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I bought my wife’s uncle a cheap Android phone after his old flip phone broke. At the time he needed to use Uber for his work commute, so a smartphone was in or

I bought my wife’s uncle a cheap Android phone after his old flip phone broke. At the time he needed to use Uber for his work commute, so a smartphone was in order. I helped him set up a google account, downloaded some important apps and showed him how to use them. Fast forward 2 weeks and he’s complaining the battery only lasts a couple hours. The Lock Screen was littered with gambling ads, there were all kinds of apps installed, and the phone was basically unusable. He claimed to have no idea how it happened. I assumed he was just clicking on any/every pop up. Maybe he really downloaded 1 bad app which then self installed the rest of this crap? Anyway, I went back to the store and bought him an iPhone SE. That was years ago now and haven’t heard a single complaint since. I think android phones aren’t for the tech illiterate. It’s way too easy to screw them up.

supriyo-biswas 3y ago
I've moved away from the Android ecosystem long ago, so I don't know if this is still maintained, but there's the Addons Detector app[1] which can be used to locate adware applications. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?hl=en&id=com.denper.addonsdetector https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?hl=en&id=com.denp...
- eastbound 3y ago
  Just search the Play store for “antivirus” and install all of them. /s that’s probably the problem with an unsafe OS by default.
  - throwme_123 3y ago
    This is a joke, right? Many of these so called "antiviruses" are malware themselves.
    - sva_ 3y ago
      In case you really don't know, the "/s" stands for "the preceding text was meant sarcastically".
      - junon 3y ago
        It's a reddit thing which is why it doesn't land here on HN as well.
        sva_ 3y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation
      - Uehreka 3y ago
        I’m pretty sure it stands for “I was being sarcastic but my sarcasm wasn’t funny enough to read as sarcasm”.
  - ohgodplsno 3y ago
    >that’s probably the problem with an unsafe OS by default. Considering how absolutely dreadful iOS has been when it comes to CVEs allowing arbitrary code executions with kernel level privileges, I don't really think anyone gets to talk about iOS being "secure" by default. Secure for your grandfather maybe. There's a reason Zerodium values iOS zero days less than Android ones too [0], which is quite telling of the amount of them they already have in stock. See also Pegasus, which literally had multiple no-interaction RCEs for iPhones through iMessage (because Apple keeps parsing files through horribly vulnerable parsers). [1] Apple gets to pretend that iOS is secure because they control the app store, which is the only official point of entry, and iOS is closed source. [0] https://zerodium.com/program.html https://zerodium.com/program.html [1] https://citizenlab.ca/2021/09/forcedentry-nso-group-imessage-zero-click-exploit-captured-in-the-wild/ https://citizenlab.ca/2021/09/forcedentry-nso-group-imessage...
    - 16bitvoid 3y ago
      > There's a reason Zerodium values iOS zero days less than Android ones too [0], which is quite telling of the amount of them they already have in stock. You could be right, but I don't think it's a given that the latter follows the former. The reason that Zerodium values iOS zero-days less than Androids is more likely because the US and European governments that purchase these exploits from Zerodium value iOS less than Android, which itself could be attributed to there simply being more Android phones used by adversarial countries than iOS.
      - ohgodplsno 3y ago
        Nope. Case in point, Pegasus was used to attack the French Minister of Armies on her iPhone. Hard to attack someone more valuable than that. Zerodium doesn't blow zero days on showing ads to you, they are used for nation-state level attacks.
    - hansel_der 3y ago
      > There's a reason Zerodium values iOS zero days less than Android ones too iirc it was the other way around for some time
- kornhole 3y ago
  There are loads of tools available to fix Android phones. The problem is that most people just use whatever is setup preinstalled. It would be a fun experiment for someone to document and post here: Buy the cheapest most bloated phone you can find and then: 1. Run the universal android debloater found on Github to disable all the crap. 2. Install some apps such as InviZible Pro to firewall the apps.
PopAlongKid 3y ago
>downloaded some important apps Why did you need to download anything besides Uber? You said that was the only thing he needed a smartphone for.
- spicybright 3y ago
  For the stuff the flip phone used to do. Soemtimes OEM androids can replace normal features with their own garbage. A better media player and safer browser is a good idea too. It really doesn't matter to the point of the story though.
  - hexo 3y ago
    What is safer browser? And also, safer than what?
    - spicybright 3y ago
      A browser that's not a years out of date chrome re-skin is a safer browser. Pretty much anything that gets updated regularly is good enough vs that. I prefer firefox with a few addons because I generally know what I want, but opera and brave have good defaults out of the box from what I hear.
NotYourLawyer 3y ago
Android is the new Windows 95.
- kornhole 3y ago
  A bloated setup provided by the store or carrier might be an apt analogy, but a phone running AOSP or a fork of it such as Graphene is better compared to Linux.
  - NotYourLawyer 3y ago
    How many smart TVs have you seen running AOSP? Zero? Yeah, me too.
    - kornhole 3y ago
      I was speaking about handsets. You can install AOSP on an SBC connected to your TV which is what I would do rather than use whatever is built into a TV.
      - NotYourLawyer 3y ago
        Yeah, I always ignore the TV’s smart interface and just use a set top box. Haven’t tried rolling my pan with AOSP yet, Apple TV is good enough.
- f6v 3y ago
  New Windows is bloated with the stuff I don’t want to see as well.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  Fast, user-respecting, and liberating?
- tored 3y ago
  I would switch to Windows 95 If I could.
cubefox 3y ago
This is an irrational comparison. You are comparing an expensive brand phone to a cheap no name Android phone. If anything, you should compare the iPhone SE to a device by Samsung or similar which costs as much as the iPhone SE. I highly doubt you would get any malware there. The article also mentions that the problem is not with Android, but with some unknown phone brands.
- supriyo-biswas 3y ago
  The comment is talking about installation of adware, which you can install on any Android device, including the flagships. The Apple App Store does have shady apps (see for example the recent ChatGPT clones) but the problem there is much less severe. Whether it stays that way with alternative app stores proposed in the EU is an interesting prospect, and a separate question though.
  - cubefox 3y ago
    Adware can also be installed on any Mac or Windows device, no matter the price. Apple fans always gesture at a supposed threat of breaking the AppStore monopoly, yet they conveniently ignore that such a monopoly already doesn't exist on their beloved Macs.
    - deleted 3y ago
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    - deleted 3y ago
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    - throwaway35imn 3y ago
      Do you not remember how much of a problem malware was on windows just a few years ago? It's why the AV industry is a thing now It's gotten a bit better but still a valid concern
      - Osiris 3y ago
        Evolution. Operating systems, and more specifically, security have been constantly evolving. Bad actors have exploited vulnerabilities and because of that there has been a bigger emphasis on security, even down to the hardware level. One could argue that the sandbox model used in iOS and other operating systems is a response to that era of malware. And we’re more secure because of it.
jeroenhd 3y ago
Apps can't just install other apps. You need system level permissions for something like that to happen. It's possible malware somehow found its way to the phone, but the more likely scenario is that the phone was infected out of the factory. The bottom of the barrel Android phones (no name brands, often phones <$200) feature system level adware that downloads and installs more crap as time goes on. It's one of the reasons these phones can be sold for that cheap. I have to wonder what brand phone you got him. I've never seen this happen on brand phones, it's always the AliExpress/Amazon crap that's full of ads in seconds. Spend the same amount of money you'd spend on an iPhone SE and I highly doubt you'll get the same result.
- yardie 3y ago
  It's' been a few years since I used an Android phone daily. But one of the nice things about iOS is the granularity of permissions. For Android app permissions are asked once during install and you take it or leave it. iOS is constantly renewing requests for location permissions and other things. And it reinforces that you are in control of your device. If you don't want an app or site to have location data you don't have to give it.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    The same is true on Android today. You are asked for permissions the first time the app needs them, not at installation time. And various things require various permissions, you don't get asked in bulk.
  - Xorlev 3y ago
    Android also reaps permissions that haven't been used recently. In the case of location, Android prompts for renewal even if it has been used recently.
  - ajross 3y ago
    > For Android app permissions are asked once during install and you take it or leave it. This is not correct. In fact the permissions paradigm for both systems is basically identical.
8jef 3y ago
Cheap android phones coming from some countries manufacturing them (you know which one-s) often have pre-installed shady apps disguised as regular bloat/admin process apps that can't be uninstalled, which deploys all kinds of attacks once the phone get configured and online. Same thing can be said of any smartphone (and pc os's), with the difference being you get spooked / polluted by knowned corps and so-called friendlies when you get Korean or US brands. Nothing new, this has been going on since the early days of android / ios. Good hygiene: deactivate/uninstall any/all apps you can at first boot, reboot, then install anew all the apps you really use. Takes a few minutes/hours, worth it most of the time. YMMV.
- Smoosh 3y ago
  It seems to me that targeting phones with built-in spying should be a higher priority for the USA than targeting TikTok.
cloudking 3y ago
The only good Android devices are the official Google Pixel series. Every other brand comes loaded with bloatware.
- stiltzkin 3y ago
  I have in high regard more Nvidia Shield Pro, to this day still bring updates since the last model 2019 and gives supports almost as Apple, shame it is unknown a new release version of this device.
- secondcoming 3y ago
  Nokia's Android phones are decent.
- spurgu 3y ago
  Pretty much I loved the Nexus lineup and used the first Pixels but stopped buying them when the prices started approaching that of laptops.
  - ikekkdcjkfke 3y ago
    Is the natural order of a public company to lower product quality and increase price?
    - spurgu 3y ago
      What? Haven't been following much (since I'm not interested in paying close to $1k for a phone) but from what I gather the Pixels are still excellent devices.
      - yencabulator 3y ago
        The brand-new Pixel 7A was priced $499 at launch with ~$125 freebies included in that price (free Pixel Buds or $100 off Pixel Buds Pro, basic case they priced at $25).
- saltcured 3y ago
geoduck14 3y ago
He wasn't making it up. I work with a nonprofit and we needed 40 cheap tablets to run some custom app that we wrote. I had tight control over what was installed and clicked on. After 9 months of using the tablets, they all would have an ad pop-up on the lock screen. I'm guessing that they came with malware that activated after X months of use. Anyway, we wiped the tablets and reinstalled our app from scratch. It wasn't too hard because the tablets were single-purpose, but if those tablets were personal tablets with all of my favorite things, it would suck.
- duxup 3y ago
  >cheap tablets Those things are the bane of my existence. I support / develop some tablet / phone business apps. Some customers cheap out up front on tablets and then I have listen to them complain that leopards ate their face (the tablets come with pre-installed garbage, one of them demands you log in to at least 3 different services on every reboot, strangely slow / unpredictable OS response times to simple API calls...). It's horrible, I own a couple of the customer's tablets to provide better support and +90% of the time the issue is "you cheaped out and bought a crappy tablet". These folks save sub $10K or even way less than that up front and then these crappy tablets and their crap-ware eats up their productivity endlessly. Sometimes they have compliance issues with their own people because they tried rebooting and it takes FOREVER for the cheap tablet to actually be usable so their employees don't do the thing with the app at all... I just tell them all they should have bought iPads / we recommend buying an iPad. At this point I'm quietly lobbying that we stop supporting Android "unofficially" and push anyone new to use iPads. Android support will be there for the sake of saying we support it... but only as an alternative / best effort just because the ecosystem is full of such bad products / eats up our time with "not the application" / "your people didn't do the thing because they hate their tablet / it didn't work" issues.
  - kitsunesoba 3y ago
    There are tolerable (minimal crapware) cheapish Android tablets out there, but you're looking at ~$200US minimum to get those and they're still going to have terrible performance and won't be able to even handle homescreen animations without dropping frames. At that point you might as well spend that extra ~$100 for an iPad for even less crapware and a SoC that won't struggle with trivial things.
realusername 3y ago
You absolutely get adware on iOS, I remember at least the calendar ad infestation as an example, and I had my fair share of broken icloud account to fix for my tech illiterate father as well. Don't know what they are doing on that aspect but even as a software developer, it was very hard to fix
GeekyBear 3y ago
> I went back to the store and bought him an iPhone SE. That was years ago now and haven’t heard a single complaint since. I would assert that the iPhone SE is the best smartphone bang for the buck, especially for users in your family with a tendency to shoot themselves in the foot and need your assistance. The $399 iPhone SE from 2016 got six years of OS updates and just got another security update last month. That's about $57 per supported year.
- hansel_der 3y ago
  bought a 1st gen SE in 2017, dropped daily, nothing broke to this day. what a phone!
y-c-o-m-b 3y ago
> I think android phones aren’t for the tech illiterate. As an Android user, I think I'm on-board with this sentiment. Anecdotally, most of the people I know with Android phones are in IT; specifically software engineers. I once had to transfer files that were downloaded on my phone to a work laptop that couldn't access the external internet and no access to external storage. I installed Termux on my Android phone, dropped to the linux terminal, installed http-server and spun up a server on the local network. I was then able to download the files I needed off of my phone. Quirky scenarios like the one I mentioned where I can "MacGyver" my Android phone is why I really like the platform. And then there's F-Droid so I don't have to deal with those pesky apps from the Google Play store.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  > I once had to transfer files that were downloaded on my phone to a work laptop that couldn't access the external internet and no access to external storage. I installed Termux on my Android phone, dropped to the linux terminal, installed http-server and spun up a server on the local network. I was then able to download the files I needed off of my phone. I don't get it, why didn't you plug in a USB cable?
  - kitsunesoba 3y ago
    Android file transfer is implemented via the terrible ancient standard MTP[0] which has spotty support anywhere but Windows. I wish Android devices instead worked like iPods, which had a partition that mounted as a plain old USB/Firewire disk when plugged into a computer. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol
    - tannhaeuser 3y ago
      Actually, old HTC and Samsung Android phones used to register as USB Mass Storage device, but Android changed that to MTP in version 5 or so.
      - 3y ago
ksec 3y ago
Ignoring under the hood OS and Subsystem. The Android UX started as a pocket pc, while iOS started as an Appliance. Even today that is more of less the same, although the both converge in the between as they look more and more alike. I have a somewhat increasingly constrain opinion on HN. May be Steve Jobs's original model was right / better. Only First Party and extremely selected third party Native Apps. And everything else being Web / HTML 5 Apps.
bastawhiz 3y ago
My mom has done this to every device she's owned. My Christmas visit starts by me asking her why she has four or five weather apps installed, every app for every local news station, apps for "coupons", and everything else I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. On her iPad, her lock screen has a CVS receipt of garbage notifications. Frankly, the problem is the ubiquity of native apps. You don't need a native app to get the weather. It shouldn't have any permissions. This is the whole premise of the web. The web has its own problems, but it can't ruin a device like poorly-considered native apps can.
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  iOS penalizes apps that abuse background privileges (running too frequently, running too long, being too resource hungry), so their background tasks get run less and less frequently over time. So at least on iOS, the impact of native junkware is limited to notification spam and can't run battery life into the ground as badly. It's not much worse than PWAs can do with webworkers and push notification permissions (and if someone has been granting every app push permissions, you can be sure they'll do the same for PWA push permissions).
  - bastawhiz 3y ago
    Against all odds, she hasn't enabled notifications for a single website. She knows she doesn't like getting notifications and usually always declines.
- somat 3y ago
  This also exposes a strange design decision involving the entire app system. Why do they need to be installed? you don't go to the manufacturers web store then explicitly install a web page so that you can then use a web app. Apps are a remininent of the personal computer experience of installing software. but for better or worse that ecosystem does not really exist on phones. apps exist in a sandbox environment with a fine grain permission for device access. really they should just transparently install and run and uninstall. It should behave like a web page with a saner execution environment. the main reason the app ecosystem exists the way it does is so the os manufacturer can seek rent on the device. This is why I am so thankful the internet and the web were developed in an academic environment rather than a commercial environment. centralized rent seeking was not a design goal of the internet.
AlecSchueler 3y ago
At the same time, would you say they're therefore the better phone for the tech literate?
userbinator 3y ago
Make and model?
e40 3y ago
I think it's ads in free apps. I kept telling my mom to stop installing free apps on Android. She really wanted this one card game. She swears she never clicked on an ad, but she constantly had malware. I pretty much forced her to go to iOS and she's been happen ever since. She really resisted me, though, and complained for a few months, but now agrees it's better. I switched in Jan 2020. I got so sick of having to upgrade phones every 2 years to get updates. I understand that's changed now (Pixel phones gets updates for 3 or 4 years?), but for more than a decade I bought a new phone every 2 years. I've had the same iPhone (11) since 1/20 and I will keep it for as long as it has updates and/or the battery lasts. So far, it feels like the day I got it.
apexalpha 3y ago
Reminds me of my own comment, some time ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33314868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33314868 I completely agree with your last sentence. The protected garden Apple creates is a blessing for most tech illiterate users.
rstuart4133 3y ago
It probably was the phone OS shipping with malware, but there is a different route that effects all phones, including iOS. It's happens the authors loose interest in maintaining their apps. Malware authors then purchase their developer keys, issue an update (but change nothing else), and you find yourself being woken up at 2AM in the morning by some screeching Casino ad. Or at least that's what my wifes phone did to her, and of course it was immediately my problem. I don't know if Android has an Update History for apps now, but back then it didn't. You don't know what app it is, because all the normal functional is untouched so it works as before. In my case there were two of them - which was worse because my technique was to uninstall one by one, then re-install if the problem continued. After a week or two of experimenting I found the right combination of apps to uninstall and my nights became peaceful again. The Play store cleaned them out after a while of course, but it was painful at the time.

supriyo-biswas 3y ago

I've moved away from the Android ecosystem long ago, so I don't know if this is still maintained, but there's the Addons Detector app[1] which can be used to locate adware applications. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?hl=en&id=com.denper.addonsdetector https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?hl=en&id=com.denp...

eastbound 3y ago
Just search the Play store for “antivirus” and install all of them. /s that’s probably the problem with an unsafe OS by default.
- throwme_123 3y ago
  This is a joke, right? Many of these so called "antiviruses" are malware themselves.
  - sva_ 3y ago
    In case you really don't know, the "/s" stands for "the preceding text was meant sarcastically".
    - junon 3y ago
      It's a reddit thing which is why it doesn't land here on HN as well.
      - sva_ 3y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation
    - Uehreka 3y ago
      I’m pretty sure it stands for “I was being sarcastic but my sarcasm wasn’t funny enough to read as sarcasm”.
- ohgodplsno 3y ago
  >that’s probably the problem with an unsafe OS by default. Considering how absolutely dreadful iOS has been when it comes to CVEs allowing arbitrary code executions with kernel level privileges, I don't really think anyone gets to talk about iOS being "secure" by default. Secure for your grandfather maybe. There's a reason Zerodium values iOS zero days less than Android ones too [0], which is quite telling of the amount of them they already have in stock. See also Pegasus, which literally had multiple no-interaction RCEs for iPhones through iMessage (because Apple keeps parsing files through horribly vulnerable parsers). [1] Apple gets to pretend that iOS is secure because they control the app store, which is the only official point of entry, and iOS is closed source. [0] https://zerodium.com/program.html https://zerodium.com/program.html [1] https://citizenlab.ca/2021/09/forcedentry-nso-group-imessage-zero-click-exploit-captured-in-the-wild/ https://citizenlab.ca/2021/09/forcedentry-nso-group-imessage...
  - 16bitvoid 3y ago
    > There's a reason Zerodium values iOS zero days less than Android ones too [0], which is quite telling of the amount of them they already have in stock. You could be right, but I don't think it's a given that the latter follows the former. The reason that Zerodium values iOS zero-days less than Androids is more likely because the US and European governments that purchase these exploits from Zerodium value iOS less than Android, which itself could be attributed to there simply being more Android phones used by adversarial countries than iOS.
    - ohgodplsno 3y ago
      Nope. Case in point, Pegasus was used to attack the French Minister of Armies on her iPhone. Hard to attack someone more valuable than that. Zerodium doesn't blow zero days on showing ads to you, they are used for nation-state level attacks.
  - hansel_der 3y ago
    > There's a reason Zerodium values iOS zero days less than Android ones too iirc it was the other way around for some time
kornhole 3y ago
There are loads of tools available to fix Android phones. The problem is that most people just use whatever is setup preinstalled. It would be a fun experiment for someone to document and post here: Buy the cheapest most bloated phone you can find and then: 1. Run the universal android debloater found on Github to disable all the crap. 2. Install some apps such as InviZible Pro to firewall the apps.

PopAlongKid 3y ago

>downloaded some important apps Why did you need to download anything besides Uber? You said that was the only thing he needed a smartphone for.

spicybright 3y ago
For the stuff the flip phone used to do. Soemtimes OEM androids can replace normal features with their own garbage. A better media player and safer browser is a good idea too. It really doesn't matter to the point of the story though.
- hexo 3y ago
  What is safer browser? And also, safer than what?
  - spicybright 3y ago
    A browser that's not a years out of date chrome re-skin is a safer browser. Pretty much anything that gets updated regularly is good enough vs that. I prefer firefox with a few addons because I generally know what I want, but opera and brave have good defaults out of the box from what I hear.

NotYourLawyer 3y ago

Android is the new Windows 95.

kornhole 3y ago
A bloated setup provided by the store or carrier might be an apt analogy, but a phone running AOSP or a fork of it such as Graphene is better compared to Linux.
- NotYourLawyer 3y ago
  How many smart TVs have you seen running AOSP? Zero? Yeah, me too.
  - kornhole 3y ago
    I was speaking about handsets. You can install AOSP on an SBC connected to your TV which is what I would do rather than use whatever is built into a TV.
    - NotYourLawyer 3y ago
      Yeah, I always ignore the TV’s smart interface and just use a set top box. Haven’t tried rolling my pan with AOSP yet, Apple TV is good enough.
f6v 3y ago
New Windows is bloated with the stuff I don’t want to see as well.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
Fast, user-respecting, and liberating?
tored 3y ago
I would switch to Windows 95 If I could.

cubefox 3y ago

This is an irrational comparison. You are comparing an expensive brand phone to a cheap no name Android phone. If anything, you should compare the iPhone SE to a device by Samsung or similar which costs as much as the iPhone SE. I highly doubt you would get any malware there. The article also mentions that the problem is not with Android, but with some unknown phone brands.

supriyo-biswas 3y ago
The comment is talking about installation of adware, which you can install on any Android device, including the flagships. The Apple App Store does have shady apps (see for example the recent ChatGPT clones) but the problem there is much less severe. Whether it stays that way with alternative app stores proposed in the EU is an interesting prospect, and a separate question though.
- cubefox 3y ago
  Adware can also be installed on any Mac or Windows device, no matter the price. Apple fans always gesture at a supposed threat of breaking the AppStore monopoly, yet they conveniently ignore that such a monopoly already doesn't exist on their beloved Macs.
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  - throwaway35imn 3y ago
    Do you not remember how much of a problem malware was on windows just a few years ago? It's why the AV industry is a thing now It's gotten a bit better but still a valid concern
    - Osiris 3y ago
      Evolution. Operating systems, and more specifically, security have been constantly evolving. Bad actors have exploited vulnerabilities and because of that there has been a bigger emphasis on security, even down to the hardware level. One could argue that the sandbox model used in iOS and other operating systems is a response to that era of malware. And we’re more secure because of it.

jeroenhd 3y ago

Apps can't just install other apps. You need system level permissions for something like that to happen. It's possible malware somehow found its way to the phone, but the more likely scenario is that the phone was infected out of the factory. The bottom of the barrel Android phones (no name brands, often phones <$200) feature system level adware that downloads and installs more crap as time goes on. It's one of the reasons these phones can be sold for that cheap. I have to wonder what brand phone you got him. I've never seen this happen on brand phones, it's always the AliExpress/Amazon crap that's full of ads in seconds. Spend the same amount of money you'd spend on an iPhone SE and I highly doubt you'll get the same result.

yardie 3y ago
It's' been a few years since I used an Android phone daily. But one of the nice things about iOS is the granularity of permissions. For Android app permissions are asked once during install and you take it or leave it. iOS is constantly renewing requests for location permissions and other things. And it reinforces that you are in control of your device. If you don't want an app or site to have location data you don't have to give it.
- deleted 3y ago
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- tsimionescu 3y ago
  The same is true on Android today. You are asked for permissions the first time the app needs them, not at installation time. And various things require various permissions, you don't get asked in bulk.
- Xorlev 3y ago
  Android also reaps permissions that haven't been used recently. In the case of location, Android prompts for renewal even if it has been used recently.
- ajross 3y ago
  > For Android app permissions are asked once during install and you take it or leave it. This is not correct. In fact the permissions paradigm for both systems is basically identical.

8jef 3y ago

Cheap android phones coming from some countries manufacturing them (you know which one-s) often have pre-installed shady apps disguised as regular bloat/admin process apps that can't be uninstalled, which deploys all kinds of attacks once the phone get configured and online. Same thing can be said of any smartphone (and pc os's), with the difference being you get spooked / polluted by knowned corps and so-called friendlies when you get Korean or US brands. Nothing new, this has been going on since the early days of android / ios. Good hygiene: deactivate/uninstall any/all apps you can at first boot, reboot, then install anew all the apps you really use. Takes a few minutes/hours, worth it most of the time. YMMV.

Smoosh 3y ago
It seems to me that targeting phones with built-in spying should be a higher priority for the USA than targeting TikTok.

cloudking 3y ago

The only good Android devices are the official Google Pixel series. Every other brand comes loaded with bloatware.

stiltzkin 3y ago
I have in high regard more Nvidia Shield Pro, to this day still bring updates since the last model 2019 and gives supports almost as Apple, shame it is unknown a new release version of this device.
secondcoming 3y ago
Nokia's Android phones are decent.
spurgu 3y ago
Pretty much I loved the Nexus lineup and used the first Pixels but stopped buying them when the prices started approaching that of laptops.
- ikekkdcjkfke 3y ago
  Is the natural order of a public company to lower product quality and increase price?
  - spurgu 3y ago
    What? Haven't been following much (since I'm not interested in paying close to $1k for a phone) but from what I gather the Pixels are still excellent devices.
    - yencabulator 3y ago
      The brand-new Pixel 7A was priced $499 at launch with ~$125 freebies included in that price (free Pixel Buds or $100 off Pixel Buds Pro, basic case they priced at $25).
saltcured 3y ago

geoduck14 3y ago

He wasn't making it up. I work with a nonprofit and we needed 40 cheap tablets to run some custom app that we wrote. I had tight control over what was installed and clicked on. After 9 months of using the tablets, they all would have an ad pop-up on the lock screen. I'm guessing that they came with malware that activated after X months of use. Anyway, we wiped the tablets and reinstalled our app from scratch. It wasn't too hard because the tablets were single-purpose, but if those tablets were personal tablets with all of my favorite things, it would suck.

duxup 3y ago
>cheap tablets Those things are the bane of my existence. I support / develop some tablet / phone business apps. Some customers cheap out up front on tablets and then I have listen to them complain that leopards ate their face (the tablets come with pre-installed garbage, one of them demands you log in to at least 3 different services on every reboot, strangely slow / unpredictable OS response times to simple API calls...). It's horrible, I own a couple of the customer's tablets to provide better support and +90% of the time the issue is "you cheaped out and bought a crappy tablet". These folks save sub $10K or even way less than that up front and then these crappy tablets and their crap-ware eats up their productivity endlessly. Sometimes they have compliance issues with their own people because they tried rebooting and it takes FOREVER for the cheap tablet to actually be usable so their employees don't do the thing with the app at all... I just tell them all they should have bought iPads / we recommend buying an iPad. At this point I'm quietly lobbying that we stop supporting Android "unofficially" and push anyone new to use iPads. Android support will be there for the sake of saying we support it... but only as an alternative / best effort just because the ecosystem is full of such bad products / eats up our time with "not the application" / "your people didn't do the thing because they hate their tablet / it didn't work" issues.
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  There are tolerable (minimal crapware) cheapish Android tablets out there, but you're looking at ~$200US minimum to get those and they're still going to have terrible performance and won't be able to even handle homescreen animations without dropping frames. At that point you might as well spend that extra ~$100 for an iPad for even less crapware and a SoC that won't struggle with trivial things.

realusername 3y ago

You absolutely get adware on iOS, I remember at least the calendar ad infestation as an example, and I had my fair share of broken icloud account to fix for my tech illiterate father as well. Don't know what they are doing on that aspect but even as a software developer, it was very hard to fix

GeekyBear 3y ago

> I went back to the store and bought him an iPhone SE. That was years ago now and haven’t heard a single complaint since. I would assert that the iPhone SE is the best smartphone bang for the buck, especially for users in your family with a tendency to shoot themselves in the foot and need your assistance. The $399 iPhone SE from 2016 got six years of OS updates and just got another security update last month. That's about $57 per supported year.

hansel_der 3y ago
bought a 1st gen SE in 2017, dropped daily, nothing broke to this day. what a phone!

y-c-o-m-b 3y ago

> I think android phones aren’t for the tech illiterate. As an Android user, I think I'm on-board with this sentiment. Anecdotally, most of the people I know with Android phones are in IT; specifically software engineers. I once had to transfer files that were downloaded on my phone to a work laptop that couldn't access the external internet and no access to external storage. I installed Termux on my Android phone, dropped to the linux terminal, installed http-server and spun up a server on the local network. I was then able to download the files I needed off of my phone. Quirky scenarios like the one I mentioned where I can "MacGyver" my Android phone is why I really like the platform. And then there's F-Droid so I don't have to deal with those pesky apps from the Google Play store.

jeroenhd 3y ago
> I once had to transfer files that were downloaded on my phone to a work laptop that couldn't access the external internet and no access to external storage. I installed Termux on my Android phone, dropped to the linux terminal, installed http-server and spun up a server on the local network. I was then able to download the files I needed off of my phone. I don't get it, why didn't you plug in a USB cable?
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  Android file transfer is implemented via the terrible ancient standard MTP[0] which has spotty support anywhere but Windows. I wish Android devices instead worked like iPods, which had a partition that mounted as a plain old USB/Firewire disk when plugged into a computer. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol
  - tannhaeuser 3y ago
    Actually, old HTC and Samsung Android phones used to register as USB Mass Storage device, but Android changed that to MTP in version 5 or so.
    - 3y ago

ksec 3y ago

Ignoring under the hood OS and Subsystem. The Android UX started as a pocket pc, while iOS started as an Appliance. Even today that is more of less the same, although the both converge in the between as they look more and more alike. I have a somewhat increasingly constrain opinion on HN. May be Steve Jobs's original model was right / better. Only First Party and extremely selected third party Native Apps. And everything else being Web / HTML 5 Apps.

bastawhiz 3y ago

My mom has done this to every device she's owned. My Christmas visit starts by me asking her why she has four or five weather apps installed, every app for every local news station, apps for "coupons", and everything else I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. On her iPad, her lock screen has a CVS receipt of garbage notifications. Frankly, the problem is the ubiquity of native apps. You don't need a native app to get the weather. It shouldn't have any permissions. This is the whole premise of the web. The web has its own problems, but it can't ruin a device like poorly-considered native apps can.

kitsunesoba 3y ago
iOS penalizes apps that abuse background privileges (running too frequently, running too long, being too resource hungry), so their background tasks get run less and less frequently over time. So at least on iOS, the impact of native junkware is limited to notification spam and can't run battery life into the ground as badly. It's not much worse than PWAs can do with webworkers and push notification permissions (and if someone has been granting every app push permissions, you can be sure they'll do the same for PWA push permissions).
- bastawhiz 3y ago
  Against all odds, she hasn't enabled notifications for a single website. She knows she doesn't like getting notifications and usually always declines.
somat 3y ago
This also exposes a strange design decision involving the entire app system. Why do they need to be installed? you don't go to the manufacturers web store then explicitly install a web page so that you can then use a web app. Apps are a remininent of the personal computer experience of installing software. but for better or worse that ecosystem does not really exist on phones. apps exist in a sandbox environment with a fine grain permission for device access. really they should just transparently install and run and uninstall. It should behave like a web page with a saner execution environment. the main reason the app ecosystem exists the way it does is so the os manufacturer can seek rent on the device. This is why I am so thankful the internet and the web were developed in an academic environment rather than a commercial environment. centralized rent seeking was not a design goal of the internet.

AlecSchueler 3y ago

At the same time, would you say they're therefore the better phone for the tech literate?

userbinator 3y ago

Make and model?

e40 3y ago

I think it's ads in free apps. I kept telling my mom to stop installing free apps on Android. She really wanted this one card game. She swears she never clicked on an ad, but she constantly had malware. I pretty much forced her to go to iOS and she's been happen ever since. She really resisted me, though, and complained for a few months, but now agrees it's better. I switched in Jan 2020. I got so sick of having to upgrade phones every 2 years to get updates. I understand that's changed now (Pixel phones gets updates for 3 or 4 years?), but for more than a decade I bought a new phone every 2 years. I've had the same iPhone (11) since 1/20 and I will keep it for as long as it has updates and/or the battery lasts. So far, it feels like the day I got it.

apexalpha 3y ago

Reminds me of my own comment, some time ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33314868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33314868 I completely agree with your last sentence. The protected garden Apple creates is a blessing for most tech illiterate users.

rstuart4133 3y ago

It probably was the phone OS shipping with malware, but there is a different route that effects all phones, including iOS. It's happens the authors loose interest in maintaining their apps. Malware authors then purchase their developer keys, issue an update (but change nothing else), and you find yourself being woken up at 2AM in the morning by some screeching Casino ad. Or at least that's what my wifes phone did to her, and of course it was immediately my problem. I don't know if Android has an Update History for apps now, but back then it didn't. You don't know what app it is, because all the normal functional is untouched so it works as before. In my case there were two of them - which was worse because my technique was to uninstall one by one, then re-install if the problem continued. After a week or two of experimenting I found the right combination of apps to uninstall and my nights became peaceful again. The Play store cleaned them out after a while of course, but it was painful at the time.