I dont understand the phone OS world.....

[Athlonite]

I wonder how many people have kept their phone land lines.

Up until a month ago I still had a landline until I realised the only reason I had it was so my mum could ring me and one elderly customer now that my mum has passed and the customer has a cell phone that they now ring me on I had it cut off as it's now a waste of money

In any case, I have many things to say about Android, not a single one of them is nice.

As do many users of Android devices about (Cr)apple so what is your point or are you just a (Cr)apple sheep caught in the Steve Jobs reality distortion field who can't see that whatever other people use as their daily device is just as good for them as your's is for you

 

[Shihab]

Then why does everyone copy Apple? Including removal of the headphone jack.

Works both ways. Apple "copied" wireless charging, multi-lens cameras, flat UI philosophy (probably the worst thing they ever copied), esims, etc, etc

The whole "x copied y" arguments are lousy, tbh, but I would be careful using it in favour of Apple. The anti-Apple hate crowd never fail to find an "Android did it first" every iOS/iPhone announcement.

I hate Linux more than Nvidia. There is nothing too HARD to download driver separately then install it, thing is there are should be drivers for the XX OS.

Well, you *can* download drivers separately on linux. It's just that, doing so often leads to a catastrophe...

 

[freeagent]

To me it’s just a pocket computer that makes phone calls lol.. does what I need. I have no problems with people using droid, it does what they want.. no problem right? So much needless division over tech.

 

[Shihab]

Cells do mitosis, whole-ass humans do this.

 

[chrcoluk]

A lot of these decisions I think are based on what they think creates hype and sells phones.

There is a number of things that annoy me with smart phone design choices.

Glass panel that cant be taken off for battery maintenance.
Thin phones that are hard to pick up and hold.
Edge phones that are even harder to use, due to having to be really careful to avoid touching screen.
Removal of FM radio on high end models.
Removal of dedicated notification LED, took years for vendors to catch on its needed, then they got rid again. Attempts to implement it on a sleeping screen very in quality.

Some more thoughts on the OS side of things.

Really poor UI design for stock for so many years, but now finally on Android 14 I see a big improvement, I am not sure if this is motorola own things or google finally seen sense, but is now an option to use a modern UI so notifications left side pull down with full screen to fit many on, and quick shortcuts when swiping down right side, laid out reasonably well, this is copying gravity box and co and it took over a decade for dev's of android to catch on. (looks like this was added in Android 12)
Finally in android 14 also is a 80% charging cap, although on the phone I am using on, it seems bugged, have to reboot the phone to be able to charge again after it stops charging. (This one I think introduced in 14)
Privacy and security is slowly improving, but it took google so long to start taking it seriously.
Direct updates which I mentioned earlier, bypassing the OEM's, I think they started this around Android 10, and with every new release more and more modules get updated this way. So even if you stuck on lets say A12, you will still get various component updates. Again a long time to figure out, but got there in the end.

Given the improvement in A12+ on notifications and quick switching, and now with dev tools can do custom DPI as well, the improved privacy+security controls, improved lock controls, improved battery control, the need for rooting is diminishing. I still run custom compiled twitter, instagram, tiktok, youtube, to make these apps much more user friendly and less hostile, but I think thats possible to do on a non rooted phone now, not entirely sure. Gravity box I hide specific persistent notification, not sure if thats possible now on latest out of the box android. Swift backup on my unrooted moto g55, on A14 wont let me backup data with apps, when I backup apps, so sadly that seems to be a root only thing still. I also when I manually recovered whatsapp on there, had to copy files over USB, as had no permissions inside Android, but I guess for better security thats probably a good trade off, its not denied completely, just locally on the phone. Curious if its possible to backup app+data over USB ADB.

 

[qxp]

Given the improvement in A12+ on notifications and quick switching, and now with dev tools can do custom DPI as well, the improved privacy+security controls, improved lock controls, improved battery control, the need for rooting is diminishing. I still run custom compiled twitter, instagram, tiktok, youtube, to make these apps much more user friendly and less hostile, but I think thats possible to do on a non rooted phone now, not entirely sure. Gravity box I hide specific persistent notification, not sure if thats possible now on latest out of the box android. Swift backup on my unrooted moto g55, on A14 wont let me backup data with apps, when I backup apps, so sadly that seems to be a root only thing still. I also when I manually recovered whatsapp on there, had to copy files over USB, as had no permissions inside Android, but I guess for better security thats probably a good trade off, its not denied completely, just locally on the phone. Curious if its possible to backup app+data over USB ADB.

These are just minor things. Root access is really about who owns your phone - you or something else.

 

[chrcoluk]

These are just minor things. Root access is really about who owns your phone - you or something else.

To me they major, I am extremely bothered about UI. Root for me has always been about being overcoming restrictions in the stock implementation. Convenience of backups, tasker, adjusting doze etc. as well. In retrospect we are actually both saying the same thing it is about that control and freedom.

 

[Baru68]

I've got Oneplus7, it is still great phone, and after changing battery (myself) and adding lineage os with android 15 it is still great phone, and will be for as long as lineage os will be updated for it
The same goes for my tablet, samsung galaxy tab s5e it has lineage os with android 15 on it .
But stupid banking apps and apps for buying from internet thinks that open bootloader is equal to root, and are closing some of it's usability like nfc payment, but in Poland We've got blik so it is not a much problem.
The funniest thing is that, with custom rom You can root Your device and then hide it that it was rooted from those apps
The problem is greed of corporations -.- they are trying to raise the consumers to be mindless stupid buying idiots.

Wait there's apps now that won't function fully if your device is rooted??? That's bonkers. I used to mess around with custom-no bloat ROMs on my galaxy S and Moto X and that wasnt a problem back then. Been out of the tinkering game for a bit, and like many things it appears to have gotten worse.

 

[qxp]

To me they major, I am extremely bothered about UI. Root for me has always been about being overcoming restrictions in the stock implementation. Convenience of backups, tasker, adjusting doze etc. as well. In retrospect we are actually both saying the same thing it is about that control and freedom.

I generally agree, just want to point out that if you have root access you have freedom to fix everything, including UI. If you have UI that you like, you can't fix the other things, but most importantly you don't know they won't decide to "improve" it later with a forced update.

 

[Ruru]

Then why does everyone copy Apple? Including removal of the headphone jack.

Keep in mind I am a PC user lol.. Apple is not my life, it’s just who made my phone.

That was hilarious. First it was a stupid thing that Apple removed it, but then others followed

PC and iPhone are a working pair IMO, I don't personally need to tweak my phone so iPhone is fine.

I hate Linux more than Nvidia.

Linux and Nvidia in the same sentence reminds me always of this classic

I'm hella anti-Nvidia myself as well, hella anti-consumer company these days.

 

[qxp]

Linux and Nvidia in the same sentence reminds me always of this classic

I'm hella anti-Nvidia myself as well, hella anti-consumer company these days.

Did not know about this one, thanks!

Just want to point out that ATI and then AMD has supported open source for a long time - ATI was providing specs and sample hardware in 1990s. AMD drivers are open source.

Intel also has open source drivers - their GPUs might not be the fastest, but on a notebook Intel integrated graphics has been a very reliable option for a long time.

 

[iameatingjam]

So here is something that is often done away with "its not possible, it cant be done" but I dont get it...

Lets take Microsoft OS, Windows, I can install Windows 10 on ANCIENT hardware, like a Core 2 Duo or even a Pentium 4, this is perfectly normal that you can do that.
I can also install Linux Unbuntu and IOS (virtual perhaps but still).

So what is up with phones and Android OS?
Why are all phones only supported for X amount of years, why are phone makers even involved? why can I just download a copy of the latest version of Android and install that on my phone?
Why are there no alternatives yet, like I know there is something like Linux on phones (heck Android is Linux derived) but its all apperenly a bit janky and out of date.

And I just dont understand why, phones are bascially small computers, heck MS now has "windows on arm" sooo can I just install windows 11 on any device that has arm based hardware?
Can I override a tablet with Android and install windows 11 on it if I wanted to?

and if not...why not? why is that world so dang different from the OS world we have known for 2 decades.

Yeah good point. I personally have been interested in graphene OS as I try to move away from google. Some things are easy, like using a different search engine and browser, but other things like android, youtube, gmail, maps, drive. All harder to replace, especially without spending money.

Anyway yeah I haven't gotten around to it yet but I really want to try Graphene os. Looks like my pixel 6 pro is still supported on the latest version, but I'm at the bottom of the list, so, I'm probably next to be dropped. Looks like its not all that different to what you describe hardware support wise. But at least I can break one more chain google has around me.

The fact that they used to have the phrase 'don't be evil' painted on their wall and then removed it, like really bothers me. Probably more than it should.