| ▲ | TechTechTech 4 days ago |
| Android source code will be released twice per year instead of every quarter. |
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| ▲ | Groxx a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| Great. So now nobody gets bugfixes until after the main vendors get priority access to it. for six months. There's no way this isn't intentional hostility towards forks. |
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| ▲ | goku12 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > There's no way this isn't intentional hostility towards forks. Of course it is. But it isn't new. This was declared in March last year. We discussed it a lot here. It's only now that it's going into effect. | |
| ▲ | anal_reactor a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You guys are getting bugfixes? | | |
| ▲ | written-beyond a day ago | parent [-] | | Ofc to the root kit installed by "them", better battery life and WiFi stability. /s |
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| ▲ | cyberax a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The security fixes will be published normally. | | |
| ▲ | Groxx a day ago | parent [-] | | Security fixes are hardly the only software problems Android has. |
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| ▲ | BoorishBears a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | The writing was on the wall the day they shipped Doze with GPS as an OS feature. All those years back I started calling it, since I built software for (long-lived) HMI devices that ran on Android | | |
| ▲ | kotaKat a day ago | parent [-] | | We were doomed when they stopped shipping a dialer or SMS app in AOSP. “Phone by Google” is disgusting. | | |
| ▲ | lossyalgo a day ago | parent [-] | | And then Signal removed SMS support so we're stuck with Gogole's crap. | | |
| ▲ | Zak a day ago | parent [-] | | There are several SMS clients on F-Droid. | | |
| ▲ | Groxx a day ago | parent [-] | | Yea, SMS and phone apps are quite numerous. I don't think it's a problem, the subsystems all the apps use is open enough and not hard to build against. Except for RCS, that's completely locked down and is pretty solidly becoming literally just Google. Fuck RCS. | | |
| ▲ | okanat a day ago | parent [-] | | Not just Google is the problem, the entire industry is the problem. Almost all of the cell-based standards are locked away and purely depend on the operators, major infrastructure companies like Motorola, Ericsson and Huawei and modem implementors like Qualcomm, Apple or Broadcom. Implementing them independently is extremely difficult and even if you manage to do it you cannot have them commercially available due to radio regulation and patents. Even academic research can only be done with collaboration of those huge companies. It is impossible to make a phone that is LTE capable completely independently (or even without nation state support). You cannot implement VoLTE or RCS without support from the carriers. They all have their own proprietary protocol on top of the standards. Google has basically infinite money and their own patents and industry relationships and government support so they can figure out RCS. An indie company, even with infinitely motivated engineers and good funding do not have any of it. | | |
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| ▲ | idle_zealot a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| At this rate, given a few more years Google will announce that they're moving to a "once a century" release model for AOSP. |
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| ▲ | LoganDark a day ago | parent [-] | | They'll decrease the frequency by a year every year so they never actually release it again | | |
| ▲ | cyberax a day ago | parent [-] | | Would it be so bad? The recent Androids have been going downhill. E.g. the mandatory edge-to-edge nonsense. | | |
| ▲ | mixermachine a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Got to say, I like the current Android versions.
In the early days I flashed my Motorola Defy every second month with some cool new ROM.
Always rooted and Xposed, always enabling something new. Now I run a S23 Ultra and after two years it still does everything I need.
OneUI 8.0 and Android 16.
For work (app de) I also have a Pixel 7a, always with the newest Android Beta.
Also works well. Even the entry level phones work OK to pretty good now.
My Samsung A16 5G (also for work) functions surprisingly well for 150€. | | |
| ▲ | drnick1 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > Now I run a S23 Ultra and after two years it still does everything I need. Maybe, but it is fully under Google and Samsung's control, and is choke full of spyware. You couldn't pay me to use a stock (Googled) Android phone for this reason alone. | |
| ▲ | MarsIronPI a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | How well is rooting supported on these newer Android versions/devices? If I install LineageOS on my device, for example, I can be reasonably sure that Magisk will work fine. But how well does it work on a stock, locked-down ROM? | | |
| ▲ | kasabali 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Most devices doesn't have unlockable bootloaders now thus you can't even root them unless it was a popular device and a temporary /finicky hack was found. |
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| ▲ | LoganDark a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Back when I used Android phones, tweaking was pretty important to me too. I still remember when I installed CyanogenMod on a Motorola XT1565, those were the days... Eventually, LineageOS, and then some new phones happened, not all of which were rootable, though I eventually ended up with a OnePlus 7 Pro which was pretty tweakable and even opened the possibility of bootloader re-locking, until a TWRP bug wiped my device and I pretty much stopped tweaking. Was never quite able to get EdXposed working right again... |
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| ▲ | LoganDark a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | morcus a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I am asking out of curiosity and nothing else: what use cases do you have that motivate you to get a new phone every year? Do iPhones get notably better with every release? I'm guessing camera or storage would be big ones? | | |
| ▲ | hypercube33 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm not parent but a counter perspective - the only three motivations I have are:
phone dies
camera vastly improves (imo it's been on a decline since the Nexus 6)
phone is too slow to use I'm on year 5 of my Samsung s21u that I can replace the Samsung ux slop with asop ports | |
| ▲ | LoganDark a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Well, with this last one they finally made the telephoto 48MP. Also, vapor chamber is nice. I don't know if the 18 will have enough for me to upgrade, and it might even have a reason for me not to upgrade (removing gestures from Camera Control). But so far it's been every year, because I've only been using iPhone for a couple years, and my first was a refurbished 15 Pro Max. The 17 Pro (non-Max) only comes with up to 1TB of storage, but that's still more than my 15 of before. |
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| ▲ | cyberax a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | > when I started being able to afford to get the latest iPhone every year. I'm truly sorry about you having to re-live the trauma of using iPhone all the time. | | |
| ▲ | LoganDark a day ago | parent [-] | | If it's not for you, that's fine. I used to think it wasn't for me too. | | |
| ▲ | lrvick a day ago | parent [-] | | It is not for anyone but Apple, because they control the source code and full remote code execution access to your device at a higher privilege level than you as the supposed owner have. | | |
| ▲ | LoganDark a day ago | parent [-] | | I trust Apple with that. Maybe not as much as I would've were Jobs still around, but I certainly still trust them more than any Android OEM. | | |
| ▲ | MarsIronPI a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Including custom ROM devs like the GrapheneOS team or the LineageOS team? That's a lot of trust you're putting in a company that only has their own profit at heart. | |
| ▲ | rwyinuse a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | After Trump's re-election, I figured that there's not much difference between using a cheap Android from Chinese OEM, or an iPhone. Both will give away my information if the totalitarian government (Chinese or American) requests so. I don't really have particular preference on whether it's the Chinese or Americans spying on me, so in the end it all boils down to price. Chinese Android devices deliver same level of performance and features as Apple for 1/4 of the price. Of course if I really cared about privacy, I would just install GrapheneOS or LineageOS on supported Android device, so no Apple in that case either. |
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| ▲ | bossyTeacher a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| This is them trying to strangle Graphene and LineageOs. We desperately need an ecosystem where manufacturers are legally compelled to publish the source code for their drivers and similar so as to make it easier for alternative Oses to exist. Android will soon become fully closed source. The writing is on the wall. |
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| ▲ | aesh2Xa1 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | The founder of GrapheneOS commented on this a few days ago here on HN, and basically said it doesn't impact GrapheneOS. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46550366 | |
| ▲ | yaro330 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | No, neither of them register as a blip on the usage stats and both have, and will continue having, priority access through OEM partnerships. | |
| ▲ | singpolyma3 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | The drivers are legally required to be, well not published, but the source sent to anyone who asks. | | |
| ▲ | TingPing a day ago | parent [-] | | Plenty of drivers are proprietary. There are many ways of doing so, like much of it can exist in userspace, or in firmware, or using a shim in the kernel. | | |
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