I like their Material Expressive design a lot more now after Apple's big reveal. While it's still a bit too colorful and whimsical for my liking, it does stay much closer to what I think should be the top UX design ideal - be clear, legible, and get out of the way. On the new iOS every screen feels like some UX designer is shouting "look how amazing I am at this!!" at me.
bandoti · 6h ago
I find as time goes on I am less-and-less excited about mobile releases. I’ve had a smartphone since the Google Nexus 1. The desktop experience is always better, and a good book is even more inviting.
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?
SchemaLoad · 5h ago
The old mobile OSs used to be hilariously lacking so every update was genuinely game changing. I remember getting really excited when Android Ice Cream Sandwich was adding screenshot functionality to tablets. And hearing people talk about folders getting added to iOS.
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.
spankibalt · 4h ago
> A lot of these tools seem like useless frivolity.
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). :(
vladms · 50m ago
Why hate them though? They can be great for some things, like messaging, maps, shopping lists and taking pictures. I never consider them "the ultimate computer", and I wouldn't want them to be, mostly because mobile stuff can break/get lost/get stolen.
strix_varius · 1h ago
So there are at least two of us! I'd be truly excited and willing to pay laptop-tier prices for either:
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.
anal_reactor · 1h ago
Honestly, I'm happy my phone won't get an update. This way I won't be exposed to new bugs. I'm on Android 13 and the only thing I observed when updating from 12 was that now when I switch apps, the screen blinks for split-second, which is incredibly annoying. Functionality-wise, there's very little that can be improved anyway. It's mostly just fiddling with details of the UI here and there.
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.
mad182 · 11m ago
> Functionality-wise, there's very little that can be improved
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.
mcny · 1h ago
Android 12 made it possible to have unattended updates possible on fdroid. I sincerely will not recommend an Android version less than 12 at this point.
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.
The layer separation on Material has been really not good for me. The floating action button is so hard to notice sometimes; I've reached out for IT help or support sometimes because I just didn't notice it.
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.
cosmic_cheese · 9h ago
In my view the dramatic reduction of depth in Material 2 and beyond was a real mistake. That was the one redeeming thing it had over other flat UI design systems.
SchemaLoad · 6h ago
Material is fine, but it feels pretty uninspired to me. Like the corporate art version of UI. Big flat inoffensive blobs, washed out pastel colours, etc. The new iOS demo kinda makes me feel excited to try the new update, once they iron out a few of the poor contrast spots.
lmm · 5h ago
Bland and inoffensive is what I want from my OS. The stage manager should be facilitating the show, not trying out their own material on the crowd.
derefr · 3h ago
The OS is less the stage manager, and more the venue itself. Imagine if the Sydney Opera House or Carnegie Hall looked "inoffensive" rather than majestic.
thedevilslawyer · 2h ago
Opera house is an app. Sydney is the OS; that needs taste, not majesty.
lmm · 1h ago
> Imagine if the Sydney Opera House or Carnegie Hall looked "inoffensive" rather than majestic.
Doesn't sound like a big problem. Some of the best plays and operas I've seen have been in bland concrete boxes, portakabins, round the back of pubs.... Of course all else being equal I'd prefer a building to look good, but good stage visibility and acoustics beats a flashy building every time.
IgorPartola · 6h ago
I agree. It is clear, functional, and reminds me of staged doctor’s offices in commercials for prescription drugs.
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.
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.
Doohickey-d · 53m ago
There's also another version of the story of why they removed it:
> 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.
> Apple now is entering their Windows XP design era.
Is Windows XP universally understood to be bad design? I remember it as somewhere between blandly unremarkable and slightly pleasant.
coredog64 · 3h ago
The "Fisher-Price" design language was unpopular, but ISTR you could turn off most of the eye candy and get a the Windows 2000 design language. Pretty sure that was like the first or second thing I did with both XP and Vista.
derefr · 3h ago
And even then, people were never against most of it. Scrollbar thumbs with grip stipple? Checkboxes that fill in with a roundrect rather than a checkmark? Buttons and tabs that have an inline ring-highlight "intent" color to them, akin to the fill color on modern Bootstrap theme buttons? These were all parts of the Luna theme as well — and people liked them. (And, IIRC, they were often sad that these parts got deactivated when reverting to the Windows Classic theme, and often asked if there was some hybrid theme that kept these.)
With Luna, I think people were mainly just reacting negatively to two things:
1. the start button being big and green and a weird blob shape; the start menu it opens having a huge, very rounded forehead and chin — and both of these having a certain "pre-baked custom PNG image 8-way sliced in Photoshop and drawn by parts" look that you'd see used on web pages in this era. This made the whole UI feel very "non-brutalist" — form not following function, the way it did in Windows Classic (where the theme was in part designed to optimize for as few line-draw GDI calls as possible.)
2. both the taskbar and window title bars being vertically thicker, and having a vaguely-plastic-looking sheen to them to "add dimensionality."
And my hypothesis is that, of these, it was mainly the "vertically thicker" taskbar+window decorations that upset so many people.
This was an era where many screens were still largely 1024x768, even as monitor sizes were growing; so "small was cool" [and legible!] Websites baked their text into images using 8x5 pixel fonts; Linux users used tiny fonts and narrow themes in fvwm/blackbox/fluxbox, etc. In that era, a title bar stealing thirty whole pixels was almost blasphemy. (Same problem with the Office XP ribbon. Microsoft's visual designers must have been too far ahead-of-the-curve in what kind of resolutions their graphics cards supported, I think.)
I think, if there was an alternate version of Luna that also shipped with XP, that just narrowed the taskbar and window caption bar to the Windows Classic dimensions... then Luna would have been universally acclaimed.
LorenDB · 11h ago
My main complaint with Material Expressive is that every other button seems to be 85% padding and 15% actual content. What happened to reasonable information density?
legitster · 11h ago
For control surfaces, padding prevents misclicks. It's actually very important part of perceived interface quality when dealing with a handheld touchscreen device.
jay_kyburz · 10h ago
Yeah, but the icons and labels could use more of that padding and be larger so old folks like me can see them.
tkzed49 · 9h ago
There's literally a setting for this. There are separate sliders for "display size" and "font size", the latter of which just makes the font larger
jay_kyburz · 9h ago
haha yes, I tried to use my kids phone the other day and I had forgotten how much larger I had set the fonts on my own phone. It was impossible to read anything.
It's actually a credit to google that you can scale the fonts up so much and then forget you had done it. In the old days, the UI would be broken in various places.
robocat · 10h ago
Different topic: CSS doesn't have a good way to manage nearby clicks? A tap just a few px outside a button should click the button? <Input>s can steal focus from nearby taps on Mobile Safari (which can also be a fuckup). I hate iPhone taps that slip a little and scrollable areas having queer interactions (causing usability/accessibility issues).
crazygringo · 10h ago
You could, but you don't want it to. Buttons are e.g. often floating above content, or adjacent to other buttons.
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.
robocat · 9h ago
> You could, but you don't want it to.
Argue with Apple because Mobile Safari makes a tap close to a button click the button (and it causes exactly the problems you've predicted, and workarounds are difficult). Do you do a lot of close testing?? Because the feature is quite noticeable.
I recall that similar features are more obvious on Android because you can make taps visible.
Virtual keyboards also have interesting responses to close taps on key buttons.
downsplat · 7h ago
Some positive padding, offset by the same negative margin, will do just that, i.e capture clicks near the link or button. It has some problems, but I've seen it used to make footnote links easier to click on mobile.
What's wrong with increasing the size of the button?
You can set a (pseudo) element as an invisible enlargement of that button but then you will get accidental taps.
xboxnolifes · 10h ago
Buttons are whatever for me, but the padding on things like notifications and other information text is getting ridiculous. The notifications are taking up 1/4 of the screen and managing to only show 3 words of an email or text on my phone.
dmix · 7h ago
Have you tried the beta on iPhone? 75% of the time it seems much nicer with 25% degraded. It's a weird mix but I see why they went in that direction. The only real problem is the religious adherence to the glass design language that is hurting it... because there are very good UX/design improvements via the glass, just not everywhere.
I wouldn't judge the new Android until I tried it on a phone either.
pier25 · 11h ago
Couldn't agree more. Quite a fall from grace by Apple.
nextos · 10h ago
Apple did skeuomorphism really well, which is hard and requires a lot of design work.
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."
Not gonna lie, I've been using (and programming) GUIs since the Amiga and even I get thrown askew by "click here to enter your name" (expecting a subsequent GUI element to focus, or worse - a popup) vs. "click here to enter your name" (haha! the prompt text disappears now and this is just where you write it I guess!).
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.
kstrauser · 10h ago
It was primarily because skeuomorphic UIs don't scale well with user experience levels. They're easier for novices but don't lend themselves well to expert use, unless you add a bunch of extra affordances that would seem really out of place in a UI meant to look like a real thing. And what does a skeuomorphic web browser or email app look ike? We don't have those in meatspace.
jazzyjackson · 9h ago
inbox/outbox is a holdover from bins setting on your desk. but yeah there's not much more to the interface of a blank sheet of paper.
I disagree that skeuomorphic can't be used by power users. Just throw a bunch of keyboard shortcuts in there.
rudedogg · 11h ago
I thought it looks nice, and gives more focus to the content like they intended :/.
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.
saubeidl · 11h ago
I agree, but that being said, I still think it peaked at the OG Material. I miss elevation shadows.
kevin_thibedeau · 4h ago
More like shouting "Watch me drain your battery all day long".
SebastianKra · 11h ago
I'm also disappointed in Apple right now, but the screenshots of the Calendar and Gmail Apps in this post are even worse. Content in Gmail is separated by kilometers of whitespace with not a divider in sight. The calendar reserves 10% of horizontal whitespace for this crucial 2014 low-poly wallpaper…
andrepd · 11h ago
Superfluous animations, cryptic icons and UI elements with no indication of function and capabilities, and ungodly amounts of whitespace that make my 5.8" screen have less information density than my 2009 Nokia. That's not what "legible and gets out my my way" means to me.
mrcwinn · 7h ago
Whatever the hot takes... nothing is more "dangerous" than a sound design philosophy. Sure, there are tweaks to make and I don't love everything about Apple's new design, but what I see is a team with an opinion on how to unify design across a full suite of products. That sounds quite durable to me.
aaomidi · 11h ago
I decided to install the beta to get a more informed opinion. I think the UI looks better when you’re holding it vs seeing it in the pictures.
Control center, however, sucks.
danieldk · 11h ago
I installed the iOS beta and thought it was as bad, if not worse than the WWDC demos. In a lot of cases, text becomes outright unreadable. Control Center looks like a mess with all the transparency.
Like the grandparent I'm much more excited by Material Design 3 Expressive.
int_19h · 5h ago
In Vista/Win7, they mostly used glass background for parts of the window that didn't have any text on them. And for the few exceptions where that wasn't the case (like e.g. window titles) they added a kind of halo so that black text would always contrast with that regardless of what was below the window, or else just significantly darken the glass and use white text. All for obvious reasons.
Looking at the new iOS screenshots, I'm surprised that those reasons apparently aren't obvious to Apple designers.
argsnd · 11h ago
There's some instances of text illegibility that seems to be caused by buggy contrast detection and I think they'll probably fix that pretty easily since this is only the first beta. I think the readability concerns are really overblown.
MisterBiggs · 10h ago
Same experience. I hopped on the beta because I thought the current version was going to be really bad and I wanted to watch them move towards something more functional. Its definitely not perfect but the way that the UI reacts in real time to holding the phone and elements moving makes it work really well and isn't something you can capture in a screenshot or video.
hulitu · 1h ago
> be clear, legible, and get out of the way.
Which none of the current OSs do (except Linux without SystemD or BSDs, with a custom WM)
hackyhacky · 33m ago
Huh? What does systemd have to do with UX? If you want a bare bones Linux GUI, there are plenty of options, e.g. i3, which are completely independent of your preferred process 1.
tail_exchange · 6h ago
The opposite for me. I'm so tired of the boring and uninspiring flat design, that Apple may have convinced me to get an iPhone next time I upgrade. I don't even notice Android updates anymore, the past 3 or 4 just look and feel the same.
bitwize · 10h ago
Indeed, but Apple still wins when it comes to "wow factor". In a year's time Android will look old and busted, and Google will have to respond with a similar UI refresh. Of course it won't be as pretty, responsive, or slick but it will keep Android in the running.
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.
paulryanrogers · 7h ago
"Pretty" is subjective and changes every 6 months or so. I prefer no animations, no translucency, info density, and an accurate calculator no matter how fast I type. But for fashion reasons we cannot have nice things.
Larrikin · 6h ago
Material Design does not get updated very often. The only reason M3 is a big deal, is because it's the first major change in years.
octo888 · 2h ago
"Unfortunately, Android has made changes which will make it much harder for us to port to Android 16 and future releases. It will also make adding support for new Pixels much more difficult. We're likely going to need to focus on making GrapheneOS devices sooner than we expected."
I can not love this development project enough its the peak of Android custom ROM. I am curious though as to what they have changed so much that it is going to be more difficult.
kyrra · 1h ago
Sounds like there are lots of causes: the project losing a senior dev who got conscripted to fight in a war. Not getting access to an OEM rom early on. Google changing a lot of the code around lock screen and other features (which makes porting over their custom changes on top of it take more time).
octo888 · 1h ago
Oh, they also had the issue that one of the leading devs got forcibly conscripted.
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
cenamus · 4m ago
I mean, conscription is per definition forced, isn't it?
edg5000 · 2h ago
"Samsung DeX has helped maximize productivity on phones, foldables and tablets for years. In Android 16, we worked closely with Samsung to develop desktop windowing, a new way to interact with your apps and content on large-screen devices." <- What does "working closely" mean for a company with infinite SW dev resources? What do they need from Samsung as far as software goes?
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)
nashashmi · 1m ago
[delayed]
nipperkinfeet · 6h ago
The release of Apple's new glass design has made Material Expressive appear aesthetically pleasing. Apple has declined so much, it's unfortunate.
awakeasleep · 3h ago
The first developer-only beta release?
visarga · 3h ago
Maybe Apple thought they need to make a desperate move to deflect from their lack of AI?
Was between submitting this and the link I did, but opted for the latter because the redesign is coming later. Thanks for adding this!
villedespommes · 11h ago
I'm really excited about the Desktop mode, now I can finally break free of Samsung!
ZuLuuuuuu · 8h ago
I was also very excited about it and that's why I immediately upgraded to Android 16. But it turns out that it is not part of this update. The same with the new Material design, it doesn't come with Android 16 update. So weird that they announced both of these features as if they are part of Android 16.
ankurdhama · 4h ago
I wish they move the clock and notification area to the taskbar instead of top bar. That top bar doesn't make sense in desktop mode.
nfriedly · 11h ago
FWIW, Motorola has also had this feature for years, but they call it "Ready For", which is a terrible name.
That said, I'm also looking forward to the official Google version coming to the rest of the Android devices
culopatin · 8h ago
I remember my Atrix had a desktop mode back in… 2011? Something like that.
2OEH8eoCRo0 · 9h ago
As am I though it's not in this release.
mrweasel · 12h ago
The notification feature looks nice. I've pretty much exclusively used iOS, but honestly notifications is a weak point for iOS, in my opinion. I frequently have the 1 notification on my home screen, but once unlocked notifications are pretty much impossible to find again.
Groxx · 11h ago
I'm certainly happy to see "force grouping". Grouping is a great opt-in enhancement, but it never should've been wholly in apps' control to begin with - apps in general cannot be trusted to not be dumb, gotta have user control to override them.
argsnd · 11h ago
I agree that Android notifications are broadly better than iOS but the live activities feature was a good idea and I’m quite glad that’s been added to Android now
throwaway314155 · 7h ago
From my perspective they merely added features Apple has had in notifications for years.
azinman2 · 1h ago
Agreed. I was surprised to see this, given the constant meme that iOS notifications are just copying Android.
robertoandred · 10h ago
Once unlocked, swipe down from the top of the screen to open Notification Center.
int_19h · 5h ago
On iOS the annoying thing about this gesture is that it only does that if you swipe down from the center. If you do it from top right corner (which is rather generously defined), you get shortcuts instead.
p_j_w · 4h ago
It works if you swipe down from the left side of the screen.
sudomateo · 1h ago
The more I compare Material 3 Expressive to Liquid Glass the more I'm excited to switch back to a Pixel. I'm a fan of the use of color, motions, and different shapes versus transparency, minimal contrast, and little color.
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.
flyinghamster · 12h ago
Oh great, I get to learn how to use my phone all over again. We need a "leave this the $EXPLETIVE alone" setting for our user interfaces.
demosthanos · 11h ago
This knee-jerk reaction is correct more often than not (see the terrible iOS redesign announced earlier), but in this case it seems like it might be incorrect?
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.
But thats also just what they're trying to advertise. They always make more changes than listed.
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
demosthanos · 4h ago
This is never how the marketing around the big UI overhauls that OP is worried about works. A sneaky UI overhaul that's launched with no fanfare doesn't get anyone promoted, so why bother?
> 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.
danieldk · 11h ago
Yep, I just installed on my Pixel 9 and it looks barely different from Android 15. Most of the changes seem to be in the plumbing. Material Design Expressive will only arrive in the next quarterly release.
nsriv · 10h ago
Yeah I think this is being lost in this rollout (and a little bit in these comments). Expressive is in the next update, since this year is a big hike up in the calendar for phone release.
butlike · 11h ago
The issue is this reaction never sticks. Everyone's up in arms, but would you really want to go back to Android KitKat or iOS 2? Probably not for more than novelty, right?
layer8 · 11h ago
I would really want to go back to something like the look of iOS 1-6, with clearly discernible UI controls vs. content and labels. Not the real-world-mimicry skeuomorphism, but the look of the standard UI controls.
Pxtl · 10h ago
Web ruined everything. Got everybody thinking that flag rectangles were cool and consistent ui frameworks were old fashioned.
bigstrat2003 · 11h ago
Yes, of course I would. Android UI has been horrible ever since 12.
AndroidKitKat · 6h ago
If it was usable with the apps I need today, I would switch back to Android 4.4.2 or iOS 6.1.3 in a heartbeat. Not sure how long I would stay before the rose tint in my glasses returns to normal, but I would certainly love to try.
pas · 9h ago
yes, who cares, let me launch apps and put widgets on the screen, what else?
I like a lot of the new features, but the visual (mis)communication language is terrible.
dzikimarian · 9h ago
While I like new notification management or control buttons on top of the drawer, I really wouldn't have problem using them in Holo design.
justsomehnguy · 10h ago
I can live another decade without an app what groups three options (one of it is "About") under a hamburger menu on a completely blank screen.
The interface of Kitkat and the UI design is fine! It looks like what Apple is moving to.
Of course I want accessibility, security and technical improvements.
FirmwareBurner · 11h ago
Bad faith argument. The opposite of Android 16 enshitification isn't going back to Android 2, but around Android 10-12 or so it was already good enough IIRC. Why not keep it like that?
Similar to Windows 11. The opposite isn't going back all the way to Windows 3.1, but Windows 7 or so was kinda peak.
So please, justify me the progress, or more exactly, have UI designers justify it, because I'm not seeing it. I've mostly seen change for the sake of change, wrapped in fluffy artsy BS jargon, making it sound like each UI change is the second coming of Christ and fixes world hunger.
Because I can justify you how for example KDE 3 and similar apps of that era including on Windows XP-7, were visually easier and more intuitive to use, than those flat modern looks of KDE 5/Windows 11 today.
throw10920 · 3h ago
> Bad faith argument.
Citation needed, and you're violating the HN guidelines besides.
>Citation needed, and you're violating the HN guidelines besides.
You want a citation for my own opinion? Are you OK?
I explained my reasoning for the bad faith argument in the comment. Did you read it? Because there's no violation of HN guidelines to provide an argumented option.
> Assume good faith.
I assumed good faith, but then I used critical thinking and decided it's in bad faith then explained why. You don't need to agree with me on this but also don't need to be needlessly petty trying to throw the rulebook at people online. Don't you have better uses for your time?
legitster · 11h ago
More and more features are getting added, so the UI has to get reorganized to accomodate for them. A lot of the changes for Android 16 are to accommodate wearables and folding phones and etc while keeping the controls more consistent between them.
FirmwareBurner · 11h ago
Cars have also gained new features, but the steering wheel, shifter, pedals, mirrors are still in the same places since >50 years. You don't need to get a new license and re-learn how to drive every time a new model comes out because they moved the steering wheel on the ceiling to install a 32 inch LCD screen.
kllrnohj · 7h ago
And my android phone still has "back", "home", and "recents" buttons in the exact same place they've been since they were literal hardware buttons. Core navigation (aka, "steering") is unchanged, no new drivers license required
Izkata · 6h ago
Originally there was a 4th button, "menu". Android had a standard grid-shaped menu that apps could implement, that would pop up from the bottom of the screen.
Also "recents" wasn't its own button, it was reached by long-pressing "home". The other button was "search".
int_19h · 5h ago
Last I checked you had to flip a switch in settings to have all those buttons back like that; it hasn't been a default in stock Android for some time now.
voidfunc · 12h ago
UI engineers need to justify their existence.
hadlock · 11h ago
I genuinely think this is the case, and why products don't have a LTS interface, even though they ought to. Sign me right up for the 10 year LTS interface. I can't recall any features in gmail that were added that I actually use besides labels, which was an early launch feature. But it's been redesigned about 9 times in the last 20 years, each time with increasing white space and/or a slightly different font.
lupire · 11h ago
LTS interface is expensive for minimal benefit.
SchemaLoad · 6h ago
If you need an LTS interface you might be best with one of those old people smartphones with the big numberpad.
rvba · 1h ago
If you need change for the sake of change, then maybe your time is worthless.
Lerc · 11h ago
UI engineers should be like vaccines. If they do their job well, you should never see why they were needed.
jrgaston · 10h ago
That so many do not see why vaccines are needed is a serious problem.
DannyBee · 10h ago
Sure, but what is happening here is basically the equivalent of us engineering current-vaccine resistant viruses, along with new vaccines, and releasing them all together, so that people know vaccines are important and are forced to get new vaccines to be safe.
We shouldn't do that, in the same way we shouldn't make sure people know UI is important by changing it completely every n years.
nawgz · 11h ago
Definitely. Those pesky UI engineers are always rewriting and refactoring and reworking stuff. Me, a talented backend engineer? I would never. My code was perfect initially and there's no pressure to show deliverables from my manager since they know I'm the best.
stackskipton · 11h ago
Huh? Sure, UI code can change, no one is arguing that but API changes, just like for backend, need to be extremely thought out and slow. For UI Engineers, UI is API to the user and for some reason, when they blow up their API, they get praised for it. Most backend engineers are change API at much much slower rate.
rezonant · 11h ago
Are you speaking in general, or is there anything specific about this update that has you upset?
eurekin · 12h ago
I think this topic returns with some regularity... It often ends with justification about the need for a promotion of a particular executive that is involved with that inevitably undeniable success
legitster · 11h ago
None of the changes have actually been that crazy. And at least on my Pixel Google has made new features opt-in after major updates.
johannes1234321 · 9h ago
Bo worries, Gemini AI will take care of that! The phone will now what you want (and show more ads)
echelon · 11h ago
I wish we had a dozen phone companies instead of just two.
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.
legitster · 11h ago
As someone who owned a Symbian, a Palm OS, and a Windows phone - I kind of refuse to listen to this argument anymore. I voted with my wallet and all I have to show for it were years of mockery from my peers and a drawerful of bricked devices.
rawling · 11h ago
> - 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.
Don't/can't Android manufacturers provide alternative defaults here?
jsight · 11h ago
Yes, and most people hate it when they do that.
echelon · 11h ago
Probably the biggest case for a full-on Google breakup. Android being split from the platform components.
A new company probably still couldn't develop platform pieces if that chink in the armor was made available by the DOJ. But if Google were split along those lines into two or more companies, it would provide nice and healthy gradients on both the hardware/OS and the platform/software sides of the market.
We really do need a Google breakup.
isaacaggrey · 11h ago
I agree with your parent post but why would a breakup not equally apply to Apple?
echelon · 11h ago
It should! But the parent was referring to Android manufacturers.
warkdarrior · 10h ago
> Probably the biggest case for a full-on Google breakup. Android being split from the platform components.
Isn't core Android open source? As long as you do not need Google apps and Google services, you can use Android OSS right now without Google's platform components.
diffeomorphism · 9h ago
Wasn't that what all the 2015 antitrust stuff was about?
Manufacturers were contractually forbidden from doing that.
rawling · 9h ago
Thanks, that helped me find this which does sound like it:
Samsung literally provides their own alternative for all of these.
crazygringo · 9h ago
> I wish we had a dozen phone companies instead of just two.
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.
rjsw · 11h ago
You can buy phones now that are not from Apple or Google, I have a Nokia KaiOS one.
lupire · 11h ago
What you want is a government sponsored phone OS. We had competition but software has economy of scale. No one wants to pay the cost of developing a phone OS used by a small fraction of users. Windows and Palm proved that.
And Samsung does sell phones with customized UI and apps.
charcircuit · 7h ago
There are more than a dozen phone companies: Google, Samsung, Motorola, Apple, HTC, Xiaomi, Huawei, LG, etc.
delfinom · 5h ago
HTC is dead. LG has exited the phone market.
Motorola is barely hanging out.
Turns out people tend to gravitate to a few choices....
Xioami/Huawei are in essence banned from the US.
prmoustache · 1h ago
That is probably a US only viewpoint. Everywhere else in the world apart from Samsung, Xiaomi is super big as well as brands such as Oppo, Realme, Honor, Pocophone, TCL, Oneplus, Huawei, Motorola and many others I just can't remember from the top of my head.
i have the feeling that for anything in the US, everything has to end up in monopolies or bipartisan approach. People just seem to buy what their neighbors/coworkers/siblings buy without trying to do a bit of research. Some kind of deep vulnerability to virality. My mate has an iphone, I need an iphone, my neighbor beagged about their Thermomix, I need a Thermomix too immediately.
kabdib · 11h ago
bring back the Windows phone! (srsly, they were pretty nice to develop for)
ozim · 10h ago
It is good for your brain, it is an excellent exercise. /s
SchemaLoad · 2h ago
Unironically think a lot of HN users brains have hardened up after using the same shitty linux DE from the 90s for too long, to the point a slightly changed border radius or color leaves them unable to function.
atum47 · 5h ago
Any improvements to battery life? I feel like my pixel 8 pro battery is dying a lot faster now.
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?
smusamashah · 9h ago
Not available for Pixel/XL, Pixel 2/XL, Pixel 3/XL, Pixel 3a/XL, Pixel 4/XL, Pixel 4a, Pixel 4a 5G, Pixel 5, or Pixel 5a.
I have Pixel 4a and I wanted to get Android 16 to get the smaller notification tile buttons back.
pulkitanand · 4h ago
Nice to see someone still using a 4a. I'm still rocking a 3a XL with lineage (massively resisting the urge to upgrade to a Pixel 9). I'm quite certain they'll do a lineage release for our phones for Android 16, hoping to use my phone for as much longer as possible!
pradn · 5h ago
It's easier to keep doing something incremental than to fundamentally change things.
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.
hwc · 10h ago
If Android is getting desktop windowing, how long until I can just plug my phone into a monitor and keyboard and have a usable computer?
cbm-vic-20 · 10h ago
You can plug a keyboard and mouse into your Andriod phone for many years. I haven't had one work with a monitor yet, though.
hwc · 9h ago
It almost works. But the monitor just mirrors the phone, including its weird aspect ratio and font size.
It's almost usable for playing movies on a TV, but that's about it.
no_carrier · 5h ago
It feels like we're getting very close. The recent addition of a Debian VM into Android (I believe it's even in AOSP) leads me to believe we'll be getting Linux apps on Android in the same way ChromeOS gets them. Imagine being able to run VSCode off your phone anywhere you can plug into a monitor.
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.
izacus · 9h ago
You could do that for years with Samsung phones already.
fsflover · 9h ago
No, you can't. There's no usable desktop software that you can run there. Artificial restrictions will stay, although might be slightly relaxed. In contrast with Librem 5 running GNU/Linux (my daily driver) this is already a reality.
izacus · 9h ago
This is just weird goal post moving.
const_cast · 4h ago
I don't think so, this has always been the limitation and why things like Windows ARM and Windows Phone fail over and over again. The interface part is easy, I guess, the application part is not. If you can figure out the application part, then you have a real shot at disrupting the market.
So far, only Apple has figured out the applications part on MacOS, and only partially. They still have wierdo iPadOS. Microsoft is doing Windows on ARM... again. We'll see how long that lasts.
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.
rkagerer · 11h ago
What's with the AI-generated "Key Takeaways" crap on the right column of that page? No thanks, the content is short enough I can easily skim it on my own.
sagarpatil · 2h ago
The worst part is I’m so deep in Apple ecosystem that it’s impossible to move to Android.
swah · 6h ago
Also a bit sick of the iOS update...
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.
AbuAssar · 9h ago
I'll take Material Expressive over iOS's liquid glass any day.
tail_exchange · 6h ago
I'm on the other camp. I'm so tired of the boring flat design, I'm actually considering switching to an iPhone.
bitpush · 4h ago
Are you not worried about accessibility issues?
tail_exchange · 3h ago
No. Like always, there will be visual accessibility features such as high contrast, reducing screen motion, dark mode, and reduced transparency. I never had to use them, but according to a family member who is blind, Apple is excellent in terms of accessibility.
fcpk · 9h ago
One extremely disappointing thing that Android has been getting under the hood with Google images is ... Play integrity.
This used to be a relatively simplistic system with three tiers:
0 - you are not certified for anything
1 - basic integrity, you need to have a genuine android device running google play services
2 - device integrity, you need to have a genuine android device with core requirements on play and no rooting
3 - strong integrity, you need a locked bootloader and signed image with recent security update
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.
i don't think this is enough - rooting should be allowed on any device that you own, rather than the device owning you.
charcircuit · 6h ago
>rooting should be allowed on a certified device
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.
pjmlp · 11h ago
Great, another version that my devices won't get.
Currently stuck between 12 and 14, and really there is hardly any reason to update.
I'm surprised they didn't have live notifications or desktop windowing. I guess features like that go from Android OEMs, to iOS, then to Android itself. Do Google have their own Pixel versions of things like that before they make it to Android though?
ptx · 10h ago
I'm pretty sure notifications could always be updated after being created. The actual change seems to be not that they now support "live updates" (as the article says) but that the UI now supports a customizable progress bar:
https://developer.android.com/about/versions/16/features/pro...
t1234s · 11h ago
Can you use an external monitor with a usb-c hub and a bluetooth mouse/keyboard in desktop mode?
nfriedly · 11h ago
It sounds like the new features are coming later this year.
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.
jakub_g · 10h ago
On Pixel 8 + Android 15, I can already connect an external monitor via "screen mirroring" feature. My keyboard and mouse, which are plugged into USB ports in the monitor, do work.
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.
Rebelgecko · 7h ago
You already can if you're not picky about window manager features
ge96 · 9h ago
Funny my phone is cheap usually a version behind. Eventually I notice the performance and get another one or the screen was destroyed. Sucks how the version is capped too by the company ahh well pro/con.
ferguess_k · 11h ago
Let me guess -- they revamped the UI again.
tootie · 11h ago
As a long time Android user, I scarcely even notice OS updates. My last 3 phones have felt like they were about the same device.
melodyogonna · 11h ago
Interesting that these are no longer tied to latest Pixel phone releases
nsriv · 10h ago
They're bringing up the phone release to a late August unveil and shipping this year, and the Material Expressive update will ship after that, so it seems a big one time shift to attempt to time it with hardware.
zb3 · 11h ago
Ah, so the "Linux Terminal" app is not yet ready for any announcements. This app with 3D acceleration enabling running graphical linux systems is what I'm waiting for, but it looks like we'll wait another year..
fhcbix · 2h ago
Right? It would be the single most useful feature for me. Unfortunately my device doesn't have libavf which seems to be needed for this to work. I don't even need 3d acceleration, a simple debian VM with docker would make me happy already.
chasil · 10h ago
Connectbot has a local terminal that I have always used for this purpose.
zb3 · 9h ago
But what I was talking about was kernel virtualization where the guest OS performs at native speed and without any hacks.
adhamsalama · 10h ago
How does it enable graphical Linux systems? I mean, I did already do this by running KDE Plasma on Termux, but why would Google allow this?
zb3 · 9h ago
They did with "VmLauncherApp" and I was able to run Fedora, however GPU acceleration didn't work.
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.
old_bayes · 11h ago
I love the detailed security features. Exactly what I want in my OS.
ChrisArchitect · 11h ago
Remember when these launches used to revolve around the codenames. This one is Baklava. As much as Material-era numbered releases have a style, I miss the personality of the confectionary-themed marketing.
nsriv · 10h ago
I liked the unveils of the confectionary themed Androids on the campus!
throw_m239339 · 11h ago
I remember my first android device, it had like 512MO of RAM (and storage), and it was blazing fast, it could be used as a WIFI repeater too (which is why I still have it, although it 2.5G...). Fast forward 13 year later or so, if your android device doesn't have at least 8gig of RAM and 64gigs of storage, then it's pretty much useless given how bloated the OS (and the apps) have become...
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?
esseph · 11h ago
The same thing that happens to every OS, features and bloat.
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.
MostlyStable · 11h ago
Which is unfortunate, because one of the strengths of Android was the diversity of the hardware ecosystem (although that strength has been lessening as manufacturers have all begun to converge on a common set of hardware features). You could get a phone that had the features you in particular wanted. Needing to buy a particular phone to get a good experience is a bummer.
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.
chasil · 10h ago
Can you unlock the bootloader on your Motorola and install LineageOS or something else?
If not, are you able to buy another Motorola phone where this is possible?
No comments yet
surgical_fire · 10h ago
I had 2 OnePlus devices in the past 7 years, and I had a great experience with both.
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.
dzonga · 11h ago
pixel devices are nice when they work. but damn hardware quality is shoddy in terms of aging. my pixel 6a battery got swollen with less than 3 years. I have a first gen iphone se still in use. I also had a pixel 3a that I couldn't find a screen replacement for luckily for me -- google accepted a trade in when the 6a got released.
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.
rstat1 · 9h ago
>> the pixels have a overheating problem -- this you can google for.
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.
thaumasiotes · 10h ago
My Pixel 6a (my current phone) has no battery swelling.
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.
cptskippy · 11h ago
My last 2 phones were Motorola and my most recent is a Pixel. Meh...
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.
nicoburns · 11h ago
> I remember my first android device, it had like 512MO of RAM (and storage), and it was blazing fast,
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.
silisili · 11h ago
> I tried a few Android cheap phones recently
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.
paxys · 11h ago
It's a problem that 95% of the world can afford to purchase a smartphone with a modern OS?
wijwp · 10h ago
That's why "problem" is in quotes. It's a self-inflicted and purposeful problem that trades a unified perception of Android through flagship devices for broad reach.
Ray20 · 3h ago
Disgusting. The EU asap needs to pass some law or something to force the monopolists to fix that.
Dylan16807 · 7h ago
The problem is that 2GB is considered low spec in the first place.
Force phone devs to use worse phones.
goodburb · 11h ago
$400 for a 3GB RAM is a "budget" phone?
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
jauntywundrkind · 11h ago
The new(er) mid range chipsets indeed are so so nice now. Pretty/fully modern process nodes, battery efficient, still very respectable cores.
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?
chihuahua · 6h ago
I had a Moto X4 which was quite cheap for $200 or $250. It did everything perfectly. No discernable lag for any operation. Plenty of storage. Great battery life. I can't imagine "needing" more phone than this.
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.
goodburb · 5h ago
Yes, $1k phones have the same issue.
resource_waste · 11h ago
>I tried a few Android cheap phones recently... they are simply unresponsive
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.
clearleaf · 6h ago
I wonder what method they've employed to make SD cards even more useless this time around.
idle_zealot · 10h ago
It's deeply disappointing to see that the multitasking solution for tablets that Google and Apple have settled on is... desktop-style floating windows, but without workspaces or window snapping.
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.
dagmx · 6h ago
iPadOs has window tiling if that’s what you mean by snapping and has had it for longer than floating windows.
And stage manager is basically workspaces by another name.
Rediscover · 6h ago
Or maybe like when the virtual desktop is larger than the viewport? OLVWM-ish.
absurdo · 11h ago
Did they fix the localhost tracking issue?
eth0up · 4h ago
Yay! Less control, more limitations and background shenanigans.
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.
hnpolicestate · 1h ago
Downvoted because it's true as is typical for HN. Safety!!!! Because the adult user is a child or something.
There's quite the panic discussion in GrapheneOS matrix chat
whalesalad · 11h ago
material design + "Google Sans" is probably the most nauseating combo imaginable.
taurusnoises · 12h ago
As someone who's very much on the outside of the Apple / Android debate (though I've never owned an iPhone, I do use a Mac and an iPad), and as someone who's relatively tech illiterate, how does this announcement read in light of Apple's latest liquid glass stuff, and the pushback I'm seeing from almost every angle. Is this Google announcement at all in response to the negative reaction Apple is getting? Does what Google is saying here get anyone excited? Maybe even excited enough to switch over?
beezlebroxxxxxx · 11h ago
I've used an Android and Apple phone on and off since the first phones were available with the respective OSs. In general, I've found the Android UI to be more intuitive (although they've both had their boondoggles).
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.
chihuahua · 6h ago
Imagine how difficult it must be for the PM whose job it is to create a long term road map or strategy for phone UIs. Everything is already done.
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.
mosdl · 12h ago
Android is a different beast since OEMs highly customize the UX. Samsung could easily make a horrible liquid glass ripoff and stick it on Android without Google doing anything.
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).
sylens · 12h ago
Google announced Material 3 Expressive a month or two ago, way before WWDC
skiman10 · 11h ago
And just to clarify, Material 3 Expressive is not shipping in these builds, that will be in a quarterly release build in probably in the first week of September.
rvba · 1h ago
I read that IOS will pepvide the battery percentage pn screen (e.g. your battery is 75% charged) and also estimated time to reach 100% capacity when charging
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.
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.
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.
https://f-droid.org/2024/02/01/twif.html
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.
Doesn't sound like a big problem. Some of the best plays and operas I've seen have been in bland concrete boxes, portakabins, round the back of pubs.... Of course all else being equal I'd prefer a building to look good, but good stage visibility and acoustics beats a flashy building every time.
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.
With Luna, I think people were mainly just reacting negatively to two things:
1. the start button being big and green and a weird blob shape; the start menu it opens having a huge, very rounded forehead and chin — and both of these having a certain "pre-baked custom PNG image 8-way sliced in Photoshop and drawn by parts" look that you'd see used on web pages in this era. This made the whole UI feel very "non-brutalist" — form not following function, the way it did in Windows Classic (where the theme was in part designed to optimize for as few line-draw GDI calls as possible.)
2. both the taskbar and window title bars being vertically thicker, and having a vaguely-plastic-looking sheen to them to "add dimensionality."
And my hypothesis is that, of these, it was mainly the "vertically thicker" taskbar+window decorations that upset so many people.
This was an era where many screens were still largely 1024x768, even as monitor sizes were growing; so "small was cool" [and legible!] Websites baked their text into images using 8x5 pixel fonts; Linux users used tiny fonts and narrow themes in fvwm/blackbox/fluxbox, etc. In that era, a title bar stealing thirty whole pixels was almost blasphemy. (Same problem with the Office XP ribbon. Microsoft's visual designers must have been too far ahead-of-the-curve in what kind of resolutions their graphics cards supported, I think.)
I think, if there was an alternate version of Luna that also shipped with XP, that just narrowed the taskbar and window caption bar to the Windows Classic dimensions... then Luna would have been universally acclaimed.
It's actually a credit to google that you can scale the fonts up so much and then forget you had done it. In the old days, the UI would be broken in various places.
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.
Argue with Apple because Mobile Safari makes a tap close to a button click the button (and it causes exactly the problems you've predicted, and workarounds are difficult). Do you do a lot of close testing?? Because the feature is quite noticeable.
Try it yourself on an iPhone (ideally use something that can do smaller taps than a finger, with zoom and without zoom): https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...
I recall that similar features are more obvious on Android because you can make taps visible.
Virtual keyboards also have interesting responses to close taps on key buttons.
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 wouldn't judge the new Android until I tried it on a phone either.
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.
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.
Which none of the current OSs do (except Linux without SystemD or BSDs, with a custom WM)
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.
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114662145938666044
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
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)
That said, I'm also looking forward to the official Google version coming to the rest of the Android devices
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 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.
[0] https://www.android.com/16
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.
I like a lot of the new features, but the visual (mis)communication language is terrible.
https://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-4.0-hig...
Of course I want accessibility, security and technical improvements.
Similar to Windows 11. The opposite isn't going back all the way to Windows 3.1, but Windows 7 or so was kinda peak.
So please, justify me the progress, or more exactly, have UI designers justify it, because I'm not seeing it. I've mostly seen change for the sake of change, wrapped in fluffy artsy BS jargon, making it sound like each UI change is the second coming of Christ and fixes world hunger.
Because I can justify you how for example KDE 3 and similar apps of that era including on Windows XP-7, were visually easier and more intuitive to use, than those flat modern looks of KDE 5/Windows 11 today.
Citation needed, and you're violating the HN guidelines besides.
> Assume good faith.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You want a citation for my own opinion? Are you OK?
I explained my reasoning for the bad faith argument in the comment. Did you read it? Because there's no violation of HN guidelines to provide an argumented option.
> Assume good faith.
I assumed good faith, but then I used critical thinking and decided it's in bad faith then explained why. You don't need to agree with me on this but also don't need to be needlessly petty trying to throw the rulebook at people online. Don't you have better uses for your time?
Also "recents" wasn't its own button, it was reached by long-pressing "home". The other button was "search".
We shouldn't do that, in the same way we shouldn't make sure people know UI is important by changing it completely every n years.
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?
A new company probably still couldn't develop platform pieces if that chink in the armor was made available by the DOJ. But if Google were split along those lines into two or more companies, it would provide nice and healthy gradients on both the hardware/OS and the platform/software sides of the market.
We really do need a Google breakup.
Isn't core Android open source? As long as you do not need Google apps and Google services, you can use Android OSS right now without Google's platform components.
Manufacturers were contractually forbidden from doing that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust_cases_against_Google...
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.
And Samsung does sell phones with customized UI and apps.
Motorola is barely hanging out.
Turns out people tend to gravitate to a few choices....
Xioami/Huawei are in essence banned from the US.
i have the feeling that for anything in the US, everything has to end up in monopolies or bipartisan approach. People just seem to buy what their neighbors/coworkers/siblings buy without trying to do a bit of research. Some kind of deep vulnerability to virality. My mate has an iphone, I need an iphone, my neighbor beagged about their Thermomix, I need a Thermomix too immediately.
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?
I have Pixel 4a and I wanted to get Android 16 to get the smaller notification tile buttons back.
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's almost usable for playing movies on a TV, but that's about 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.
So far, only Apple has figured out the applications part on MacOS, and only partially. They still have wierdo iPadOS. Microsoft is doing Windows on ARM... again. We'll see how long that lasts.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
http://android.com/16
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.
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.
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.
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?
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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...