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Reading your comment, my final thought was that essentially if you want to maintain another computer, similar to your desktop, buy an Android phone. Research an

Reading your comment, my final thought was that essentially if you want to maintain another computer, similar to your desktop, buy an Android phone. Research and install your ROM of choice, route it and install the programs you want, and you are responsible to make sure it all works. If you don’t want yet another computer to maintain consuming hours of your time, buy an iPhone. I do use Android for my streaming set top boxes, because of that flexibility. Devices like the Fire TV are flexible, like having an energy efficient and much more affordable version of a PC. But for my phone, for such an essential device that just has to work, it’s too much to ask out of me.

Bakary 4y ago
You aren't wrong in a technical sense but the amount of effort to make it work is really overstated here. It shouldn't take more than a few hours tops for everything you are describing, not including the time spent choosing the phone of course. You have to compare it to the time lost with iOS as well, whether it's from missing apps/features or salary hours spent on the Apple ecosystem because of the lock-in.
- BuckRogers 4y ago
  Your second paragraph is a bit of a stretch in my humble opinion. Missing apps and features, on iOS? I see. And salary hours? I was a long time android phone user. I used Cyanogenmod, which became Lineage. I was kind of left in a lurch once CM dropped support from my phone. Then I was using some truly obscure software. It doesn’t feel comfortable to use with banking apps. There used to be a good handful of distinct advantages for Android on phones. But today if anything important is missing, it’s more likely be missing on Android. Outside of someone who really wants FF with UBO. For example, if you buy a Sonos sound bar and want to use the room adjustment software, it only exists on iOS. Sonos can’t guarantee the quality of the microphone used to enable the software for Android. In regards to your first point, yes it may only take an hour or two if you know what you’re doing or have done it before. But most users are not going to be doing all of that on their phone. For me, I found that chasing secure and up-to-date software on android ended up being like duplicating my desktop PC. And I say that as someone who is an Android fan. Just for certain use cases. And by no means a partisan in this whole debate. It’s really just my experience as a software developer that has spent five years or more on each platform. I quite like the Samsung phones. If I went back, I would pick up one of those. I really like the Dex feature and the USB-C is mandatory. But there’s not much that personally draws me in from the points that you mentioned, the time and technical investment, any missing features or lock in.
jchw 4y ago
It's got layers of course. If you don't mind the way the Pixel device works out of the box, then obviously it's basically on par with an iPhone in terms of ease of use and setup. They trade blows obviously, but I'd call the experience comparable. I can switch between iPhone and Pixel with absolutely no confusion. But if you do mind the way it works, you don't necessarily have to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Sometimes, you can get the changes you want without having to do a whole lot of work. If all you want to do is sideload an APK, like the F-Droid store for example, it's some straight-forward taps. The system even guides you into it, no blatant dark patterns in my view of it. This is honestly pretty good, maybe even nicer than the modern macOS defaults! That will get you Fennec F-Droid and uBlock Origin very easily and quickly. No developer mode. No confusing dark pattern UX. No $100/yr payments. No flashing ROMs, no rooting, nothing. Just tapping the screen a bit. Keep in mind that Android also has the intents system so many default things can be changed, not just browser or e-mail client; pretty much any action that can open a third-party app can be supported by another third-party app. If you want to go deeper, you might root your device, install something like Xposed, or at least modify system APKs. It's not all that bad, although obviously the tradeoffs start to hit here: Safetynet no longer passes unless you bypass it somehow, OTA updates might undo some of your modifications, etc. But, it's still pretty powerful for not all that much work. Guides and tools are usually made so that moderate power users can do it. Plenty of kids do it for sure. And finally, if you want full control over everything, you can install third-party ROMs like GrapheneOS. Honestly, sometimes this is even easier than rooting, but it does come with some downsides still (I don't believe SafetyNet would pass on most third party ROMs, although miraculously, Pixel devices do support Secure Boot with third party ROMs, which I honestly feel was a very unexpected improvement of recent years.) Are Android phones generally less usable? I don't know. My whole family has always used Android phones and it seems fine. I do think the ecosystem of Android phones is a little weak right now, but at least we finally have CPUs that aren't so damn weak; that was one major score in favor of iPhone that was really hard to argue. They're probably still not all that close in the benchmarks, but it doesn't mater; the subjective experience is better. Android phones can finally drive high-refresh-rate displays very smoothly, and Firefox no longer feels like trying to browse the internet on a Pentium II. What I will say is that Apple has more advanced features for casual users provided that you stick to their ecosystem, but the "stick to their ecosystem" part is a hard sell for some of those features.

Bakary 4y ago

You aren't wrong in a technical sense but the amount of effort to make it work is really overstated here. It shouldn't take more than a few hours tops for everything you are describing, not including the time spent choosing the phone of course. You have to compare it to the time lost with iOS as well, whether it's from missing apps/features or salary hours spent on the Apple ecosystem because of the lock-in.

BuckRogers 4y ago
Your second paragraph is a bit of a stretch in my humble opinion. Missing apps and features, on iOS? I see. And salary hours? I was a long time android phone user. I used Cyanogenmod, which became Lineage. I was kind of left in a lurch once CM dropped support from my phone. Then I was using some truly obscure software. It doesn’t feel comfortable to use with banking apps. There used to be a good handful of distinct advantages for Android on phones. But today if anything important is missing, it’s more likely be missing on Android. Outside of someone who really wants FF with UBO. For example, if you buy a Sonos sound bar and want to use the room adjustment software, it only exists on iOS. Sonos can’t guarantee the quality of the microphone used to enable the software for Android. In regards to your first point, yes it may only take an hour or two if you know what you’re doing or have done it before. But most users are not going to be doing all of that on their phone. For me, I found that chasing secure and up-to-date software on android ended up being like duplicating my desktop PC. And I say that as someone who is an Android fan. Just for certain use cases. And by no means a partisan in this whole debate. It’s really just my experience as a software developer that has spent five years or more on each platform. I quite like the Samsung phones. If I went back, I would pick up one of those. I really like the Dex feature and the USB-C is mandatory. But there’s not much that personally draws me in from the points that you mentioned, the time and technical investment, any missing features or lock in.

jchw 4y ago

It's got layers of course. If you don't mind the way the Pixel device works out of the box, then obviously it's basically on par with an iPhone in terms of ease of use and setup. They trade blows obviously, but I'd call the experience comparable. I can switch between iPhone and Pixel with absolutely no confusion. But if you do mind the way it works, you don't necessarily have to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Sometimes, you can get the changes you want without having to do a whole lot of work. If all you want to do is sideload an APK, like the F-Droid store for example, it's some straight-forward taps. The system even guides you into it, no blatant dark patterns in my view of it. This is honestly pretty good, maybe even nicer than the modern macOS defaults! That will get you Fennec F-Droid and uBlock Origin very easily and quickly. No developer mode. No confusing dark pattern UX. No $100/yr payments. No flashing ROMs, no rooting, nothing. Just tapping the screen a bit. Keep in mind that Android also has the intents system so many default things can be changed, not just browser or e-mail client; pretty much any action that can open a third-party app can be supported by another third-party app. If you want to go deeper, you might root your device, install something like Xposed, or at least modify system APKs. It's not all that bad, although obviously the tradeoffs start to hit here: Safetynet no longer passes unless you bypass it somehow, OTA updates might undo some of your modifications, etc. But, it's still pretty powerful for not all that much work. Guides and tools are usually made so that moderate power users can do it. Plenty of kids do it for sure. And finally, if you want full control over everything, you can install third-party ROMs like GrapheneOS. Honestly, sometimes this is even easier than rooting, but it does come with some downsides still (I don't believe SafetyNet would pass on most third party ROMs, although miraculously, Pixel devices do support Secure Boot with third party ROMs, which I honestly feel was a very unexpected improvement of recent years.) Are Android phones generally less usable? I don't know. My whole family has always used Android phones and it seems fine. I do think the ecosystem of Android phones is a little weak right now, but at least we finally have CPUs that aren't so damn weak; that was one major score in favor of iPhone that was really hard to argue. They're probably still not all that close in the benchmarks, but it doesn't mater; the subjective experience is better. Android phones can finally drive high-refresh-rate displays very smoothly, and Firefox no longer feels like trying to browse the internet on a Pentium II. What I will say is that Apple has more advanced features for casual users provided that you stick to their ecosystem, but the "stick to their ecosystem" part is a hard sell for some of those features.