35 ms·

Android 10

• wnevets 7y ago
  I know this is silly but losing the dessert codename is kinda sad.
  • ajflores1604 7y ago
    I was bummed about it too at first but thinking about it more, having version numbers will make it more obvious if a device has outdated software to the normal consumer and might put pressure on manufacturers to update devices much faster
  • dugluak 7y ago
    I was rooting for Quindim
    • SwiftyBug 7y ago
      Queijadinha wouldn't be bad either
  • toast0 7y ago
    It is inevitable that all (popular?) operating systems end up at version 10 though...
  • 0-_-0 7y ago
    Maybe it's not too late! Quick, let's come up with a dessert name that starts with Q!
  • prvc 7y ago
    They could have chosen "Quince pudding".
  • tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
    I'm so glad about the change. Sure, K comes before P in the alphabet, but figuring this (and the actual distance) out takes a lot more mental effort than comparing 4.4 with 9. It also resolves the issue where you need to decide whether 7 is larger than Marshmallow - a question that would make people question your sanity if posed without context. And to make it more confusing, each release had a separate codename used before the release, so you had Android K, Android Key Lime Pie, Android KitKat, Android 4.4, and API level 19, all meaning the same thing. Now, if only we could get rid of the separate "API level" designator (or rather, turn it into an opaque enum, instead of using it everywhere)... because 28 should not be less than 10.
  • colonCapitalDee 7y ago
    If it's any consolation it's internal name is "Android Q" for "Quince Tart".
• JoshTriplett 7y ago
  The way they show and demonstrate gestures, along with the UI at the bottom, strongly suggests that they intend to eliminate the semi-"hard" buttons in favor of gestures. That would save space, give people a bit more control over fullscreen apps, and provide a less "modal" UI where the same gestures always work even if the buttons aren't available (such as when playing fullscreen video). Also, "Get security updates faster." is huge; this is effectively saying "no matter who makes your phone, you still get updates". Deprecating "Device admin for enterprise" makes it much safer to access work resources from an otherwise personal Android device, without giving your IT department the ability to remote-wipe your entire device.
  • kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    9 already implements the swipeable "pill" navigation. It isn't on by default if you upgraded from 8.
    • JoshTriplett 7y ago
      I use that today, yes; however, that only eliminates one of the three buttons. On Android 9, you still have a back button and a home button.
    • TremendousJudge 7y ago
      I tried the pill, couldn't manage to get used to it. I just hope they don't go "we know what's best for you" on this one.
    • crummy 7y ago
      I tried the pill and eventually turned it off. Android 10's navigation seems a lot more fluid, though maybe a little less discoverable. edit: to be clear, I now have the option for traditional 3 buttons, 2 buttons (pill), and no buttons (all gestures).
    • ehsankia 7y ago
      This is orders of magnitude better than the pill one, which not only felt unfinished, it didn't even actually get rid of the bottom bar, which seems like the whole point of gesture navigation...
• Willson50 7y ago
  Is there a way to run Live Caption on a command line?
  • jpadkins 7y ago
    https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/ https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/
    • izacus 7y ago
      Live Captioning is on device though - works even in airplane mode.
  • techntoke 7y ago
    What are you trying to use it for exactly, like audio on Linux without Android?
    • Willson50 7y ago
      Mostly looking for a cheaper Google Speech-to-Text.
      • thekyle 7y ago
        Maybe try Mozilla DeepSpeech. https://github.com/mozilla/DeepSpeech https://github.com/mozilla/DeepSpeech
• MrMetlHed 7y ago
  How will Google avoid being sued (like Amazon / Audible is being sued https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-lawsuit/top-u-s-publishers-sue-amazons-audible-for-copyright-infringement-idUSKCN1VD1ZY https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-lawsuit/top-u-...) for the "Live Caption" feature?
  • pgeorgi 7y ago
    For example by making it a feature that isn't exclusively used for books? I suspect it's implemented using the new Playback Capture API (https://developer.android.com/preview/features/playback-capture https://developer.android.com/preview/features/playback-capt...) which provides an opt-out, too.
    • inlined 7y ago
      Seems dangerous to opt out of what is arguably an accessibility feature.
  • tantalor 7y ago
    Because it works on all apps not just audio books
• cowmix 7y ago
  When does ChromeOS get Android 10? I'm sick of being at 7.X.
  • iamnotacrook 7y ago
    I'm not sure I could tell you which version of Android is on my chromeos pc. The apps are each in little Windows. Are some apps not supported because the version of Android is too old?
  • bdefore 7y ago
    Google stated they'd scuttled updating to 8 in lieu of going straight to 9. That didn't happen and now we're at 10. I'm a little concerned the train won't ever arrive at the station. 7.1.1 in Settings > Google Play Store > Manage Android Preferences > About
  • jasonvorhe 7y ago
    Certain devices such as Pixelbook and Slate received Pie with Chrome OS 72 in February.
• mfontani 7y ago
  > Android’s new Dark theme uses true black to keep your battery alive longer. None of the screenshots around the caption seem to use "true black", though!
  • seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    How could you even tell without an organic LED screen?
    • SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
      While you can't tell it's "true" black without an OLED, it's clearly a dark grey.
      • cosarara 7y ago
        The frame of the phone is darker, and even that is not #000. The web page background is, though.
    • sp332 7y ago
      With a photo editor. #000000 or bust!
  • readams 7y ago
    Note that "true black" saves almost no additional power on an OLED vs a dark grey.
    • dartdartdart1 7y ago
      "almost"
    • Someone1234 7y ago
      Indeed. But it does look nicer/work better for what black themes are actually good at: Using at night. So while the additional battery savings between "true black" and grey are within the margin of error, the battery benefits remain for both and the non-battery benefits remain for our eyes.
• uncheckederror 7y ago
  Nice to see Signal (not the default Messages app) in the Smart Reply demo.
  • border43 7y ago
    First thing I noticed too. That's awesome.
  • headmelted 7y ago
    Is it? I use Signal because I don't want Google reading my messages.
    • gowld 7y ago
      Does Smart Reply send your messages to Google?
      • TheCraiggers 7y ago
        No, it uses the app's API to do that. However, the push notification from GCM does come from google and is possibly read though.
        • izacus 7y ago
          IIRC Signal doesn't send message contents over GCM because of that - it just sends a ping that wakes the app to retrieve the data. (The app of course also has a choice of encrypting the payload - it's free form after all.)
        • mcpeepants 7y ago
          I believe there is an API for hooking into notification text prior to display, which allows the Signal app to decrypt the message. The Signal server doesn't have access to the plaintext message in order to send it in a GCM.
        • rolltiide 7y ago
          thats not a reliable assumption. push notifications services can merely send instructions, and the visual notification can be an object formed completely client side.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• llampx 7y ago
  Wow, the bar at the bottom is a rip-off of iOS
  • SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    That's equally absurd that a horizontal bar is a rip-off and that Google ripped it off. I've been running my Samsung with only gestures for months now, I can't see a reason to need something like that.
  • gowld 7y ago
    Which bar?
    • placatedmayhem 7y ago
      Not OP, but I think they're referring to the task-switching thin line at the bottom.
    • mopay 7y ago
      The white line at the bottom.
  • readams 7y ago
    iOS navigation gestures are suspiciously similar to the gestures on the Palm Pre.
    • panpanna 7y ago
      Actually it went something like this: Palm -> meego -> xda mad scientists -> iOS -> Android Given that Palm UI people now work for Android, this was bound to happen.
  • yAak 7y ago
    iOS and Android ripping each others' good ideas off is good for us. =)
• mopay 7y ago
  Just at the top of the page there's a screenshot of the Assistant. If you toggle dark mode (there's a floating button at the bottom of the screen to do so) the text changes from "when is my flight" to "what time is my flight".
• dddddaviddddd 7y ago
  This should be available for Pixel phones sometime today, right?
  • TwoNineA 7y ago
    Yes, and other Android phones probably never, except some current flagships who'll get it in 6+ months.
    • pedrocr 7y ago
      Some phones in the Android One program should also have a decent chance of getting it quickly. Everything else will probably get quite a few of the features from the closed source parts of Android that are shipped by the Play Store anyway.
      • TwoNineA 7y ago
        Android OS features can't be updated from PlayStore, other than the WebView.
        • pedrocr 7y ago
          What are you calling "Android OS" in this context? My understanding is that a lot of APIs that used to be shipped with AOSP and be updated with each new Android version are now shipped in the Play store to avoid the mess that is Android fragmentation.
    • siffland 7y ago
      Looks groovy, but my 2 year old LG is stuck at Android 8 with Security updates stopped in January. I wish android hardware was better supported for the long haul. I would even go as far as saying i would pay yearly for android maintenance than to pitch my phone for a OS update. My phone has plenty of power....at least we have XDA forums.
      • izacus 7y ago
• conradfr 7y ago
  I guess they ran out of new feature ideas ... and release names.
  • theandrewbailey 7y ago
    They announced the release name thing a week ago: https://www.blog.google/products/android/evolving-android-brand/ https://www.blog.google/products/android/evolving-android-br...
    • conradfr 7y ago
      Yes I missed that. Makes sense I guess but I still think the name and logo were a fun and lovable part of Android, and a popular tourist spot at the Google campus.
  • xiphias2 7y ago
    Mobile phones at this point are mature technology (really hard to improve upon).
• whalesalad 7y ago
  Great to see more attention being put on reducing distractions. The 'Digital Wellbeing' features are great, as well as the name itself.
• Causality1 7y ago
  The rate limiting of wifi pinging means Google just ripped the heart out of wardriving.
• garysahota93 7y ago
  As a recent iOS user coming from Android, this almost makes me want to go back. I really do miss the Smart Reply and native Google Assistant features. But alas, iMessage pressure is real in my friend's group.
  • gowld 7y ago
    How does the pressure manifest?
    • bsamuels 7y ago
      as dumb as it sounds, nobody likes to be a green bubble
      • placatedmayhem 7y ago
        It's not just green bubbles. Tapbacks are awkward and pictures and videos don't send as reliably. With my "green bubble" friends, we usually use Telegram or Signal or Keybase instead. I'd love to see a standardized IM/Text protocol instead of 1000 fragmented platforms. I've got on the order of 10 chat apps on my phone right now, all used in different contexts.
        • izacus 7y ago
          > I'd love to see a standardized IM/Text protocol instead of 1000 fragmented platforms. I've got on the order of 10 chat apps on my phone right now, all used in different contexts. Apple could easily open the protocol, but they won't. They also won't use any of the other ones so as long as you'll be using iOS, you'll be in the iMessage garden and everyone else will be in another garden.
        • ptx 7y ago
          Try Matrix[1]. It's a protocol specification with multiple open-source implementations. It has federation so that you can choose which server to use (or run your own) and still communicate with everyone else. It has end-to-end encryption (although at the moment it only works in one client, but it's coming along). [1] https://matrix.org/ https://matrix.org/
• rvz 7y ago
  > With Android 10, you’re in control of your privacy. With privacy being the latest buzzword in the tech industry and all this news about privacy blunders I keep seeing, For Google to market something like this for Android makes you wonder what other nefarious features that have been added to Android that they didn't tell you about. In terms of privacy, Android 10 instead screams "Upgrade and lose control of your privacy".
  • readams 7y ago
    Actually there are a number of new privacy-enhancing features in this release. Probably the most prominent is that it will help you choose which apps should be able to get location information in the background. Google obviously has a tricky relationship with privacy, but as far as I know Android 10 is strictly better in that regard.
    • kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
      Better would be adopting the permissions controls that LineageOS provides.
      • thekyle 7y ago
        You mean Privacy Guard?
    • klingonopera 7y ago
      Privacy enhancing towards 3rd party apps, maybe, but towards Google itself OTOH... As someone trying to manage using an Android phone without Google's services (Play Store et al), they really castrated Android starting with version 8, when you needed the Play Store in order to reliably receive push notifications. In fact, I'm passively looking for ways to downgrade my phone back to LineageOS 14/Android 7 because of this, but older releases of Lineage aren't easily readily available...
  • cameronbrown 7y ago
    Don't be the reason people think 'privacy nuts' are so. A true pivot to privacy would be an exceptionally good thing for Google.
• Siecje 7y ago
  > HEIF Imaging > Support for new file format (.heic) to save still images. What is the advantage of .heic images?
  • rolltiide 7y ago
    compatibility with iOS file sharing
    • Siecje 7y ago
      So Android couldn't open a .heic file from an iOS user?
      • jdofaz 7y ago
        I think 9 added read support
      • mcraiha 7y ago
        Media library from Android didn't support it. Naturally apps could have used any existing third party library to support that feature.
  • cptskippy 7y ago
    > The MPEG group claims that twice as much information can be stored in a HEIF image as in a JPEG image of the same size, resulting in a better quality image. HEIF also supports animation, and is capable of storing more information than an animated GIF at a small fraction of the size. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Image_File_Format https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Image_File_F...
  • ASalazarMX 7y ago
    A modern, patent-encumbered standard brought to you by The MPEG Group™ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Image_File_Format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Image_File_For...
    • 7y ago
• pranau 7y ago
  I wonder how many of the features advertised here will make it onto the Android 10 release of other OEMs. In Android 9 for example, the ability to select text via OCR in the recent apps screen was limited to only the Pixel devices for some strange reason even though all Android devices had access to that feature prior to the release of Google Assistant via the Google app. In a similar vein, Digital Wellbeing was officially limited to Pixel devices and Android One devices although it could be sideloaded onto other phones (where it ran perfectly fine) running Android 9+.
  • izacus 7y ago
    Most of them are choice of the OEMs - e.g. Samsung held back Digital Wellbeing on their S9 phone updates so it could market their own reimplementation on S10 series. Everything marketed here is available to all OEMs - Pixel specific features are marketed on Pixel marketing pages.
    • ant6n 7y ago
      ... We're getting more and more into an age where mobile hardware doesn't matter anymore, because it's become so fungible. And Samsung will do very badly, because they're hardware is good, but their software sucks so bad.
      • pjmlp 7y ago
        Regular consumers appear to have other opinion about bare bones AOSP UI. I find it quite ugly from design point of view, loaded with an amount of blinding white colour.
      • vetinari 7y ago
        Comparing Samsung's OneUI and stock Android, I would pick OneUI without blinking. I used to hate Touchwiz.
        • jm4 7y ago
          It more comes down to the permanently installed crap software they bundle like it’s a 1998 emachine. And the lame Samsung account requirement. And Bixby. There’s that weird rewards program thing where you earn xp for using different features on the phone. The updates are slow. It feels more like spyware than standard google stuff. The whole thing is a pretty terrible experience.
• B1FF_PSUVM 7y ago
  "Contaminant detection: If moisture or debris is detected in your USB port, a notification will be sent to you and accessories will not function." "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
  • grawprog 7y ago
    This new feature fills me with foreboding. I really miss the days phones came with covers for the USB ports. They were annoying as hell due to my lack of finger nails, but damn the port stayed spotless. Every phone I've had lately the usb port gets so full of dust and crap chargers stopped working properly unless I fucked around and balanced it just perfectly.
    • techntoke 7y ago
      You can buy female dust covers on Amazon. I haven't really had issues. My biggest complaint was how susceptible USB micro was to breaking, but no problems with USB Type-C phones.
  • Kneecaps07 7y ago
    I can't wait until it falsely identifies the dirt and I can't charge my phone any more.
  • heroprotagonist 7y ago
    Well, the USB port on my pixel is already useless for anything except charging. Somehow the data connection is broken. I hope the update still lets me charge..
• matchbok 7y ago
  It's always nice to see how each Android release compares to iOS. Usually about 10% of the features while releasing to about .05% of the active phones. The vast majority of people won't see these features for another 3 years.
  • flixic 7y ago
    Hoping to be wrong, checked the data. It's been about a year for iOS 12 and Android Pie. According to the latest numbers, iOS 12 is at 84% [1] and Android Pie is at 27% [2]. I also don't think that waiting 3 years will push Pie percentage much higher. Android 6.0 is more popular than 8.0 and 7.0. I don't envy Android devs... Can't imagine it's fun to develop apps when you have to target OSes released 4+ years ago because 21% of devices still run them. For iOS the "4+ years" number is way below 1%. [1] https://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/ https://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/ [2] https://gs.statcounter.com/android-version-market-share/mobile-tablet/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/android-version-market-share/mobi...
    • graeme 7y ago
      It’s 88% for ios 12 now, apple keeps a tally here: https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/ https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/ Only 5% are on earlier than ios 11.
  • spectrum1234 7y ago
    You need to factor in price for a fair comparison.
• mpalczewski 7y ago
  I guess I'm not impressed. - Edit: not a bad release Live caption on device: Sounds great. Very useful if you are hearing impaired. If you just want captions for the words the are difficult to make out, some AI isn't going to help there. AI's are currently worse than I am at detecting words. Smart reply: This looks useful. Not having to lose info as you create an appointment or less clicks copying and pasting directions. Yeah, great feature. Good job here. Sound amplifier: Remember when everyone was up in arms because iPods could boost sound way too loud. (disregarding different source volumes and headphone sensitivity). So everyone limited the power output of their headphone jack. Well, now we've come full circle and we can blast our ear drums the way god intended, it just takes more button presses. This is like yeah, we took away a feature because of hysteria, now it's back. Edit: Thanks for explaining this to me. This feature does indeed seem useful. Audio that is more clear, being able to hear what's around you, yeah this is great. Gesture navigation: I hate this. Maybe some people like it. If you are one of those people, I'm happy for you. Dark theme: I originally though this feature was dumb. Next we'll have gray theme, or blue theme. Battery savings just didn't seem that great. After using this for a while, I like dark theme, in an unexpected way. I find that the black colors are less stimulating and the phone is less of a distraction. Digital wellbeing: I haven't found these features all that useful. Perhaps someone else makes use of them. I mostly see this as shaming for using the phone too much. Focus mode: Remember that one android release that made it so you can easily block all notifications from an app. Well, later they made it so you can only easily block a category(can still block all just more presses). Then apps can create as many categories as they want(so you keep getting spammed). This time they didn't do the user friendly release, in order to focus you have to check each app you have installed. Completely backwards like they didn't really want to do this feature. Family link: I'm not a parent, kids and phones sound like a nightmare to me. I hope this helps you parents. No opinion from me.
  • skybrian 7y ago
    This is really quite cynical, particularly about sound amplifier. It should be very useful to the millions of people who are hearing impaired, but haven't gotten a hearing aid yet. (Most people tend to put this off for a while.) There's some irony that some folks might have gotten hearing loss from headphones in the first place, but it sounds like a useful feature.
• pilif 7y ago
  Is it just my imagination or did that “smart reply” video teaser feature an Apple emoji thumbs-up emoji as an UI element of Android?
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • vesinisa 7y ago
    You're right. It's the Signal IM app, which seems to use the iOS emoji pack.
• butz 7y ago
  Still, only 10.4% of Android devices are running version 9.
  • flixic 7y ago
    The data I find says 27%: https://gs.statcounter.com/android-version-market-share/mobile-tablet/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/android-version-market-share/mobi...
  • izacus 7y ago
    My dashboards all say 30%+ across apps with a lot of users.
• BlackLotus89 7y ago
  Some of the features sound amazing "sound amplifier" sounds like a hearing aid like function. If it has a low audio delay and good function set to filter noise it could be revolutionary. I was looking for something like this in app form not too long ago. I wonder how gesture navigation will work with some apps. I wonder which features will make it into aosp/lineageos. I'm missing android smartlock in limeageos. If I could wish for a feature for android it would be "game mode" from oxygenos.
  • derekp7 7y ago
    Too bad it the sound amplifier app only works with wired headphones, with Pixel 2 and above not having a headphone jack. So now that they got me to switch over to bluetooth headphones, I have to dig out the USB adapter and an older pair of wired headphones to try it out. Not sure why some apps such as this hate bluetooth, since this app would be a perfect match with bluetooth earbuds.
    • BlackLotus89 7y ago
      Good thing that I won't buy a phone without a headphone jack. I didn't even saw that piece of information. It's probably because of the delay thought, it can get very annoying if you add bluetooth delay to the processing delay. Let's see if we can find more information on that. Maybe it can even remove your own voice
• buildzr 7y ago
  Glad to see a big push for security updates directly from Google here, any further details on how this will be implemented and if device manufacturers will screw it up?
• coding123 7y ago
  The only thing I want in Android next is native call blocking similar to Hiya but integrated. They did a good job with my last request of being able to turn off all notifications. Happy Android user (except when voice assist fucks up then I'm all rage) (Edit Ok and iPhone like messaging)
  • jlmorton 7y ago
    Pixel 3 integrates call screening very tightly, which is not quite the same thing, but is in many ways better.
• vladdanilov 7y ago
  The website assets are optimized in a rather strange way. The total page weight of ~20MB is huge for mobile. The images are heavily compressed using WebP lossy with quite noticeable blockiness and washed out textures and fine details, but squeezed into 1MB, yet the videos are only lightly compressed, and make up most of the page weight. Had they been compressed with libx264 at good quality, the page weight would be more than 70% smaller, and there would not be any need to ruin the image quality that much.
  • sieabahlpark 7y ago
    Webp is web scale
  • CodeGlitch 7y ago
    Yes the site crashed my (old) Android phone running Firefox. First time this has ever happened since I've owned the device... Which is many years!
  • burtonator 7y ago
    wow... 20MB.. I thought my 5MB app was horrible!@
    • redwall_hp 7y ago
      It is. This is just several more steps up the atrocity ladder. Web site weight has majorly outpaced the growth of the average internet connection speed, and we also live in a world where mobile usage is up and many people have usage caps. I pay per gigabyte with a prepaid plan for my phone, because I'm not paying $40/month for phone service when I can pay less than half that, so blindly clicking a web page and having 20MB quickly used up sucks.
      • Phillips126 7y ago
        I hear ya. I find the "unlimited data" plans are just far too expensive to justify paying for. My current carrier (Verizon[0]) offers 4(!) different "unlimited" plans starting at $70/mo and going up from there. My Wife and I only have 2GB/mo plans which itself is $35/mo. Our two cellphones have a higher bill than our entire household electric/gas bill and we have a modest sized house with central air/heating and lots of TVs/games/etc. [0] https://www.verizonwireless.com/plans/ https://www.verizonwireless.com/plans/
• enjoyyourlife 7y ago
  Still no way to block network access to an app
• ericfrederich 7y ago
  I remember reading somewhere that a future version of Android would be able to tether an existing WiFi connection but I can't find the article. I hope this Android 10 contains this. It's painful to go to a hotel that has a captive portal and not be able to use something like a Chromecast. Would be super useful to sign in once on your phone and then share that WiFi with other devices.
  • ohyea 7y ago
    My Samsung S7 did this I think. Haven't seen it on another phone though.
  • shadeless 7y ago
    Both my Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 9 do this, they call it Wi-Fi sharing: https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/mobile-devices/how-do-i-set-up-wi-fi-tethering-on-my-samsung-android-device/ https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/mobile-devices/how-do-i-s...
• trulyrandom 7y ago
  Factory images are also available now for Pixel devices: https://developers.google.com/android/images https://developers.google.com/android/images.
  • vesinisa 7y ago
    It seemed to come to my German Pixel 1 as an over-the-air update straight away as well, currently downloading it. Nice job, Google!
• burtonator 7y ago
  Can they PLEASE get Android Auto to work over bluetooth? I want to wirelessly charge in my car and wirelessly navigate too.
  • Rebelgecko 7y ago
    I imagine there's bandwidth limitations over bluetooth. That's why Android Auto (and I think also Apple Carplay?) use WiFi.
  • burnte 7y ago
    Done. https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/267568-google-rolls-out-wireless-android-auto-but-almost-no-one-can-use-it https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/267568-google-rolls-out-w...
  • izacus 7y ago
    AA will never work over Bluetooth because BT isn't a technology capable of reliably streaming a video stream AA requires. There is a wifi version though, but due to regulation and unreliable drivers, it's not widely deployed.
• wozniacki 7y ago
  Has someone done a thorough deep dive into both iOS and Android's privacy stances as of current writing? I ask the following since most of my friends just don't know which of the two to trust anymore although they clearly dont trust Google more. Not so much that they would consider getting a Librem 5[1] but are very wary of either OS given the spate of privacy violations in general, off late and given the heightened concerns over the surveillance era we currently live in. So I ask, have they found conclusive evidence for either iOS or Android to be putting money where their mouth is, exclusively in the areas of privacy and customer data protection? Or is it just mostly glib statements with not much in the way of substantive deployments to safeguard users? Sundar Pichai recently said something on the lines of "Privacy should not be a luxury good", subtly taking a dig at Apple. "To make privacy real, we give you clear, meaningful choices around your data. All while staying true to two unequivocal policies: that Google will never sell any personal information to third parties; and that you get to decide how your information is used.[2] Is there any meat to any of this, as of this writing? Simply put if you didn't mind sacrificing a few bells and whistles which of the two OSes would your next phone have? Android or iOS? [1] Librem 5 smartphone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem#Librem_5_smartphone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem#Librem_5_smartphone [2] Google’s Sundar Pichai: Privacy Should Not Be a Luxury Good https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/opinion/google-sundar-pichai-privacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/opinion/google-sundar-pic...
• alistproducer2 7y ago
  I recently bought a Nokia 2.2, which in in the Android One program. Two main reasons: a removable battery and OS updates for two years and security for 3. At this point, there's very little difference between the hardware of flagships and commodity, especially considering the real-world use of smartphones. I mean, is anyone compiling programs on these things or doing anything particularly intensive? Not really. So given the choice between a $1000 phone and a $140 one, I choose the latter because in 2019 your really paying for the software. Since Android 9, I really enjoy Android. It feels like a totally different experience with things like split screen, gesture nav, and smart replies. The Android team is doing a great job as of late. I look forward to getting this update. I hope we get to a point where the OEMs stop being the gate keepers of our phone's OSs and these devices become more like laptops, in the sense of being able to run whatever we want.
  • nunodonato 7y ago
    Samsung DeX (or similar) is a very interesting use case for more powerful hardware. But if that's not something you'd use, then I fully agree with you.
    • ivankolev 7y ago
      I am setting myself up on DeX as a full blown Intellij IDEA multi language environment but their locked down Linux distro makes me very uneasy...
      • pezo1919 7y ago
        I am on iOS but if that happens I might migrate! Is this something available today?
        • ivankolev 7y ago
          It is a beta program, search for "Linux on DeX" for details.
          • 7y ago
• shmerl 7y ago
  Good to see even stronger push for Vulkan. Now the main remaining offenders who still refuse to support it are: * MS (Xbox) * Sony (PlayStation) * Apple (iOS, macOS).
• KoenDG 7y ago
  Just a thought: how's the integration with the Linux kernel going? I recall reading a few months ago that 1. There are significant differences between the "main" kernel and the one android uses. 2. This was a choice in early development. 3. Efforts are underway to largely undo this, making them as similar as possible. And as per usual, I can't find the article anymore.
  • shmerl 7y ago
    Google were pushing for better upstream usage. For example they are backing Freedreno driver for Adreno (Qualcomm) GPUs.
• jhack 7y ago
  Can't wait to try it out in three years when I replace my eight-month-old phone that won't be getting an update.
  • x2f10 7y ago
    Serious question: why not iPhone?
    • ghego1 7y ago
      Legit answer: go for a Pixel 3a
  • treelovinhippie 7y ago
    My 20-month-old Pixel 2 got the update today.
    • ehsankia 7y ago
      Pixel 1 is also getting Q update, which is now 3 years old.
  • jasonvorhe 7y ago
    Well, why buy from such vendors? It's not like a lack of updates from vendors isn't a well known issue. Pixel, OnePlus, Nokia.
• wdfx 7y ago
  So how much padding is in the release package to make the update sized 1337 Mb ? :P
• MayeulC 7y ago
  Interesting. Some of these improvements are great, others are more of a mixed bag. To point out some of the latter: > heif support A shame they didn't put their weight behind avif for this one. Maybe there are some "lobbies" at play? > Live caption I love it for accessibility. I loathe it for privacy. Local, self-hosted, or bust. Same for Live Transcribe. Awesome and scary. > Family link It was about time google shared a tiny bit of the data it has on us, so that we can put it for good use. Of course, this really shows the level of control and insight Google has on us. > Smart Reply Some commenters here wrote that this was done locally. I would like some source on this (is training also done locally? Nothing is sent back?). If so, this might be interesting. Otherwise, that's plain scary. > Keep your data private with more controls More control is great, but that's still not enough. The app may refuse to launch if denied a permission, we would need an option to "lie" about it. "ad retargeting and personalization", from the screenshot, sounds like preventing apps (or maybe just asking) to use the advertizing ID for such purposes. Of course, they can still do it with everything else. > Get security updates faster Everyday Android strays further from the GPL. The way forward should be to help manufacturers play nice (use a few persons full-time for support, promote "mainline" devices to the public as the ones that will always receive updates). I haven't looked into the details, but this sounds like furthering their "trebble" HAL to run (and update) closed-source blobs on an outdated kernel (but who cares, right? because they put less and less stuff in the GPL'ed kernel). --- My apologies if that reads like a rant. The level of control Google has on our (digital) lives is downright horrifying. I'm honestly pulling all my weight behind free software alternatives to google, both donating and contributing, but that's not nearly enough, as the vast majority of people simply don't care. You know what they say about putting all of your eggs into the same basket? One that will not hesitate to blackmail you to get them back, and maybe taste one or two. And now, how about putting yourself into that basket, for good measure? I'm quite interested in alternatives such as postmarketos, pinephone, librem 5, plasma mobile, ubports, lineageos, replicant, mycroft, mozilla voice, firefox, peertube, nextcloud, collabora online, openstreetmap, Matrix, and countless others. Most projects lack manpower and funding, unfortunately. Yet most of the ones I quoted are quite likely to succeed, IMO.
  • izacus 7y ago
    > Live caption >I love it for accessibility. I loathe it for privacy. Local, self-hosted, or bust. Same for Live Transcribe. Awesome and scary. Uhhmm... Live Caption is running on-device speech recognition model. So it's local only. >Smart Reply >Some commenters here wrote that this was done locally. I would like some source on this (is training also done locally? Nothing is sent back?). If so, this might be interesting. Otherwise, that's plain scary. No, the model is built ahead of time from other sources then downloaded and applied locally. Data isn't sent anywhere. >Everyday Android strays further from the GPL. The way forward should be to help manufacturers play nice (use a few persons full-time for support, promote "mainline" devices to the public as the ones that will always receive updates). I haven't looked into the details, but this sounds like furthering their "trebble" HAL to run (and update) closed-source blobs on an outdated kernel (but who cares, right? because they put less and less stuff in the GPL'ed kernel). It didn't work for last 15 years, why do you think it'll suddenly start working now?
• 19870213 7y ago
  I wonder if my Moto Z2 Force will get this (probably not), only got Android 9 a couple of weeks ago. If it does get it, then I hope the update will fix the wonky wifi issues that I'm having that weren't present in Android 8...
  • 19870213 7y ago
    What you know... The security update for July just dropped and my wifi starts working better. No mention of it in the release notes (just that it's the security update for July)...
• est31 7y ago
  > Now, you can share your Wi-Fi details with guests via a QR code while keeping your password secure. This is terribly misleading. The format used does contain the password so your password is still being shared: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code#WiFi_network_login https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code#WiFi_network_login * https://github.com/zxing/zxing/wiki/Barcode-Contents#wi-fi-network-config-android-ios-11 https://github.com/zxing/zxing/wiki/Barcode-Contents#wi-fi-n... I'm saying misleading because there is an interpretation of that sentence that is technically correct: Some people might use short passwords so that they can tell them to guests. With this feature, they can use longer secure passwords. In this interpretation, "keeping your passwords secure" would refer to the entropy of the password instead of how shared it is. However, when you normally read this sentence, this isn't the interpretation that comes to your mind. I guess that some internal document written by people who understood the difference had something like "with this feature you can have now secure passwords and you are still able share them with guests". Then someone without awareness of this difference reformulated it into the current form.
  • wdfx 7y ago
    The feature is a bit more than this. In the WiFi share screen, the network password is actually displayed in plain text as well. It does require a fingerprint/pattern/pin to show anything though.
  • coryfklein 7y ago
    Security is and always has been a sliding scale, despite always referred colloquially as being either present or absent. "Keeping your password secure" in English really means, "improving the security of your password".
    • shkkmo 7y ago
      Except this feature doesn't add security, it just adds a tool for reducing the usability trade-off of having a long hard password. I think it is very misleading phrasing.
      • 7y ago
• totaldude87 7y ago
  i feel odd about this timing.. why not release it with new pixel phones (like apple does), or there is no new software gimmicky on new pixel phones? anyways started downloading this for pixel 3a, thanks google!
• alinspired 7y ago
  even old google pixel 1 (2016) got android 10! and there seems to be a re-spin already: https://developers.google.com/android/images#marlin https://developers.google.com/android/images#marlin
• autoexec 7y ago
  > So, if a friend asks you out to dinner, your phone will suggest you text "". Then, it’ll also pull up directions right in Google Maps. "Smart reply" sounds like a privacy nightmare. Now just opening a text causes unsolicited connections to made to Google's servers and other websites containing the contents of your messages. I hope this is something you can easily disable.
  • spiznnx 7y ago
    It's completely on-device [0]. The prediction models have been shrunk [1] so no connections are made (Google has enabled lots of shrunken on-device models with TF Lite [2]) . I'm not sure why this page doesn't call that out considering how privacy-focused the other features are. 0. https://www.androidauthority.com/smart-reply-android-q-983647/ https://www.androidauthority.com/smart-reply-android-q-98364... 1. https://www.tensorflow.org/lite/models/smart_reply/overview https://www.tensorflow.org/lite/models/smart_reply/overview 2. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.00630.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.00630.pdf, https://www.tensorflow.org/lite/guide https://www.tensorflow.org/lite/guide
    • autoexec 7y ago
      That sounds way more reasonable!
• jl6 7y ago
  Did HEIC support ever come to Android? I recall it being announced for Pie I think, but cannot find any evidence of people using it. I’ve been hoping that Android adoption of HEIC would increase the availability of software to view and manage such files.
  • cosmotron 7y ago
    From the article (if you scroll down to the Camera section and expand it): > HEIF Imaging > Support for new file format (.heic) to save still images.
• Nimitz14 7y ago
  Goddamnit. I just released a on-device speech-to-text app lol.
• n8hunzaker 7y ago
  Sitting happy on a Pixel 1 from 2016. Android gets better and better.
• integrii 7y ago
  Wait a second. The back button is being replaced with a swipe from the left edge of the screen??? What if my phone is really wide? What if I miss that gesture 40% of the time?
  • markmark 7y ago
    On my pixel at least you can select to use the new gestures, the previous pill-style gestures, or the old three icon method. I use the pill-style ones, because I have other actions triggered on edge swipes that I want to keep.
• c-smile 7y ago
  Any hope for getting native Graphics API on Android? Or is it too much to ask and so each native app shall reinvent the wheel by its own? 12 years and no such basic stuff ...
• tidenly 7y ago
  This update just bricked my Pixel - are Google even testing these things?
• xtat 7y ago
  99% of what I do with my phone worked great with all the features of ICS. Today its just very slow and I have to buy a new one. My Thinkpad has outlasted 3 phones. I want so badly to nope out of this whole ecosystem. Don't even mention IOS.