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I have been developing Android apps since Eclair, and I'm from a "developing" country. For me the deterioration of Android started after Jelly Bean. Jelly Bean

I have been developing Android apps since Eclair, and I'm from a "developing" country. For me the deterioration of Android started after Jelly Bean. Jelly Bean for me is the best Android OS in history. So fast and fluid, it can run on the most low-end smartphones at that time. Developing for it was also very fun. Then I remember KitKat OS came and it was all hell broke loose. Every OEM was just releasing different Android versions here and there every year. And Google did nothing. They just let every smartphone company do what they want In my history of ~11 years of Android development, it's just hard to purchase a Google phone. I bought a Nexus tablet but I have to ask my sister in the US to ship it to me. The shipping fee is ridiculous high I remember. Then they introduced Pixel and Go editions but still I couldn't purchase officially from Google. I have to ask favor from someone in the US/EU to ship it to me.

roneythomas6 4y ago
I have used Jelly Bean both on S3 and Nexus 4. What I found is that Jelly Bean gets really slow after a while and you need to factory reset every couple of months. Newer versions of Android don't have this issue.
- danuker 4y ago
  A factory reset unapplies all updates. But for instance, Chrome will auto-update even without you being logged into a Google account.
  - roneythomas6 4y ago
    Factory reset on android can only reset the apps to the version of the app that came with the OS release. It doesn't revert any OS updates. Also all apps are updated by Google Play as long as you're logged in and haven't disabled auto-update.
    - danuker 4y ago
      Android 5 did revert my Chrome. Sites worked faster for a while on my very old device.
derefr 4y ago
> And Google did nothing. They just let every smartphone company do what they want What would you have expected them to do? Vendors are free by licensing to fork AOSP and do what they will with it. Ain't nothing Google can say to change that; any more than they can say what people can do with forks of Chromium.
- chii 4y ago
  they could've made the android naming and trademark licensing be the gateway - you have to maintain a certain level of quality, or not add crapware, etc. If a manufacturer forks, and don't get the naming rights, they cannot use the logos, name or branding.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - derefr 4y ago
    Google already did this a long time ago (https://developer.android.com/distribute/marketing-tools/brand-guidelines https://developer.android.com/distribute/marketing-tools/bra...): > The "Android" name, the Android logo, the "Google Play" brand, and other Google trademarks, are property of Google LLC and not part of the assets available through the Android Open Source Project. But guess what? This didn't (and still doesn't) influence the device vendors one bit. Instead, the device vendors worked around this constraint in the most blunt way possible: by stripping the word "Android" out of the OS in every place it appears, replacing it with some other term. That's half of what these Android-forked OSes (e.g. Xiaomi's MIUI) are about in the first place — giving the OS its own branding distinct from "Android."
    - deadbeeves 4y ago
      Not the device vendors. Some device vendors did that. Some other device vendors would have preferred to use the Android branding and comply with Google's restrictions than to alienate the existing userbase. Can you really imagine Samsung selling SamsungOS phones? Once Android was established it was well within Google's possibilities to impose restrictions, but they instead chose to let the manufacturers do whatever they pleased.
chii 4y ago
I completely agree with android getting worse every major update. I have an old-ish phone, but recently needed to update from android 9 to android 10. And have been plagued with issues ever since - volume is somehow lowered on bluetooth devices, and the battery doesn't last as long, and occasionally there are crashes that force phone to restart.
- NickNameNick 4y ago
  The Bluetooth audio issue is annoying. There seems to be some disagreement between the headset chipset and the phone about what the default volume level should be. You can turn off a setting called something like 'unified volume control', to go back to the old way of having separate (and redundant) volume control on both headset and source device.
  - chii 4y ago
    If you're referring to 'disable absolute volume control', I tried it, and doesn't seem to help much if anything at all.
    - h4waii 4y ago
      This option should allow you to adjust the volume on your peripheral AND your device, instead of only adjusting it on the device which may max out via software. This is something I set religiously on all the Android devices I use for audio-only media.
surfmike 4y ago
Interesting you had that experience, since KitKat had Project Svelte which was a big effort to cut memory usage. This made an enormous difference for low end phones.
- lawgimenez 4y ago
  My experience with KitKat is not that good. Yes memory usage improved but the introduction of broken APIs started here. I remember MediaPlayer API was just so broken in this build. It was breaking so much randomly in HTC and Sony that we have to search frantically for those phones. Plus our apps also run on TV by plugging an Android USB. It worked pretty well on JB and then broke suddenly after KitKat. I remember vividly since I have to code for 23 hours straight just to beat that deadline.
  - robocat 4y ago
    “As of October 2020, 1.47% of Android devices run KitKat. As of August 2022, it is the oldest Android version still supported by Google Play Services and is currently the minimum version to develop apps for the Google Play Store.” I remember KitKat being great because it was the version that introduced Chrome based WebView, which made a huge difference for compatibility if you needed it. However the WebView component only got auto-updating in Android 5.0, so security double sucks. And KitKat was the version that there was an explosion of devices for - impressive that 4.4.4 is still supported nearly a decade later (albeit without OS security patches!) It was released when iOS7 was released with the iPhone 5.
    - sir 4y ago
      The thing you have to remember about those usage figures is that they don’t really include the large numbers of low-end devices that are often running quite old versions of Android. The sort of person who uses SHAREit and other platforms to minimise their data usage, often has to delete one app and install another to switch between them (due to lack of space), and certainly can’t afford a new phone every few years, is not included in these statistics.
  - 4y ago
kyriakos 4y ago
I live in EU and pixel phones are not officially available to me. Even in countries where they are there is no sufficient stock for a long time after they are released. At this point mainstream Android devices are either Samsung or Chinese brands.
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
  EU here as well. You can buy them from a zillion resellers, or directly from Google.
  - kyriakos 4y ago
    They are not being sold directly from Google in all EU countries.
    - ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
      No, but resellers (Fnac, Media Markt, etc), Amazon, and eBay should cover all the edge cases.
acchow 4y ago
> They just let every smartphone company do what they want Android is an open source project.
- ec109685 4y ago
  Google is able to assert a high degree of control given they can chose or not chose to let a phone manufacturer have access to Google apps.
- type0 4y ago
  AOSP, Android Open Source Project But it isn't what regular people mean when you talk about Android. In the say way you could say that MacOS would be Open source if they had almost the same name with Darwin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)
pjmlp 4y ago
The way they went with Java support and how the NDK still feels like a 20% project after all these years killed the motivation for doing side gigs in Android development. Also Google IO is not fun any longer, knowing that I will only get to play with those features when my phone dies and is time for a replacement. And even when buying one needs to take care, for example, plenty of Android 10 phones still on sale.
- StrLght 4y ago
  I have worked on multiple apps from global top 500, we had a little bit of NDK for videos and WebRTC. But that code was written in the times when there was no widely used non-NDK APIs for media. Right now landscape is very different: NDK is very niche, and if you’re seeing it everywhere, then either you’re in the gamedev / IoT / etc, or doing something in a very strange way. What exactly do you use NDK extensively for?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Gamedev precisely.
- lawgimenez 4y ago
  I agree. The only memorable Google IO was the introduction of Google Glass skydiving event. That was so cool.
- dpkirchner 4y ago
  Back when I developed Android apps I never bothered to watch IO and barely kept up with the latest SDKs. There was no point because it takes years for new versions of Android to go live on enough devices to make the effort worthwhile. By the time half of users are on the latest version a whole new version has been released. I mean just look at this: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/android https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/android . No recent version ever even hit 50%. Maybe it would have been different if I was part of a large team with more time to spend on somewhat frivolous efforts.
causality0 4y ago
Personally I miss Kitkat 4.4. That sweet, sweet Mass Storage mode made file management oh so easy. No trying to copy things around only to have it bitch at you that the device is busy, or the crippled replacement MTP making Windows lose its shit at the idea you might want to copy a filetype that wasn't on its approved list. God we've regressed.
- randie63 4y ago
  THIS! MTP sucks hard and is slow and easy to overload with many files. My 4.2 device was Umi X2 Chinese phone and I even hacked together couple Roms for such Meadiatek based devices back then. I remember my lightest ROM was like 250mb. With working PlayStore and all, but obviously only bare minimum included. Nowadays even the lightest custom Roms are 700mb+ . With Google apps and all easy 1.5GB and more.
  - throwaway2056 4y ago
    Look at https://github.com/SelfAdjointOperator/better-adb-sync https://github.com/SelfAdjointOperator/better-adb-sync forked from https://github.com/google/adb-sync https://github.com/google/adb-sync Uses a syntax like rsync via adb.
  - Jiro 4y ago
    You're probably better off using adb. (Which does have its problems, like not handling copying directories well).
    - causality0 4y ago
      These days I just use a network file browser to copy files. Easier that way.
- lawgimenez 4y ago
  Ha! I love old school war stories like this.
sergiomattei 4y ago
> They just let every smartphone company do what they want You might be romanticizing the situation. Before Jelly Bean, it was still completely a Wild West. If anything, custom skins from manufacturers were even worse back then.
dangus 4y ago
> Every OEM was just releasing different Android versions here and there every year. And Google did nothing. They just let every smartphone company do what they want It's open source, what do you propose they do about that? Close source the OS? > For me the deterioration of Android started after Jelly Bean. Jelly Bean for me is the best Android OS in history. This is definitely where I lost you. That's a 10 year old OS, basically an OS that represents the the infancy of consumer smartphones. Anyone who actually goes back and uses an OS that old will quickly discover just how little "vital" functionality it has. One that's particularly funny to me: Android added native printer support in 8.0. That's something we've had on desktop computers for decades! We didn't even have fully fledged notification controls and do not disturb before Android 5, something that's considered a basic necessity now. Couldn't search the system settings. The list goes on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history
awelxtr 4y ago
I still reget updating to KitKat my Nexus 7 (2013)
slim 4y ago
sometimes I fantasize about forking jelly bean.

roneythomas6 4y ago

I have used Jelly Bean both on S3 and Nexus 4. What I found is that Jelly Bean gets really slow after a while and you need to factory reset every couple of months. Newer versions of Android don't have this issue.

danuker 4y ago
A factory reset unapplies all updates. But for instance, Chrome will auto-update even without you being logged into a Google account.
- roneythomas6 4y ago
  Factory reset on android can only reset the apps to the version of the app that came with the OS release. It doesn't revert any OS updates. Also all apps are updated by Google Play as long as you're logged in and haven't disabled auto-update.
  - danuker 4y ago
    Android 5 did revert my Chrome. Sites worked faster for a while on my very old device.

derefr 4y ago

> And Google did nothing. They just let every smartphone company do what they want What would you have expected them to do? Vendors are free by licensing to fork AOSP and do what they will with it. Ain't nothing Google can say to change that; any more than they can say what people can do with forks of Chromium.

chii 4y ago
they could've made the android naming and trademark licensing be the gateway - you have to maintain a certain level of quality, or not add crapware, etc. If a manufacturer forks, and don't get the naming rights, they cannot use the logos, name or branding.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- derefr 4y ago
  Google already did this a long time ago (https://developer.android.com/distribute/marketing-tools/brand-guidelines https://developer.android.com/distribute/marketing-tools/bra...): > The "Android" name, the Android logo, the "Google Play" brand, and other Google trademarks, are property of Google LLC and not part of the assets available through the Android Open Source Project. But guess what? This didn't (and still doesn't) influence the device vendors one bit. Instead, the device vendors worked around this constraint in the most blunt way possible: by stripping the word "Android" out of the OS in every place it appears, replacing it with some other term. That's half of what these Android-forked OSes (e.g. Xiaomi's MIUI) are about in the first place — giving the OS its own branding distinct from "Android."
  - deadbeeves 4y ago
    Not the device vendors. Some device vendors did that. Some other device vendors would have preferred to use the Android branding and comply with Google's restrictions than to alienate the existing userbase. Can you really imagine Samsung selling SamsungOS phones? Once Android was established it was well within Google's possibilities to impose restrictions, but they instead chose to let the manufacturers do whatever they pleased.

chii 4y ago

I completely agree with android getting worse every major update. I have an old-ish phone, but recently needed to update from android 9 to android 10. And have been plagued with issues ever since - volume is somehow lowered on bluetooth devices, and the battery doesn't last as long, and occasionally there are crashes that force phone to restart.

NickNameNick 4y ago
The Bluetooth audio issue is annoying. There seems to be some disagreement between the headset chipset and the phone about what the default volume level should be. You can turn off a setting called something like 'unified volume control', to go back to the old way of having separate (and redundant) volume control on both headset and source device.
- chii 4y ago
  If you're referring to 'disable absolute volume control', I tried it, and doesn't seem to help much if anything at all.
  - h4waii 4y ago
    This option should allow you to adjust the volume on your peripheral AND your device, instead of only adjusting it on the device which may max out via software. This is something I set religiously on all the Android devices I use for audio-only media.

surfmike 4y ago

Interesting you had that experience, since KitKat had Project Svelte which was a big effort to cut memory usage. This made an enormous difference for low end phones.

lawgimenez 4y ago
My experience with KitKat is not that good. Yes memory usage improved but the introduction of broken APIs started here. I remember MediaPlayer API was just so broken in this build. It was breaking so much randomly in HTC and Sony that we have to search frantically for those phones. Plus our apps also run on TV by plugging an Android USB. It worked pretty well on JB and then broke suddenly after KitKat. I remember vividly since I have to code for 23 hours straight just to beat that deadline.
- robocat 4y ago
  “As of October 2020, 1.47% of Android devices run KitKat. As of August 2022, it is the oldest Android version still supported by Google Play Services and is currently the minimum version to develop apps for the Google Play Store.” I remember KitKat being great because it was the version that introduced Chrome based WebView, which made a huge difference for compatibility if you needed it. However the WebView component only got auto-updating in Android 5.0, so security double sucks. And KitKat was the version that there was an explosion of devices for - impressive that 4.4.4 is still supported nearly a decade later (albeit without OS security patches!) It was released when iOS7 was released with the iPhone 5.
  - sir 4y ago
    The thing you have to remember about those usage figures is that they don’t really include the large numbers of low-end devices that are often running quite old versions of Android. The sort of person who uses SHAREit and other platforms to minimise their data usage, often has to delete one app and install another to switch between them (due to lack of space), and certainly can’t afford a new phone every few years, is not included in these statistics.
- 4y ago

kyriakos 4y ago

I live in EU and pixel phones are not officially available to me. Even in countries where they are there is no sufficient stock for a long time after they are released. At this point mainstream Android devices are either Samsung or Chinese brands.

ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
EU here as well. You can buy them from a zillion resellers, or directly from Google.
- kyriakos 4y ago
  They are not being sold directly from Google in all EU countries.
  - ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
    No, but resellers (Fnac, Media Markt, etc), Amazon, and eBay should cover all the edge cases.

acchow 4y ago

> They just let every smartphone company do what they want Android is an open source project.

ec109685 4y ago
Google is able to assert a high degree of control given they can chose or not chose to let a phone manufacturer have access to Google apps.
type0 4y ago
AOSP, Android Open Source Project But it isn't what regular people mean when you talk about Android. In the say way you could say that MacOS would be Open source if they had almost the same name with Darwin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)

pjmlp 4y ago

The way they went with Java support and how the NDK still feels like a 20% project after all these years killed the motivation for doing side gigs in Android development. Also Google IO is not fun any longer, knowing that I will only get to play with those features when my phone dies and is time for a replacement. And even when buying one needs to take care, for example, plenty of Android 10 phones still on sale.

StrLght 4y ago
I have worked on multiple apps from global top 500, we had a little bit of NDK for videos and WebRTC. But that code was written in the times when there was no widely used non-NDK APIs for media. Right now landscape is very different: NDK is very niche, and if you’re seeing it everywhere, then either you’re in the gamedev / IoT / etc, or doing something in a very strange way. What exactly do you use NDK extensively for?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Gamedev precisely.
lawgimenez 4y ago
I agree. The only memorable Google IO was the introduction of Google Glass skydiving event. That was so cool.
dpkirchner 4y ago
Back when I developed Android apps I never bothered to watch IO and barely kept up with the latest SDKs. There was no point because it takes years for new versions of Android to go live on enough devices to make the effort worthwhile. By the time half of users are on the latest version a whole new version has been released. I mean just look at this: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/android https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/android . No recent version ever even hit 50%. Maybe it would have been different if I was part of a large team with more time to spend on somewhat frivolous efforts.

causality0 4y ago

Personally I miss Kitkat 4.4. That sweet, sweet Mass Storage mode made file management oh so easy. No trying to copy things around only to have it bitch at you that the device is busy, or the crippled replacement MTP making Windows lose its shit at the idea you might want to copy a filetype that wasn't on its approved list. God we've regressed.

randie63 4y ago
THIS! MTP sucks hard and is slow and easy to overload with many files. My 4.2 device was Umi X2 Chinese phone and I even hacked together couple Roms for such Meadiatek based devices back then. I remember my lightest ROM was like 250mb. With working PlayStore and all, but obviously only bare minimum included. Nowadays even the lightest custom Roms are 700mb+ . With Google apps and all easy 1.5GB and more.
- throwaway2056 4y ago
  Look at https://github.com/SelfAdjointOperator/better-adb-sync https://github.com/SelfAdjointOperator/better-adb-sync forked from https://github.com/google/adb-sync https://github.com/google/adb-sync Uses a syntax like rsync via adb.
- Jiro 4y ago
  You're probably better off using adb. (Which does have its problems, like not handling copying directories well).
  - causality0 4y ago
    These days I just use a network file browser to copy files. Easier that way.
lawgimenez 4y ago
Ha! I love old school war stories like this.

sergiomattei 4y ago

> They just let every smartphone company do what they want You might be romanticizing the situation. Before Jelly Bean, it was still completely a Wild West. If anything, custom skins from manufacturers were even worse back then.

dangus 4y ago

> Every OEM was just releasing different Android versions here and there every year. And Google did nothing. They just let every smartphone company do what they want It's open source, what do you propose they do about that? Close source the OS? > For me the deterioration of Android started after Jelly Bean. Jelly Bean for me is the best Android OS in history. This is definitely where I lost you. That's a 10 year old OS, basically an OS that represents the the infancy of consumer smartphones. Anyone who actually goes back and uses an OS that old will quickly discover just how little "vital" functionality it has. One that's particularly funny to me: Android added native printer support in 8.0. That's something we've had on desktop computers for decades! We didn't even have fully fledged notification controls and do not disturb before Android 5, something that's considered a basic necessity now. Couldn't search the system settings. The list goes on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history

awelxtr 4y ago

I still reget updating to KitKat my Nexus 7 (2013)

slim 4y ago

sometimes I fantasize about forking jelly bean.