to adopt a new OS-version. So it's in the interest of Samsung to contribute as much of their fundamentals back upstream, so Google themselves takes care of maintaining it.
3. Google may make it mandatory at some point: The Android Compatibility Definition Document (CDD) defines the mandatory requirements for a device to be granted into the Android Ecosystem. Google is in control of this document and may at some point add specific behavior or features as a condition for Android compliance. This "Desktop Mode" has the potential to become the default behavior for Tablets, so Samsung may be required to adopt it for devices classified as Tablet by the CDD [0]
4. Google returns the favor: Samsung can trade collaboration on this feature for business opportunities with Google in other areas (i.e. Mixed Reality, B2B, Chromebooks,...), which potentially allows Samsung to be first in an entirely new market...
[0] https://source.android.com/docs/compatibility/16/android-16-...
What is this feature in reality? It is just a projected screen with a certain resolution. And then it has apps that appear and open as resizable windows. Android had a downloadable app called something like Sense that did this but the app developers didn’t make apps with resizable windows at the time.
I guess part of the working closely is to cause developers to display apps that can be resized. And resize it for them in the event they refuse.
This seems like such a killer feature to me. And every time I watch a video of someone trying out DeX it seems to work so well.
Yet it never seems to take off. I don't understand why. What am I missing? App ecosystem not good enough for business use?
"This is the year of mobile docking replacing workstations" has kind of become my "This is the year of Linux on the desktop.
Both have an ecosystem that operates in both worlds (though Microsoft keeps killing their phones and doesn't currently have one) - so they could do it.
It's obvious that the iPad could be a Mac now, there's no technical limitation. So the iPhone could be, too.
No such thing.
> Android Desktop mode will improve and people will ditch Windows
I agree; I would have switched from a desktop PC to my tablet in 2017 using DeX on my Samsung Tab S3 if enough websites would have worked with the DeX browser. I bet it's fine now, nearly a decade later.
Good on Google for not just stealing Samsung's work.
The swiping downward is also fairly dumb. There zero discoverability and triggering it seems hit in miss.
If you have no notification swiping down also locks your phone, rather than telling you that you have zero notification... WHY?
So basically, Android low end has become useless, I remember 10+ years ago having to search for something very fast because of the context, like something on a map or surf the web for info. It was still super responsive with 512MO...
I tried a few cheap Android phones recently... they are simply unresponsive, google apps will suddenly shut down because the device is out of memory or something... or you try to make a call, you make a mistake so you try to hang up, the phone will refuse to hang up because it's stuck! you'd have to remove the battery to quickly cancel the call! What the hell happened with that OS?
That said, Pixel devices all the way. No gross UI reskin, no having multiple copies of the same type of app (Samsung camera vs android camera, dialers, keyboards, etc.).
Fast, stable, good features.
If it's not a pixel device, you're probably going to have a "mid" experience.
Very stable, nice UI, no hardware/batery issues, very responsive.
I don't know if I trust Google to make decent hardware. I am highly suspicious of Pixel phones.
I don't call things I don't want to have "features" It's just more bloat in my mind.
I say that as someone who has had several Pixel phones (and Nexus before that) and been happy with them. But yeah, my most recent phone is a low-end Motorola that I picked specifically for a set of hardware features, but unfortunately, as the parent commenter describes, it has been a _terrible_ experience for a variety of reasons. I got the hardware features I wanted (mostly, no one makes the full set I want anymore, see above), and it turns out that I had to give up a halfway-decent software experience.
If not, are you able to buy another Motorola phone where this is possible?
Pixel experience is literally same thing as Samsung One UI - a gross UI reskin
> no having multiple copies of the same type of app (Samsung camera vs android camera, dialers, keyboards, etc
Google is the one that forces the multiple copies of same app thing
Vendor blobs are used in third party phones that have different hardware. Or, in some cases, because the phone seller wants to track you or try an offer an additional "value add" with their version of the app.
They don't have to do any of that.
the pixels have a overheating problem -- this you can google for.
oh yeah, when automatic android updates happen a bunch of your settings are reset even something simple as UI-theme.
On the other hand, it takes over a minute to decide that it's confirmed a GPS location. The Pixel 3a will do the same thing in more like one second. The utter failure of the GPS on the Pixel 6a (and possibly other related phones?) seems to be a known, common issue.
I do have overheating problems. The phone won't work outdoors in climates that are less nice than California. Which surprises me, since that's most of the world.
People keep saying this, but that's been every phone I've ever had. They all get hot in hot weather and under heavy use.
The Motos came with very little bloatware that was easy enough to uninstall or disable. There are just as many new Google Apps that just weren't available on Moto phones that I've been uninstalling from my Pixel:
Google One, Google Tasks, Google News, Google Lens, Google Support Services, Google PDF Viewer, Google Play Books, Google Pixel Watch, Pixel Buds, Pixel Studio, Gemini, Safety, Find Hub, Google Home
It's not 3rd party, but it's still bloatware.
I got $100 motorolas and outside of snapchat and the keyboard being responsive, it did the job for months.
I was a bit impressed.
I no longer am afraid to break my expensive phone because those worked in the short term.
IMO that's the big 'problem' with Android - any fly by night company can make a phone with it, which sours those people on Android as a whole and rightfully so. They may not understand that it's not Android itself that is awful, but the low spec'd phone or 'enhancements' some company added.
Higher end Android phones generally don't have any of these problems at all. I can't even remember the last time mine had something crash or had to restart. I generally stick to high end Moto, Pixel, or Oneplus(current). Some people like Samsung but their skin/os is too heavy handed for me.
Force phone devs to use worse phones.
Which device was that? My memory of early Android devices is that they were anything but fast. It's only relatively recently that they've caught up to iPhones in terms of responsiveness.
I paid $200 for a Moto G85 5G with 12GB RAM, 256GB storage last year.
Alternatives in the same range: CMF Phone 1/2 and OnePlus Nord CE4 Lite 5G
Really glad to see we've finally landed at a place where finding an old refurbished flagship is not the only logical choice, where the mid-range has a lot going on for it.
Just wish we had some mainline kernel support, could put Debian on these things! I've had a OnePlus 6T (2018) that supposedly does pretty ok that I've been meaning to try Mobian on, and it felt like for a bit Snapdragons were getting better and better Linux support. But that motion seems to have really tapered off in the last ~2 years?
Unfortunately it reached the end of its (security) updates so I figured it would be unsafe to keep using it since I have banking apps on the phone. Sad.
I'm on a iPhone 13 Pro Max right now that's still doing well but starting to show battery capacity age. Plus, it's the only non-USB-C device I own so I'd be happy to get rid of it.
I'm not impressed with Apple as of late.
I really hope it won't be delayed
I tried it and it works great - Dex-like experience with mouse and keyboard, on a stock Pixel phone.
That said, I'm also looking forward to the official Google version coming to the rest of the Android devices
https://en-emea.support.motorola.com/app/answers/detail/a_id...
Shame, I liked it very much since Samsung phones are expensive
Phones are a duopoly reinforced by networks effects. Only Google and Apple matter.
I have Pixel 4a and I wanted to get Android 16 to get the smaller notification tile buttons back.
Security update has a stamp of 5 November 2023 on it.
That's one of the things that has kept me away from Apple devices, is that you can't change basic things about how they look or operate. It's all on Apple's terms. I also dislike how they add the most basic things, like changing the background on your chats, and act like they just invented it.
I also think we'll get a more desktop ready version of Chrome. If we get these things I think it'll be a gamechanger.
It's almost usable for playing movies on a TV, but that's about it.
I would like to trade it in for a pixel 9 pro xl, but it's kinda hard/impossible to do in Brazil.
I got a good deal from best buy but you need to have a US issued document to trade your phone in, bummer.
Any plans to ever sell it in Brazil?
Warning: The May 2025 update for Pixel 6 (6, 6 Pro, 6a) and Pixel 8 (8, 8 Pro, 8a) devices contains a bootloader update that increments the anti-roll back version for the bootloader. This prevents the device from rolling back to previous vulnerable versions of the bootloader. After flashing the May 2025 update on these devices you won't be able to flash and boot older Android 15 builds.
Desperation
Currently stuck between 12 and 14, and really there is hardly any reason to update.
For technical stuff, better check here, https://developer.android.com/about/versions/16/summary
And the promised WebGPU for Java and Kotlin, discussed at Vulkanised 2025 apparently didn't made the cut to Android 16.
One avenue these phone OS, and any consumer OS, can pursue is making it easy to string together app sub-steps. An app can be "cracked open" into sub-step a) either by developers themselves b) or by a backend process at app submission time. The backend process could look at the screens, and see what the user journeys are - this is within reach for current LLMs. An "sub-step" here is like taking a flights app and turning it into different types of search functions - search by date, location, points etc. So an app becomes a bunch of interfaces.
Once you have these "sub-steps" a local LLM can string them together, because it can understand their inputs, outputs, and behaviors.
Actually executing the sub-steps would require the OS to execute the app in the background and run the sub-steps for the user. This would be akin to what browser agents do right now
So this is a way of semantically extracting the "verbs" in existing apps.
With a library of these "sub-steps" in apps, combined with similar ones extracted from the internet - you could chain together the web and native worlds, in the service of the user.
It's easier on phone OSs because phone apps are usually already logged in. It's realistic for iOS to just do a bunch of stuff for you in the background. You really can probably get finance info from all your finance apps, for example.
I'm not saying this is necessarily the answer - but re-thinking the OS in this sort of what is what would be an actually ambitious thing for Apple or Google to do. All these small tweaks are opiates.
It is now up to developers to expose this.
* Saw an unexpected notification post-upgrade that, when I clicked it, took me to the wrong place. It was about "Body Sensor" permission for "Fit" which I assumed meant Google Fit needed additional info about my private health info. A crappy workflow for me, since the warning was real, I became alarmed .. hoping that "Fit" really was simply Google Fit, and ended up in Google Play Services' app information settings sheet.
* Took me to a 'welcome to new pixel' which has overgrown its UX with OS 16. It had 3 'new' features to tell me about - something about 'VIP' which seemed like over-optimization of a workflow. Some other stuff which was not relevant to me (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44245460). It also had an enormous list of differently colored (highlighted, not-highlighted) icons which led me to info about features, UGH .. in "Wizard" format (next, next, next) so I could not see an overview, nor know which I had previously viewed during the prior 15 OS iterations...so I abandoned that mini "Welcome" app.
-- Also, the mini videos in the "Welcome" app are inscrutable. My Pixel Fold 1 main screen is already small, and then the video illustrating the features is not zoomable. Clicking it merely pauses it. The videos show a hypothetical Pixel phone and a hypothetical human finger-tip dragging its way across the screen. Then the video wants me to read some of this 3x-too-small text, because THAT is the POINT of the video I had the most annoyance at .. the text content was somehow the feature. Yes I should have put my glasses on (+1.2 prescription - slight far-sighted), though it seems like I should be able to read the text-in-video from 2' away...it's literally the Welcome app, for ALL users, not some extra-niche app. Human Factors People gave zero shits about that IMO.
Now, of course they removed the app :) But there's a "linux terminal" app which at least in theory should allow something similar since GPU acceleration was mentioned, but the app is limited "on user builds"..
Note this uses kernel virtualization, so it's faster and more properly separated.
This API/requirements set was uniquely put by pressure from various vendors(think banks and various "security-certification" obsessed parties), and was already quite unpleasant, as it excludes any form of rooting, even if your root-access is adb only. But it gets worse as now non-official images are getting excluded not only from strong integrity[0] but also device integrity. Numerous apps are now requiring device integrity and hence won't be usable even on a locked, signed android image if it's not google or vendor-official.
It actually gets worse. Google has been silently restricting the api results(as of may): - basic requires a certified device with an android platform key attestation - device now requires a hardware verified boot, with locked bootloader and recent security patch. This excludes lots of devices - strong requires security patch on all partitions
And it gets even worse. On recent play stores & android versions, as apps have to be installed or updated by google play to get a full integirty response. no more sideloading APKs or alternative stores.
This is nothing but a clear move to a full lock-in to play store, where the majority of vendors live, to end up with a fully locked a-la-apple ecosystem. This doesn't improve security, people that know still have ways to bypass those restrictions when needed. All it does is give the illusion of safety.
I would personally feel like: 1 - rooting should be allowed on a certified device with most apps still working. This could be done with a locked bootloader too if they provided such an image for debug. 2 - alternative os, like graphene, should be given a way to pass all attestations, as well as alternative stores, provided they follow a set of constraints.
With this in mind, I can't be positive about android 16 and new versions going down a grim locked future.
[0] https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/6361-play-integrity-api-and...
i don't think this is enough - rooting should be allowed on any device that you own, rather than the device owning you.
I'm going to trial/move to iOS because of this. If I'm going to live in a walled garden, might as well live in the better one.
Hopefully I can live with the shittier notifications/keyboard/lack of back button; I think the rest of iOS is overall better than a degoogled android experience.
I also don't really understand the point of all these strong integrity checks being enforced e.g. with banking apps or the alike. You can already just go to the corresponding website (and do the same actions) on a compromised device, how does restricting the app version provide any benefit?
I don't think this should be allowed because rooting breaks the Android security model. Devices that don't follow at least Android's security model should not be allowed that way apps understand the security model of Android.
>grapheneos should be given a way to pass all attestations
There already is the Android attestation API that can be used to attest grapheneos. But I do think it would be nice if Play Integrity would expand beyond just Play Protect Certified devices, to devices which can prove they offer a similar or greater level of security.
Should the default android be locked, with no root, play store verifying apps, etc, absolutely. This is great for the average user that desires nothing more than just running play store apps.
Should you have the ability to run what you want on your phone, and copy the data from the app that you installed, after accepting the risks? absolutely.
It is already non trivial to install root, and adb locked root for example makes things vastly more secure even in that case(that is, you can only adb su into your phone, you can't grant the permission to an app directly). Especially with locked adb having fingerprint verification.
On grapheneos you can get basic. You can't get device, which is now needed by a lot of applications. See another example at: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/18118-play-integrity-meets-...
Play integrity by locking everything to the Google/Main vendors is making it less and less possible to run non-primary images/oses. And it's not for users security, it's for apps security, so this is purely to reassure the industry, and yet it is just another security theater. Running with strong integrity on a rooted device is possible with semi-significant effort, and that's good. It means that we're not relying on security by obscurity, and we can look at what's running on the phones.
Sure, but that doesn't require root to do. The OS can expose capabilities that apps want instead of requiring security to be entirely bypassed with root.
>and copy the data from the app that you installed, after accepting the risks?
No, because that violates Android's security model. If an app wants to have a authentication token live on a single device then being able to copy it violates that and can result in multiple different devices sharing the same token.
>Google/Main vendors is making it less and less possible
It's app developers doing this.
Anyone ever stop to notice how skillful google is at putting lipstick on pigs?
To watch their artisans in action, simply do:
Settings/System/DeveloperOptions/RunningServices and tick Show Cached Processes after absorbing that in your immediate view, which will have included the 23 running processes under Play Services.
Yeah yeah. There has to be lots of stuff in such a glorious suite. Of course it's crawling with things completely irrelevant to the user. We all know this. But can it ever go too far?
I honestly don't feel more secure since that amazing update that blocks access to directories even through USB. Blocking Ghost Commander is one thing, but USB?
I won't make a scathing list of complaints here. Each update tends to beg the task though.
Edit: It's really complex, right? Google is honest and forthright. So they'd never lie about absolutely needing Precise Location to use Maps. Clearly it's necessary. While using pure GPS appears for all practical purposes to do everything I need, in truth, not having Scanning activated threatens much destruction and a subconsciously worse navigation experience. I've read the arguments for why the End will come if Scanning access isn't given, but I stopped using Maps, and Scanning too, and things seem fine. Try to figure this one out. And how the F do I get my files out of the Audio Recorder directory? I must Share them, via email. No access unless Shared, over the Internet. If this isn't an upgrade, I'm lost. I'm just going to guess this new version has an embedded uninterruptible LLM that tells the user what they want and how to use the device. Because that's something Google doesn't believe the user is capable of.
Whats the MVP (minimum viable pixel) nowadays? Google lineup is super expensive in my country, probably zero support, so I'm afraid of investing.
I tried a (used) 6a, it was lovely (compared to my Samsung) until it wouldn't scroll while charging (a known issue) so I returned it.
I have a Pixel 7 Pro running GrapheneOS , I am never going back to an AndroidOS, period. The level of privacy and control GOS provides is like no other, and the security update is always ahead of Google. GOS in fact has found and reported vulnerabilities which we get released to our phone faster than Google.
I am too biased to say anything, I went De-Google years ago, I am using web version instead of apps, if only people knew how much crappy is running in their phone. However, I still access YouTube coz TV sucks and there is no better service, and YouTube Music coz any other service sucks with poor content.
Mobiles releases from some time now have been more of the same, it is even worse on Apple side lmao, but now things are getting worse with AI everywhere.
AI IMHO means more data being collected, more features and services that are cloud based instead of locally, meaning, soon or later since everything is running on the cloud, you must pay a subscription. Remember, when it comes to big tech nothing is free, you either pay for a subscription or your personal data is the payment.
I looked through the highlights linked here and the full "What's New" page [0] and am pleasantly surprised to see a few new features but no major overhauls of existing ones.
And its the sneaky ones that get through...like when I upgraded to 15 my home button no longer exists when the screen is locked, which effectively makes google maps navigation stuck on the screen unless you stop navigation by pressing back repeatedly
> like when I upgraded to 15 my home button no longer exists when the screen is locked, which effectively makes google maps navigation stuck on the screen unless you stop navigation by pressing back repeatedly
Smaller things like this, sure.
FYI, swiping up from the bottom will get into the lock screen and then once unlocked into the home screen.
https://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-4.0-hig...
Of course I want accessibility, security and technical improvements.
I like a lot of the new features, but the visual (mis)communication language is terrible.
Please write your legislators and demand antitrust action against Apple and Google for the following:
- Lack of One-Tap Web Installs (without scare walls or buried settings menus). This is the biggest stranglehold they have. Web installs can be done safely and securely via app signing, permissions, and signature blacklists.
- First-party defaults for all the platform pieces: Messaging, Payments, Photos, Music, Media, Navigation, etc. Every single one of these lets Apple and Google squeeze another industry and forces us into a pit of no-innovation.
- Default search, in the case of Google, which ropes you into their search / ads funnel. They've also bought it out on Apple's end.
- Default browser tech, in the case of Apple. It prevents innovation on app runtimes and deployment and forces you to develop using Apple technologies.
Winning the mobile rights battle will not only liberate us from the "promo cycle" plague, it'll stop the tax on innovation and introduce healthy competition.
If American legislators and the DOJ / FTC won't act, then every other country should. If enough countries put pressure on Apple and Google, we'll start to see competition reemerge. Right now it's impossible to develop a new smartphone entrant. Even Meta and Microsoft with their nearly-unlimited capital couldn't fight off Apple and Google.
YCombinator would probably be happy if smartphones became open platforms. They'd see healthier margins for startups and less direct platform competition. a16z is pushing for this. Just because Apple and Google were there first twenty years ago shouldn't give them an eternity to rule the entire category.
Don't/can't Android manufacturers provide alternative defaults here?
Manufacturers were contractually forbidden from doing that.
And Samsung does sell phones with customized UI and apps.
Counterpoint: the resources currently dedicated to Apple and Android would then be spread across a dozen operating systems, assuming constant consumer spending.
Maybe you think stasis is a good thing, but I (mostly) appreciate the progress iOS and Android have made over the past nearly two decades. I wouldn't want to currently be stuck at iOS 3 or 4 as opposed to iOS 18.
Assuming you actually mean a dozen phone operating systems. Because we already do have lots of phone companies, but they mostly all use Android.
Motorola is barely hanging out.
Turns out people tend to gravitate to a few choices....
Xioami/Huawei are in essence banned from the US.
But, some Samsung and Motorola phones already support that (DeX and "Ready For"), and there's a kind of janky version that you can unlock in developer settings for phones (including Pixel 8 & 9) that have video output but no built-in desktop mode.
However the annoying thing is that many apps which display video (official TV streaming apps from my ISP etc.) detect the presence of an external display, and prevent video playback there. Sigh.
I have asked every apple user around me and they just tell me about photo sync and iCloud.
These are the things at the top of my mind, I’m sure I can come up with much more.
Photo sync and iCloud are pretty easy to replace with Google Photos/G drive, so I’m not worried about that part.
It’s these small things that add up and make the whole experience better.
That alone is enough to lock most users in to the ecosystem. The idea of figuring out how to transfer all your photos to an Android device is too much work for most people.
None of the other stuff is worth worrying about.
I am personally migrating away from relying on iCloud and successfully so, but once you buy into an ecosystem, you end up entangled on so many levels that it's nearly impossible to move away with serious friction and habit-altering compromises. It becomes a serious cognitive load.
Notes apps are really also a solved problem
But I can't say there are as good alternatives to Airtag
- Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43484927
- Google will develop the Android OS in private: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43482798
It's reasonable to think Google is choking AOSP.
There's so much space here to experiment with tiling views, scrolling columns of windows, whatever. Floating windows are cumbersome enough when you have a mouse and big display to spread things out on. I've tried this floating window thing in beta on my Pixel Tablet and iPad's windowing on the iPadOS 26 beta and they're basically worthless. A straight downgrade compared to the existing split views. They'd have done better to just let me add more apps to a split view.
And stage manager is basically workspaces by another name.
The desktop paradigm is decades old, and deviating from it would probably elicit negative feedback (as seen in previous attempts by Apple in iPadOS).
> desktop-style floating windows, but without workspaces or window snapping.
In the new Desktop mode on Android, it supports snapping windows as well as multiple desktops/workspaces.
In iPadOS you can snap windows to halves or quadrants.
But lately it does seem like spinning wheels on the UI front for both. Without a distinct new feature to build the UI around, most UI changes just seem like change for the sake of change (ie. resume/executive driven design). Both OS seem to be approaching a very similar paradigm (Apple becoming more androidy IMO lately). Minor changes aren't going to cause major changes in popularity. "Liquid Glass" does seem to be uniquely disliked, and probably for good reasons, but Apple generally has ecosystem and brand lock-in that will put the brakes on much ship jumping.
The only strategy is to create work so the team isn't disbanded. Add gradients, and then remove them in a few years. But write high-brow text to explain the changes, like an artist who describes their solid gray oil on canvas so it can sell for a million dollars.
Most of Google's work on Android seems to be around making smaller changes for the UX and bigger internal changes (splitting up the OS so individual parts can be updated without the OEM involvement, security changes, etc).
Android had this for 15 years or more...