14 ms·

Why I'm Ditching Android

269 points by kevq 8y ago

Latteland 8y ago
Google does let you turn off location tracking and web search history and I believe them. Apple has a much higher walled garden, do you have to trust them completely? I am on Android and have considered this.
moocowtruck 8y ago
android to iphone.. thats like deciding which gulag you like better
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
me551ah 8y ago
Notifications, as you rightly mentioned, are a huge problem with Android. Some manufacturers implement battery saving measures which force kill applications so they can no longer process notifications. I used to work at a team messaging startup Flock and we used to get a lot of complaints from users about missing notifications. We were able to detect impacted users and reduce complaints substantially using duplicate acks from xmpp fcm and app. The details are outlined here in case anyone wants to check out: https://hackernoon.com/notifications-in-android-are-horribly-broken-b8dbec63f48a https://hackernoon.com/notifications-in-android-are-horribly...
- dep_b 8y ago
  That's a pretty horrifying story about those push notifications. The biggest use case of my customers for creating native apps around web apps for iOS is push notifications, that's immensely huge for businesses. Losing push notifications means your application loses it's value.
  - sgc 8y ago
    Although probably not push itself as a mechanism, this interfering trend is so bad that for a time I could not find a timer or alarm that would actually ring at the right time. I have one now, but there should have been zero instances of failure to notify for a timer.
    - Arnt 8y ago
      On the other hand, there should also be zero instances of battery-burning apps, and zero instances of unkillable apps. IMO the blame belongs mostly to the thingies that kills apps so hard that Android blacklists them, and won't start them again until the user explicitly does it. That Android has that blacklist is understandable; that "battery savers" get innocent apps added is IMNSHO offensively shoddy.
      - sgc 8y ago
        I had no idea they did that. Does Greenify work that way?
        Arnt 8y ago
        Never tried Greenify. But the two I've seen close apps in a forcible manner that Android cannot distinguish from a buggy app that crashes repeatedly when restarted. Then Android revokes the app's right to (re)start itself. The user retains that right. But the app cannot e.g. schedule anything to be run next time the phone is on WLAN, or next time the battery is being charged.
  - fyfy18 8y ago
    Why does push notifications on Android require the app to be running? On iOS, as I understand, you tell Apple to send a notification, which is received by a service on the device, which triggers your app to do a little processing and show the notification - why is Android any different?
- krtkush 8y ago
  If you still know people working over there please let them know that the slack wannabe messaging app is a dumpster fire. I struggle with it every day at work. Edit: I realise I came across a bit too aggressive. Apologies for that.
  - me551ah 8y ago
    You could also use 'Send Feedback' from inside of the app and send in your issues to the devs. I've found that the developers are pretty responsive to feedback and reply back quickly. It has 4.3 rating on the store.
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    I doubt anyone is going to log a trouble ticket for "dumpster fire."
- yen223 8y ago
  The current Android app development landscape seems to be where the web was circa 2005, where you have a "standard" Android API (except without an actual standard), implemented a million different ways based on the whims of each individual vendor. Compounded by the problem that Google seems to enjoy replacing parts of the API every single year for no discernable reason. I do not envy the job of an Android developer.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    The best part is having Google supporters defend that Android is not as fragmented as J2ME. In a sense they are kind of right just in a wrong way, OEMs got even worse.
- Zenst 8y ago
  Notifications need teirs. You have notifications, that are not important, so low priority. But equally you have notifications that are important, those should be sent and logged message queue style, so they stay on the send queue until processed and processing acknowledged by the client.
  - me551ah 8y ago
    Actually Google does have the concept of priority in Notifications. https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/concept-options https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/concept-opt... . On a Google/Stock Android OS and on some good manufacturers like motorola notifications do work as expected. It's just the custom battery saver stuff that some manufacturers implement on top of Android which causes issues. Google doesn't have much control over the privileged process that manufacturers install on devices.
    - dredmorbius 8y ago
      User- or sender- determined? One of those never works.
      - fprotthetarball 8y ago
        The user determines the priority of notifications per-app and per-app-notification type (using notification channels) and configures how the notification is allowed to interrupt them. https://developer.android.com/training/notify-user/channels https://developer.android.com/training/notify-user/channels
        dredmorbius 8y ago
        That at least ... stands a chance ... of working. Though in my experience, any notifications is too many.
- paulie_a 8y ago
  Apps developers seem to think their notifications are more important than they really are. Yet somehow the time sensitive notifications don't show up. but it's awesome I was notified and interrupted throughout the day about a new ___. I personally have cancelled paid services and uninstalled apps because of that abuse. And yet useful apps have issues with notifications even without battery saving measures. It's not just a single app, it's been a consistent issue.
  - bootlooped 8y ago
    It's been possible to turn off notifications on an app-by-app basis for at least 2 years. The settings are pretty granular in the newer versions of Android, you can set it so that an app does not interrupt you in any way, and you'll only see the notification once you unlock your phone. However, if a single app is mixing in, say, 5 frivolous notifications with 2 critical ones, I don't think there is any OS-level way to deal with that. https://www.howtogeek.com/204187/how-to-disable-app-notifications-in-android/ https://www.howtogeek.com/204187/how-to-disable-app-notifica...
    - paulie_a 8y ago
      The problem is that some notifications for a particular app are useful. It just seems like the creators of the app feel all of their many notifications are equally important. It's granular to the level of "all or nothing" in most cases.
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    Agreed. I deleted the Starbucks app from my iPhone because Starbucks decided to use spam notifications. Same for 9to5 Mac. Ditto for the New York Times, my local media, and even the BBC. I just want an app that will send me notifications about breaking news. Breaking news that is actually important breaking news, and not "See our profile of some celebrity you don't give a crap about in tomorrow's New York Times!" Sadly, the only news app I have left that's permitted to access notifications is Sky News. And even it spams on occasion. But it seems to be only around once or twice a month.
- HillaryBriss 8y ago
  > force kill applications so they can no longer process notifications I saw your article about push notifications on certain android phone manufacturers and found it interesting -- something I hadn't seen before. Nice! But, if I'm not mistaken, the OP is focusing especially on android notifications raised by the app itself rather than push notifications. I'm not sure, but it seems like the problem he highlights involves compatibility-mode changes to the way apps run code while the app itself is also in the background. Or, it could be that the app developers are not using the officially recommended soup of background processing job scheduling classes the way Android says they should. Or, maybe that soup of classes isn't always as reliable as advertised.
  - p2t2p 8y ago
    From what I know, Android app has to run a background service to listen for GSM notifications so if you kill it - no notifications for you. Am I being wrong, has it changed? My last android dev experience is about 5 years old.
    - HillaryBriss 8y ago
      any app can raise a Notification i.e. a message box thingee that appears in the device's Notification Drawer. (this is different from a Push Notification.) and I think what the OP was talking about was this kind of Notification. i think he was saying that various apps that count on reliably running code in the background (e.g. when the app itself is in the stopped state and not visible on screen) are no longer able to reliably run that code in the background because Android decided not to let them do that on demand in a reliable way (in order to save battery). but that backgrounded code is what had been placing notifications in the Notification Drawer (when, say, the app became aware that there was a new email in your inbox or when a Calendar appointment was now one hour away, etc). as for push notifications, nowadays, Firebase Cloud Messaging is recommended. your app derives a service from FirebaseMessagingService and marks that service as "exported" in the manifest. and, you don't have to explicitly start that service. and, though i could be wrong, I think that service does not actually run in the background all the time. i think what happens is that some generic Firebase service invokes your app's service when a push notification has arrived for it. your app's service then processes that message as desired, and, if I understand correctly, it shuts back down. i believe Firebase is basically managing your service so that it does not have to run in the background all the time.
- rando444 8y ago
  Pardon my ignorance, but why do you see this as an Android-only problem? Surely every possible operating system suffers the same problem, no?
  - realusername 8y ago
    No, only Android suffers of these hacky issues because Google allows manufacturer to customize Android way too much. Android is the modern equivalent of Windows XP themes if you want to compare.
    - eyko 8y ago
      Or Linux distributions.
  - dep_b 8y ago
    iOS notifications are in a separate system and do not need any part of the host app to be started to receive them.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - bunnycorn 8y ago
    Not me551ah, but the problem with Android is that: 1. iOS is an Apple operating system. Every iOS device has a daemon running a service that connects with Apple's APNS (Apple Push Notification Service), and that service routes the notifications of every App to the user's device. APNS is non-negotiable, every iOS device has it running, and every App that wants to [reliably] deliver notifications must use it. It's part of the OS, so the OS won't kill it, in fact, if it crashes, the OS restarts it. It also means it's "well behaved", meaning it won't mine cryptocurrencies in the background (unless Apple breaks bad and decides that it's $1T value is not worth it anymore). 2. Android is not a strictly Google operating system. Google has it's APNS analogous, GCM (Google Cloud Messaging), but not every Android device has ties with Google, its open source, meaning millions (billions?) of Android devices out there are running without any Google ties. So in turn, many Apps device to have their own background tasks running all the time, with a persistent connection to the server to watch for notifications. Problem with this it's okay when you have 10 Apps with notifications, not when you have 100 Apps with notifications, each one having it's own background service. Some Android OEM's want their users to have great batt life and kill those background services, leaving notifications dead.
- wdr1 8y ago
  Funny. I never used Flock & would get spammed notifications (via SMS) from them. My 2012 Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/wdr1/status/255454270160244736 https://twitter.com/wdr1/status/255454270160244736 It later which switched to email wherein the justification was "growth strategy."
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    My 2012 Twitter thread: Nope. This account's Tweets are protected.
orliesaurus 8y ago
I was hoping the author was going to list alternative stable mobile OSes with privacy and users in mind, or maybe lay down the reasons for starting a project hard forking an existing OS or something...but he literally just said he wants to move to iOS??? Honestly, (and personally) I feel better knowing that I am running an Android ROM with publicly available code on Github than any iOS any day
- rapnie 8y ago
  I think /e/ ( https://e.foundation https://e.foundation) promising in that respect, and in the longer run maybe puri.sm Librem5.
matart 8y ago
On the notifications part, I had a Huawei phone for a bit and encountered the same issue. Huawei does some crazy things to keep the battery from draining. It does kill almost all background apps. There are some settings to stop this but it seems like a crap shoot whether it decided to listen to them. I thought android had gone down hill and eventually tested out an S9 and realized it was the Huawei android flavor that did this.
- amaccuish 8y ago
  I have the same problem with my android, I generally find the notifications less reliable than when I was on iOS.
- yason 8y ago
  To me, this sounds like a feature. Basically I'd like the phone to cut off all mobile data, wifi, gps, and other radio and kill all applications when the screen is locked. OnePlus has some background activity limits and you can turn on the aggressive Doze (or whatever it's called these days) but if my phone is locked I would really, really like to just receive calls and sms and have the system enforce that, and switch off all the unrelated hardware to extend standby time.
  - LeoPanthera 8y ago
    You can do this on the iPhone by completely disabling “background refresh”. It will still poll for notifications - but nothing else.
  - aembleton 8y ago
    I used to do this when I had a rooted phone. I kept the radio active so that I could receive calls and texts but data, GPS and wifi were all off. It saved battery if I wasn't doing much with my phone. If I was constantly unlocking to check where I was on a map then it ate up more battery and it was incredibly frustrating as it takes a while to get a GPS lock when you don't have Wifi to assist in a city, until Wifi come back on which also takes a while. Friends that only communicate with messenger and Whatsapp had trouble getting through. Loads of apps that had been trying to communicate also woke up once there was a connection using up more CPU cycles, slowing everything down some more. IMHO, its not worth it. Just use the background apps controller in Android 8.1. Whitelist the things that you do want notifications from and everything else can wait for you to open the app.
Kirth 8y ago
A bit painful to read considering the iPhone SE-series is now discontinued. (Despite that the SE is still a very good phone. Wish more manufacturers made devices with these dimensions and polish.)
- dep_b 8y ago
  It will be supported for another year or two so there's time to wait a bit to see what Apple does. An Xr Mini would be an instabuy for me even if they would price it around US$700.
- aikah 8y ago
  Yeah, the SE was best value/price phone. I have hard time understanding why Apple stopped producing it. The form factor was the best as well, I can't stand bigger phones personally. I told my parents to buy an Android initially but ultimately they moved to the iPhone because they thought it was simpler and better than Android. To me the fact that I can code my own apps with Java without having to buy a mac is a plus, but I understand people who aren't developers don't care about hackability if they can afford an iPhone.
  - wrkronmiller 8y ago
    iOS can also be pretty fun to develop for if you have a mac and xcode. IMHO iOS is good for developers who are okay with coloring inside the lines set out by Apple. The developer experience isn't perfect by any stretch, but writing personal apps/utilities in Swift using a package manager like Carthage is pretty painless. Apple has some great features for de-centralization, such as the Multipeer Connectivity framework. I think it depends a lot on where in the stack you want to work. If you want to customize your baseband or do system-level modifications then Android is the way to go. If you work higher up the stack, writing apps, then you might like iOS more than Android. I certainly did.
- epmaybe 8y ago
  It's discontinued, but you can still purchase the device (for fairly low price too!). On top of that, based on Apple's track record for software support, you can expect support for at least another year, if not more. Note that the iPhone 5S, a phone released in 2013 on iOS7, received the iOS12 update not too long ago.
dagenix 8y ago
The number of requests sent to Google or Apple seems like a poor metric to judge privacy impact. A single request with my bank account number carries a lot more information about me than 1,000 with my battery status.
- yipbub 8y ago
  Apple has less incentive to exfiltrate your personal data. I hate what both apple and google stand for these days.
- kopo 8y ago
  I thought so too, until while programming a wifi webcam I needed to sniff wifi traffic from my phone. God that was scary. I remember doing packet capture work 10-12 years back and knowing more or less what my machine was doing on the network. These days I can't even begin to work that out. There is easily a 100x more traffic and every single time I ran a capture I would find a whole bunch of new hosts being contacted that have no business talking to my phone. And I just use my phone for email and messaging. Not a big app user.
- cbsmith 8y ago
  There's also Google Analytics... a product often used by third parties to collect behavioral data.
wowamit 8y ago
To say that I'm ditching Android is a pretty incomplete statement - because there is no one Android. It really matter which flavour of Android we are talking about. And which specific device. For example, the bloatware might not be a problem on a unlocked Pixel device. At this point, both iOS and Android are in pretty stable states. It comes down to individual preferences. Author primarily seems to have an issue with Google, which again is justified.
- pseudoandy 8y ago
  I do not have any extra bloatware from any manufacturer, due to the fact that I run a Xiaomi Mi A1 as my daily driver, but I still would appreciate the choice to be able to manually install only the apps that I would use, e.g. Firefox instead of Chrome. I do have 64Gb of internal storage, but I obsess about every lost megabyte due to something I don't use( even when disabled or not used, Chrome still runs functions on the phone, so it runs in the background ).
  - zwkrt 8y ago
    That sounds a lot like bloatware to me
  - muro 8y ago
    Chrome is the webview for all apps, might be tricky to remove.
    - ashleyn 8y ago
      Boy, this is really starting to remind me of the controversy over bundling IE in Windows 98. Makes me think that all products eventually end up as bloated due to market pressure.
    - TheRealPomax 8y ago
      It's not, though. WebView is the built in web view mechanism for all apps that don't want to roll their own web view, and Chrome for Android is a browser that makes use of that WebView mechanism. Strictly speaking, a browser is just an interface that lets you interact with web pages. And you're not locked into WebView: if you actually wrote your own, you're entirely free to deploy it. It's just insanely hard to write a web render engine these days so for most people there's no point in the slightest: it just makes your application bigger. One example where it _does_ make sense is Firefox for Android, which comes with its own engine, because as long as the Android core classes area available, it should be able to run. Not "stop working" just because someone tailored their Android build to not include WebView.
ChrisRackauckas 8y ago
Honestly, who really cares that much about what smartphone you have these days? You have one with a good enough battery and the same apps as anyone else, and the speed is all fast enough to not notice. At this point the technology has converged.
- beatgammit 8y ago
  Yup. I just bought a $250 Moto X4 to replace my Nexus 6 and it feels faster. My Nexus 6 cost $450 a couple years old, and my new phone was new. I don't see any reason to pay $1000 for a phone these days, and I probably could have gotten the same experience from the Moto G at $200. I just want a phone that: - can last the entire day - can run a browser reasonably well - has decent reception - will get security updates for at least 2 years (expected lifetime of batteries) I don't need a fancy camera, next-gen graphics, or super high DPI screen, I just need a phone that's reasonably reliable, and even the bottom tier phones are more than capable.
  - jefftk 8y ago
    For me the camera is the main thing: smartphone cameras have been getting really good. Examples of my phones: 2017, Pixel 1: https://www.jefftk.com/pictures/2017/20171228_091058.jpg https://www.jefftk.com/pictures/2017/20171228_091058.jpg 2017, Galaxy S6: https://www.jefftk.com/pictures/2017/20170312_123314_030.jpg https://www.jefftk.com/pictures/2017/20170312_123314_030.jpg 2014, Moto X: https://www.jefftk.com/pictures/2014/stevie-lily-ball.jpg https://www.jefftk.com/pictures/2014/stevie-lily-ball.jpg 2011, Galaxy SII: https://www.jefftk.com/images/2011/all/IMG_20120115_202514.jpg https://www.jefftk.com/images/2011/all/IMG_20120115_202514.j...
- kevinherron 8y ago
  > You have one with a good enough battery and the same apps as anyone else, and the speed is all fast enough to not notice. At this point the technology has converged. Sure, which is why we're seeing a shift towards choosing a phone based on your personal/philosophical/marketing beliefs about how your personal data is treated instead, which is what at least part of this article talks about in justifying the switch.
SamWhited 8y ago
I've been coming around to this way of thinking more and more lately. Apple has a clear business model that involves selling high-end phones and other hardware and taking a percentage of app sales, not selling me to advertisers. I've found at least 5 different privacy settings buried in various places around the Android menus in a confusing way (instead of just having a single switch in the privacy settings menu), and for years iOS has had a much better security track record. The only real down side I can see is that it's not open source (not that Android is either, but there are Android based alternatives that are), but on balance I'd rather use something where the economic pressure is to do right by their customers, not something where their customers are the product. Apple has serious problems, but on balance it seems to be the better choice. I also tend to agree with the OP that the iPhone SE is a reasonable size, unlike every Android phone on the market. I just really wish there were a decent chat client that supported XMPP-based services, that's really all that's stopped me from moving over (my carrier lets me receive SMS/MMS messages to an XMPP address and receive calls via SIP, so it's rather important to me).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- tootie 8y ago
  I think you can say that if privacy is important to you, then you are probably more aligned with Apple's business plan. The article says as much. It's not like Apple are being more magnanimous, it's just that they don't profit off of user tracking so they use it as marketing ammo against Google users. As a developer, it constantly burns my biscuits that Apple software only runs on Apple hardware. The fact that I have no choice but to buy expensive Apple devices to develop for their platform is irritating.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 8y ago
    To some degree, a company that makes money of devices rather than ads will always charge more for the devices since they can’t really sell the device at or below cost and then make the profit from showing ads to their users.
amaccuish 8y ago
This guy was a saviour. I was poking round his blog after reading this, and found his review for elementaryOS where he mentions how to get the system tray working. I've been searching for months to get it working.
billfruit 8y ago
What about iOS being a walled garden? Moving to a proprietary OS isn't going to safeguard the interests of data security in the long term. Also see the rich custom rom scene for Android phones, with highly active communities building rooms for even phone models long abandoned by their manufacturers.
- UncleEntity 8y ago
  > Moving to a proprietary OS isn't going to safeguard the interests of data security in the long term. They did say in TFA (or perhaps another comment) that Apple uses privacy as a marketing jab against Google since they don't really want all your datas to sell ads. Which does seem to hold true in practice, their newest crypto-chip thing they can't access even if they want to, going to the mat to against the FBI and various other instances over the years.
- kevq 8y ago
  I don't use any Apple services really, so I won't be sucked in to the walled garden. A lot of things I self-host and I've already checked that equivalent apps are available in iOS.
pseudoandy 8y ago
I remember when Ubuntu tried making a mobile phone OS( Ubuntu Touch ), but it never was a commercial success. I was extremely dissatisfied to hear about Google and their phone upload requests. It makes me question whether Android is a good choice after all( not that I agree with Apple, either ). That is the problem with modern-day tech, there is not enough choice in the market. Everything is either bought out or choked out by larger, dominating manufacturers, i.e. Google & Apple.
- fit2rule 8y ago
  I would use Ubuntu Touch tomorrow if I could. I think there's still an opportunity for such devices.
  - jammygit 8y ago
    I installed ubports a year ago on a nexus 5 and it ran great. The only reason I switched to lineage was for authy and anki. They really did give up too soon
- thrill 8y ago
  I felt Ubuntu gave up far too soon.
qaute 8y ago
"I tried replacing Android with Lineage OS on a old phone I had. Whilst that meant I didn’t have any Google Apps on my device, it was still Android underneath. Also many apps kept complaining that I didn’t have Google services on the device." An alternative is to install microG [1], which reimplements assorted Google services. YMMV, but I've been able to run ~70% of all Android apps with no problems. [1] https://microg.org/ https://microg.org/
- kingosticks 8y ago
  What's the best hardware supported by microG? My current phone is not supported and while my previous one is, it's an original Moto G; I don't think I could handle returning to those specs, not to mention the ageing battery.
  - commoner 8y ago
    MicroG supports all Android devices, but requires manual installation. LineageOS for microG (which is a pre-built ROM) supports all phones that are supported by LineageOS. A full list of these phones can be found here: Sorted by device age, with pictures and specifications: https://piotr-yuxuan.github.io/choose-a-new-phone/ https://piotr-yuxuan.github.io/choose-a-new-phone/ Sorted by model, with LineageOS version and build day (view on desktop for all columns): https://www.lineageoslog.com/build/scheduler https://www.lineageoslog.com/build/scheduler
  - jammygit 8y ago
    I installed it one a pixel 1 xl recently and it runs great
  - kingosticks 8y ago
    I actually tried it on my moto g and it runs pretty well. Everything works so far, this seems like a much better choice than buying an overpriced, discontinued, entirely closed Apple device.
diminish 8y ago
I won't ditch Android for Apple. Apple is restricted, Safari is a tragedy for the web and prices are too expensive for the value. Somehow I dislike everything Apple represents, and reminds. The design, the simplicity which comes from restrictiveness. Even the lightest Linux window manager like i3wn, is better than all of os/x does. I will just wait till a true open source option comes.
- pokemongoaway 8y ago
  We just need a de-Googled fork to become popular and supported. For example CopperheadOS.
- kevq 8y ago
  Simply install Firefox and your problems are over. That's what I do on my iPad, and what I intend to do on the SE when it arrives.
  - robin_reala 8y ago
    Firefox on iOS still uses the system WebKit. I disagree with the premise that Safari is a tragedy for the web though.
archi42 8y ago
I'm currently in a similar spot, but am very surprised you did not mention MicroG, which is an open reimplementation of the Google APIs. There seem to be some issues with GCM (or, more precisely, the newer replacement - uhm, FCM?), but imho it's worth a try. If you already have a LineageOS-supported device, you can grab a prebuilt LineageOS+MicroG image from the MicroG site. Disclaimer: That's pure theory. I'm still figuring out how to do a custom build of LOS16+MicroG for my device, since it's only on LOS14.
- kop316 8y ago
  Have you looked here? They do builds of lineageos with mircog already installed https://lineage.microg.org/ https://lineage.microg.org/
  - archi42 8y ago
    Thanks :), but as I said: > If you already have a LineageOS-supported device, you can grab a prebuilt LineageOS+MicroG image from the MicroG site. I redacted a lengthy part of my comment since I felt it wouldn't add anything to the discussion; but it went like this: Sadly, my device (HTC 10 aka pme) is officially only on LineageOS 14.x, which is Android 7. Since I am coming from Android 8 stock ROM, I'd like to stay on Android 8 or even get Android 9. There are unofficial LineageOS builds for this (from a guy who just doesn't merge the back to LOS; which I can understand considering the additional effort - on top of all the work is already doing). But of course they lack the necessary patches for MicroG. And the MicroG only pre-builts are based on the official LineageOS build process and thus the official images. So I can only get Android 7 + MicroG with the comfortable "grab image and flash"-method. I gave building a custom MicroG+LOS{15.1,16.0} a shot using the official MicroG docker image (just a single docker run command) and adding the unofficial builds local_manifest.xml, but those two builds failed for me and I didn't bother messing around with that docker c*. Accidentally, I did that the day before this was posted to HN, no changes since then. But I suppose I'll try a docker-less build on my machine once I feel like it. Eventually I can just put MicroG on the unofficial build from xda-devs, since that doesn't contain GApps; but I am not sure how great the experience is when not having the MicroG/F-Droid patches. I will see. EDIT: Regarding signature spoofing, the MicroG github wiki says: > You can also patch your already-install ROM by flashing NanoDroid-patcher, without any computer interaction. It will auto-patch every updated ROM. So maybe that works.
asveikau 8y ago
I put lineage on two devices and I must say it's shockingly refreshing to be able to have some say in how much Google you get. I am used to the idea of OEM and carrier bloatware but it's surprising how much unwanted Google software appears in a stock image. On lineage I am pretty happy with the "nano" set of OpenGApps which is about the amount of Googleyness I want. I install a few more from Play on top.
- k__ 8y ago
  Lineage seems like a reasonable solution. Dropping Android for iOS is a joke.
  - asveikau 8y ago
    Yeah, if you don't like something Apple puts in their image good luck... On the other hand it's not always as reasonable as it should be. I do find it frustrating that devices are so locked down, to the point where finding something to run lineage well and has the feature set you want can be tough. With my latest attempt I found a phone where several models, depending on what country and carrier, would not unlock the bootloader. And online sellers of phones are not always specific about what sub-model you get. I had to return a few because the seller sent me a Rodgers or an AT&T one that wouldn't unlock. I can definitely see how enough rounds of this can make some people throw their hands up and let Apple make all the choices.
    - rootusrootus 8y ago
      Thing is, there are plenty of places where Google dictates Android options that you cannot do anything about. It is not like Apple has a monopoly on this. The idea of mucking about with multiple phones just to find the one which irritates me the least is very unappealing. It's an appliance, I just need the thing to work.
      - asveikau 8y ago
        Ok. It's like running Linux or BSD on desktops or laptops, which I have done since the 90s. If you get into that game, or especially many years ago it was more true, you sometimes had to be picky or patient about hardware. That's a choice I can make in order to get perceived advantages on other fronts, and I respect and understand people who make the other trade-off. (I acknowledged as much in the comment you're replying to.)
sergiotapia 8y ago
I made the opposite move last month. Ditched my iphone 6+ and went with a Samsung Galaxy S9+. Apple soured me with their bullshit around throttling the CPU to make the battery last the same. No wonder my phone was performing like shit. But here's the bad news, this new phone I got is still not so hot. I still run out of battery despite working from home and only using the phone for google maps and calendar/slack when I'm out of office. I don't game on it or anything. For my next phone I want to find a much more inexpensive phone, swappable battery, with a long-ass battery time. I would go with a Nokia but I don't know if their classic phone supports google maps.
- hso1 8y ago
  I managed to get Google Maps working on my Nokia 3310 3G
  - lvalenta 8y ago
    Did you? How long was it loading? :-))
- ricardobeat 8y ago
  Did you try replacing the iPhone battery?
- techstrategist 8y ago
  Why not try the $29 battery swap?
tambourine_man 8y ago
I use an SE too. I wish Apple would sell a smaller version of their newest display, camera and chip.
brownbat 8y ago
Based on the stated concerns, data sent to Google, bundled apps that can't be removed... And given the author's interest in FOSS... Really interesting Lineage failed. He claims apps kept nagging about the lack of Google app support. How pervasive is that? Could he have just found a couple app alternatives rather than throwing them all out at once? It's hard to disentangle whether the problems we have are with our phones, with the OS, or with the app ecosystem. (Quick edit for clarity.)
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  As someone who also tried Googleless Android before giving Android a kick to the curb, it's often specific service clients with no alternative. Like I needed Skype, and despite Microsoft being a Google competitor, their app didn't work without Play Services. And with security being key to me, I'm not interested on depending on a third party hack with all my sensitive data.
  - brownbat 8y ago
    Makes sense, thanks for that insight. Yeah, helping third parties engage in signature spoofing does sound far from ideal.
- mtgx 8y ago
  Google has entangled its Play framework deeply into the AOSP, obviously on purpose, not necessarily to discourage ROM developer, but I'm guessing primarily to discourage OEMs from changing AOSP too much, as well as slow down Android fork-developers such as Amazon.
swozey 8y ago
He missed the thing that's getting me really close to leaving Android after being a devout user since the G1 (with a short 3-5 month stint on an Iphone 6). I really, really dislike IOS and I absolutely don't want to be more tied to Apple than I am with my MBP and Hackintosh (technically I'm just tied to OSX right now). RCS (the Android attempt at iMessage) is STILL not a real-world thing. Txt messaging and MMS on Android is still an absolute joke. My Samsung S8 has, what, a 12-megapixel camera (I never look at these specs anymore) that can take incredible pictures and videos but if I want to send them to someone I have to jump through a bunch of hoops. Upload them to dropbox, share it, send my friend the link, hope they click it vs it just playing in their messaging app. If I send that video via text message it gets compressed to a 500kb blurry mess. I frequently have to explain to people that Androids don't take terrible pictures, my phone takes amazing pictures. The problem is when I send them to you I'm limited to the maximums of text messaging because phone providers haven't rolled out RCS. It also doesn't help that the Snapchat app back when I used to use it just took a screenshot of our camera app. That further shouted, "Android sucks at pictures, what a peasant phone!" Tmobile has RCS now but it only works between Tmobile Android users who are using the stock messaging app. They might even need a recent phone with a specific version of Android, I'm not sure there. They rolled this out in June 2018. 2018! How long has imessage been around? And I still have never seen it actually kick in because 90% of the people I txt are on iphones. I also HAVE to use the built-in Messaging app to get this because the RCS API wasn't (not sure if it is now) public so other messaging apps couldn't send over RCS. If I use the Samsung messaging app then I lose the web messaging feature that the Google Messaging app gives me. The Google Messaging app is terrible, though, it doesn't even have the ability to click a person's name and see all of the media shared between us like the good messaging apps do. I have to literally scroll and scroll and scroll to see a picture that I've been sent. There are all these tradeoffs just for messaging. Do I want an easy web experience so I don't have to pick my phone up every time I get a text? Then I lose the file library when you click a contacts name. Do I want RCS? I'm not even sure which Messaging app to use for it. It's either Samsung Messaging or I need to download Tmobile messaging. I don't follow it but I don't believe ATT/Verizon are even going to roll out RCS, I believe they have their own implementation coming (somedayTM). Unless their "Advanced Messaging" is just RCS. Will that work with Tmobile users? Or will it just be between ATT customers? I have plenty of other complaints about Android lately. Privacy, per-app notifications are a mess. I LOVE the customization of Android and the lack of it is what I dislike about IOS but I'm to the point where I just want a smooth UX. edit: Before I get the "Use Whatsapp/etc" that's just not an option. Google Hangouts was SOMEWHAT ubiquitous between my friends a few years ago and was great but if I'm taking pictures of my house for a contractor, or shooting pictures of my Jeep offroading to random Jeep friends and what not I'm not going to go "Are you on WhatsApp?" each time. I know these limits are because of carriers and not Google/Android specifically.
mikestew 8y ago
Yes their hardware is grossly overpriced, but the flagship Android phones are pretty much inline with Apple these days. So which is it, Apple is grossly over-priced or inline with what a decent Android phone costs? And then the author goes on to complain about the data firehouse back to Google and bloatware. Are we yet seeing that price is not always measured in dollars? I don’t mean to pick on the author, I guess it’s just interesting to watch the process of coming to this realization. But the notifications, holee-shit. That seems like one of those “under a full moon...” reports, but others here confirm. I’m so speechless, I don’t even have a snarky Apple fanboi comment.
- ricardobeat 8y ago
  Apple devices have been historically overpriced. Most recently Android manufacturers wised up and realized they can also benefit from segmentation, and raised prices to match. Now everything is overpriced, and we all win! /s
abrax3141 8y ago
I also have an SE and love it. The OP, and various posts above are slightly wrong to say that Apple is a hardware company. Apple is a PRODUCT company; They design, sell, and support the whole product. That’s why is all Just Works, which is what most folks of any ilk want. Even their Unix (basically BSD) Just Works. Yeah, a little more Open would be great, but when I want to build something else, like a house, I really don’t need to be worrying about recompiling my screwdriver. Like the OP said, I want a phone that’s a phone and works. I want a Unix that’s stabdards compliant and works. I want a laptop that works. And I’m willing to pay a little more for someone else to build and maintain the roads and bridges so I can get where I want to go. And, yeah, not to spy on me while I’m getting there.
markhopkins 8y ago
"Most of the bloatware on Android devices I’ve used over the years cannot be removed as they’re marked as system apps." I believe you can use the Application Manager in Android to disable any of these Apps, even though you cannot remove them. Just don't disable an App the phone actually needs.
zdmc 8y ago
I made the switch to a refurbished 6s a couple of months ago when we started work on a new iOS app, and I am happy that I did. For the foreseeable future, I'll be purchasing iPhones. (I even purchased the recently announced Mac Mini in order to access the Apple software ecosystem; though, I suspect that I'll continue to prefer my Ubuntu laptop for productivity). Why switch? After all this time (embarrassed to say), I've finally started to take my data privacy seriously. I really respect Google as an engineering company, and even as a product company. Products like Search/PageRank, Maps, StreetView, SkyMap, Translate, Books/Scholar, AdWords/AdSense/AdMob, Places, Trends, TensorFlow (and CoLab w/ free 12 hr sessions of TPU or GPU), BigTable, Gmail, Glass, and of course Android all are/were really great products. The only problem: those offerings are for the direct purpose of collecting your personal data (or the indirect purposes of making their other products - which collect your data - more efficient, or to bring more people online to collect data from). I would love Google as a product company; I hate them as an ad company (85%+ of revenues resulting from advertising activities). I have migrated from, or I am currently migrating from, every Google product with the exception of YouTube (difficult to break from that, so I try to mitigate by having multiple accounts) and TensorFlow. Notifications on Android were never an issue for me. Maybe I didn't have a similar suite of apps as OP. (iOS notifications have been more annoying thus far).
brownbat 8y ago
A lot of people want to ditch both Android and Apple, so /e/ is kicking off as a purely Google-free FOSS OS the author might like more than Lineage, once it gets a little more developed: https://www.xda-developers.com/e-google-free-lineageos-fork-nexus-oneplus-xiaomi/ https://www.xda-developers.com/e-google-free-lineageos-fork-... We're overdue for some viable third option.
- guilhas 8y ago
  Isn't LineageOS microG already google free?
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    Did you read the author’s issues with that?
    - brownbat 8y ago
      The author talks about lineage, but not micro g, which does sound designed to solve his exact issue. "Android experience relies heavily on Google's Play Services. The microG project creates an alternative to installing Gapps, which install and execute closed-source blobs on our phones. MicroG however requires a patch called "signature spoofing"..."
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    Yes, it is, and you can run microG on any Android version without OpenGApps. With microG you still rely on non-free services (Google Play Services, for example); just via open source frameworks. You also, possibly, breach Google's EULA. I do use it. The notifications aren't flawless, since any application using firebase isn't going to work (the old GCM still works for now). Things may break any day. I suppose its akin to being on your own whilst running a Hackintosh except that the software is FOSS. A reasonable alternative is a model where you pay for the software and get a license to run it. For that, you can opt for Sailfish which is almost completely FOSS. Heck, you can run community versions of Sailfish as well but without Alien Dalvik (Android compatibility layer). But I wouldn't depend on such too much. Other alternatives are the Ubuntu Touch/Phone project by UBPorts, and the KDE people are also still alive and kicking. There's postmarketOS, based on Alpine, giving older smartphones a second life. And you can also opt to use a dumbphone plus a mobile device. You don't need to have a smartphone.
ac130kz 8y ago
The best thing about Android is that you can change it (Huawei is useless). Acquire root permissions and any app can be deleted. There is also an option to install a fully free and open source Google Services implementation (if you need them so much). Finally, notifications are caused by vendor specific problems, clean Android is fully functional.
jraph 8y ago
What I want to be able to do with a phone: - calling - texting - taking pictures - occasionally recording sound - music - directions - occasionally, an alarm clock, a calendar and notes - web surfing is a nice to have and I use it now that I have it. - the ability to run a Debian Chroot and an X server is a nice to have. Lineage 15 (soon 16) with latest updates, without Google apps does that brilliantly well, and I get a solid 6 to 10 days of battery life. No emails (but k-9 mail works well if needed, and the webmail too), no chat. Chat would be possible (and I will probably want that in the future) with many applications like Signal, Riot, Conversations, maybe even WhatsApp (I haven't tested - not interested). Directions with OsmAnd gives me great offline functionality, allowing for a 2€/month phone plan. I get all notifications I want in a timely manner, which are texts and calls. No more. edit: Oh, and installing apps without the phone needing any email address. On iOS, I would not have such a freedom. Next step: a blob-free phone, or no phone at all.
jasonvorhe 8y ago
It's rather common knowledge that most vendors that aren't Google or Nokia put a load of crap ware on their devices that can't be removed. Duh. He also hasn't really ditched Android yet, since his iPhone hasn't even been delivered yet. I don't get the point of this blog post.
arminiusreturns 8y ago
The second a pure linux phone without googles bullshit (which includes allowing manufacturer and carrier bullshit) comes out, I'm switching. Until then I'm sticking with my blackberry android because at least I have a linux underside and a foss appstore. Google had such a good opportunity with android, and shit the bed with it, abusing users and letting manufacturers and carriers join in on the abuse. There should be a "Right to Root".
- Johnny555 8y ago
  I think you already missed that boat: https://www.techradar.com/news/canonicals-dream-for-an-ubuntu-phone-is-dead https://www.techradar.com/news/canonicals-dream-for-an-ubunt...
  - rmusial 8y ago
    This project send seems promising... https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-smartphone-makes-major-strides-in-manufacturing-and-development/ https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-smartphone-makes-major-strides...
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    And OpenMoko before that. Turns out the number of people that actually want a phone with a terminal interface is in the dozens.
    - LeoPanthera 8y ago
      Don’t strawman. No-one wants a phone with a terminal interface, and linux phones did not have terminal interfaces.
      - foob 8y ago
        I recognize that I'm in the minority, but I want a terminal interface on my phone. I have my qualms with Android, but one of my favorite things about it is that I can drop into a terminal and have what is essentially a full Linux distro at my disposal. I often leave my main laptop at the office instead of lugging it around, and it's great being able to use a bluetooth keyboard with my phone to get real work done sometimes. I use termux [1] which allows me to install whatever software I want with APT. I can use vim, ssh into servers, and mostly do whatever else I would do on a computer. It's not a strawman, it's just a developer-centric niche. 1 - https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Main_Page https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Main_Page
komali2 8y ago
I can't go to Apple because it's clear they never again make a phone with a headphone jack, and I require a phone with a headphone jack.
luord 8y ago
> I’m never going to completely get rid of Google, that’s impossible at this point And here's the crux of why I just don't bother, then again it's not really that big of a deal to me that I'm the "product". I'll probably regret it some day, but I'm hoping that I won't.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
agumonkey 8y ago
Maybe efforts should be redirected to google-free android based OSes (postmarket, or the right-now-quantic copperhead ...)
mettamage 8y ago
Really in line with my own thinking. I bought an iPhone SE 6 months ago for the reasons he stated. The one thing I dislike is that you don't have a Finder type of functionality. But there are some 3rd party apps that do it well enough (I think one was called Documents). Also it is easy to find a protectable huge case for these phones since they already exists for eons in the digital industry. I sometimes drop my phone in front of people to see what they are missing: the absence of broken screens.
- barnabee 8y ago
  The Apple app "Files" (which might not be installed by default) may be of interest as Finder-like functionality - it lets you browse, search and manage files stored on the device, in iCloud and in 3rd party services (Dropbox, Google Drive, FTP/SCP via an app like Transmit, etc.)
chmln 8y ago
As they say, when there's a will - there's a way. The author clearly did not evaluate all of the alternatives, and simply jumped from one walled garden to another. Bloatware, adware, and battery life are cited as his reasons. But he could have rooted his phone in 5 minutes then deleted all the bloatware and google apps in an instant. Add microG and adaway on top, and you have a nice ad-free system with much better battery life. All he had to do was research.
- griffoa 8y ago
  I built Android phones for a living for many years and I could probably root a device very quickly and get it up and running just like in the old days, but I seriously cannot be bothered anymore. Only viable alternative for me right now is an Apple device. I wish there was an alternative that just worked out of the box - and I even work for Apple these days...
  - chmln 8y ago
    All it takes is booting into fasboot and running `fastboot oem unlock`. If that's too much for some, I don't blame them for choosing Apple.
- philjohn 8y ago
  > All he had to do was research. And that's the problem. One platform offers, mostly, sane defaults with strong privacy guarantees and no bloatware, the other requires you to invest time and effort, first to research, then enact.
  - chmln 8y ago
    > strong privacy guarantees This can change any day. And if you think that's impossible, look at Windows or Google Chrome. Most users just will happily trade privacy for convenience. > the other requires you to invest time and effort, first to research, then enact This is classic learning curve = bad. Rust is also harder than JavaScript, and Vim is harder than Notepad. What matters is whether its worth it. Some people don't see a problem with being at the whim of a megacorp and not having true ownership of their devices. That's normal. After all, Chrome and Windows have huge marketshare too. Putting all the eggs in Apple's basket is near-sighted at best.
ryl00 8y ago
I ditched Android 2+ years ago for... Windows Mobile. :) While I did so for purely financial reasons (Microsoft was in the process of bailing out, so was putting their stock on fire sale and I couldn't resist, ecosystem disadvantages notwithstanding), I've come to appreciate the design and will be sad once I have to leave (I'm still using a Windows 10 Mobile Alcatel IDOL 4s as my daily driver). To me, Windows Mobile had some of the best parts of Android (hardware variety) and Apple (regular OS/security updates for all).
amanaplanacanal 8y ago
I'm also thinking about ditching android, for a completely different reason. I want a premium phone. I like good cameras, and big fat CPUs. So I've been using Samsung phones for a while. I currently have an S6, which I have been pretty happy with. But it has come to my attention that it has received its last update about 6 months ago. Samsung only sends updates for two years. Having an internet-connected device that no longer gets patches? Seems like a terrible idea to me. Apple supports their phones for 5 years. So that's the direction I'm currently looking.
- poisonborz 8y ago
  Just ask around what great experience it is to use new os/apps on a 5 year old phone.
  - lvalenta 8y ago
    I think this issue is likely to be diminished as the performance difference's not been improving that much lately (X and XS having similar CPU performance) - we have come to a point of smartphone evolution where yearly additions to a performance will not be the reason to upgrade -> therefore I don't expect new iOS versions slowing devices significantly.
    - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
      That's what I am thinking too.
- lostmsu 8y ago
  Use a postmarket Lineage OS?
- TheAceOfHearts 8y ago
  I bought a Pixel 3, which will receive 3 years of feature and security updates directly from Google. Previously I had a Pixel 1, which only received 2 years of updates, although it'll continue to receive security updates for another year. I'd prefer it if they provided support for a bit longer than that, but it's still better than what many other vendors are pushing. The Pixel 3 is a big improvement over every other Android experience I've had, and I've been in the ecosystem since the Nexus One. It's the first Android phone I've used which actually feels like a premium phone, which is what I'd expect, considering its hefty price tag. Its camera has been called the top of the line by many reviewers. Heck, right now there's a post in the HN front page about the Pixel 3's camera [0]. Stock Android is still kinda buggy and rough around the edges in a few places, but it has definitely been improving. I've found the latest version to be much more stable and reliable, at least during the short time I've had it. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370130
JimGuns 8y ago
I am not sure how people are figuring this out now. It's only common sense given googles business model and their history that your android phone is nothing more than a tracking and data generation device. I am sure Apple has it's flaws but Google uses Android to double down on selling your info. Be smart, pick up an old Blackberry 10 device and use its Android emulator.
- slothtrop 8y ago
  How do you feel about the android-based blackberrys?
  - JimGuns 8y ago
    I heard they are pretty good and are a bit more secure, but the underlying system is still android.
    - archi42 8y ago
      The problem is not Google itself, the problem are the Google Services coming with every phone (often plus two Facebook Apps, plus Instagram, plus some manufacturer specific stuff - mine was spamming me once a month with "Why don't you buy a new theme for HTC Sense"). As mentioned by me & others, you can replace those with MicroG, though YMMV.
- pokemongoaway 8y ago
  There's also CopperheadOS. If only we could get more hardware support :)
SubiculumCode 8y ago
After my old cell phone broke and just after I bought a new desktop computer, my newer cell phone broke bad right after warranty. It was hard to justify another outlay of money so I bought a Nokia 3310. Pretty close to a dumb cell phone. For the most part nothing in my life got worse. It isn't that hard to ditch a real smart phone..well if your life is spent in front of a computer for your job anyway. However, the Nokia 3310 is not a good dumb cell phone. The text messaging application is broken for messages for group messages and and multiple messages from the same person in a row. Basic stuff. Text messaging with the old style number pad entry is really as horrible as we remember. Surely there are better alternatives for key entry on a dumb phone in this age. Despite this, it does its job as a cell phone. It almost always has a charge, and it gets reception where my old cell phone would not, and despite its size you can always hear its ringer. So there are pluses. It does contain a web browser and 3G connectivity. I can use its web browser to read HN, and I do pretty frequently, but on most sites the formatting is always horribly wrong. Clicking a link frequently takes you to a different address than was clicked.
marcus_holmes 8y ago
I bought a Pixel 2. It had Google system apps, not Huawei system apps. My last phone was an iPhone 6 plus. It had Apple system apps that I couldn't uninstall. I don't get it.
thebruce87m 8y ago
I wish people would stop using the term “overpriced”. If it was overpriced, then Apple would lower the price or stop selling it. Apple set the price. They determine if the price is correct based on their sales numbers, not your perceived value of the Bill Of Materials for the phone.
- Thriptic 8y ago
  Agreed, I've even had apple fanboy friends rage about the price of apple hardware and then go right out and buy the latest thing. If you're willing to pay sticker price for a product, it is clearly not overpriced. If you want the prices to drop, stop behaving like a price insensitive userbase.
fractalf 8y ago
The worlds really could use a "free" mobile OS. I was sad that Firefox OS never saw daylight. Im on android and dislike google very much, though not as much as I disslike Apple. Purism is making a Libre 5 mobile, I hope something like that could really break through. Imagine a desktop/server world without linux. Thats would be awefull. Yet thats where we are with mobiles today
- amiga-workbench 8y ago
  Firefox OS is now known as Kai OS, its available on devices like the nokia banana phone. I've still got a Mozilla Flame developer handset and it all runs surprisingly smoothly.
  - gregknicholson 8y ago
    Firefox OS is open source. KaiOS is closed source. KaiOS may be a continuation of the same product, but it's not a continuation of the same project.
- jammygit 8y ago
  Purism's Linux phone is in development. Version one will surely be low in features, but it sure has potential if it can survive a few iterations
- JVIDEL 8y ago
  Sailfish is another alternative.
- snaky 8y ago
  The only realistically feasible free mobile OS is Android actually. AOSP to be exact, with no Google Play Services.
NicoJuicy 8y ago
I see a pro Apple sentiment here for privacy, just my 2 cents. Apple is constantly raising their prices ( asp ) and they won't share unit sales in their next stock report. So I'm curious what this will do for the future.
rurban 8y ago
I would rather use Sailfish on a Sony Xperia then. Privacy, cheaper, faster, longer battery life. Can also install Android apps.
Apotheos 8y ago
Had the same problem with my S9+, battery would just drop throughout the day. I ended up disabling a bunch of Samsung apps and trying to find the others that were giving me wake locks and now I can happily say I get almost two days, with 6 to 8 hours of screen in time.
Teknoman117 8y ago
I'm hoping SailfishOS is in a good state for OnePlus 3 when it looses official support from OnePlus.
xte 8y ago
Personally I've ditched Google services (like GMail and contacts) from a little while, however I do not find any viable alternatives to Android not as a phone, not as a limited mobile MUA but as a personal navigation devices. I tried both FOSS PND and classic TomTom's/Garmin's etc, none of them while having few strong points can really beat GMail (for now). I hope Purism can create a FOSS phone but I'm not too optimistic since many tried it and fail, including many with far more resources than Pursim but for now change a jail for another only for background traffic it's not worth my money... I simply choose an economic device (MotoG 4G) and stick with it as long as it will work...
dplgk 8y ago
The "ditching Google" guy can't find a way to stop using Android Pay or Google plus? Using Google plus means your still 100% in Google's ecosystem. These are also 2 of the easiest things to stop using.

269 points by kevq 8y ago

Google does let you turn off location tracking and web search history and I believe them. Apple has a much higher walled garden, do you have to trust them completely? I am on Android and have considered this.

moocowtruck 8y ago

android to iphone.. thats like deciding which gulag you like better

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

me551ah 8y ago

Notifications, as you rightly mentioned, are a huge problem with Android. Some manufacturers implement battery saving measures which force kill applications so they can no longer process notifications. I used to work at a team messaging startup Flock and we used to get a lot of complaints from users about missing notifications. We were able to detect impacted users and reduce complaints substantially using duplicate acks from xmpp fcm and app. The details are outlined here in case anyone wants to check out: https://hackernoon.com/notifications-in-android-are-horribly-broken-b8dbec63f48a https://hackernoon.com/notifications-in-android-are-horribly...

dep_b 8y ago
That's a pretty horrifying story about those push notifications. The biggest use case of my customers for creating native apps around web apps for iOS is push notifications, that's immensely huge for businesses. Losing push notifications means your application loses it's value.
- sgc 8y ago
  Although probably not push itself as a mechanism, this interfering trend is so bad that for a time I could not find a timer or alarm that would actually ring at the right time. I have one now, but there should have been zero instances of failure to notify for a timer.
  - Arnt 8y ago
    On the other hand, there should also be zero instances of battery-burning apps, and zero instances of unkillable apps. IMO the blame belongs mostly to the thingies that kills apps so hard that Android blacklists them, and won't start them again until the user explicitly does it. That Android has that blacklist is understandable; that "battery savers" get innocent apps added is IMNSHO offensively shoddy.
    - sgc 8y ago
      I had no idea they did that. Does Greenify work that way?
      - Arnt 8y ago
        Never tried Greenify. But the two I've seen close apps in a forcible manner that Android cannot distinguish from a buggy app that crashes repeatedly when restarted. Then Android revokes the app's right to (re)start itself. The user retains that right. But the app cannot e.g. schedule anything to be run next time the phone is on WLAN, or next time the battery is being charged.
- fyfy18 8y ago
  Why does push notifications on Android require the app to be running? On iOS, as I understand, you tell Apple to send a notification, which is received by a service on the device, which triggers your app to do a little processing and show the notification - why is Android any different?
krtkush 8y ago
If you still know people working over there please let them know that the slack wannabe messaging app is a dumpster fire. I struggle with it every day at work. Edit: I realise I came across a bit too aggressive. Apologies for that.
- me551ah 8y ago
  You could also use 'Send Feedback' from inside of the app and send in your issues to the devs. I've found that the developers are pretty responsive to feedback and reply back quickly. It has 4.3 rating on the store.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  I doubt anyone is going to log a trouble ticket for "dumpster fire."
yen223 8y ago
The current Android app development landscape seems to be where the web was circa 2005, where you have a "standard" Android API (except without an actual standard), implemented a million different ways based on the whims of each individual vendor. Compounded by the problem that Google seems to enjoy replacing parts of the API every single year for no discernable reason. I do not envy the job of an Android developer.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  The best part is having Google supporters defend that Android is not as fragmented as J2ME. In a sense they are kind of right just in a wrong way, OEMs got even worse.
Zenst 8y ago
Notifications need teirs. You have notifications, that are not important, so low priority. But equally you have notifications that are important, those should be sent and logged message queue style, so they stay on the send queue until processed and processing acknowledged by the client.
- me551ah 8y ago
  Actually Google does have the concept of priority in Notifications. https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/concept-options https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/concept-opt... . On a Google/Stock Android OS and on some good manufacturers like motorola notifications do work as expected. It's just the custom battery saver stuff that some manufacturers implement on top of Android which causes issues. Google doesn't have much control over the privileged process that manufacturers install on devices.
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    User- or sender- determined? One of those never works.
    - fprotthetarball 8y ago
      The user determines the priority of notifications per-app and per-app-notification type (using notification channels) and configures how the notification is allowed to interrupt them. https://developer.android.com/training/notify-user/channels https://developer.android.com/training/notify-user/channels
      - dredmorbius 8y ago
        That at least ... stands a chance ... of working. Though in my experience, any notifications is too many.
paulie_a 8y ago
Apps developers seem to think their notifications are more important than they really are. Yet somehow the time sensitive notifications don't show up. but it's awesome I was notified and interrupted throughout the day about a new ___. I personally have cancelled paid services and uninstalled apps because of that abuse. And yet useful apps have issues with notifications even without battery saving measures. It's not just a single app, it's been a consistent issue.
- bootlooped 8y ago
  It's been possible to turn off notifications on an app-by-app basis for at least 2 years. The settings are pretty granular in the newer versions of Android, you can set it so that an app does not interrupt you in any way, and you'll only see the notification once you unlock your phone. However, if a single app is mixing in, say, 5 frivolous notifications with 2 critical ones, I don't think there is any OS-level way to deal with that. https://www.howtogeek.com/204187/how-to-disable-app-notifications-in-android/ https://www.howtogeek.com/204187/how-to-disable-app-notifica...
  - paulie_a 8y ago
    The problem is that some notifications for a particular app are useful. It just seems like the creators of the app feel all of their many notifications are equally important. It's granular to the level of "all or nothing" in most cases.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  Agreed. I deleted the Starbucks app from my iPhone because Starbucks decided to use spam notifications. Same for 9to5 Mac. Ditto for the New York Times, my local media, and even the BBC. I just want an app that will send me notifications about breaking news. Breaking news that is actually important breaking news, and not "See our profile of some celebrity you don't give a crap about in tomorrow's New York Times!" Sadly, the only news app I have left that's permitted to access notifications is Sky News. And even it spams on occasion. But it seems to be only around once or twice a month.
HillaryBriss 8y ago
> force kill applications so they can no longer process notifications I saw your article about push notifications on certain android phone manufacturers and found it interesting -- something I hadn't seen before. Nice! But, if I'm not mistaken, the OP is focusing especially on android notifications raised by the app itself rather than push notifications. I'm not sure, but it seems like the problem he highlights involves compatibility-mode changes to the way apps run code while the app itself is also in the background. Or, it could be that the app developers are not using the officially recommended soup of background processing job scheduling classes the way Android says they should. Or, maybe that soup of classes isn't always as reliable as advertised.
- p2t2p 8y ago
  From what I know, Android app has to run a background service to listen for GSM notifications so if you kill it - no notifications for you. Am I being wrong, has it changed? My last android dev experience is about 5 years old.
  - HillaryBriss 8y ago
    any app can raise a Notification i.e. a message box thingee that appears in the device's Notification Drawer. (this is different from a Push Notification.) and I think what the OP was talking about was this kind of Notification. i think he was saying that various apps that count on reliably running code in the background (e.g. when the app itself is in the stopped state and not visible on screen) are no longer able to reliably run that code in the background because Android decided not to let them do that on demand in a reliable way (in order to save battery). but that backgrounded code is what had been placing notifications in the Notification Drawer (when, say, the app became aware that there was a new email in your inbox or when a Calendar appointment was now one hour away, etc). as for push notifications, nowadays, Firebase Cloud Messaging is recommended. your app derives a service from FirebaseMessagingService and marks that service as "exported" in the manifest. and, you don't have to explicitly start that service. and, though i could be wrong, I think that service does not actually run in the background all the time. i think what happens is that some generic Firebase service invokes your app's service when a push notification has arrived for it. your app's service then processes that message as desired, and, if I understand correctly, it shuts back down. i believe Firebase is basically managing your service so that it does not have to run in the background all the time.
rando444 8y ago
Pardon my ignorance, but why do you see this as an Android-only problem? Surely every possible operating system suffers the same problem, no?
- realusername 8y ago
  No, only Android suffers of these hacky issues because Google allows manufacturer to customize Android way too much. Android is the modern equivalent of Windows XP themes if you want to compare.
  - eyko 8y ago
    Or Linux distributions.
- dep_b 8y ago
  iOS notifications are in a separate system and do not need any part of the host app to be started to receive them.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- bunnycorn 8y ago
  Not me551ah, but the problem with Android is that: 1. iOS is an Apple operating system. Every iOS device has a daemon running a service that connects with Apple's APNS (Apple Push Notification Service), and that service routes the notifications of every App to the user's device. APNS is non-negotiable, every iOS device has it running, and every App that wants to [reliably] deliver notifications must use it. It's part of the OS, so the OS won't kill it, in fact, if it crashes, the OS restarts it. It also means it's "well behaved", meaning it won't mine cryptocurrencies in the background (unless Apple breaks bad and decides that it's $1T value is not worth it anymore). 2. Android is not a strictly Google operating system. Google has it's APNS analogous, GCM (Google Cloud Messaging), but not every Android device has ties with Google, its open source, meaning millions (billions?) of Android devices out there are running without any Google ties. So in turn, many Apps device to have their own background tasks running all the time, with a persistent connection to the server to watch for notifications. Problem with this it's okay when you have 10 Apps with notifications, not when you have 100 Apps with notifications, each one having it's own background service. Some Android OEM's want their users to have great batt life and kill those background services, leaving notifications dead.
wdr1 8y ago
Funny. I never used Flock & would get spammed notifications (via SMS) from them. My 2012 Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/wdr1/status/255454270160244736 https://twitter.com/wdr1/status/255454270160244736 It later which switched to email wherein the justification was "growth strategy."
- reaperducer 8y ago
  My 2012 Twitter thread: Nope. This account's Tweets are protected.

orliesaurus 8y ago

I was hoping the author was going to list alternative stable mobile OSes with privacy and users in mind, or maybe lay down the reasons for starting a project hard forking an existing OS or something...but he literally just said he wants to move to iOS??? Honestly, (and personally) I feel better knowing that I am running an Android ROM with publicly available code on Github than any iOS any day

rapnie 8y ago
I think /e/ ( https://e.foundation https://e.foundation) promising in that respect, and in the longer run maybe puri.sm Librem5.

matart 8y ago

On the notifications part, I had a Huawei phone for a bit and encountered the same issue. Huawei does some crazy things to keep the battery from draining. It does kill almost all background apps. There are some settings to stop this but it seems like a crap shoot whether it decided to listen to them. I thought android had gone down hill and eventually tested out an S9 and realized it was the Huawei android flavor that did this.

amaccuish 8y ago
I have the same problem with my android, I generally find the notifications less reliable than when I was on iOS.
yason 8y ago
To me, this sounds like a feature. Basically I'd like the phone to cut off all mobile data, wifi, gps, and other radio and kill all applications when the screen is locked. OnePlus has some background activity limits and you can turn on the aggressive Doze (or whatever it's called these days) but if my phone is locked I would really, really like to just receive calls and sms and have the system enforce that, and switch off all the unrelated hardware to extend standby time.
- LeoPanthera 8y ago
  You can do this on the iPhone by completely disabling “background refresh”. It will still poll for notifications - but nothing else.
- aembleton 8y ago
  I used to do this when I had a rooted phone. I kept the radio active so that I could receive calls and texts but data, GPS and wifi were all off. It saved battery if I wasn't doing much with my phone. If I was constantly unlocking to check where I was on a map then it ate up more battery and it was incredibly frustrating as it takes a while to get a GPS lock when you don't have Wifi to assist in a city, until Wifi come back on which also takes a while. Friends that only communicate with messenger and Whatsapp had trouble getting through. Loads of apps that had been trying to communicate also woke up once there was a connection using up more CPU cycles, slowing everything down some more. IMHO, its not worth it. Just use the background apps controller in Android 8.1. Whitelist the things that you do want notifications from and everything else can wait for you to open the app.

Kirth 8y ago

A bit painful to read considering the iPhone SE-series is now discontinued. (Despite that the SE is still a very good phone. Wish more manufacturers made devices with these dimensions and polish.)

dep_b 8y ago
It will be supported for another year or two so there's time to wait a bit to see what Apple does. An Xr Mini would be an instabuy for me even if they would price it around US$700.
aikah 8y ago
Yeah, the SE was best value/price phone. I have hard time understanding why Apple stopped producing it. The form factor was the best as well, I can't stand bigger phones personally. I told my parents to buy an Android initially but ultimately they moved to the iPhone because they thought it was simpler and better than Android. To me the fact that I can code my own apps with Java without having to buy a mac is a plus, but I understand people who aren't developers don't care about hackability if they can afford an iPhone.
- wrkronmiller 8y ago
  iOS can also be pretty fun to develop for if you have a mac and xcode. IMHO iOS is good for developers who are okay with coloring inside the lines set out by Apple. The developer experience isn't perfect by any stretch, but writing personal apps/utilities in Swift using a package manager like Carthage is pretty painless. Apple has some great features for de-centralization, such as the Multipeer Connectivity framework. I think it depends a lot on where in the stack you want to work. If you want to customize your baseband or do system-level modifications then Android is the way to go. If you work higher up the stack, writing apps, then you might like iOS more than Android. I certainly did.
epmaybe 8y ago
It's discontinued, but you can still purchase the device (for fairly low price too!). On top of that, based on Apple's track record for software support, you can expect support for at least another year, if not more. Note that the iPhone 5S, a phone released in 2013 on iOS7, received the iOS12 update not too long ago.

dagenix 8y ago

The number of requests sent to Google or Apple seems like a poor metric to judge privacy impact. A single request with my bank account number carries a lot more information about me than 1,000 with my battery status.

yipbub 8y ago
Apple has less incentive to exfiltrate your personal data. I hate what both apple and google stand for these days.
kopo 8y ago
I thought so too, until while programming a wifi webcam I needed to sniff wifi traffic from my phone. God that was scary. I remember doing packet capture work 10-12 years back and knowing more or less what my machine was doing on the network. These days I can't even begin to work that out. There is easily a 100x more traffic and every single time I ran a capture I would find a whole bunch of new hosts being contacted that have no business talking to my phone. And I just use my phone for email and messaging. Not a big app user.
cbsmith 8y ago
There's also Google Analytics... a product often used by third parties to collect behavioral data.

wowamit 8y ago

To say that I'm ditching Android is a pretty incomplete statement - because there is no one Android. It really matter which flavour of Android we are talking about. And which specific device. For example, the bloatware might not be a problem on a unlocked Pixel device. At this point, both iOS and Android are in pretty stable states. It comes down to individual preferences. Author primarily seems to have an issue with Google, which again is justified.

pseudoandy 8y ago
I do not have any extra bloatware from any manufacturer, due to the fact that I run a Xiaomi Mi A1 as my daily driver, but I still would appreciate the choice to be able to manually install only the apps that I would use, e.g. Firefox instead of Chrome. I do have 64Gb of internal storage, but I obsess about every lost megabyte due to something I don't use( even when disabled or not used, Chrome still runs functions on the phone, so it runs in the background ).
- zwkrt 8y ago
  That sounds a lot like bloatware to me
- muro 8y ago
  Chrome is the webview for all apps, might be tricky to remove.
  - ashleyn 8y ago
    Boy, this is really starting to remind me of the controversy over bundling IE in Windows 98. Makes me think that all products eventually end up as bloated due to market pressure.
  - TheRealPomax 8y ago
    It's not, though. WebView is the built in web view mechanism for all apps that don't want to roll their own web view, and Chrome for Android is a browser that makes use of that WebView mechanism. Strictly speaking, a browser is just an interface that lets you interact with web pages. And you're not locked into WebView: if you actually wrote your own, you're entirely free to deploy it. It's just insanely hard to write a web render engine these days so for most people there's no point in the slightest: it just makes your application bigger. One example where it _does_ make sense is Firefox for Android, which comes with its own engine, because as long as the Android core classes area available, it should be able to run. Not "stop working" just because someone tailored their Android build to not include WebView.

ChrisRackauckas 8y ago

Honestly, who really cares that much about what smartphone you have these days? You have one with a good enough battery and the same apps as anyone else, and the speed is all fast enough to not notice. At this point the technology has converged.

beatgammit 8y ago
Yup. I just bought a $250 Moto X4 to replace my Nexus 6 and it feels faster. My Nexus 6 cost $450 a couple years old, and my new phone was new. I don't see any reason to pay $1000 for a phone these days, and I probably could have gotten the same experience from the Moto G at $200. I just want a phone that: - can last the entire day - can run a browser reasonably well - has decent reception - will get security updates for at least 2 years (expected lifetime of batteries) I don't need a fancy camera, next-gen graphics, or super high DPI screen, I just need a phone that's reasonably reliable, and even the bottom tier phones are more than capable.
- jefftk 8y ago
  For me the camera is the main thing: smartphone cameras have been getting really good. Examples of my phones: 2017, Pixel 1: https://www.jefftk.com/pictures/2017/20171228_091058.jpg https://www.jefftk.com/pictures/2017/20171228_091058.jpg 2017, Galaxy S6: https://www.jefftk.com/pictures/2017/20170312_123314_030.jpg https://www.jefftk.com/pictures/2017/20170312_123314_030.jpg 2014, Moto X: https://www.jefftk.com/pictures/2014/stevie-lily-ball.jpg https://www.jefftk.com/pictures/2014/stevie-lily-ball.jpg 2011, Galaxy SII: https://www.jefftk.com/images/2011/all/IMG_20120115_202514.jpg https://www.jefftk.com/images/2011/all/IMG_20120115_202514.j...
kevinherron 8y ago
> You have one with a good enough battery and the same apps as anyone else, and the speed is all fast enough to not notice. At this point the technology has converged. Sure, which is why we're seeing a shift towards choosing a phone based on your personal/philosophical/marketing beliefs about how your personal data is treated instead, which is what at least part of this article talks about in justifying the switch.

SamWhited 8y ago

I've been coming around to this way of thinking more and more lately. Apple has a clear business model that involves selling high-end phones and other hardware and taking a percentage of app sales, not selling me to advertisers. I've found at least 5 different privacy settings buried in various places around the Android menus in a confusing way (instead of just having a single switch in the privacy settings menu), and for years iOS has had a much better security track record. The only real down side I can see is that it's not open source (not that Android is either, but there are Android based alternatives that are), but on balance I'd rather use something where the economic pressure is to do right by their customers, not something where their customers are the product. Apple has serious problems, but on balance it seems to be the better choice. I also tend to agree with the OP that the iPhone SE is a reasonable size, unlike every Android phone on the market. I just really wish there were a decent chat client that supported XMPP-based services, that's really all that's stopped me from moving over (my carrier lets me receive SMS/MMS messages to an XMPP address and receive calls via SIP, so it's rather important to me).

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
tootie 8y ago
I think you can say that if privacy is important to you, then you are probably more aligned with Apple's business plan. The article says as much. It's not like Apple are being more magnanimous, it's just that they don't profit off of user tracking so they use it as marketing ammo against Google users. As a developer, it constantly burns my biscuits that Apple software only runs on Apple hardware. The fact that I have no choice but to buy expensive Apple devices to develop for their platform is irritating.
- fiddlerwoaroof 8y ago
  To some degree, a company that makes money of devices rather than ads will always charge more for the devices since they can’t really sell the device at or below cost and then make the profit from showing ads to their users.

amaccuish 8y ago

This guy was a saviour. I was poking round his blog after reading this, and found his review for elementaryOS where he mentions how to get the system tray working. I've been searching for months to get it working.

billfruit 8y ago

What about iOS being a walled garden? Moving to a proprietary OS isn't going to safeguard the interests of data security in the long term. Also see the rich custom rom scene for Android phones, with highly active communities building rooms for even phone models long abandoned by their manufacturers.

UncleEntity 8y ago
> Moving to a proprietary OS isn't going to safeguard the interests of data security in the long term. They did say in TFA (or perhaps another comment) that Apple uses privacy as a marketing jab against Google since they don't really want all your datas to sell ads. Which does seem to hold true in practice, their newest crypto-chip thing they can't access even if they want to, going to the mat to against the FBI and various other instances over the years.
kevq 8y ago
I don't use any Apple services really, so I won't be sucked in to the walled garden. A lot of things I self-host and I've already checked that equivalent apps are available in iOS.

pseudoandy 8y ago

I remember when Ubuntu tried making a mobile phone OS( Ubuntu Touch ), but it never was a commercial success. I was extremely dissatisfied to hear about Google and their phone upload requests. It makes me question whether Android is a good choice after all( not that I agree with Apple, either ). That is the problem with modern-day tech, there is not enough choice in the market. Everything is either bought out or choked out by larger, dominating manufacturers, i.e. Google & Apple.

fit2rule 8y ago
I would use Ubuntu Touch tomorrow if I could. I think there's still an opportunity for such devices.
- jammygit 8y ago
  I installed ubports a year ago on a nexus 5 and it ran great. The only reason I switched to lineage was for authy and anki. They really did give up too soon
thrill 8y ago
I felt Ubuntu gave up far too soon.

qaute 8y ago

"I tried replacing Android with Lineage OS on a old phone I had. Whilst that meant I didn’t have any Google Apps on my device, it was still Android underneath. Also many apps kept complaining that I didn’t have Google services on the device." An alternative is to install microG [1], which reimplements assorted Google services. YMMV, but I've been able to run ~70% of all Android apps with no problems. [1] https://microg.org/ https://microg.org/

kingosticks 8y ago
What's the best hardware supported by microG? My current phone is not supported and while my previous one is, it's an original Moto G; I don't think I could handle returning to those specs, not to mention the ageing battery.
- commoner 8y ago
  MicroG supports all Android devices, but requires manual installation. LineageOS for microG (which is a pre-built ROM) supports all phones that are supported by LineageOS. A full list of these phones can be found here: Sorted by device age, with pictures and specifications: https://piotr-yuxuan.github.io/choose-a-new-phone/ https://piotr-yuxuan.github.io/choose-a-new-phone/ Sorted by model, with LineageOS version and build day (view on desktop for all columns): https://www.lineageoslog.com/build/scheduler https://www.lineageoslog.com/build/scheduler
- jammygit 8y ago
  I installed it one a pixel 1 xl recently and it runs great
- kingosticks 8y ago
  I actually tried it on my moto g and it runs pretty well. Everything works so far, this seems like a much better choice than buying an overpriced, discontinued, entirely closed Apple device.

diminish 8y ago

I won't ditch Android for Apple. Apple is restricted, Safari is a tragedy for the web and prices are too expensive for the value. Somehow I dislike everything Apple represents, and reminds. The design, the simplicity which comes from restrictiveness. Even the lightest Linux window manager like i3wn, is better than all of os/x does. I will just wait till a true open source option comes.

pokemongoaway 8y ago
We just need a de-Googled fork to become popular and supported. For example CopperheadOS.
kevq 8y ago
Simply install Firefox and your problems are over. That's what I do on my iPad, and what I intend to do on the SE when it arrives.
- robin_reala 8y ago
  Firefox on iOS still uses the system WebKit. I disagree with the premise that Safari is a tragedy for the web though.

archi42 8y ago

I'm currently in a similar spot, but am very surprised you did not mention MicroG, which is an open reimplementation of the Google APIs. There seem to be some issues with GCM (or, more precisely, the newer replacement - uhm, FCM?), but imho it's worth a try. If you already have a LineageOS-supported device, you can grab a prebuilt LineageOS+MicroG image from the MicroG site. Disclaimer: That's pure theory. I'm still figuring out how to do a custom build of LOS16+MicroG for my device, since it's only on LOS14.

kop316 8y ago
Have you looked here? They do builds of lineageos with mircog already installed https://lineage.microg.org/ https://lineage.microg.org/
- archi42 8y ago
  Thanks :), but as I said: > If you already have a LineageOS-supported device, you can grab a prebuilt LineageOS+MicroG image from the MicroG site. I redacted a lengthy part of my comment since I felt it wouldn't add anything to the discussion; but it went like this: Sadly, my device (HTC 10 aka pme) is officially only on LineageOS 14.x, which is Android 7. Since I am coming from Android 8 stock ROM, I'd like to stay on Android 8 or even get Android 9. There are unofficial LineageOS builds for this (from a guy who just doesn't merge the back to LOS; which I can understand considering the additional effort - on top of all the work is already doing). But of course they lack the necessary patches for MicroG. And the MicroG only pre-builts are based on the official LineageOS build process and thus the official images. So I can only get Android 7 + MicroG with the comfortable "grab image and flash"-method. I gave building a custom MicroG+LOS{15.1,16.0} a shot using the official MicroG docker image (just a single docker run command) and adding the unofficial builds local_manifest.xml, but those two builds failed for me and I didn't bother messing around with that docker c*. Accidentally, I did that the day before this was posted to HN, no changes since then. But I suppose I'll try a docker-less build on my machine once I feel like it. Eventually I can just put MicroG on the unofficial build from xda-devs, since that doesn't contain GApps; but I am not sure how great the experience is when not having the MicroG/F-Droid patches. I will see. EDIT: Regarding signature spoofing, the MicroG github wiki says: > You can also patch your already-install ROM by flashing NanoDroid-patcher, without any computer interaction. It will auto-patch every updated ROM. So maybe that works.

asveikau 8y ago

I put lineage on two devices and I must say it's shockingly refreshing to be able to have some say in how much Google you get. I am used to the idea of OEM and carrier bloatware but it's surprising how much unwanted Google software appears in a stock image. On lineage I am pretty happy with the "nano" set of OpenGApps which is about the amount of Googleyness I want. I install a few more from Play on top.

k__ 8y ago
Lineage seems like a reasonable solution. Dropping Android for iOS is a joke.
- asveikau 8y ago
  Yeah, if you don't like something Apple puts in their image good luck... On the other hand it's not always as reasonable as it should be. I do find it frustrating that devices are so locked down, to the point where finding something to run lineage well and has the feature set you want can be tough. With my latest attempt I found a phone where several models, depending on what country and carrier, would not unlock the bootloader. And online sellers of phones are not always specific about what sub-model you get. I had to return a few because the seller sent me a Rodgers or an AT&T one that wouldn't unlock. I can definitely see how enough rounds of this can make some people throw their hands up and let Apple make all the choices.
  - rootusrootus 8y ago
    Thing is, there are plenty of places where Google dictates Android options that you cannot do anything about. It is not like Apple has a monopoly on this. The idea of mucking about with multiple phones just to find the one which irritates me the least is very unappealing. It's an appliance, I just need the thing to work.
    - asveikau 8y ago
      Ok. It's like running Linux or BSD on desktops or laptops, which I have done since the 90s. If you get into that game, or especially many years ago it was more true, you sometimes had to be picky or patient about hardware. That's a choice I can make in order to get perceived advantages on other fronts, and I respect and understand people who make the other trade-off. (I acknowledged as much in the comment you're replying to.)

sergiotapia 8y ago

I made the opposite move last month. Ditched my iphone 6+ and went with a Samsung Galaxy S9+. Apple soured me with their bullshit around throttling the CPU to make the battery last the same. No wonder my phone was performing like shit. But here's the bad news, this new phone I got is still not so hot. I still run out of battery despite working from home and only using the phone for google maps and calendar/slack when I'm out of office. I don't game on it or anything. For my next phone I want to find a much more inexpensive phone, swappable battery, with a long-ass battery time. I would go with a Nokia but I don't know if their classic phone supports google maps.

hso1 8y ago
I managed to get Google Maps working on my Nokia 3310 3G
- lvalenta 8y ago
  Did you? How long was it loading? :-))
ricardobeat 8y ago
Did you try replacing the iPhone battery?
techstrategist 8y ago
Why not try the $29 battery swap?

tambourine_man 8y ago

I use an SE too. I wish Apple would sell a smaller version of their newest display, camera and chip.

brownbat 8y ago

Based on the stated concerns, data sent to Google, bundled apps that can't be removed... And given the author's interest in FOSS... Really interesting Lineage failed. He claims apps kept nagging about the lack of Google app support. How pervasive is that? Could he have just found a couple app alternatives rather than throwing them all out at once? It's hard to disentangle whether the problems we have are with our phones, with the OS, or with the app ecosystem. (Quick edit for clarity.)

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
As someone who also tried Googleless Android before giving Android a kick to the curb, it's often specific service clients with no alternative. Like I needed Skype, and despite Microsoft being a Google competitor, their app didn't work without Play Services. And with security being key to me, I'm not interested on depending on a third party hack with all my sensitive data.
- brownbat 8y ago
  Makes sense, thanks for that insight. Yeah, helping third parties engage in signature spoofing does sound far from ideal.
mtgx 8y ago
Google has entangled its Play framework deeply into the AOSP, obviously on purpose, not necessarily to discourage ROM developer, but I'm guessing primarily to discourage OEMs from changing AOSP too much, as well as slow down Android fork-developers such as Amazon.

swozey 8y ago

He missed the thing that's getting me really close to leaving Android after being a devout user since the G1 (with a short 3-5 month stint on an Iphone 6). I really, really dislike IOS and I absolutely don't want to be more tied to Apple than I am with my MBP and Hackintosh (technically I'm just tied to OSX right now). RCS (the Android attempt at iMessage) is STILL not a real-world thing. Txt messaging and MMS on Android is still an absolute joke. My Samsung S8 has, what, a 12-megapixel camera (I never look at these specs anymore) that can take incredible pictures and videos but if I want to send them to someone I have to jump through a bunch of hoops. Upload them to dropbox, share it, send my friend the link, hope they click it vs it just playing in their messaging app. If I send that video via text message it gets compressed to a 500kb blurry mess. I frequently have to explain to people that Androids don't take terrible pictures, my phone takes amazing pictures. The problem is when I send them to you I'm limited to the maximums of text messaging because phone providers haven't rolled out RCS. It also doesn't help that the Snapchat app back when I used to use it just took a screenshot of our camera app. That further shouted, "Android sucks at pictures, what a peasant phone!" Tmobile has RCS now but it only works between Tmobile Android users who are using the stock messaging app. They might even need a recent phone with a specific version of Android, I'm not sure there. They rolled this out in June 2018. 2018! How long has imessage been around? And I still have never seen it actually kick in because 90% of the people I txt are on iphones. I also HAVE to use the built-in Messaging app to get this because the RCS API wasn't (not sure if it is now) public so other messaging apps couldn't send over RCS. If I use the Samsung messaging app then I lose the web messaging feature that the Google Messaging app gives me. The Google Messaging app is terrible, though, it doesn't even have the ability to click a person's name and see all of the media shared between us like the good messaging apps do. I have to literally scroll and scroll and scroll to see a picture that I've been sent. There are all these tradeoffs just for messaging. Do I want an easy web experience so I don't have to pick my phone up every time I get a text? Then I lose the file library when you click a contacts name. Do I want RCS? I'm not even sure which Messaging app to use for it. It's either Samsung Messaging or I need to download Tmobile messaging. I don't follow it but I don't believe ATT/Verizon are even going to roll out RCS, I believe they have their own implementation coming (somedayTM). Unless their "Advanced Messaging" is just RCS. Will that work with Tmobile users? Or will it just be between ATT customers? I have plenty of other complaints about Android lately. Privacy, per-app notifications are a mess. I LOVE the customization of Android and the lack of it is what I dislike about IOS but I'm to the point where I just want a smooth UX. edit: Before I get the "Use Whatsapp/etc" that's just not an option. Google Hangouts was SOMEWHAT ubiquitous between my friends a few years ago and was great but if I'm taking pictures of my house for a contractor, or shooting pictures of my Jeep offroading to random Jeep friends and what not I'm not going to go "Are you on WhatsApp?" each time. I know these limits are because of carriers and not Google/Android specifically.

mikestew 8y ago

Yes their hardware is grossly overpriced, but the flagship Android phones are pretty much inline with Apple these days. So which is it, Apple is grossly over-priced or inline with what a decent Android phone costs? And then the author goes on to complain about the data firehouse back to Google and bloatware. Are we yet seeing that price is not always measured in dollars? I don’t mean to pick on the author, I guess it’s just interesting to watch the process of coming to this realization. But the notifications, holee-shit. That seems like one of those “under a full moon...” reports, but others here confirm. I’m so speechless, I don’t even have a snarky Apple fanboi comment.

ricardobeat 8y ago
Apple devices have been historically overpriced. Most recently Android manufacturers wised up and realized they can also benefit from segmentation, and raised prices to match. Now everything is overpriced, and we all win! /s

abrax3141 8y ago

I also have an SE and love it. The OP, and various posts above are slightly wrong to say that Apple is a hardware company. Apple is a PRODUCT company; They design, sell, and support the whole product. That’s why is all Just Works, which is what most folks of any ilk want. Even their Unix (basically BSD) Just Works. Yeah, a little more Open would be great, but when I want to build something else, like a house, I really don’t need to be worrying about recompiling my screwdriver. Like the OP said, I want a phone that’s a phone and works. I want a Unix that’s stabdards compliant and works. I want a laptop that works. And I’m willing to pay a little more for someone else to build and maintain the roads and bridges so I can get where I want to go. And, yeah, not to spy on me while I’m getting there.

markhopkins 8y ago

"Most of the bloatware on Android devices I’ve used over the years cannot be removed as they’re marked as system apps." I believe you can use the Application Manager in Android to disable any of these Apps, even though you cannot remove them. Just don't disable an App the phone actually needs.

zdmc 8y ago

I made the switch to a refurbished 6s a couple of months ago when we started work on a new iOS app, and I am happy that I did. For the foreseeable future, I'll be purchasing iPhones. (I even purchased the recently announced Mac Mini in order to access the Apple software ecosystem; though, I suspect that I'll continue to prefer my Ubuntu laptop for productivity). Why switch? After all this time (embarrassed to say), I've finally started to take my data privacy seriously. I really respect Google as an engineering company, and even as a product company. Products like Search/PageRank, Maps, StreetView, SkyMap, Translate, Books/Scholar, AdWords/AdSense/AdMob, Places, Trends, TensorFlow (and CoLab w/ free 12 hr sessions of TPU or GPU), BigTable, Gmail, Glass, and of course Android all are/were really great products. The only problem: those offerings are for the direct purpose of collecting your personal data (or the indirect purposes of making their other products - which collect your data - more efficient, or to bring more people online to collect data from). I would love Google as a product company; I hate them as an ad company (85%+ of revenues resulting from advertising activities). I have migrated from, or I am currently migrating from, every Google product with the exception of YouTube (difficult to break from that, so I try to mitigate by having multiple accounts) and TensorFlow. Notifications on Android were never an issue for me. Maybe I didn't have a similar suite of apps as OP. (iOS notifications have been more annoying thus far).

brownbat 8y ago

A lot of people want to ditch both Android and Apple, so /e/ is kicking off as a purely Google-free FOSS OS the author might like more than Lineage, once it gets a little more developed: https://www.xda-developers.com/e-google-free-lineageos-fork-nexus-oneplus-xiaomi/ https://www.xda-developers.com/e-google-free-lineageos-fork-... We're overdue for some viable third option.

guilhas 8y ago
Isn't LineageOS microG already google free?
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  Did you read the author’s issues with that?
  - brownbat 8y ago
    The author talks about lineage, but not micro g, which does sound designed to solve his exact issue. "Android experience relies heavily on Google's Play Services. The microG project creates an alternative to installing Gapps, which install and execute closed-source blobs on our phones. MicroG however requires a patch called "signature spoofing"..."
- Fnoord 8y ago
  Yes, it is, and you can run microG on any Android version without OpenGApps. With microG you still rely on non-free services (Google Play Services, for example); just via open source frameworks. You also, possibly, breach Google's EULA. I do use it. The notifications aren't flawless, since any application using firebase isn't going to work (the old GCM still works for now). Things may break any day. I suppose its akin to being on your own whilst running a Hackintosh except that the software is FOSS. A reasonable alternative is a model where you pay for the software and get a license to run it. For that, you can opt for Sailfish which is almost completely FOSS. Heck, you can run community versions of Sailfish as well but without Alien Dalvik (Android compatibility layer). But I wouldn't depend on such too much. Other alternatives are the Ubuntu Touch/Phone project by UBPorts, and the KDE people are also still alive and kicking. There's postmarketOS, based on Alpine, giving older smartphones a second life. And you can also opt to use a dumbphone plus a mobile device. You don't need to have a smartphone.

ac130kz 8y ago

The best thing about Android is that you can change it (Huawei is useless). Acquire root permissions and any app can be deleted. There is also an option to install a fully free and open source Google Services implementation (if you need them so much). Finally, notifications are caused by vendor specific problems, clean Android is fully functional.

jraph 8y ago

What I want to be able to do with a phone: - calling - texting - taking pictures - occasionally recording sound - music - directions - occasionally, an alarm clock, a calendar and notes - web surfing is a nice to have and I use it now that I have it. - the ability to run a Debian Chroot and an X server is a nice to have. Lineage 15 (soon 16) with latest updates, without Google apps does that brilliantly well, and I get a solid 6 to 10 days of battery life. No emails (but k-9 mail works well if needed, and the webmail too), no chat. Chat would be possible (and I will probably want that in the future) with many applications like Signal, Riot, Conversations, maybe even WhatsApp (I haven't tested - not interested). Directions with OsmAnd gives me great offline functionality, allowing for a 2€/month phone plan. I get all notifications I want in a timely manner, which are texts and calls. No more. edit: Oh, and installing apps without the phone needing any email address. On iOS, I would not have such a freedom. Next step: a blob-free phone, or no phone at all.

jasonvorhe 8y ago

It's rather common knowledge that most vendors that aren't Google or Nokia put a load of crap ware on their devices that can't be removed. Duh. He also hasn't really ditched Android yet, since his iPhone hasn't even been delivered yet. I don't get the point of this blog post.

arminiusreturns 8y ago

The second a pure linux phone without googles bullshit (which includes allowing manufacturer and carrier bullshit) comes out, I'm switching. Until then I'm sticking with my blackberry android because at least I have a linux underside and a foss appstore. Google had such a good opportunity with android, and shit the bed with it, abusing users and letting manufacturers and carriers join in on the abuse. There should be a "Right to Root".

Johnny555 8y ago
I think you already missed that boat: https://www.techradar.com/news/canonicals-dream-for-an-ubuntu-phone-is-dead https://www.techradar.com/news/canonicals-dream-for-an-ubunt...
- rmusial 8y ago
  This project send seems promising... https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-smartphone-makes-major-strides-in-manufacturing-and-development/ https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-smartphone-makes-major-strides...
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  And OpenMoko before that. Turns out the number of people that actually want a phone with a terminal interface is in the dozens.
  - LeoPanthera 8y ago
    Don’t strawman. No-one wants a phone with a terminal interface, and linux phones did not have terminal interfaces.
    - foob 8y ago
      I recognize that I'm in the minority, but I want a terminal interface on my phone. I have my qualms with Android, but one of my favorite things about it is that I can drop into a terminal and have what is essentially a full Linux distro at my disposal. I often leave my main laptop at the office instead of lugging it around, and it's great being able to use a bluetooth keyboard with my phone to get real work done sometimes. I use termux [1] which allows me to install whatever software I want with APT. I can use vim, ssh into servers, and mostly do whatever else I would do on a computer. It's not a strawman, it's just a developer-centric niche. 1 - https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Main_Page https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Main_Page

komali2 8y ago

I can't go to Apple because it's clear they never again make a phone with a headphone jack, and I require a phone with a headphone jack.

luord 8y ago

> I’m never going to completely get rid of Google, that’s impossible at this point And here's the crux of why I just don't bother, then again it's not really that big of a deal to me that I'm the "product". I'll probably regret it some day, but I'm hoping that I won't.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

agumonkey 8y ago

Maybe efforts should be redirected to google-free android based OSes (postmarket, or the right-now-quantic copperhead ...)

mettamage 8y ago

Really in line with my own thinking. I bought an iPhone SE 6 months ago for the reasons he stated. The one thing I dislike is that you don't have a Finder type of functionality. But there are some 3rd party apps that do it well enough (I think one was called Documents). Also it is easy to find a protectable huge case for these phones since they already exists for eons in the digital industry. I sometimes drop my phone in front of people to see what they are missing: the absence of broken screens.

barnabee 8y ago
The Apple app "Files" (which might not be installed by default) may be of interest as Finder-like functionality - it lets you browse, search and manage files stored on the device, in iCloud and in 3rd party services (Dropbox, Google Drive, FTP/SCP via an app like Transmit, etc.)

chmln 8y ago

As they say, when there's a will - there's a way. The author clearly did not evaluate all of the alternatives, and simply jumped from one walled garden to another. Bloatware, adware, and battery life are cited as his reasons. But he could have rooted his phone in 5 minutes then deleted all the bloatware and google apps in an instant. Add microG and adaway on top, and you have a nice ad-free system with much better battery life. All he had to do was research.

griffoa 8y ago
I built Android phones for a living for many years and I could probably root a device very quickly and get it up and running just like in the old days, but I seriously cannot be bothered anymore. Only viable alternative for me right now is an Apple device. I wish there was an alternative that just worked out of the box - and I even work for Apple these days...
- chmln 8y ago
  All it takes is booting into fasboot and running `fastboot oem unlock`. If that's too much for some, I don't blame them for choosing Apple.
philjohn 8y ago
> All he had to do was research. And that's the problem. One platform offers, mostly, sane defaults with strong privacy guarantees and no bloatware, the other requires you to invest time and effort, first to research, then enact.
- chmln 8y ago
  > strong privacy guarantees This can change any day. And if you think that's impossible, look at Windows or Google Chrome. Most users just will happily trade privacy for convenience. > the other requires you to invest time and effort, first to research, then enact This is classic learning curve = bad. Rust is also harder than JavaScript, and Vim is harder than Notepad. What matters is whether its worth it. Some people don't see a problem with being at the whim of a megacorp and not having true ownership of their devices. That's normal. After all, Chrome and Windows have huge marketshare too. Putting all the eggs in Apple's basket is near-sighted at best.

ryl00 8y ago

I ditched Android 2+ years ago for... Windows Mobile. :) While I did so for purely financial reasons (Microsoft was in the process of bailing out, so was putting their stock on fire sale and I couldn't resist, ecosystem disadvantages notwithstanding), I've come to appreciate the design and will be sad once I have to leave (I'm still using a Windows 10 Mobile Alcatel IDOL 4s as my daily driver). To me, Windows Mobile had some of the best parts of Android (hardware variety) and Apple (regular OS/security updates for all).

amanaplanacanal 8y ago

I'm also thinking about ditching android, for a completely different reason. I want a premium phone. I like good cameras, and big fat CPUs. So I've been using Samsung phones for a while. I currently have an S6, which I have been pretty happy with. But it has come to my attention that it has received its last update about 6 months ago. Samsung only sends updates for two years. Having an internet-connected device that no longer gets patches? Seems like a terrible idea to me. Apple supports their phones for 5 years. So that's the direction I'm currently looking.

poisonborz 8y ago
Just ask around what great experience it is to use new os/apps on a 5 year old phone.
- lvalenta 8y ago
  I think this issue is likely to be diminished as the performance difference's not been improving that much lately (X and XS having similar CPU performance) - we have come to a point of smartphone evolution where yearly additions to a performance will not be the reason to upgrade -> therefore I don't expect new iOS versions slowing devices significantly.
  - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
    That's what I am thinking too.
lostmsu 8y ago
Use a postmarket Lineage OS?
TheAceOfHearts 8y ago
I bought a Pixel 3, which will receive 3 years of feature and security updates directly from Google. Previously I had a Pixel 1, which only received 2 years of updates, although it'll continue to receive security updates for another year. I'd prefer it if they provided support for a bit longer than that, but it's still better than what many other vendors are pushing. The Pixel 3 is a big improvement over every other Android experience I've had, and I've been in the ecosystem since the Nexus One. It's the first Android phone I've used which actually feels like a premium phone, which is what I'd expect, considering its hefty price tag. Its camera has been called the top of the line by many reviewers. Heck, right now there's a post in the HN front page about the Pixel 3's camera [0]. Stock Android is still kinda buggy and rough around the edges in a few places, but it has definitely been improving. I've found the latest version to be much more stable and reliable, at least during the short time I've had it. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370130

JimGuns 8y ago

I am not sure how people are figuring this out now. It's only common sense given googles business model and their history that your android phone is nothing more than a tracking and data generation device. I am sure Apple has it's flaws but Google uses Android to double down on selling your info. Be smart, pick up an old Blackberry 10 device and use its Android emulator.

slothtrop 8y ago
How do you feel about the android-based blackberrys?
- JimGuns 8y ago
  I heard they are pretty good and are a bit more secure, but the underlying system is still android.
  - archi42 8y ago
    The problem is not Google itself, the problem are the Google Services coming with every phone (often plus two Facebook Apps, plus Instagram, plus some manufacturer specific stuff - mine was spamming me once a month with "Why don't you buy a new theme for HTC Sense"). As mentioned by me & others, you can replace those with MicroG, though YMMV.
pokemongoaway 8y ago
There's also CopperheadOS. If only we could get more hardware support :)

SubiculumCode 8y ago

After my old cell phone broke and just after I bought a new desktop computer, my newer cell phone broke bad right after warranty. It was hard to justify another outlay of money so I bought a Nokia 3310. Pretty close to a dumb cell phone. For the most part nothing in my life got worse. It isn't that hard to ditch a real smart phone..well if your life is spent in front of a computer for your job anyway. However, the Nokia 3310 is not a good dumb cell phone. The text messaging application is broken for messages for group messages and and multiple messages from the same person in a row. Basic stuff. Text messaging with the old style number pad entry is really as horrible as we remember. Surely there are better alternatives for key entry on a dumb phone in this age. Despite this, it does its job as a cell phone. It almost always has a charge, and it gets reception where my old cell phone would not, and despite its size you can always hear its ringer. So there are pluses. It does contain a web browser and 3G connectivity. I can use its web browser to read HN, and I do pretty frequently, but on most sites the formatting is always horribly wrong. Clicking a link frequently takes you to a different address than was clicked.

marcus_holmes 8y ago

I bought a Pixel 2. It had Google system apps, not Huawei system apps. My last phone was an iPhone 6 plus. It had Apple system apps that I couldn't uninstall. I don't get it.

thebruce87m 8y ago

I wish people would stop using the term “overpriced”. If it was overpriced, then Apple would lower the price or stop selling it. Apple set the price. They determine if the price is correct based on their sales numbers, not your perceived value of the Bill Of Materials for the phone.

Thriptic 8y ago
Agreed, I've even had apple fanboy friends rage about the price of apple hardware and then go right out and buy the latest thing. If you're willing to pay sticker price for a product, it is clearly not overpriced. If you want the prices to drop, stop behaving like a price insensitive userbase.

fractalf 8y ago

The worlds really could use a "free" mobile OS. I was sad that Firefox OS never saw daylight. Im on android and dislike google very much, though not as much as I disslike Apple. Purism is making a Libre 5 mobile, I hope something like that could really break through. Imagine a desktop/server world without linux. Thats would be awefull. Yet thats where we are with mobiles today

amiga-workbench 8y ago
Firefox OS is now known as Kai OS, its available on devices like the nokia banana phone. I've still got a Mozilla Flame developer handset and it all runs surprisingly smoothly.
- gregknicholson 8y ago
  Firefox OS is open source. KaiOS is closed source. KaiOS may be a continuation of the same product, but it's not a continuation of the same project.
jammygit 8y ago
Purism's Linux phone is in development. Version one will surely be low in features, but it sure has potential if it can survive a few iterations
JVIDEL 8y ago
Sailfish is another alternative.
snaky 8y ago
The only realistically feasible free mobile OS is Android actually. AOSP to be exact, with no Google Play Services.

NicoJuicy 8y ago

I see a pro Apple sentiment here for privacy, just my 2 cents. Apple is constantly raising their prices ( asp ) and they won't share unit sales in their next stock report. So I'm curious what this will do for the future.

rurban 8y ago

I would rather use Sailfish on a Sony Xperia then. Privacy, cheaper, faster, longer battery life. Can also install Android apps.

Apotheos 8y ago

Had the same problem with my S9+, battery would just drop throughout the day. I ended up disabling a bunch of Samsung apps and trying to find the others that were giving me wake locks and now I can happily say I get almost two days, with 6 to 8 hours of screen in time.

Teknoman117 8y ago

I'm hoping SailfishOS is in a good state for OnePlus 3 when it looses official support from OnePlus.

xte 8y ago

Personally I've ditched Google services (like GMail and contacts) from a little while, however I do not find any viable alternatives to Android not as a phone, not as a limited mobile MUA but as a personal navigation devices. I tried both FOSS PND and classic TomTom's/Garmin's etc, none of them while having few strong points can really beat GMail (for now). I hope Purism can create a FOSS phone but I'm not too optimistic since many tried it and fail, including many with far more resources than Pursim but for now change a jail for another only for background traffic it's not worth my money... I simply choose an economic device (MotoG 4G) and stick with it as long as it will work...

dplgk 8y ago

The "ditching Google" guy can't find a way to stop using Android Pay or Google plus? Using Google plus means your still 100% in Google's ecosystem. These are also 2 of the easiest things to stop using.