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> Meanwhile Android seems much more 'sane' for me as a user In my view it's devolving into an awkward, less and less usable system. I run a phone with stock An

> Meanwhile Android seems much more 'sane' for me as a user In my view it's devolving into an awkward, less and less usable system. I run a phone with stock Android 9, and it does not let me set notifications to "vibrate only". I only have a choice between muting the phone(which makes me miss calls etc. because it basically plays dead) or letting it annoy me with a notification sound every couple minutes. There is no inbetween. Also, it does not have a way to toggle automatic screen brightness aside from the switch buried in the settings. This is, to put it mildly, insane and near unusable in my opinion. The last 5 years I've used exclusively Windows Phone 8 and Blackberry 10 OS, and both of those are still years ahead of Android's usability even though they're both not being actively developed anymore for almost the same period. I still don't see a current smartphone on the market that comes close.

third_I 7y ago
I would most certainly not peg Android as the promised land for users. It's indeed "devolving" slightly as of late, after a peak UX around 7-8 imho (still not perfect but it was smoother back then I feel, less clutter). Note that my screen brightness control, manual (slider) or auto (toggle), is right there in the notification menu. Android seems to be the least of two evils for me, as I've just found out in these comments, insofar as I have more access (filesystem etc) to do 'enterprise-y stuff' like data sync to personal infrastructure, remote flow management, etc. But it's evil, like iOS :) Oh let's define "evil", because this is not r/conspiracy. I mean: - not user-centric but vendor-centric (this is true of all commercial OS, which is why I use Linux whenever I can, or FreeBSD when it applies) - feels less like your "home" (as a desktop does) and more like some project housing or hotel room (all identical, like appliances in dev terms). Think not "wallpaper" but "GPOs", what a sysadmin can do (or should be able to). - tons of hidden 'features' and otherwise magic triggers that are poor in the way of discoverability, let alone transparency if we're gonna get there. Obfuscated, silent, opt-out, the whole dark side of tech is concentrated in mobile platforms. Lol, I am so jaded with UX these days. Why can't we have nice things. I mean, user-centric UX paradigms. How hard can it be to make money by selling great(er) products?

third_I 7y ago

I would most certainly not peg Android as the promised land for users. It's indeed "devolving" slightly as of late, after a peak UX around 7-8 imho (still not perfect but it was smoother back then I feel, less clutter). Note that my screen brightness control, manual (slider) or auto (toggle), is right there in the notification menu. Android seems to be the least of two evils for me, as I've just found out in these comments, insofar as I have more access (filesystem etc) to do 'enterprise-y stuff' like data sync to personal infrastructure, remote flow management, etc. But it's evil, like iOS :) Oh let's define "evil", because this is not r/conspiracy. I mean: - not user-centric but vendor-centric (this is true of all commercial OS, which is why I use Linux whenever I can, or FreeBSD when it applies) - feels less like your "home" (as a desktop does) and more like some project housing or hotel room (all identical, like appliances in dev terms). Think not "wallpaper" but "GPOs", what a sysadmin can do (or should be able to). - tons of hidden 'features' and otherwise magic triggers that are poor in the way of discoverability, let alone transparency if we're gonna get there. Obfuscated, silent, opt-out, the whole dark side of tech is concentrated in mobile platforms. Lol, I am so jaded with UX these days. Why can't we have nice things. I mean, user-centric UX paradigms. How hard can it be to make money by selling great(er) products?