“Phones” in the title is doing lots of heavy lifting. “Android phones” is the key missing piece.
I love Free software too, and I wish I could run more of my life on it, but it’s no longer my hobby. I like cars, too, but I don’t work on a hobby car. The author’s experience is why I use proprietary stuff like Apple for these parts of my life. A new Apple device is usually a non-event: charge it, authenticate, wait for the back to restore while you go about your business.
The cost of more freedom (in this case, from proprietary toolchains and data lakes) is needing to exercise more control (compiling custom Android images). I just, honest to god, don’t want to spend the time on it. A kid, a house, cats, getting old. I like that someone else has solved multi-device backup and restore, and I feel happy watching it happen so perfectly, even if I’m not the one controlling it.
To be fair, setting up a new iPhone (without restoring from backup) is a pretty long-winded process these days. You have to make about 50 decisions on various features, tap through numerous info screens, set up Face ID, Apple Pay, voice recognition, etc. etc. It feels like every team at Apple wants something in the onboarding flow.
*Samsung phones. Known for a long time for their crapware infested devices. At the other end of the spectrum, Pixel phones are quite easy and smooth to set up.
You're presenting a false dichotomy. I'd argue that installing and setting up GrapheneOS on a Pixel is as-much or less effort compared to setting up an iPhone. And it gives you full freedom and the best possible security while doing so. You can have everything at once.
Apple products are atrocious to setup too. I've wanted to film just how bad the experience is but I'd need a 3rd phone since I have to use the 2nd phone to setup the new 1st phone.
iOS/macOS is no better. My wife kept getting weird errors on her iPhone.
Turns out, her photos were only in the cloud and, quelle surprise, she had run out of room in "The Cloud(tm)" in spite of having almost half a terabyte free on her phone.
I find it hard to believe that almost 20 years after copying iPhone, Google still hasn’t figured out how to do backups properly for simple phone migration. What happens if your Android phone is stolen or destroyed?
(It reminds me of the major car manufacturers ignoring what Tesla saw as vital - having a reliable trustworthy easy to use charging network was as important as the BEV itself.)
I fear every single time I have to switch phones. Being degoogled means I first have to choose hardware based on custom ROMs compatibility, and fight the thing to just install the ROM. Then the fun begins, for every single stupid feature I have to install and setup a solution (app) optionally restoring a backup individually. Contacts, calendar, files, maps, passwords, airtag protection, email, IM, keyboard, weather, notes, smart garbage:tm:, alternative YouTube client...The state of current tech is pityful, if it wasn't what I was doing to put food on the table I wouldn't want any of this garbage 10 meters near me.
Edit: Before any of the geniuses here says "at least you can use alternatives" I don't want to hear your copium, it's obvious this won't last.
Upgraded to one of the latest iPhone recently. First time I clicked on “transfer data from old phone”. I’m used to reinstalling the operating system every couple of months from when I used Windows. It took maybe 15 minutes with close to 0 interactions. Everything was transferred. I was already authenticated in apps. What took manual steps was eSIM transfers.
I don’t remember exact steps so there could have been a bit more. But it was an impressive experience and I told my geek friends about it. They were surprised this is the first time I used this feature.
i typically don't want to re-enter credentials etc, so I always do encrypted backup via itunes.. took 6-7hrs just transferring photos quite hands off most of the time but still painful, can't imagine what android guys go through
If you use android and don't choose GrapheneOS then idk what to tell you, its been an awesome experience with no issues for the last ~5ish years I've used it.
Giving an Android phone to elderly/non-technical people is asking for trouble imho. They will eventually tap their way into installing suspicious apps, adware or even straight up malware. It's inevitable, they are not aware of what they do and how to avoid the many risks of the digital world.
I remember having the same struggles of OP when setting up a cheap android phone for my grandma, the amount of bloat, adware and misleading content I had to remove was incredible (and some couldn't even be removed). The irony was that after a few months of light usage, the phone was in a state even worse, full of downloaded apps and opened suspicious websites in the browser. She would swear she never even noticed any of those.
This is one of the cases in which giving them an iPhone with its walled garden has great benefits. You can also setup parental control on top of that already locked down ecosystem.
If your relatives are significantly tech illiterate, I'd skip the smartphone entirely and go for a locked-down Linux desktop + feature phone. The most dangerous apps are big legitimate ones.
If you do go for a smartphone, my experience tells me that there's no difference between Android and iOS. The biggest sources for shady apps are the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Shady stuff on the web can be easily defeated using an adblocking browser, which is essential for older relatives.
> If your relatives are significantly tech illiterate, I'd skip the smartphone entirely and go for a locked-down Linux desktop + feature phone. The most dangerous apps are big legitimate ones.
You know, they are adults and have free will and do want a smartphone like everyone else to use Whatsapp, read the news, search things on Google, etc.
Hell, my 95 year old grandma convinced a nurse to install TikTok on her phone because she saw her using it and also wanted to try it. It's not like we can isolate them from the world
Setting up enshittified devices is the nightmare. Don't curse out on all phones because they made a poor purchase decision. You're literally buying it wrong. Next time go with a slightly used device that's fully supported by GrapheneOS and marvel at the frictionless setup.
Another thing that annoys me on Android is the setup experience itself. All my recent device presentcthe same behaviour: login with a Google account, transfer data, setup voice assistant and some other defaults,done.
Then after the first app updates is done, a notification comes with "let's finish setting up your phone" and again asks to setup voice assistant, check defaults and whatever else is in the flow.
Has no one noticed that the setup flow seems to run twice?
And it's not one specific device. I do it with eight to ten devices a year, from different OEM, writing reviews and testing. They all have the same behaviour.
I'm dreading having to buy a new rugged Android phone. I have one where all the stuff I don't want is turned off. F-Droid, Firefox, FairEmail, DuckDuckGo, no Google account. Getting a new phone into that configuration may not be possible.
The major brands are more and more locked down, and the minor brands can't be trusted.
I have a Cat phone now. The actual manufacturer, Bullett, went bankrupt. Can't get the small rubber parts needed to maintain the waterproofing.
Sounds like setting up Windows. The amount of explaining of “why you don't want or need that” was insane. I got Ubuntu down to 10 min or so. Including my fav apps. (I won’t make the comparison to setting up NicOS with a ready to go config ;))
The worst part is that it keeps getting harder, not easier. Every new phone setup asks you to connect more accounts, enable more permissions, and configure more services.
I recently helped a family member set up a new phone and it took over 2 hours. Between 2FA migrations, app re-authentication, and trying to figure out which backup actually had their data, it was miserable.
Phone manufacturers have zero incentive to make cross-platform migration easy. Apple wants you to stay on iPhone. Google wants you to stay on Android. The user suffers.
I personally call this process of setting up a new device, whether for me or for someone else, "shit shoveling". It is something of a ritual.
In the former case the thing that needs to be removed is the entirety of the OS (and if that proves to be impossible, the device is returned or discarded), and in the latter it's a scan of all apps and removal of all unnecessary apps, my grandma does not need Samsung Galaxy Games, thank you very much.
I do SIP and Asterisk. I read the title and was like I know right! Oh smartphones. Setting it up is the tip of an iceberg whereas consumers and society as a whole are pay huge prices in several currencies for phones which are tremendously over engineered for and not fit for, purpose. The entire stack from Von Veumann to 5G has to go.
For those on iPhones or respectable mobile network operators, not everyone has as good of an experience as you do.
For people who buy subsidized Android-based phones from some carriers such as Metro by T-Mobile USA, they either come with bloatware baked in or they download the bloatware when you first activate the device or something like that.
These things are fairly easy to disable if you know what you are doing but if you don't know what you are doing, I can imagine people will simply put up with ads showing up every time you pick up the phone. It can get annoying VERY quickly.
I've been running Android custom ROMs since Gingerbread days, on HTC HD2. At that time, I'd be flashing nightlies, switching between CyanogenMod and Paranoid Android, kernels, getting bootloops.
Setting up the phone was no big deal - most apps could be backed up with Titanium Backup, few that couldn't (e.g. banking) would just get redownloaded and I'd log in immediately. I was also still a student back then and had more time to tinker, but if it was anything like it is now, I would've given up much quicker.
In the last year I had to do few clean flashes with changing my phone, then updating LineageOS, and once the phone just wiped itself for no reason. Backups don't work for most apps - even if you can get one, they'll crash without a specific reason. 2FA everywhere is mostly security theater, with apps that have no business keeping my data but insisting on it, using SMS, email, authenticators, selfies. Banking apps needing two layers of root detection circumvention (because a custom ROM is already problematic, so you need root to stop them from detecting an unlocked bootloader, and then again not to detect root). Google insisting on sending a security check notification to a phone that's just been wiped with no ability to confirm that it's really you from your PC (but if you give it few minutes, it will give in and let you verify with SMS), always feels like hacking yourself.
It's a massive pain already on a clean, bloatware-free custom ROM, with a truly minimum app list. Once you need to start debloating the official OS, it's another hour or three, depending if they're nice and let you uninstall things or if you need adb access to disable offending packages.
I am an iPhone user myself, but the number of "this is an android problem" and "just use iPhone" in response to the author's complaints surprises me. I thought HN was more anti apple in the past? Maybe we are all old now and tinkering with our devices is out of fashion, but this doesn't make the author's complaints illegitimate.
And if we zoom out a bit, iPhones are only 20% of the global phone market. The overwhelming majority of the world uses android because, well, iPhones are expensive. There are plenty of places where an iPhone is still a status symbol. Even you think the author should have bought his parents iPhones instead, there is still a whole world of people out there who would benefit from improvements in the android ecosystem.
iPhones are only 20% but in USA they are much popular, and most people here will be from USA and will have disposable income working as software developers.
If you think this setup process is a drag, imagine what a pain in the neck it is to try to use your phone after your paranoid son has fucked it all up like this.
63 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 59.8 ms ] threadContrasting it to my experience setting up iPhones is… dramatic.
I love Free software too, and I wish I could run more of my life on it, but it’s no longer my hobby. I like cars, too, but I don’t work on a hobby car. The author’s experience is why I use proprietary stuff like Apple for these parts of my life. A new Apple device is usually a non-event: charge it, authenticate, wait for the back to restore while you go about your business.
The cost of more freedom (in this case, from proprietary toolchains and data lakes) is needing to exercise more control (compiling custom Android images). I just, honest to god, don’t want to spend the time on it. A kid, a house, cats, getting old. I like that someone else has solved multi-device backup and restore, and I feel happy watching it happen so perfectly, even if I’m not the one controlling it.
iOS/macOS is no better. My wife kept getting weird errors on her iPhone.
Turns out, her photos were only in the cloud and, quelle surprise, she had run out of room in "The Cloud(tm)" in spite of having almost half a terabyte free on her phone.
All the companies want to hold your data hostage.
(It reminds me of the major car manufacturers ignoring what Tesla saw as vital - having a reliable trustworthy easy to use charging network was as important as the BEV itself.)
I don’t remember exact steps so there could have been a bit more. But it was an impressive experience and I told my geek friends about it. They were surprised this is the first time I used this feature.
Here's how you actually set up an Android phone:
- log into Google account
- select a few checkboxes (basically just if you want to restore apps or not)
- done, everything else is automatic
All the fuckery they decided to do because they think they're tech savvy wasn't required.
This is one of the cases in which giving them an iPhone with its walled garden has great benefits. You can also setup parental control on top of that already locked down ecosystem.
If you do go for a smartphone, my experience tells me that there's no difference between Android and iOS. The biggest sources for shady apps are the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Shady stuff on the web can be easily defeated using an adblocking browser, which is essential for older relatives.
You know, they are adults and have free will and do want a smartphone like everyone else to use Whatsapp, read the news, search things on Google, etc.
Hell, my 95 year old grandma convinced a nurse to install TikTok on her phone because she saw her using it and also wanted to try it. It's not like we can isolate them from the world
Some things are actually worse on the iOS side. It took years for Apple to catch up with spam and scam calls/SMS detection.
Plain Google search is still the main vector of scams, I eventually set up NextDNS on her devices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
Then after the first app updates is done, a notification comes with "let's finish setting up your phone" and again asks to setup voice assistant, check defaults and whatever else is in the flow.
Has no one noticed that the setup flow seems to run twice?
And it's not one specific device. I do it with eight to ten devices a year, from different OEM, writing reviews and testing. They all have the same behaviour.
I have a Cat phone now. The actual manufacturer, Bullett, went bankrupt. Can't get the small rubber parts needed to maintain the waterproofing.
Suggestions?
I recently helped a family member set up a new phone and it took over 2 hours. Between 2FA migrations, app re-authentication, and trying to figure out which backup actually had their data, it was miserable.
Phone manufacturers have zero incentive to make cross-platform migration easy. Apple wants you to stay on iPhone. Google wants you to stay on Android. The user suffers.
In the former case the thing that needs to be removed is the entirety of the OS (and if that proves to be impossible, the device is returned or discarded), and in the latter it's a scan of all apps and removal of all unnecessary apps, my grandma does not need Samsung Galaxy Games, thank you very much.
Insightful stuff. Adults buy iPhones.
For people who buy subsidized Android-based phones from some carriers such as Metro by T-Mobile USA, they either come with bloatware baked in or they download the bloatware when you first activate the device or something like that.
These things are fairly easy to disable if you know what you are doing but if you don't know what you are doing, I can imagine people will simply put up with ads showing up every time you pick up the phone. It can get annoying VERY quickly.
I've been running Android custom ROMs since Gingerbread days, on HTC HD2. At that time, I'd be flashing nightlies, switching between CyanogenMod and Paranoid Android, kernels, getting bootloops.
Setting up the phone was no big deal - most apps could be backed up with Titanium Backup, few that couldn't (e.g. banking) would just get redownloaded and I'd log in immediately. I was also still a student back then and had more time to tinker, but if it was anything like it is now, I would've given up much quicker.
In the last year I had to do few clean flashes with changing my phone, then updating LineageOS, and once the phone just wiped itself for no reason. Backups don't work for most apps - even if you can get one, they'll crash without a specific reason. 2FA everywhere is mostly security theater, with apps that have no business keeping my data but insisting on it, using SMS, email, authenticators, selfies. Banking apps needing two layers of root detection circumvention (because a custom ROM is already problematic, so you need root to stop them from detecting an unlocked bootloader, and then again not to detect root). Google insisting on sending a security check notification to a phone that's just been wiped with no ability to confirm that it's really you from your PC (but if you give it few minutes, it will give in and let you verify with SMS), always feels like hacking yourself.
It's a massive pain already on a clean, bloatware-free custom ROM, with a truly minimum app list. Once you need to start debloating the official OS, it's another hour or three, depending if they're nice and let you uninstall things or if you need adb access to disable offending packages.
And if we zoom out a bit, iPhones are only 20% of the global phone market. The overwhelming majority of the world uses android because, well, iPhones are expensive. There are plenty of places where an iPhone is still a status symbol. Even you think the author should have bought his parents iPhones instead, there is still a whole world of people out there who would benefit from improvements in the android ecosystem.