The names were not only dessert-based, but also alphabetical. The last one to be named in this fashion was Pie. They probably couldn't find a good dessert name starting with Q, so they discontinued the practice.
OS X names used to be big cats too until they ran out of good ones. Now it's locations in California. Who knows what it will be next.
Or Qottab. It's not that there are no desserts with Q, but there are none that are as well-known and widely-used in the anglosphere as pies and marshmallows.
> Going with a new naming scheme for the 10th version of Android makes a bit of sense; it’s a landmark release. Still, given how difficult it is to put a common dessert to the letter Q, I noted to Google’s Sameer Samat, VP of product management for Android, that it was awfully convenient that Google picked this release to switch up the naming scheme. “We’re going to deal with that skepticism,” he says. Google’s actual reason for switching the naming, he says, isn’t that Q is hard, but rather that desserts aren’t very inclusive. “We have some good names, but in each and every case they leave a part of the world out,” he argues. Android is a global brand, used by more people in India and Brazil than in the US, so going with an English word for the dessert leaves some regions out. Pie isn’t always a dessert, “lollipop” can be hard to pronounce in some regions, and “marshmallows aren’t really a thing in a lot of places,” Samat says. Numbers, at least, are universal.
You could make the same argument that names aren't inclusive -- after all, not everyone can say "Jean Valjean" but "24601" is universal, right?
It doesn't really matter, but it's weird reasoning. Cutesy touches like the dessert names help humanize tech company products and anchor them in reality. It's a shame to give it up because we can't find universal desserts, which is a strange claim to make anyway -- wouldn't anybody, anywhere, appreciate a marshmallow? Why not pick some foreign desserts from unappreciated countries to bring attention to them, instead of abandoning the concept entirely?
> wouldn't anybody, anywhere, appreciate a marshmallow?
Doubtful. Cacao farmers have never tasted chocolate [0]. Foods and desserts are not universal. The sugary slop I eat in America would be appalling in many places across the world. Not to mention the portion sizes.
Weird that their solution was to get rid of the names instead of just using more desserts from other cultures. If they want inclusivity and to bring awareness to other cultures, seems like the best option, no? Now nobody gets to see their favorite dessert as an Android OS name.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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. ...
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.
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'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.
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.
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 is remarkable the difference in awareness that android vs iOS releases produce. As a iOS user, i'm glad that iOS releases and features are pushed to me aggressively.
Having been a developer for both platforms, Apple events/announcements are exciting for people working on iOS apps, while Google events are kinda just depressing.
"Oh, yeah, that's cool I guess. Be fun to get to use it in five more years when enough people have this, or a newer, version, for it to matter."
A few years ago the phone co's would sell a phone today to your parents that was already 1-2 version behind especially if the phone was released a year or so ago. And then NEVER update it over 3 years outside of (maybe) some security updates.
For some reason, a month after iOS is released, phones from Apple, including older phones still being sold, are either sold updated or can be updated.
> For some reason, a month after iOS is released, phones from Apple, including older phones still being sold, are either sold updated or can be updated.
That reason should be pretty obvious. Apple has a massive profit margin on their phones, so they're economically able to do this.
The margins are super small with Android devices, so if any OEM tries to offer support they'll be quickly undercut by the competition
There are more reasons than that. Apple has tight control over its operating system, and even designs many chip components themselves (not all). Android phone manufacturers on the other hand integrate finished components from various manufacturers, together with their driver packages. If Qualcomm doesn't create a new set of drivers for a new android version, they don't have much of a choice.
This isn't true imo. With AndroidX and before that the support library, most of the new features have been backwards compatible with older versions of Android.
Most of interesting features aren’t (can’t) be in the support libraries. I haven’t developed android apps in years — thankfully — but the features I can recall off the top of my head are runtime permissions and granular notification settings. Both sweet things that weren’t worth implementing for years after the OS official release.
Sure, but I don't want them and that's on the (lengthening every year) list of stuff I wish Apple'd take out, to simplify the UI. Peaked in iOS 6, IMO, been a rollercoaster that's never again reached the height of that first hill ever since.
Really? I've found Apple's slow and steady approach to additions in the iOS UI to be more pleasant than not. I will admit I've only been using iPhones since iOS 10 but have mostly only noticed improvements since then (e.g. the new control panel, amazing animations, app library).
Widgets, as well, have been a deal breaker for me, what makes you dislike them?
The only real problem I have with iOS as a whole right now is how buried some actions can be, especially in apps like Safari and Music, some things which should be a press away can take 3-4 taps to complete, which while not really annoying does make me feel like a grandpa just tapping away at his phone to share an image or add a song to my queue.
I like iOS devices as a slab of glass & metal that becomes various tools (apps). Since there's nothing else that operates that way, the more it becomes like a general-purpose OS, the farther we get from having anything available that behaves that way.
The shock of the move from 6 to 7 was pretty large. 6: "slide to unlock" slider that looked like a physical slider-latch, like one you might slide to unlock a container, and was so obvious in what it did, that it hardly even needed text to be usable by anyone. 7: "swipe to unlock" in thin text on... the background? So what do I swipe? Oh, the screen itself, which is a completely different metaphor for interaction, and entirely unintuitive to people who don't think like that. That kind of thing, repeated across the entire UI.
Most of the multitasking stuff they've added, are just weird modes I accidentally put myself in then have to spend time figuring out how to get out of them. I'm sure they're pure rage-inducing hell for most people, who are even worse at tech than I am.
I think the loss of the home button, one of the most brilliant UI elements of all time, is a big loss for intuitiveness/usability for people who aren't immersed in very digital-native metaphors. It was such a great safety net for people. "Oh shit, what's this?! HOME BUTTON! Ah, now I'm in familiar territory". Swiping the screen up from the bottom is not a complete replacement for that.
Overall it's just far less relaxing and straightforward than it used to be. Used to feel like some kind of hyper-advanced "slow tech" sort of thing. Now it's a lot closer to just being another computer OS. I wouldn't care, except there's no alternative that provides the old thing that I liked better.
I like the idea of having iOS as just a portal to a bunch of your apps, but I think saying something like this would've made much more sense 5+ years ago. Nowadays, 99% of people see their phones are far, far more. Whether that is a good or bad thing depends on the person i guess.
> 7: "swipe to unlock" in thin text on... the background? So what do I swipe? Oh, the screen itself...
I can already detect what is probably a massive difference in technical literacy and age between us but I'll humor myself anyways. I still have an iPhone 3g lying around with the old physical looking slider and while i do agree it made more sense than just swiping up from the background, our great UX overloads at basically every phone company around the release of iOS 7 probably decided that just swiping on the background was more aesthetic and "modern".
Now that I think about it, the same could probably be said for just about any major mobile UI change over the past few years.
Also regarding what you said about the move from a physical home button, I am torn here, I like both approaches very much (as someone who has an iPhone SE and a 13 mini on hand) and can't really decide which is better. Though I will admit that once you really master the fully gesture based UX of newer iOS releases, it is just a tad but more efficient, if less "sensible" overall.
I still do wish Apple made a flagship alternative iphone which was just an 8 plus but with the latest and greatest chip and screen and battery and whatnot but with classic old look and feel, I have no doubt it would sell pretty well too.
> Overall it's just far less relaxing and straightforward than it used to be.
I genuinely believe this is by design, these products (both software and hardware) are being sold to people who already know what's been going on for the most part (and in the case of newbies, this is what they are first introduced to so they never even knew there was another reality) and can easily adapt to the new interface changes. In practice, I remember people being frustrated about the iPhone X's gesture based interface but Apple has improved it to the point where no one really mentions it anymore, it's just a part of the refined iOS experience now i guess.
> Swiping the screen up from the bottom is not a complete replacement for that.
Last note, you have to at least acknowledge that it's mad satisfying to do so, if a little unnatural at first.
I love Android, at least on my TV set top box. I haven't used it on my phone since the Samsung GS3, almost a decade now. I like it and as a Windows user would love the additional integration but I need a "mini" phone and I want someone to match Apple's longterm support. People (don't know they) want Microsoft's foldable device and a phone like my 12 mini, but on Android. If Microsoft or Amazon ever decides to fit the void, I'd be back in. I enjoy the heck out of my FireTV devices, and have ever since I moved off of my AppleTV gen2 box, which was the last one I know of that could be easily jailbroken.
Looks like grandparent mode is enabled by default with all the whitespace and even lower information density. What's the endgame? In 20 years only a single letter at a time on the screen?
>Any information processed in Private Compute Core requires explicit user action before it can be shared with Google (...)
If they know everything about the data going in and coming out it's still useless.
I doubt anyone here wants more tweets. I personally wish the twitter UI would just be entirely whitespace (or a fine chirping blue if they're feeling adventerous) for their audience to sit and enjoy; I can genuinely find no drawbacks to such a UI rework.
You're not wrong. I guess I'm more annoyed by how widespread it has become to waste whitespace. The new Reddit design is unusable for me because of how much space it wastes. I try it sometimes for a few days, then go back to the old design and feel so much happier to be able to see so much at once without distractions.
As someone who grew up using 160x160 and 320x320 PDAs, the idea a smartphone now uses a 1080x1200 rectangle to only give me eight buttons makes me want to throw up.
As someone who used 132x65 pagers back then, my Blackberry RIM 850 can display more information in the screen than my Samsung Note 8. I loathe this "maximum white space!!" UIs as well. My boss prefers the grandparent-mode UIs whereas I prefer compact with every space is being used as possible. I like to have high-density texts like the old day of Reddit to minimum screen-scrolling.
Oh man, blackberry's where such perfect communication devices, fast writing no additional bs...i miss that time, it was the perfect mix of smart and dump phone...and nothing more was/is needed.
oh yeah we all look back super fondly on the dozens and dozens of nested lists that somehow was considered passable as a user interface.
I'm no fan of the current whitespace-heavy UI paradigm, but to say BlackBerry did it better is definitely not matching my own memories of my BlackBerry devices at all.
It is the design paradigm of Blackberry is what we prefers because it shows information of what we want and need without any fuss. The modern design paradigm is so backward and marketing-oriented, filled with ads and paddings the way bean counters have in mind. The 90s/00s era have a good design in mind that are human-oriented and natural to use. Now, everything felt off and harder to memorize those extra steps. My Blackberry make it feel like an important tool and easier to use (they are refers as Crackberry back then), modern smartphone tries their best to be hostile toward their users no matter what. If we stay on the goal of human-oriented design with modern style, then our design paradigm will be vastly different than what we have now.
I agree with the sentiment about UI designs today, and I think that those horrible lists of the BlackBerry were just as bad, for the very same reasons.
some of those list items took some action immediately, some opened further lists, and there was no differentiation visually, for example. some may call that "tool-like", but I call it "lacking important contextual information", and it's just as bad as other UIs which lack important cues.
> modern smartphone tries their best to be hostile toward their users no matter what
they definitely do not try to be hostile. I sense an attitude on this site lately which is probably best summed up as "everything new is stupid" and that is just as misguided as believing that modern smartphones are intentionally hostile.
MAYBE they're unintentionally hostile. Maybe, but I doubt it. Smartphones are imperfect, yes, and dark patterns DO exist, yes, and I can't recall ever seeing anything hostile in Android or iOS or iPadOS, ever. organized poorly? sure. oversimplified? yep! hostile? never.
Those PDAs generally used styluses, similarly sized screens (or at least about half the size of current phones, 4-5", so a very different DPI) and it was considered okay to make interface elements so small that you could not walk and reliably hit them at the same time.
By your logic we should be able to use a PDA interface on a smartwatch.
>Looks like grandparent mode is enabled by default with all the whitespace and even lower information density. What's the endgame? In 20 years only a single letter at a time on the screen?
Just playing to their customer. As time goes on, the demographics of Android users get older and less savvy as everyone else switches to iPhone. (not snark, I have a Pixel myself)
Well at first IT people complained because boomers wouldn't learn how to use computers. Now they (sorta)did and they want one letter per screen. Since they still control the majority of the market share that is what we will get by default.
Its really the getting old denial mode. All of those people need reading glasses not huge font.
Seriously the in house attorney where i worked(like 70yo) had his phone font set so large it was like 2-3 words per screen on email and text.
I almost cut my arm off with all that edge. Care to dial it back a bit?
The counterpoint is that most of the 'information' apps think are important really are wasting my time and obscuring actual signal. Putting design on a diet and making apps think about what data is priority vs noise is something that respects the user.
The ability to glance at my phone and get the most important info without parsing out noise - that's a big plus. The ability to mix and match widgets on my home and lock screen to display the data I want without crowding stuff out - also great.
It's funny that a related argument against mobile is that all apps demand full screen and it's difficult to do advanced work bc of app switch friction - well this approach of forcing apps to limit and prioritize info puts out a path of addressing that inefficiency nicely.
> what important APIs did they axe now?
Again many API turn downs improve user privacy, improve system stability, or push apps to more battery/memory efficient APIs.
Do you really want win32 level of API compatibility? As a user I don't care. As a developer I would rather work on a living and evolving platform then a fossil or legacy tarpit.
What I want from a grandparent mode is for the app to not show an sign-up announcement screen with every update or at least have that X (close) prominently; Adobe Acrobat Reader is notorious in that regard as they showcase their graphics prowess with fancy 'Sign-up' screen with every update and almost invisible (X) button; Old people who are just trying to open a pdf from the email shouldn't have to put up with this.
This is a serious problem that Google has not worked nearly hard enough. Sure, you can buy a Pixel if you want no bloatware and updates on the release day. But not having that for most OEMs is, among other things, a security problem.
You are not alone; Google store is available only in 12 of 27 EU countries (it is not in a single Eastern-European country and neither in Cyprus, Greece, Luxembourg and Malta).
Its not google's fault that manufacturers are greedy for user data and basically nobody releases Android One phones, the option is there. They could if they wanted, but even ie Xiaomi stopped releasing their phones with it. And their normal products are crapfest of highest calibre from OS level (at least my Mi 9 is).
> Its not google's fault that manufacturers are greedy for user data and basically nobody releases Android One phones, the option is there
Google could just enforce it, like they enforce so many things, by tying it to the Play Services license. If Google wanted to prevent manufacturers from 'customizing` (ruining) their Android phones, they could do so.
but how will those poor carriers and handset vendors "add value" or "differentiate" if they are forced to use stock Android? won't someone think of the children of the employees of those companies?
seriously, "adding value" has never once "added" any "value" for the end user. not once.
Sad to hear it's still a problem. I had Android for a while, but device upgrades instead of being exciting, were a thing I most dreaded.
Upgrading Android phones, even with their supposedly new migration assistant via cables, still kept losing most of my apps' device-local data and settings, as if Google didn't care about anything that isn't on their servers.
What kind of stuff does iOS back up that Android doesn't?
On Android, all of my photos are backed up to Google Photos. Most games use Google Play's cloud save system. All of my notes are in Google Keep or Google Docs (or Notion) which all are backed up in the cloud. Whenever you switch phones, you can easily select a list of all the apps you want to install and _most_ of them have data backed up automatically.
I think literally the only stuff on my phone that isn't backed up is local files (downloads etc.) but those could easily just be saved to Google Drive instead of on-device.
Apple effectively lets you 'image' the device, so you can transfer from one to another with no messing around. Windows Mobile/Phone allowed you to do the same thing. Blame fragmentation with ROMs like One UI etc.
> I think literally the only stuff on my phone that isn't backed up is local files
And besides downloads, there are many apps that just use local files and that you therefore need to transfert manually. e.g. apps from F-Droid, SMS, Wechat, etc. So even though "many" stuffs are automatically stored in Google servers, you still need a lot of case-by-case manual attention and care when transferring to a new phone.
I see three total representations of time... I think? I think that's what I'm looking at on the left screenshot on the "Mon 4" widget? A clock face? One of them's normal (top bar), one (the clock face) looks way more "cutesy" and decorative than functional, so I guess if it's some customization and not standard, that's fine, but what's with the Lock Screen? Why print the time with unusual formatting on there? (I know, I know, the answer is "it looks very nice in screenshots for marketing... and for my portfolio")
Rightmost screenshot: wow, iOS and Android quick-settings screens have converged a lot more than I realized, since I was last in the Android world. Who copied whom?
It's really weird that the rightmost screenshot (the quick-settings screen) bumps the top bar down for a second top bar that just prints the date, in small type.
The permissions and privacy stuff seems OK but I'm surprised they were so far behind on that front that this is new.
Screenshot interface is also damn near identical to the one on my iPhone. Again, dunno who got there first, or if it's just convergent design... but wow, it's very close. The "scrolling screenshot" thing is cool, though I wonder how that'll interact with drawing rules for various app widgets—or maybe it just works on web content? (no clue if my iPhone can do that—I don't think so?)
Phone switching feature—again, I'm surprised this is new for them. Being able to do it from iPhone, too, is a nice touch though.
> Phone switching feature—again, I'm surprised this is new for them. Being able to do it from iPhone, too, is a nice touch though.
The feature itself is very old. I think they are implying that in previous versions it did not transfer all your "essentials" and now it does - it isn't really clear to me what exactly they improved, though. And the iPhone bit may be new.
I mean the "fixed" top bar that usually shows the time and battery status, et c., gets bumped down for a second one that just prints the date, on the far left of the screen. This is on the settings screen, captured on the right side of the top graphic on the page.
It's a weird choice for a bunch of reasons—why go to extra effort to print the date on the settings screen, of all places, but not in any kind of a "you can edit this here" context, but only an informational one? Why not find a way to put it on the existing top bar? (it looks like there's room, even with the notch) Why break a "this bar is fixed at the top and doesn't have anything 'above' it in the view hierarchy—all it might do is disappear, not be pushed down" norm for such a minor thing? If you're going to that effort, why only use like 1/4 of the width (even accounting for the notch) that you're claiming, and not display more stuff there? Why not just print that under the existing bar, if you've decided it needs to appear on this screen?
It looks like a mistake, as is. Like some kind of temporary dev UI element that got left in by accident.
I am positively impressed with the new "Material You". Really. Don't want to stay in my comfort zone. Some positive stress for the brain to adapt to the new situation. All UI seems a little soft and friendly. For me missing IOS functionality with gestures from top to bottom to lower down any app for more convenient control with one hand
> Was that paragraph meant to be clickable or extendable?
The next four sections expand on it: see what apps are using the mic and camera, option to give apps only approximate location data, app permissions dashboard, and the local computation for some data.
Last time I used android it was version 4.1 boasting how it improved responsiveness of the system. Here we are with Android 12 still trying to improve responsiveness and smoothness of the system...
Performance is still variable on Samsung/Xioami devices in my experience. I have a Samsung S21 which can be really fast one minute and stuttering the next. Possibly it's better on Google's own devices.
highly recommend unless you need knox or some other propritary samsung app. I also wish they would stick with one processor. The exynos vs snapdragon differences are annoying when trying to read reviews or troubleshoot
It is really good and has been like forever. You of course have to spend equal amounts as for an iPhone to get a high end experience, and it was like that back then as well. Many people failed to understand this and bought shitty underpowered handhelds, and blamed Android for being laggy.
I had high end Android devices up to Android 7 and still experienced lagging and stuttering. It was clear there were optimisation issues with the software that couldn’t be solved by throwing hardware at.
Agree. I have a Samsung S21 which is supposed to be top of the range and I occasionally experience such poor performance that wouldn't be tolerated on a lower end iPhone. Android is really a mixed bag even on high end device. Sometimes it just flies then next minute it lags and stutters so badly...in the same app doing exactly the same thing. I only stay on Android due to pretty much a single app that's not available in iOS, otherwise I would be using an iPhone. They're not perfect but gosh iPhones are so much more polished, consistent and at least reasonably quick/smooth even if you have older/lower end devices.
Ever since iOS 15 came out I’ve been getting small stutters in CarPlay. I’m on an iPhone 12 Pro so it’s not a hardware speed issue.
You know what? You’re right. It sticks out like a sore thumb because it’s so different from my normal experience. I’m used to some 3rd party apps being terrible but not the OS itself.
(Never used Android for more than 5 minutes, can’t comment there)
Samsung devices (and I read, Xiaomi devices too, but to a lesser extent) have shitty performance. Yeah, they have excellent specs, but the software is horrible. I know this because Pixels are almost always guaranteed to be extremely fluid, but my comparable S10 suffers from significant stutters and lag.
Open developer settings and change the three "animation scale" settings to 0.5x. Modern phones rarely have responsiveness issues outside gratuitous animations.
The new accessibility features seem pretty cool. But this design is awful, and these widgets are the worst I’ve ever seen. The clock widget in particular is just… ugly? Wtf, why do they seem so proud of this monstrosity, sticking it everywhere they can?
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 269 ms ] threadOS X names used to be big cats too until they ran out of good ones. Now it's locations in California. Who knows what it will be next.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quindim
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qottab
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/22/20827231/android-10-q-goo...
It doesn't really matter, but it's weird reasoning. Cutesy touches like the dessert names help humanize tech company products and anchor them in reality. It's a shame to give it up because we can't find universal desserts, which is a strange claim to make anyway -- wouldn't anybody, anywhere, appreciate a marshmallow? Why not pick some foreign desserts from unappreciated countries to bring attention to them, instead of abandoning the concept entirely?
Doubtful. Cacao farmers have never tasted chocolate [0]. Foods and desserts are not universal. The sugary slop I eat in America would be appalling in many places across the world. Not to mention the portion sizes.
[0]: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/08/01/336919715/th...
...but when exporting, we have to sanitize cultural expression so as not to confuse or offend.
This is all a bit silly.
Whats wrong with just taking random foods from around the world?
I used to know this stuff, but these days couldn't care less.
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.
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.
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.
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.
IMO, one of the recent updates brought nice feature to AOSP and therefore all vendors: navigation via swipes.
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.
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
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.
"Oh, yeah, that's cool I guess. Be fun to get to use it in five more years when enough people have this, or a newer, version, for it to matter."
A few years ago the phone co's would sell a phone today to your parents that was already 1-2 version behind especially if the phone was released a year or so ago. And then NEVER update it over 3 years outside of (maybe) some security updates.
For some reason, a month after iOS is released, phones from Apple, including older phones still being sold, are either sold updated or can be updated.
Meanwhile my iPhone 8 got iOS 15 over 5 years after it launched.
iOS 14.8 was 9/13/21 14.7 was 7/26/21
iOS 12.5 was 6/14/21
So that's 7+ years?
That reason should be pretty obvious. Apple has a massive profit margin on their phones, so they're economically able to do this.
The margins are super small with Android devices, so if any OEM tries to offer support they'll be quickly undercut by the competition
Widgets, as well, have been a deal breaker for me, what makes you dislike them?
The only real problem I have with iOS as a whole right now is how buried some actions can be, especially in apps like Safari and Music, some things which should be a press away can take 3-4 taps to complete, which while not really annoying does make me feel like a grandpa just tapping away at his phone to share an image or add a song to my queue.
The shock of the move from 6 to 7 was pretty large. 6: "slide to unlock" slider that looked like a physical slider-latch, like one you might slide to unlock a container, and was so obvious in what it did, that it hardly even needed text to be usable by anyone. 7: "swipe to unlock" in thin text on... the background? So what do I swipe? Oh, the screen itself, which is a completely different metaphor for interaction, and entirely unintuitive to people who don't think like that. That kind of thing, repeated across the entire UI.
Most of the multitasking stuff they've added, are just weird modes I accidentally put myself in then have to spend time figuring out how to get out of them. I'm sure they're pure rage-inducing hell for most people, who are even worse at tech than I am.
I think the loss of the home button, one of the most brilliant UI elements of all time, is a big loss for intuitiveness/usability for people who aren't immersed in very digital-native metaphors. It was such a great safety net for people. "Oh shit, what's this?! HOME BUTTON! Ah, now I'm in familiar territory". Swiping the screen up from the bottom is not a complete replacement for that.
Overall it's just far less relaxing and straightforward than it used to be. Used to feel like some kind of hyper-advanced "slow tech" sort of thing. Now it's a lot closer to just being another computer OS. I wouldn't care, except there's no alternative that provides the old thing that I liked better.
> 7: "swipe to unlock" in thin text on... the background? So what do I swipe? Oh, the screen itself...
I can already detect what is probably a massive difference in technical literacy and age between us but I'll humor myself anyways. I still have an iPhone 3g lying around with the old physical looking slider and while i do agree it made more sense than just swiping up from the background, our great UX overloads at basically every phone company around the release of iOS 7 probably decided that just swiping on the background was more aesthetic and "modern".
Now that I think about it, the same could probably be said for just about any major mobile UI change over the past few years.
Also regarding what you said about the move from a physical home button, I am torn here, I like both approaches very much (as someone who has an iPhone SE and a 13 mini on hand) and can't really decide which is better. Though I will admit that once you really master the fully gesture based UX of newer iOS releases, it is just a tad but more efficient, if less "sensible" overall.
I still do wish Apple made a flagship alternative iphone which was just an 8 plus but with the latest and greatest chip and screen and battery and whatnot but with classic old look and feel, I have no doubt it would sell pretty well too.
> Overall it's just far less relaxing and straightforward than it used to be.
I genuinely believe this is by design, these products (both software and hardware) are being sold to people who already know what's been going on for the most part (and in the case of newbies, this is what they are first introduced to so they never even knew there was another reality) and can easily adapt to the new interface changes. In practice, I remember people being frustrated about the iPhone X's gesture based interface but Apple has improved it to the point where no one really mentions it anymore, it's just a part of the refined iOS experience now i guess.
> Swiping the screen up from the bottom is not a complete replacement for that.
Last note, you have to at least acknowledge that it's mad satisfying to do so, if a little unnatural at first.
>Any information processed in Private Compute Core requires explicit user action before it can be shared with Google (...)
If they know everything about the data going in and coming out it's still useless.
Also what important APIs did they axe now?
I'm no fan of the current whitespace-heavy UI paradigm, but to say BlackBerry did it better is definitely not matching my own memories of my BlackBerry devices at all.
some of those list items took some action immediately, some opened further lists, and there was no differentiation visually, for example. some may call that "tool-like", but I call it "lacking important contextual information", and it's just as bad as other UIs which lack important cues.
> modern smartphone tries their best to be hostile toward their users no matter what
they definitely do not try to be hostile. I sense an attitude on this site lately which is probably best summed up as "everything new is stupid" and that is just as misguided as believing that modern smartphones are intentionally hostile.
MAYBE they're unintentionally hostile. Maybe, but I doubt it. Smartphones are imperfect, yes, and dark patterns DO exist, yes, and I can't recall ever seeing anything hostile in Android or iOS or iPadOS, ever. organized poorly? sure. oversimplified? yep! hostile? never.
"Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?"
But otherwise I do agree it was a fantastic phone for easy communication. Although it was far too easy to txt and drive
By your logic we should be able to use a PDA interface on a smartwatch.
Don't you think that a letter is a bit optimistic? What about colored buttons with icons, ala Idiocracy?
I don't think fashion has an endgame.
Just playing to their customer. As time goes on, the demographics of Android users get older and less savvy as everyone else switches to iPhone. (not snark, I have a Pixel myself)
They did this. It’s trendy. Later they’ll “discover” information density and go in the other direction.
Its really the getting old denial mode. All of those people need reading glasses not huge font. Seriously the in house attorney where i worked(like 70yo) had his phone font set so large it was like 2-3 words per screen on email and text.
I almost cut my arm off with all that edge. Care to dial it back a bit?
The counterpoint is that most of the 'information' apps think are important really are wasting my time and obscuring actual signal. Putting design on a diet and making apps think about what data is priority vs noise is something that respects the user.
The ability to glance at my phone and get the most important info without parsing out noise - that's a big plus. The ability to mix and match widgets on my home and lock screen to display the data I want without crowding stuff out - also great.
It's funny that a related argument against mobile is that all apps demand full screen and it's difficult to do advanced work bc of app switch friction - well this approach of forcing apps to limit and prioritize info puts out a path of addressing that inefficiency nicely.
> what important APIs did they axe now?
Again many API turn downs improve user privacy, improve system stability, or push apps to more battery/memory efficient APIs.
Do you really want win32 level of API compatibility? As a user I don't care. As a developer I would rather work on a living and evolving platform then a fossil or legacy tarpit.
/s
Not really, I live in Croatia (EU member) and the product is not available in my country.
Not all shops will ship abroad, but buying a smartphone shouldn't pose a problem.
But Google will tell you they are not in your country, they won't ship there and you can just look:
> We aren’t in your region yet > > You can still browse our products in any of the other regions.
Google could just enforce it, like they enforce so many things, by tying it to the Play Services license. If Google wanted to prevent manufacturers from 'customizing` (ruining) their Android phones, they could do so.
seriously, "adding value" has never once "added" any "value" for the end user. not once.
Upgrading Android phones, even with their supposedly new migration assistant via cables, still kept losing most of my apps' device-local data and settings, as if Google didn't care about anything that isn't on their servers.
On Android, all of my photos are backed up to Google Photos. Most games use Google Play's cloud save system. All of my notes are in Google Keep or Google Docs (or Notion) which all are backed up in the cloud. Whenever you switch phones, you can easily select a list of all the apps you want to install and _most_ of them have data backed up automatically.
I think literally the only stuff on my phone that isn't backed up is local files (downloads etc.) but those could easily just be saved to Google Drive instead of on-device.
And besides downloads, there are many apps that just use local files and that you therefore need to transfert manually. e.g. apps from F-Droid, SMS, Wechat, etc. So even though "many" stuffs are automatically stored in Google servers, you still need a lot of case-by-case manual attention and care when transferring to a new phone.
Rightmost screenshot: wow, iOS and Android quick-settings screens have converged a lot more than I realized, since I was last in the Android world. Who copied whom?
It's really weird that the rightmost screenshot (the quick-settings screen) bumps the top bar down for a second top bar that just prints the date, in small type.
The permissions and privacy stuff seems OK but I'm surprised they were so far behind on that front that this is new.
Screenshot interface is also damn near identical to the one on my iPhone. Again, dunno who got there first, or if it's just convergent design... but wow, it's very close. The "scrolling screenshot" thing is cool, though I wonder how that'll interact with drawing rules for various app widgets—or maybe it just works on web content? (no clue if my iPhone can do that—I don't think so?)
Phone switching feature—again, I'm surprised this is new for them. Being able to do it from iPhone, too, is a nice touch though.
The feature itself is very old. I think they are implying that in previous versions it did not transfer all your "essentials" and now it does - it isn't really clear to me what exactly they improved, though. And the iPhone bit may be new.
sounds like a privacy thing
It's a weird choice for a bunch of reasons—why go to extra effort to print the date on the settings screen, of all places, but not in any kind of a "you can edit this here" context, but only an informational one? Why not find a way to put it on the existing top bar? (it looks like there's room, even with the notch) Why break a "this bar is fixed at the top and doesn't have anything 'above' it in the view hierarchy—all it might do is disappear, not be pushed down" norm for such a minor thing? If you're going to that effort, why only use like 1/4 of the width (even accounting for the notch) that you're claiming, and not display more stuff there? Why not just print that under the existing bar, if you've decided it needs to appear on this screen?
It looks like a mistake, as is. Like some kind of temporary dev UI element that got left in by accident.
Oh, come on.
Because I wanted to read what they meant by
"With new easy-to-use, powerful privacy features, you’ll have peace of mind"
but noscript blocked any link or something.
"If you see anything that you’re not comfortable with, you can manage permissions right from the dashboard."
I doubt I can remove all permissions from Google (?)
The next four sections expand on it: see what apps are using the mic and camera, option to give apps only approximate location data, app permissions dashboard, and the local computation for some data.
You know what? You’re right. It sticks out like a sore thumb because it’s so different from my normal experience. I’m used to some 3rd party apps being terrible but not the OS itself.
(Never used Android for more than 5 minutes, can’t comment there)