6 ms·

Android 11

61 points by loyukfai 6y ago

chrisacky 6y ago
What's the easiest way to replicate the scroll animation they are doing? (the big with the big green circle expanding in height) I've looked at their source, looks to be a <div> which upon scroll updates the --root-vars (whcih is then used for the transform/scale css ruules) --component-position: 0px; --shape-position: 714px; --image-height: 712px; --offset-image-wrapper: 1248px; --offset-middle-image-value: 219.667; --scroll-position: 530px; --opacity-value: 0.507736; Unfortunately the actual implementation is all hidden in the common.min.js behind the data-android-component-config {'small': {'easeShape': 0.005}, 'medium': {'easeShape': 0.002}} I'm just curious if there's any libraries which handle all the breakpoints,animations, style updates without needing to reinvite. For something so face-value trivial, the Google implementation sure has a lot of edge cases I can see they handle in their "setAnimations_" code.
wiradikusuma 6y ago
"Built-in screen recording. Finally." -- lol. Also important: Record with sound from your mic, your device or both.
trabant00 6y ago
Option one: I'm growing old and crazy. Option two: all these features encourage people to rely on their phone to manage their notifications/conversations instead of keeping their distractions at a minimum - humanly manageable level.
- teekert 6y ago
  It can be an extra line of defense. When I had a Pebble I liked that important things (to me) could get through to the watch, the rest was nicely waiting on the phone for when took the time.
- 1_player 6y ago
  All those screenshots look so busy to me, like there's so much going on in these people's lives that they struggle to keep up. I want the distraction device that sits in my pocket to simplify my life, not expose and amplify all the small interruptions as if they _need_ to be taken care of RIGHT NOW or else. "you can pin conversations so they always appear on top of other apps and screens. Bubbles keep the conversation going—while you stay focused on whatever else you’re doing. Access the chat anytime or anywhere." — Yo dawg, I heard you like distractions... It's not a critique on Android 11 per se. Just a general aimless rant about the direction we're going with our technological lives.
  - glenstein 6y ago
    Yeah, I was wondering if I was going crazy. Even the very first screen was kinda giving me a headache. It was supposed to be exhibiting elegance and simplicity. But I know enough from a decade of using Android to see all kinds of segments of the interface that have their own special context behaviors and features, with new menu layers and questions and assumptions that I will need to train myself to figure out.
fsflover 6y ago
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24410575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24410575
teekert 6y ago
"Bubbles keep the conversation going—while you stay focused on whatever else you’re doing." Does it get more oxymoronic than this?
- johnasmith 6y ago
  It's an (awkward) user friendly spin on what's ultimately a security update. Previously, if an app like FB wanted a bubble, they'd draw a screen overlay via `WindowManager`. That's the same API often misused to draw invisible layouts over your banking app. Providing a purpose built bubbles API lets Android close the door on the riskier API.
- tjbiddle 6y ago
  Think of it this way: 1) Now, if you do like bubbles - At least it's all in one bubble rather than multiple apps doing their own thing. 2) If you don't like bubbles - you can disable them all at once.
Mindwipe 6y ago
This is a pretty weak update. Fiddling with quite minor things, while breaking the ability to backup your device even more. Backup is a major black eye in the Android ecosystem for regular users.
- arkitaip 6y ago
  Android takes care of your contacts, passwords, wifi settings, browser settings, photos, etc. It requires a Google account but it's astonishing how quickly you can set up a new phone by simply logging into your Google account. What's missing is better media management for third party apps like WhatsApp and Telegram so important photos and videos are backed up while unimportant ones are ignored and even discarded regularly. Every single family member's phone I've had to deal with has had this issue ("why is my phone out of storage when I barely have any apps installed?!" Meanwhile, WhatsApp is storing 20GB of funny videos).
  - julesnp 6y ago
    I find their "Junk files" feature in the new Files app very useful for clearing up space: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.nbu.files https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
  - creshal 6y ago
    > Android takes care of your contacts Google contacts. , passwords, Google app passwords. > wifi settings, Because you can't not use Google's app for it. > browser settings, Google Chrome settings. > photos, Google photos. > etc. (As long as it's in a Google app.) > it's astonishing how quickly you can set up a new phone by simply logging into your Google account. After ten years or so of using Android I finally bit the bullet and enabled Google backups to transfer stuff to my new phone a few months back, and I was astonished at how fucking nothing gets backed up that isn't already in a Google cloud synced app. What's the point? Every single other app I had to manually figure out how to transfer and restore, because all Google doing is to "helpfully" prevent me from backing up my data for "security" reasons.
janvdberg 6y ago
Does anyone know what efforts Android developers specifically take to address Android's performance on the multitude of low-end Android devices? I think (?) most people experience Android on low-end / underpowered devices and I wonder whether with these upgrades those devices are left behind.
- Aaargh20318 6y ago
  It’s more that buying a high-end Android phone is kind of pointless. As a dev you want to target the largest possible customer base. In practice this means developing with a low-end phone and an older OS version in mind. You could have your app adapt to higher-end phones or newer OS versions with things like optional features, but in reality the market share of those devices is too low to be worth the investment. In the end, users with high-end Android phones will mainly be running apps that are not designed to take full advantage of the capabilities of the device.
  - mastazi 6y ago
    Mmmm I’m not sure if that is always the case. Anecdote: I live in Australia (where probably the share of higher end devices is higher than other countries) and I’ve seen a trend where some Android apps that are made for the Australian market, are only available to higher end devices and listed as incompatible with everything else. In some extreme cases, they are also restricted to one single brand i.e. only latest generation, high-end Samsung models would be supported. I haven’t used Android for more than a year so I’m really struggling to remember what apps did that, if I remember I will reply to this comment later.
- creshal 6y ago
  Those devices never get upgraded to new Android versions so that's not something Android devs worry about. Hardware manufacturers just have to beef up the next generation of low end phones! (Cue KaiOS eating away all the low end market.)
- throwaway8941 6y ago
  I'll leave my anecdote until someone knowledgeable shows up. I don't they they've been doing nearly enough. I've been using a cheap Asus (MSM8916 + 2 GiB RAM) for about 4.5 years and have tried every version of Android from 5 through 10 (most of them via CyanogenMod / LineageOS). I always trim down the firmware on my devices as much as possible without bricking it, and still one feels the phone getting slower and slower with every version increment. 7 is the last one more or less usable on this kind of hardware, and 10 really struggles to run and leaves very little RAM for applications to use. So, even if my vendor didn't stop releasing updates so soon, a less patient user would've tossed the phone right after Nougat was released. (BTW, fuck you Asus, I'll never buy from you again)
iBotPeaches 6y ago
Without a major dessert name these releases just feel smaller and not as noticeable. My Pixel upgraded this morning to 11 and just another day.
biktor_gj 6y ago
The biggest announcement here seems to be the "Security updates from Google Play" I don't know if that means Samsung doesn't get to decide when you get updates or if it means "we're delaying security updates from being pushed to AOSP so you better have Google Services installed if you want your vulnerabilities patched in a timely fashion"
- arianvanp 6y ago
  If you click on the link it says *for android One devices which was already the case since ... android 8? so i'm very confused
  - Liquid_Fire 6y ago
    I think what's new is that the updates are delivered via the Google Play store rather than as a system update, meaning they don't require rebooting the phone.
- DebtDeflation 6y ago
  It's referring to Project Mainline. Just as Project Treble separated out the low level device drivers (CPU, modem, camera, etc.) provided by the hardware manufacturers from the OS itself and allowed for monthly Security Updates that didn't require an entire OS update, Project Mainline is separating out almost everything in user space from the lower level parts of the OS so that the former can be updated directly from Google Play rather than from that monthly Security Update. If you go to Settings->Security, you'll see both "Security update" and "Google Play system update" as two separate entries and corresponding dates, reflecting that. Edited to add: Project mainline was originally released in Android 10 and there were 8 modules that could be updated via Google Play, Android 11 expanded that by adding 12 more modules for a total of 20.
sto_hristo 6y ago
Desktop mode. Please, desktop mode already. These devices have as much or more ram and logical processors than my last office computer. Office tasks have been more than capable to be performed on such a device. No third party hack, but native and official support for desktop mode. Also, i am so tired of renting phones - give us the root account by default. If i would buy a new device, i will want to gain control of it.
- rimliu 6y ago
  They also are more powerfull than Apollo computers. Should they come with a Moon lander too?
- untog 6y ago
  Didn’t Samsung offer desktop mode at one point? I think it got canned because no one used it, sadly.
  - sto_hristo 6y ago
    Samsung still does it, but they are a third party thing, support is not native. Some apps just don't work well as a window. Such a thing implies you have to have a capable monitor and a bluetooth mice/kbd. Adoption will take significant time, but it will come either from current OSes or a newcomer. Remember how Nokia was the definition of reality and Apple came with their smartphone and turned the industry around overnight? Same thing will happen once someone introduces a true universal and responsive device that can seamlessly adapt to all kinds of use cases. It's just a question of when.
    - untog 6y ago
      > It's just a question of when. I’m a lot more sceptical. I’m a tech nerd through and through and I can’t really see why I’d want a truly responsive device like that. The things I do on both phone and computer (email, messaging, maps, etc) are on the cloud so it’s easy to switch devices. The stuff that’s more difficult to move (my coding setup) isn’t something I ever use on mobile. I can see the financial argument in favour of it but a laptop style case with monitor, keyboard and trackpad probably wouldn’t ever be that much cheaper than a Chromebook or the like.
mikece 6y ago
As an operating system Android is continuing to get a little more modular, allowing more "user observable functionality" to be updated independent of an OS version upgrade (or waiting on a carrier or OEM to approve such an upgrade). Unfortunately, even more of capability of "Android" is being delivered by the very-closed-source Google Mobile Service (GMS) while the feature set of AOSP is dwindling to being "mere phone without the smarts." At this point what we call Android is about as closed source as Apple's iOS. It's too bad the tribes and factions wanting to build a truly open Linux phone can't bury the hatchet and rally behind a single implementation.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  GMS however, even though the code is closed, has an open interface. This allows projects such as MicroG and HMS to replicate the functionality of GMS almost to a T, and makes it in practice very possible to have a modern Android phone running a fully open OS and compatible with the vast majority of apps.
  - brnt 6y ago
    I agree it's better than nothing (iOS), but it's correct what OP wrote: important parts of Android are now as closed source as iOS.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      True, but these important parts largely have open source interpretations. There's no real reason for GMS to be more Android than microG.
      - brnt 6y ago
        But it means a group of volunteers (which fortunately exists, I depend on them for my phones) needs to keep tracking and duplicating an ever expanding component of Android, without have any say in the direction of its development. It's getting to be more Wine than Windows at this point. It's problematic at minimum.
thanhhaimai 6y ago
The change I like the most is the permission change: "If you haven't used an app in a while, you may not want it to keep accessing your data. So Android will reset permissions for your unused apps. You can always turn permissions back on." "Give one-time permissions to apps that need your mic, camera or location. The next time the app needs access, it must ask for permission again."
- bogwog 6y ago
  I wonder if that applies to Google's own apps
  - smilespray 6y ago
    Fat chance.
  - programbreeding 6y ago
    It does. Here is Maps + Location [0]. And here is Google Home + Mic [1]. I just picked 2 random google services that seemed like they would rely on location (Maps) and microphone (Home). [0] https://i.imgur.com/RSN239u.png https://i.imgur.com/RSN239u.png [1] https://i.imgur.com/x5vCg5W.png https://i.imgur.com/x5vCg5W.png
    - bogwog 6y ago
      But do those permissions get revoked automatically if you don't use the apps for a while? (the "permissions auto-reset" feature)
- Fnoord 6y ago
  > "Give one-time permissions to apps that need your mic, camera or location. The next time the app needs access, it must ask for permission again." I use Bouncer [1] for that. Been using it for many years. Although it doesn't revoke permanent permission after a while of non-usage, I'd argue it'd be better to revoke the permission if the permission itself (for that specific app) hasn't been granted for a while. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston.permission https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston....
jonny383 6y ago
Upgraded my Pixel 2 today. Amazingly, battery life seems much better.
bfrog 6y ago
From a plethora of choice to a duopoly, spyware vs overpriced fragile hardware. Lame
intricatedetail 6y ago
If you can't record calls with that OS using 3rd party app then it is a deal breaker. That's why I am stuck with early 9 and won't upgrade.

61 points by loyukfai 6y ago

What's the easiest way to replicate the scroll animation they are doing? (the big with the big green circle expanding in height) I've looked at their source, looks to be a <div> which upon scroll updates the --root-vars (whcih is then used for the transform/scale css ruules) --component-position: 0px; --shape-position: 714px; --image-height: 712px; --offset-image-wrapper: 1248px; --offset-middle-image-value: 219.667; --scroll-position: 530px; --opacity-value: 0.507736; Unfortunately the actual implementation is all hidden in the common.min.js behind the data-android-component-config {'small': {'easeShape': 0.005}, 'medium': {'easeShape': 0.002}} I'm just curious if there's any libraries which handle all the breakpoints,animations, style updates without needing to reinvite. For something so face-value trivial, the Google implementation sure has a lot of edge cases I can see they handle in their "setAnimations_" code.

wiradikusuma 6y ago

"Built-in screen recording. Finally." -- lol. Also important: Record with sound from your mic, your device or both.

trabant00 6y ago

Option one: I'm growing old and crazy. Option two: all these features encourage people to rely on their phone to manage their notifications/conversations instead of keeping their distractions at a minimum - humanly manageable level.

teekert 6y ago
It can be an extra line of defense. When I had a Pebble I liked that important things (to me) could get through to the watch, the rest was nicely waiting on the phone for when took the time.
1_player 6y ago
All those screenshots look so busy to me, like there's so much going on in these people's lives that they struggle to keep up. I want the distraction device that sits in my pocket to simplify my life, not expose and amplify all the small interruptions as if they _need_ to be taken care of RIGHT NOW or else. "you can pin conversations so they always appear on top of other apps and screens. Bubbles keep the conversation going—while you stay focused on whatever else you’re doing. Access the chat anytime or anywhere." — Yo dawg, I heard you like distractions... It's not a critique on Android 11 per se. Just a general aimless rant about the direction we're going with our technological lives.
- glenstein 6y ago
  Yeah, I was wondering if I was going crazy. Even the very first screen was kinda giving me a headache. It was supposed to be exhibiting elegance and simplicity. But I know enough from a decade of using Android to see all kinds of segments of the interface that have their own special context behaviors and features, with new menu layers and questions and assumptions that I will need to train myself to figure out.

fsflover 6y ago

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24410575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24410575

teekert 6y ago

"Bubbles keep the conversation going—while you stay focused on whatever else you’re doing." Does it get more oxymoronic than this?

johnasmith 6y ago
It's an (awkward) user friendly spin on what's ultimately a security update. Previously, if an app like FB wanted a bubble, they'd draw a screen overlay via `WindowManager`. That's the same API often misused to draw invisible layouts over your banking app. Providing a purpose built bubbles API lets Android close the door on the riskier API.
tjbiddle 6y ago
Think of it this way: 1) Now, if you do like bubbles - At least it's all in one bubble rather than multiple apps doing their own thing. 2) If you don't like bubbles - you can disable them all at once.

Mindwipe 6y ago

This is a pretty weak update. Fiddling with quite minor things, while breaking the ability to backup your device even more. Backup is a major black eye in the Android ecosystem for regular users.

arkitaip 6y ago
Android takes care of your contacts, passwords, wifi settings, browser settings, photos, etc. It requires a Google account but it's astonishing how quickly you can set up a new phone by simply logging into your Google account. What's missing is better media management for third party apps like WhatsApp and Telegram so important photos and videos are backed up while unimportant ones are ignored and even discarded regularly. Every single family member's phone I've had to deal with has had this issue ("why is my phone out of storage when I barely have any apps installed?!" Meanwhile, WhatsApp is storing 20GB of funny videos).
- julesnp 6y ago
  I find their "Junk files" feature in the new Files app very useful for clearing up space: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.nbu.files https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
- creshal 6y ago
  > Android takes care of your contacts Google contacts. , passwords, Google app passwords. > wifi settings, Because you can't not use Google's app for it. > browser settings, Google Chrome settings. > photos, Google photos. > etc. (As long as it's in a Google app.) > it's astonishing how quickly you can set up a new phone by simply logging into your Google account. After ten years or so of using Android I finally bit the bullet and enabled Google backups to transfer stuff to my new phone a few months back, and I was astonished at how fucking nothing gets backed up that isn't already in a Google cloud synced app. What's the point? Every single other app I had to manually figure out how to transfer and restore, because all Google doing is to "helpfully" prevent me from backing up my data for "security" reasons.

janvdberg 6y ago

Does anyone know what efforts Android developers specifically take to address Android's performance on the multitude of low-end Android devices? I think (?) most people experience Android on low-end / underpowered devices and I wonder whether with these upgrades those devices are left behind.

Aaargh20318 6y ago
It’s more that buying a high-end Android phone is kind of pointless. As a dev you want to target the largest possible customer base. In practice this means developing with a low-end phone and an older OS version in mind. You could have your app adapt to higher-end phones or newer OS versions with things like optional features, but in reality the market share of those devices is too low to be worth the investment. In the end, users with high-end Android phones will mainly be running apps that are not designed to take full advantage of the capabilities of the device.
- mastazi 6y ago
  Mmmm I’m not sure if that is always the case. Anecdote: I live in Australia (where probably the share of higher end devices is higher than other countries) and I’ve seen a trend where some Android apps that are made for the Australian market, are only available to higher end devices and listed as incompatible with everything else. In some extreme cases, they are also restricted to one single brand i.e. only latest generation, high-end Samsung models would be supported. I haven’t used Android for more than a year so I’m really struggling to remember what apps did that, if I remember I will reply to this comment later.
creshal 6y ago
Those devices never get upgraded to new Android versions so that's not something Android devs worry about. Hardware manufacturers just have to beef up the next generation of low end phones! (Cue KaiOS eating away all the low end market.)
throwaway8941 6y ago
I'll leave my anecdote until someone knowledgeable shows up. I don't they they've been doing nearly enough. I've been using a cheap Asus (MSM8916 + 2 GiB RAM) for about 4.5 years and have tried every version of Android from 5 through 10 (most of them via CyanogenMod / LineageOS). I always trim down the firmware on my devices as much as possible without bricking it, and still one feels the phone getting slower and slower with every version increment. 7 is the last one more or less usable on this kind of hardware, and 10 really struggles to run and leaves very little RAM for applications to use. So, even if my vendor didn't stop releasing updates so soon, a less patient user would've tossed the phone right after Nougat was released. (BTW, fuck you Asus, I'll never buy from you again)

iBotPeaches 6y ago

Without a major dessert name these releases just feel smaller and not as noticeable. My Pixel upgraded this morning to 11 and just another day.

biktor_gj 6y ago

The biggest announcement here seems to be the "Security updates from Google Play" I don't know if that means Samsung doesn't get to decide when you get updates or if it means "we're delaying security updates from being pushed to AOSP so you better have Google Services installed if you want your vulnerabilities patched in a timely fashion"

arianvanp 6y ago
If you click on the link it says *for android One devices which was already the case since ... android 8? so i'm very confused
- Liquid_Fire 6y ago
  I think what's new is that the updates are delivered via the Google Play store rather than as a system update, meaning they don't require rebooting the phone.
DebtDeflation 6y ago
It's referring to Project Mainline. Just as Project Treble separated out the low level device drivers (CPU, modem, camera, etc.) provided by the hardware manufacturers from the OS itself and allowed for monthly Security Updates that didn't require an entire OS update, Project Mainline is separating out almost everything in user space from the lower level parts of the OS so that the former can be updated directly from Google Play rather than from that monthly Security Update. If you go to Settings->Security, you'll see both "Security update" and "Google Play system update" as two separate entries and corresponding dates, reflecting that. Edited to add: Project mainline was originally released in Android 10 and there were 8 modules that could be updated via Google Play, Android 11 expanded that by adding 12 more modules for a total of 20.

sto_hristo 6y ago

Desktop mode. Please, desktop mode already. These devices have as much or more ram and logical processors than my last office computer. Office tasks have been more than capable to be performed on such a device. No third party hack, but native and official support for desktop mode. Also, i am so tired of renting phones - give us the root account by default. If i would buy a new device, i will want to gain control of it.

rimliu 6y ago
They also are more powerfull than Apollo computers. Should they come with a Moon lander too?
untog 6y ago
Didn’t Samsung offer desktop mode at one point? I think it got canned because no one used it, sadly.
- sto_hristo 6y ago
  Samsung still does it, but they are a third party thing, support is not native. Some apps just don't work well as a window. Such a thing implies you have to have a capable monitor and a bluetooth mice/kbd. Adoption will take significant time, but it will come either from current OSes or a newcomer. Remember how Nokia was the definition of reality and Apple came with their smartphone and turned the industry around overnight? Same thing will happen once someone introduces a true universal and responsive device that can seamlessly adapt to all kinds of use cases. It's just a question of when.
  - untog 6y ago
    > It's just a question of when. I’m a lot more sceptical. I’m a tech nerd through and through and I can’t really see why I’d want a truly responsive device like that. The things I do on both phone and computer (email, messaging, maps, etc) are on the cloud so it’s easy to switch devices. The stuff that’s more difficult to move (my coding setup) isn’t something I ever use on mobile. I can see the financial argument in favour of it but a laptop style case with monitor, keyboard and trackpad probably wouldn’t ever be that much cheaper than a Chromebook or the like.

mikece 6y ago

As an operating system Android is continuing to get a little more modular, allowing more "user observable functionality" to be updated independent of an OS version upgrade (or waiting on a carrier or OEM to approve such an upgrade). Unfortunately, even more of capability of "Android" is being delivered by the very-closed-source Google Mobile Service (GMS) while the feature set of AOSP is dwindling to being "mere phone without the smarts." At this point what we call Android is about as closed source as Apple's iOS. It's too bad the tribes and factions wanting to build a truly open Linux phone can't bury the hatchet and rally behind a single implementation.

sudosysgen 6y ago
GMS however, even though the code is closed, has an open interface. This allows projects such as MicroG and HMS to replicate the functionality of GMS almost to a T, and makes it in practice very possible to have a modern Android phone running a fully open OS and compatible with the vast majority of apps.
- brnt 6y ago
  I agree it's better than nothing (iOS), but it's correct what OP wrote: important parts of Android are now as closed source as iOS.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    True, but these important parts largely have open source interpretations. There's no real reason for GMS to be more Android than microG.
    - brnt 6y ago
      But it means a group of volunteers (which fortunately exists, I depend on them for my phones) needs to keep tracking and duplicating an ever expanding component of Android, without have any say in the direction of its development. It's getting to be more Wine than Windows at this point. It's problematic at minimum.

thanhhaimai 6y ago

The change I like the most is the permission change: "If you haven't used an app in a while, you may not want it to keep accessing your data. So Android will reset permissions for your unused apps. You can always turn permissions back on." "Give one-time permissions to apps that need your mic, camera or location. The next time the app needs access, it must ask for permission again."

bogwog 6y ago
I wonder if that applies to Google's own apps
- smilespray 6y ago
  Fat chance.
- programbreeding 6y ago
  It does. Here is Maps + Location [0]. And here is Google Home + Mic [1]. I just picked 2 random google services that seemed like they would rely on location (Maps) and microphone (Home). [0] https://i.imgur.com/RSN239u.png https://i.imgur.com/RSN239u.png [1] https://i.imgur.com/x5vCg5W.png https://i.imgur.com/x5vCg5W.png
  - bogwog 6y ago
    But do those permissions get revoked automatically if you don't use the apps for a while? (the "permissions auto-reset" feature)
Fnoord 6y ago
> "Give one-time permissions to apps that need your mic, camera or location. The next time the app needs access, it must ask for permission again." I use Bouncer [1] for that. Been using it for many years. Although it doesn't revoke permanent permission after a while of non-usage, I'd argue it'd be better to revoke the permission if the permission itself (for that specific app) hasn't been granted for a while. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston.permission https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston....

jonny383 6y ago

Upgraded my Pixel 2 today. Amazingly, battery life seems much better.

bfrog 6y ago

From a plethora of choice to a duopoly, spyware vs overpriced fragile hardware. Lame

intricatedetail 6y ago

If you can't record calls with that OS using 3rd party app then it is a deal breaker. That's why I am stuck with early 9 and won't upgrade.