6 ms·

Oh man, you should have seen the mobile sphere before Android...

by Andrex 4y ago

naikrovek 4y ago
no joke. what a hellhole that was.
- Huh1337 4y ago
  I kinda liked J2ME...
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    You're the first person I've ever heard saying this. People used to complain a lot about Android fragmentation, but J2ME was easily 50x worse. Maybe 100x.
acdha 4y ago
Before iOS, to be fair. Touchscreens got the attention but the use of the iPod’s popularity to negotiate a non-terrible cellular market was equally transformative. The carriers used to charge something on the order of $50k each to be listed in their app stores and their percentage of revenue was high and negotiated based on your perceived ability to pay: we had several clients bail on J2ME projects because they were being asked to take home less than half of each sale and making 6-7 figure minimum profit commitments to each carrier! The sales person would look at their total corporate revenue to base their first offer on, and they were not quick to negotiate down to our actual budget.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  > Before iOS, to be fair. iOS didn't move the needle on open source, open bootloaders or anything gp mentioned. All iOS did was shift the balance of power from telecom companies to Apple. Android was far more open than all that came before it: the source code was available,it used open source & contributed back, and brought a very "PC" mindset[1] to an industry that had always considered handsets to be appliances (save a few Nokia models in the Communicator line). 1. "Intents" that could be handled by any app of the users choosing was very much like "Open with..." on PCs. Even disregarding the open source stuff, Android was very much an open system just for that reason.
  - acdha 4y ago
    Going back to the original comment, iOS improved the situation from the carrier having veto power over the entire experience to just the phone vendor and the App Store is more open than some of the earlier ones were (standard terms). It also doesn’t have the ad / activity data issues. Android can be more open but let’s not pretend that a lot of devices have locked bootloaders, too, and has never lived up to that “PC” model due to things like proprietary drivers and apps refusing to run on unlocked devices. The future is very much unsettled here and we need something like legislation to reverse that trend.
    - sangnoir 4y ago
      > Android can be more open but let’s not pretend that a lot of devices have locked bootloaders Not all Android handsets have unlockable bootloaders - but all handsets with unlockable bootloaders run Android.
      - BlueTemplar 4y ago
        I think you meant to say can run Android ?
        sangnoir 4y ago
        I realized my comment could the interpreted the way you did as I was writing it, and left it ambiguous (because that too is a good thing enabled by Android's openness) However, my main point was that outside of niche devices[1] that are rounding errors for smartphone consumer market share: the vast majority of devices sold with unlockable bootloaders already run Android: I'd guestimate > 95%. Looking at the list of devices supported by LineageOS (after enabling "Legacy Devices") is awe-inspiring. In the past, Samsung, Sony and Motorola had a solid lineup of unlockable devices. 1. I say this as someone who almost succumbed to the temptation of buying the Pine64 phone with the intention of contributing code
        BlueTemplar 4y ago
int_19h 4y ago
Before Android and iOS, the dominant smartphone/PDA platforms were Windows Mobile and Symbian. And whatever their usability issues were, I don't recall there being a problem with downloading (or even buying boxed) third-party software directly from the authors and installing it directly.
- kolinko 4y ago
  As a developer from that era - developing for Symbian was absurdly difficult and awkward. Around 2007 we tried building an app that scanned barcodes in a store to show you comparison from online stores. Symbian's APIs for cameras were so broken, that we couldn't get a decent enough resolution of photos. Java had permission/ux issues that made the app unfeasible. It was literally impossible to build an app like this back then, even though phones had good enough cameras already. Not to mention the fact that you needed a whole studio to build and test even a simple app like this - so many variants of OSes, and phones, and every single one had it's own quirks. And to add an insult to the injury - we had to pirate the SDK, because the official links to SDKs didn't work for a few days, and nobody seemed to notice. So yeah, in theory the users could download apps to the devices. But in practice it was easier for devs to hack into iPhone 1.0 and build apps there - even before the official app store launch, than it was ever to build something for Symbian and the others.
- derefr 4y ago
  Before Android and iOS, no third-party developer cared about smartphones/PDAs, because they were a tiny sliver of the market and so you couldn't make money targeting them. Bigcorps like Microsoft/Facebook/Twitter might make free apps for these, just to cover them (since their own employees used them); but no ISV cared. If you were an ISV developing paid "apps" for "mobile" at all, you were developing J2ME apps for feature-phones.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    That's plainly not true. Sure, there weren't "millions of apps" in the store, but like I mentioned above, there was actual boxed software sold for those platforms.
RobotToaster 4y ago
I don't remember having these problems on windows mobile 5.
akira2501 4y ago
It was a nascent market, and the first versions of Android and iOS were not significantly better than what was already being offered. Is the suggestion that we wouldn't have put any effort into developing the ecosystem if Google and Apple didn't decide to involve themselves in it?
- kolinko 4y ago
  What? No, no, no. iOS and Android were night and day compared to Symbian and the other operating systems of that era. Aside from the very basic games and super-simple apps, it was virtually impossible to write anything significant for non-Apple/Android devices. Because of that, even before the official launch of an iOS SDK, there were more apps for iPhone (because people hacked it), than there ever were for Nokia. For WindowsCE, sure there were apps, but phones didn't run Windows really then. Only PDAs.
  - BlueTemplar 4y ago
    Hmm, yet Symbian had a third-party movie player that worked decently well... (finding it on the Web was a harder issue). Wait, also a whole freaking browser : Opera mini - don't say that isn't complex !
MisterTea 4y ago
You mean it how it barley existed and all we did was talk and text? Yes. And it was marvelous.
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  You have forgotten the video calls, have you ? Which is quite understandable, it's not like we use those much even today (in real life, I'm not talking about ads and movies), despite not having to pay extra to the cell carrier !

Oh man, you should have seen the mobile sphere before Android...

by Andrex 4y ago

Oh man, you should have seen the mobile sphere before Android...

naikrovek 4y ago

no joke. what a hellhole that was.

Huh1337 4y ago
I kinda liked J2ME...
- sangnoir 4y ago
  You're the first person I've ever heard saying this. People used to complain a lot about Android fragmentation, but J2ME was easily 50x worse. Maybe 100x.

acdha 4y ago

Before iOS, to be fair. Touchscreens got the attention but the use of the iPod’s popularity to negotiate a non-terrible cellular market was equally transformative. The carriers used to charge something on the order of $50k each to be listed in their app stores and their percentage of revenue was high and negotiated based on your perceived ability to pay: we had several clients bail on J2ME projects because they were being asked to take home less than half of each sale and making 6-7 figure minimum profit commitments to each carrier! The sales person would look at their total corporate revenue to base their first offer on, and they were not quick to negotiate down to our actual budget.

sangnoir 4y ago
> Before iOS, to be fair. iOS didn't move the needle on open source, open bootloaders or anything gp mentioned. All iOS did was shift the balance of power from telecom companies to Apple. Android was far more open than all that came before it: the source code was available,it used open source & contributed back, and brought a very "PC" mindset[1] to an industry that had always considered handsets to be appliances (save a few Nokia models in the Communicator line). 1. "Intents" that could be handled by any app of the users choosing was very much like "Open with..." on PCs. Even disregarding the open source stuff, Android was very much an open system just for that reason.
- acdha 4y ago
  Going back to the original comment, iOS improved the situation from the carrier having veto power over the entire experience to just the phone vendor and the App Store is more open than some of the earlier ones were (standard terms). It also doesn’t have the ad / activity data issues. Android can be more open but let’s not pretend that a lot of devices have locked bootloaders, too, and has never lived up to that “PC” model due to things like proprietary drivers and apps refusing to run on unlocked devices. The future is very much unsettled here and we need something like legislation to reverse that trend.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    > Android can be more open but let’s not pretend that a lot of devices have locked bootloaders Not all Android handsets have unlockable bootloaders - but all handsets with unlockable bootloaders run Android.
    - BlueTemplar 4y ago
      I think you meant to say can run Android ?
      - sangnoir 4y ago
        I realized my comment could the interpreted the way you did as I was writing it, and left it ambiguous (because that too is a good thing enabled by Android's openness) However, my main point was that outside of niche devices[1] that are rounding errors for smartphone consumer market share: the vast majority of devices sold with unlockable bootloaders already run Android: I'd guestimate > 95%. Looking at the list of devices supported by LineageOS (after enabling "Legacy Devices") is awe-inspiring. In the past, Samsung, Sony and Motorola had a solid lineup of unlockable devices. 1. I say this as someone who almost succumbed to the temptation of buying the Pine64 phone with the intention of contributing code
        BlueTemplar 4y ago

int_19h 4y ago

Before Android and iOS, the dominant smartphone/PDA platforms were Windows Mobile and Symbian. And whatever their usability issues were, I don't recall there being a problem with downloading (or even buying boxed) third-party software directly from the authors and installing it directly.

kolinko 4y ago
As a developer from that era - developing for Symbian was absurdly difficult and awkward. Around 2007 we tried building an app that scanned barcodes in a store to show you comparison from online stores. Symbian's APIs for cameras were so broken, that we couldn't get a decent enough resolution of photos. Java had permission/ux issues that made the app unfeasible. It was literally impossible to build an app like this back then, even though phones had good enough cameras already. Not to mention the fact that you needed a whole studio to build and test even a simple app like this - so many variants of OSes, and phones, and every single one had it's own quirks. And to add an insult to the injury - we had to pirate the SDK, because the official links to SDKs didn't work for a few days, and nobody seemed to notice. So yeah, in theory the users could download apps to the devices. But in practice it was easier for devs to hack into iPhone 1.0 and build apps there - even before the official app store launch, than it was ever to build something for Symbian and the others.
derefr 4y ago
Before Android and iOS, no third-party developer cared about smartphones/PDAs, because they were a tiny sliver of the market and so you couldn't make money targeting them. Bigcorps like Microsoft/Facebook/Twitter might make free apps for these, just to cover them (since their own employees used them); but no ISV cared. If you were an ISV developing paid "apps" for "mobile" at all, you were developing J2ME apps for feature-phones.
- int_19h 4y ago
  That's plainly not true. Sure, there weren't "millions of apps" in the store, but like I mentioned above, there was actual boxed software sold for those platforms.

RobotToaster 4y ago

I don't remember having these problems on windows mobile 5.

akira2501 4y ago

It was a nascent market, and the first versions of Android and iOS were not significantly better than what was already being offered. Is the suggestion that we wouldn't have put any effort into developing the ecosystem if Google and Apple didn't decide to involve themselves in it?

kolinko 4y ago
What? No, no, no. iOS and Android were night and day compared to Symbian and the other operating systems of that era. Aside from the very basic games and super-simple apps, it was virtually impossible to write anything significant for non-Apple/Android devices. Because of that, even before the official launch of an iOS SDK, there were more apps for iPhone (because people hacked it), than there ever were for Nokia. For WindowsCE, sure there were apps, but phones didn't run Windows really then. Only PDAs.
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  Hmm, yet Symbian had a third-party movie player that worked decently well... (finding it on the Web was a harder issue). Wait, also a whole freaking browser : Opera mini - don't say that isn't complex !

MisterTea 4y ago

You mean it how it barley existed and all we did was talk and text? Yes. And it was marvelous.

BlueTemplar 4y ago
You have forgotten the video calls, have you ? Which is quite understandable, it's not like we use those much even today (in real life, I'm not talking about ads and movies), despite not having to pay extra to the cell carrier !