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Many Android bugs with 500+ stars closed as obsolete on December 25

269 points by diafygi 12y ago

diafygi 12y ago
EDIT: The original title of this post was "Someone silently closed 37% (19/52) of Android bugs with 500+ stars on Dec 25th" (it has been involuntarily changed by the mods). Here's the list (all marked Obsolete silently by e...@google.com): https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=82 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=82 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1257 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1257 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1211 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1211 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2117 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2117 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2361 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2361 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1386 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1386 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1730 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1730 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2207 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2207 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2845 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2845 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1285 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1285 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2305 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2305 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2412 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2412 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1089 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1089 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1698 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1698 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2318 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2318 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1041 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1041 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=63793 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=63793 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1284 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1284 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1106 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1106
- sarciszewski 12y ago
  https://code.google.com/p/google-security-research/issues/list?can=1 https://code.google.com/p/google-security-research/issues/li... cevans => cev... (Chris Evans is known to be part of Project Zero.) Given their censorship scheme, I can't help but wonder if e...@google.com means eric@google.com? If so, the culprit is likely Eric Schmidt. EDIT: Okay, can anyone explain WHY they're downvoting this?
  - yourad_io 12y ago
    The same person/profile[1] who closed these issues has been merging issues as far back as 2013[2]. I doubt that would have been him. [1] https://code.google.com/u/116776574616066648526/ https://code.google.com/u/116776574616066648526/ [2] https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=63433 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=63433
    - sarciszewski 12y ago
      Then it's someone with a 3-person last name whose first name starts with an E
    - shortstuffsushi 12y ago
      If you guys are really interested, the profile you linked has a list of projects. Glancing at the "vogar" project which it says is owned by e...@google.com (first I happened to pick), you can see links to the blog of Elliott Hughes. His site indicates he's a Google employee. So, not exactly proven, but seems to fit the bill.
      - sarciszewski 12y ago
        Except Ellion Hughes shows up elsewhere as elliot...@google.com https://code.google.com/p/enh/ https://code.google.com/p/enh/
        shortstuffsushi 12y ago
gcb0 12y ago
all my bugs from android 2.3 (still heavily used in the us and out) up to android 4.2 were closed as obsolete. several are somewhat fixed on 5.0 (most by removing the feature) but nothing about support even nexus devices from 2.5 years ago. 3 were security ones confirmed by a few comments. I've been getting obsolete emails on my low profile bugs since November all the way to Dec 25... Google just gave up. i think nobody there care about users after yahoo stole JBQueru. they now focus exclusively on profit and easy/fun work (i.e. full focus on new versions because maintaining old, stable software is the job of interns)
- mfisher87 12y ago
  I started seeing obsolete emails early this month for a bug I've been tracking: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=8839 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=8839 It's extremely frustrating to have an issue thread full of agreeing constructive comments from users marked obsolete with no comment from the developers, when the issue is still annoying many users. It definitely gives the impression that Google gave up or does not care about users.
  - thomasahle 12y ago
    If the maintainers of the official alarm app don't like this feature, can't you just use a custom app? Or is it something fundamental to the notification system?
  - tdkl 12y ago
    This isn't a bug, it's a feature for indication that an user has an alarm set, so it minimizes the possibility of going off at unexpected time, the user wasn't aware of. Imagine if having mobile connection indicator wouldn't be shown because someone would say it wastes space, resulting in possible charges. Hiding things from users isn't exactly good UX.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- gst 12y ago
  The last device sold by Google that now runs an Android release of 4.2 or earlier was (afaik) the Nexus S - which was released in 2010. I think it's reasonable to stop support for a particular device after something like 4 years. Yes, there are other 3rd party manufacturers that sold devices based on such outdated versions up until recently. But why should it be Google's task to provide updates for these devices? That sounds like something that the manufacturers are supposed to do.
kelukelugames 12y ago
Silently? This isn't that dramatic. edit. title has been fixed.
- eli 12y ago
  I think the implication is that it happened without much fanfare and during a holiday because they didn't want people to notice.
  - ldng 12y ago
    It's a christmas gift for the Android dev team, right ?
- yourad_io 12y ago
  Silently == closing without comment. Dramatic or not depends on the issue: This[1] issue (note the id) has 6275 people following it and 1659 comments/activities. Marking it obsolete with "(No comment was entered for this change.)" is kinda middle-finger-ish, don't you think? [1] https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=82 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=82
  - MrQuincle 12y ago
    Yes, this one is especially annoying. I created an Android app for the Brookstone rover once, see https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.almende.roveropen&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.almende.ro... and I got some bad reviews for my app because people don't understand that they have to root their smartphone to enable ad-hoc capabilities. It doesn't only make Google look bad, it also reflects on others.
  - sduclos 12y ago
    Wifi ad hoc network (82) seem like good thing to have in an emergency. Searching around I found Wi-Fi Peer-to-Peer in Android doc at http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/wifip2p.html http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/wifip...
cryptoz 12y ago
Google's handling of Android bugs is unpleasant and difficult to swallow. The QA seems minimal and little or no attention is paid to user filed bugs. The barometer on the Nexus 5 is still broken after a year+ of software updates. Infuriating. The bug with hundreds of stars is marked obsolete! The barometer is still broken. I'd like to debug and fix it but other things have priority, and I don't feel confident that if I were able to fix, that my change would be merged. Oy! https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=62938 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=62938 Edit: I should mention, they did fix part of it after about 6 months in the wild (the part where the barometer crashed all the sensors). What they haven't fixed is that the barometer doesn't actually reliably work. Edit #2: Interestingly, I might have to eat some of my words. I'm just testing on 5.0.1 for the first time and haven't been able to reproduce the issues present from 4.0 through 5.0. Maybe it's actually fixed in 5.0.1!! Of course, I've only been testing for 10 minutes and it could still surface. For reference, the remaining bug is that the barometer periodically reports seemingly random values. 5mb, 730mb, 1004mb, 740mb, 300mb, 3mb, 750mb, etc. Now it seems to be stable and generally reporting the same values. Interesting. Edit #3: A pastebin showing that it seems to be working after a few minutes of use. http://pastebin.com/RdBqbWzC http://pastebin.com/RdBqbWzC Edit #4: If you're curious why I care, it's for PressureNet to make a better weather forecast :) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.cumulonimbus.barometernetwork https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.cumulonimbu...
- mfisher87 12y ago
  Most major companies, to me, seem to be following Apple's example and forcing a shorter support lifecycle for each device, expecting users to simply replace their "obsolete" device with the newest one.
  - titaniumdecoy 12y ago
    This is a common but completely unfair criticism of Apple. Plenty of people complained when iOS 7 was made available for the iPhone 4 (because the hardware was too slow to run it properly). And Apple still sells and supports relatively ancient hardware (the iPad mini) as a result of their current strategy of selling last year's model as the second-best option.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Kapura 12y ago
Lizard Squad strikes again!
arthursilva 12y ago
Android dev is smelly, even if you target 4.0+. Any mid sized app need several workarounds/hacks in order to work properly.
- droidist2 12y ago
  Absolutely. Android dev makes me appreciate the relative robustness and elegance of front-end web dev, and that's saying something.
- cpncrunch 12y ago
  We target 2.3/3.0 and have required very few workarounds/hacks. iOS is a hell of a lot worse - there are various bugs either introduced or "fixed" (requiring a workaround) in each release.
  - e28eta 12y ago
    We may be writing very different kinds of iOS apps, but most of our SDK upgrade problems stem from (often accidental) misuse of Apple's APIs, or a documented change that Apple made.
dsr_ 12y ago
For the casual onlooker: that's not closed as in resolved, that's closed as in irrelevant. The people who are unhappy with those bugs probably consider them very relevant.
josephhainline 12y ago
You say "bugs" but many of these are clearly feature requests. There's a pretty big difference.
mik3y 12y ago
It's not a shock; if anything I'm surprised they didn't shut down the issue tracker altogether. It's been little more than a glorified pastebin of generally poor-quality, unreviewed reports. Perhaps this is a sign someone's going to start triaging things, but I'd doubt it..
51Cards 12y ago
I saw several email alerts come through as these were being closed. 3 of them were submitted by myself and at least one I would say is still relevant in Android 5.0 That said with the history of how bugs have been handled there I wasn't very surprised.
krschultz 12y ago
At some point in a long living project, you have to declare some bugs are #wontfix. You are just lieing to yourself if you think you will ever get to the end of the bug backlog. It also can become an anchor, the team is focused solely on fixing bugs here and there instead of moving the ball forward (and hopefully fixing more fundamental problems along the way). I've made the call to mass close tickets like this. It's never fun, but sometimes you have to do it. These ticket seem to fall into two buckets. 1) Pre Android 5.x bugs. I can understand why they don't want to invest here. Effort is definitely better spent trying to get more devices onto Android 5.x 2) Feature requests for apps. I bet a lot of these are either on a roadmap for a future version of Android, or are simply never going to be added.
- diafygi 12y ago
  Then mark them as WontFix with a comment explaining why. Marking Obsolete without comment and restricting further comments is a huge slap in the face to your biggest supporters (those who went through the trouble of trying to contribute positively by filing/commenting/starring the bug).
  - mrec 12y ago
    Yup. They did the same thing with Chrome a couple of years back - just had a bot go through and close everything older than some threshold en masse. As you might expect, I don't bother reporting Chrome bugs any more.
    - keithpeter 12y ago
      Suppose the Chrome team closed everything older than some cut-off date but explained why (perhaps on a blog) and encouraged people to open new tickets about issues that carried forward to currently supported versions. Would that gesture have kept you motivated to report bugs?
      - mrec 12y ago
        IIRC there was something (unconvincing) on a blog, and they did (nominally) encourage people to open new tickets for issues they cared about. No, that didn't keep me motivated. Words are cheap; actions speak louder. If they really wanted to encourage people to open tickets, they wouldn't robo-close them. There are a lot of ways they could have avoided that mess. Keepalive anything with recent comment traffic is one that springs to mind, since those comments are often along the lines of "yup, still an issue as of version X.Y.Z" or "Hey, it's been N years, any word on a fix?".
munchhausen 12y ago
This is very unpalatable, and makes me reconsider whether my next phone will, again, be an Android device. This sort of "fuck you" attitude towards legitimate feedback and valid bug reports from users doesn't bode well for Google, and indicates that any talk of "openness" of Android is just that - empty talk. If the Android development process is going to be a 100% closed, cathedral-type endeavour, I might as well get an iPhone.
- valvar 12y ago
  You say that as if iPhone is the only alternative, while in fact there (will soon be) lots of alternatives. Right now there's the Jolla, which I personally own (and it's fantastic), but soon we'll also see the Neo900 which will be almost as free and open as you can get, and on the horizon Firefox OS and Ubuntu phones are looming.
  - spiralpolitik 12y ago
    While all are worthwhile ventures they are all too late to the market to make a difference. We are now in the middle years of the smartphone market. The time for new entrants ended in 2010. It's iOS and Android locked in a struggle that neither can completely win from here on out.
    - madez 12y ago
      What do you care who "wins"?
      - tdkl 12y ago
        He probably wants the most for his money and in this case iOS/Android is the way to roll in 2014.
    - valvar 12y ago
      What does that matter? All I personally want is a good and open phone, and right now I've got that, and it looks like we'll have even more alternatives in the future. Just giving a heads-up to other hackers...
TillE 12y ago
That's a shame. I had 1285 (USSD API) starred, which would have allowed for some interesting carrier-specific apps. Do any mobile OSes let apps get a USSD response?
- edent 12y ago
  Same here - that's how I found out about this. ISTR that Symbian let you run & receive USSD commands.
- wasyl 12y ago
  Same for me, I got an email recently that bug I starred has been closed. Pretty disappointing, this would open so many possibilities
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mariuolo 12y ago
Just wait long enough until the bug becomes obsolete. It's the same as the Ubuntu(™) way. The user (if still alive) can re-submit it for the newer version, if applicable and the cycle goes on.
- droidist2 12y ago
  Haha, Attrition Driven Development?
edent 12y ago
6 years after being reported, Android still doesn't support downloading .ics files. https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1257 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1257 Makes it impossible to add events from websites. It's very frustrating that there doesn't seem to be anyone at Google who looks at bugs. It's all about creating "cool" experiences without the tedious work of fixing bugs.
- runn1ng 12y ago
  That seems like a feature request, not a bug, to me.
  - hayksaakian 12y ago
    If you can download everything else normally without an error, but downloading a file with .ics crashes then its a bug. If you want special functionality associated with .ics files as you download them then that's a feature. Which is this?
- fpgeek 12y ago
  Um, as the comment thread in the bug demonstrates, it isn't that simple. Android does support downloading .ics files, you just need to install a third-party app to handle the calendar integration. Is that ideal? Of course not. But it is bog-standard prioritization to close issues that have easy workarounds in favor of issues that don't (and that's before you get to the possible patent complications someone mentions late in the thread). More generally, I'd argue that this is a missing feature in the proprietary Google Calendar app, and not an OS issue at all.
jspaetzel 12y ago
I'm not sure if you guys actually even looked at what these requests were but most of them are irrelevant and rightly so... obsolete/irrelevant features. To choose one particular example that stood out to me from the first page with 198 stars: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1140 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1140 I wont even get started on how much information this is lacking for it to be actually executed. The point being that most of the ones in the list have not even been touched in over a year and more closely resemble a Christmas wishlist than actual issues. They should be closed since they are cluttering up the workflow of real problems and it would be a waste of an engineer's time to respond to them all adequately. If they are still relevant a year later maybe you should go through and do something productive like creating a new issue with updated details.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- joelhaasnoot 12y ago
  I do support for an app with several million downloads. While it may not make sense on a technical level, it's really powerful for your app and your users to reach out and explain this. For us this is a quick two line reply that the wish is on the wishlist and may be picked up later. Many of the wishes you get are completely logical, some are for very specific use cases, and some are completely off topic. We still track them in a list, and each ticket becomes a vote (we happen to use Trello). It gives us a great view of what users want, miss and would like to see. And yes, our engineers also answer support emails.
  - jspaetzel 12y ago
    I think this would be great if they could do that.. but when it comes to millions of users I dont think even google can handle that much feedback publicly without falling seriously short. It's amazing they are able to address as many issues as they do, after all there are like 14000 open issues right now in that tracker.
    - 12y ago
MichaelEGR 12y ago
Closing the very recent and ongoing with no hope in sight BLE bugs which are very real and heinous is BS: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=58381 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=58381 BLE stack is even worse in Lollipop.
- oahziur 12y ago
  Totally agree, and the BLE peripheral mode only support Nexus 6 and Nexus 9. It was working on Nexus 5 on L Preview, and then unsupported... https://code.google.com/p/android-developer-preview/issues/detail?id=1570 https://code.google.com/p/android-developer-preview/issues/d...
- tdkl 12y ago
  This comment exactly explains the frustration : https://code.google.com/p/android-developer-preview/issues/detail?id=1570#c31 https://code.google.com/p/android-developer-preview/issues/d... Hardware supports it, but Google for some unknown reason just disables software support, it did it in the past with 4.3 BLE support and apparently nothing changed.
allendoerfer 12y ago
Enterprises are able to pay huge maintenance fees. Single consumers are not and game theory teaches us, that they are unable to unite to get it (free rider problem). So I fear, that we need stronger consumer protection for software products. I do not know the situation in the US, but in the EU we have a mandated 2 year warranty for almost every product with very few sensible exceptions (food and the like). We need the same for software. Features that are advertised have to be guaranteed. Of course software has bugs, so the law has to be about software getting fixed, not being perfect. Actually that is the same with physical products as they do not have to be replaced, they can be repaired, so this does not even make a difference. There has to be some lightweight definition of non-functional requirements. This one is difficult and dangerous as the big players could unite and regulate the small ones out. Related to that, double or triple the warranty periods. This is not so much an issue with smartphones and the like, as they become obsolete by superior successors or fashion, but with stuff like printers, vacuum cleaners or electric toothbrushes. Of course, this would hurt companies like hell and will never happen. I imagine in the long run, it would actually be super beneficial to those, who remain, because it would create a brand "Sold in the EU" much like "Made in Germany" with all the mythos of the deregulated Autobahn but the highly regulated warranties :D
- maccard 12y ago
  > Related to that, double or triple the warranty periods. I'm not convinced that this solves anything. When you buy a 50 euro/dollar vacuum do you expect it to have the same life expectancy as the 500 dollar vacuum made with higher quality parts? If the company is required to provide a 6 year warranty for a machine that they estimate to last 2 years, they will simply stop producing the cheaper vacuums, meaning everyone who wants a vacuum has to now pay 500 dollars. My knowledge of Vacuum cleaner economics is limited, granted, but I can't see how this works out well in the longer term for anyone, other than the people who would have anyway purchased the more expensive product (that normally comes with a lifetime/extended warranty from the manufacturer anyway)
  - allendoerfer 12y ago
    Valid point. Several things apply: You have to adjust the price for the cheap vacuum cleaner in your mind. You are actually talking about several of them, because of their reduced lifetime. Prices do not necessarily reflect the actual costs of the product directly sometimes not even remotely. Printers or game consoles for example are hardly or not at all profitable. The main purpose of prices is to differentiate the product classes, otherwise it would be harder to tell, which one actually is the higher class product. So that part of the pricing would not move at all. Economics of scale. The higher quality parts will be produced in greater mass and become cheaper. Innovation. If there is a need for cheaper vacuums, somebody will eventually find a way to build one. Finally, the main point: Planned obsolescence [0]. Products are actually designed to break directly after the 2 year guarantee. One could argue, that designing costs would actually fall, due to the obsolete step. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
curiously 12y ago
Had a phone from 2010ish. Recently switched to a Motorolla G smartphone with latest Android on it. I am absolutely amazed how far Android has come. It feels so smooth and good. I thought about jumping to iPhone but my view of Android has changed drastically. (My old phone was Galaxy Nexus and it was rife with randomly restarting during calls and sluggy OS).
mpdehaan2 12y ago
Managing any project with thousands of contributors is very hard - namely, duplicate bugs, low quality bug reports, bugs that are no longer valid given OS or version changes, etc. I can't imagine how hard it is to manage something on the scale of Android, where it's so consumer-oriented, half of everyone with a phone (roughly) potentially could be using the bug tracker. There may be some interesting room to build a bug tracker that can better semantically sort, and ensure better quality bug reports - templates for bug reports are a start, but there are very few if any good triage tools for the people on the other end of the system. In this case, yes, there should have been at least a canned template response such as "if this still affects you,..." etc, but even that is difficult - with 50 people replying to a bug report, it's a good way to get 50 duplicates. Ultimately, it's a sign where open source project management practices get increasingly hard the larger a project gets, and while it may be possible to keep up with the contributors, keeping up with userland can be an even larger feat. In some ways, proprietary software has a it a LOT easier, and I don't envy the task. While not every project can hire 15-30 extra people to manage and prune a gigantic issue tracker - Android probably can, and probably should, given the spirit of what it is. Longer term, I still think we can do a lot better with bug tracker technology to provide more semantic views into what's there and needs to be done - eliminating the need to keep things pruned in this way. But we are no where close yet.
- chralieboy 12y ago
  StackOverflow provides a good example of how this could work. They identify duplicates as you type the questions and have many moderators dedicating time, for free, on cleaning things up. Of course that doesn't solve the difficult matter of actually fixing the bugs, but I'm sure the Android developers would sincerely appreciate it. Closing duplicates or reports with little information sets a standard for the bugs that do get fixed.
- chralieboy 12y ago
  StackOverflow provides a good example of how this could work. They identify duplicates as you type the questions and have many moderators dedicating time, for free, on cleaning things up. Of course that doesn't solve the difficult matter of actually fixing the bugs, but I'm sure the Android developers would sincerely appreciate it. Closing duplicates or reports with little information sets a standard for the bugs that do get fixed.
realrocker 12y ago
Since many of these bugs are also simultaneously raised by OEM's they are closed internally without feedback. And feedback to what bug, they are so many for the same! Also lot of them are feature enhancements and are really opinionated actually to work on. It could be better but it's not that bad. You won't believe the hoops you gotta jump to get anything done. Too many stakeholders in AOSP!(which has both pros and cons). I work on the AOSP for an OEM.
fidotron 12y ago
This should be just another wake up call to the fact that Android just isn't open. Unless you're inside the OHA your view doesn't count, and even then you have to go along with Google's vision of the future. End users might think they have it bad, but the development experience is basically an exercise in dealing with whatever hyped up shiny unfinished turd is floating down from on high. It's a shame because some aspects of the system are really damn good, but there is just so much crap. Having seen all this develop has persuaded me that the future is lower level APIs. On the web that means asm.js, Canvas, indexeddb etc. (discarding HTML and CSS), and on Android it means C++ and OpenGL and staying the hell away from as much of the higher level parts as possible. (Bonus points for increased code portability). The reason for this is the lower level ones seem to reach stable predictability much faster. It is better/easier to bundle any high level UI toolkit in the application itself than to have to support rendering on four different versions of the toolkit.
- TillE 12y ago
  I'm not sure what you think "open" means. You're still free to fork Android and do what you want with it. Google's negligence in fixing a variety of issues doesn't change that one bit.
  - fidotron 12y ago
    You aren't really free to fork it at all. Forking the SDK is explicitly not allowed, but the killer is if you want to make one device which carries the Google Apps you have to agree that all Android devices you make will. (i.e. you are forced to bundle Google Play Services on all devices). This is why Amazon do what they do and it remains a separate ecosystem.
    - digi_owl 12y ago
      I seem to recall that there is some fairly stringent marketing elements involved as well. If you carry the Google apps, you can't put them deeper than one level below the launcher or something.
    - 12y ago
thomaslutz 12y ago
What's even more infuriating is that devices with LTE like razorg get delayed multiple weeks if not months with software updates. Still waiting on Android 5 with what I thought is the 'better' device compared to razor.
tehabe 12y ago
Some of the bugs I reported were also marked "obsolete", but they were mostly fixed in Android 5.0, so I can't really complain about it. But yeah, the handling of bugs is awful, no comparison to the way Chromium handles bugs. They might not be perfect. But it feels much better handled.
therealmarv 12y ago
I know Android devs have a internal bugtracker, so there are two bugtrackers at least (internal and external). This horrible external bugtracker on Google Code is maybe not as relevant as you might think. I can imagine it is a pain in the *ss to sync them.
lnanek2 12y ago
It's unfortunate, but Google pretty much ignores most outside bug reports and a bot marks them obsolete automatically. Rather than improving things, the situation has actually gotten worse and worse over the years and they started adding tags to prevent people from commenting. Even if Google rarely fixed things the comments were often pretty good for working together with other developers to come up with work arounds.

269 points by diafygi 12y ago

EDIT: The original title of this post was "Someone silently closed 37% (19/52) of Android bugs with 500+ stars on Dec 25th" (it has been involuntarily changed by the mods). Here's the list (all marked Obsolete silently by e...@google.com): https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=82 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=82 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1257 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1257 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1211 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1211 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2117 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2117 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2361 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2361 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1386 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1386 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1730 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1730 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2207 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2207 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2845 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2845 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1285 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1285 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2305 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2305 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2412 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2412 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1089 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1089 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1698 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1698 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2318 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2318 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1041 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1041 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=63793 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=63793 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1284 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1284 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1106 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1106

sarciszewski 12y ago
https://code.google.com/p/google-security-research/issues/list?can=1 https://code.google.com/p/google-security-research/issues/li... cevans => cev... (Chris Evans is known to be part of Project Zero.) Given their censorship scheme, I can't help but wonder if e...@google.com means eric@google.com? If so, the culprit is likely Eric Schmidt. EDIT: Okay, can anyone explain WHY they're downvoting this?
- yourad_io 12y ago
  The same person/profile[1] who closed these issues has been merging issues as far back as 2013[2]. I doubt that would have been him. [1] https://code.google.com/u/116776574616066648526/ https://code.google.com/u/116776574616066648526/ [2] https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=63433 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=63433
  - sarciszewski 12y ago
    Then it's someone with a 3-person last name whose first name starts with an E
  - shortstuffsushi 12y ago
    If you guys are really interested, the profile you linked has a list of projects. Glancing at the "vogar" project which it says is owned by e...@google.com (first I happened to pick), you can see links to the blog of Elliott Hughes. His site indicates he's a Google employee. So, not exactly proven, but seems to fit the bill.
    - sarciszewski 12y ago
      Except Ellion Hughes shows up elsewhere as elliot...@google.com https://code.google.com/p/enh/ https://code.google.com/p/enh/
      - shortstuffsushi 12y ago

gcb0 12y ago

all my bugs from android 2.3 (still heavily used in the us and out) up to android 4.2 were closed as obsolete. several are somewhat fixed on 5.0 (most by removing the feature) but nothing about support even nexus devices from 2.5 years ago. 3 were security ones confirmed by a few comments. I've been getting obsolete emails on my low profile bugs since November all the way to Dec 25... Google just gave up. i think nobody there care about users after yahoo stole JBQueru. they now focus exclusively on profit and easy/fun work (i.e. full focus on new versions because maintaining old, stable software is the job of interns)

mfisher87 12y ago
I started seeing obsolete emails early this month for a bug I've been tracking: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=8839 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=8839 It's extremely frustrating to have an issue thread full of agreeing constructive comments from users marked obsolete with no comment from the developers, when the issue is still annoying many users. It definitely gives the impression that Google gave up or does not care about users.
- thomasahle 12y ago
  If the maintainers of the official alarm app don't like this feature, can't you just use a custom app? Or is it something fundamental to the notification system?
- tdkl 12y ago
  This isn't a bug, it's a feature for indication that an user has an alarm set, so it minimizes the possibility of going off at unexpected time, the user wasn't aware of. Imagine if having mobile connection indicator wouldn't be shown because someone would say it wastes space, resulting in possible charges. Hiding things from users isn't exactly good UX.
deleted 12y ago
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gst 12y ago
The last device sold by Google that now runs an Android release of 4.2 or earlier was (afaik) the Nexus S - which was released in 2010. I think it's reasonable to stop support for a particular device after something like 4 years. Yes, there are other 3rd party manufacturers that sold devices based on such outdated versions up until recently. But why should it be Google's task to provide updates for these devices? That sounds like something that the manufacturers are supposed to do.

kelukelugames 12y ago

Silently? This isn't that dramatic. edit. title has been fixed.

eli 12y ago
I think the implication is that it happened without much fanfare and during a holiday because they didn't want people to notice.
- ldng 12y ago
  It's a christmas gift for the Android dev team, right ?
yourad_io 12y ago
Silently == closing without comment. Dramatic or not depends on the issue: This[1] issue (note the id) has 6275 people following it and 1659 comments/activities. Marking it obsolete with "(No comment was entered for this change.)" is kinda middle-finger-ish, don't you think? [1] https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=82 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=82
- MrQuincle 12y ago
  Yes, this one is especially annoying. I created an Android app for the Brookstone rover once, see https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.almende.roveropen&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.almende.ro... and I got some bad reviews for my app because people don't understand that they have to root their smartphone to enable ad-hoc capabilities. It doesn't only make Google look bad, it also reflects on others.
- sduclos 12y ago
  Wifi ad hoc network (82) seem like good thing to have in an emergency. Searching around I found Wi-Fi Peer-to-Peer in Android doc at http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/wifip2p.html http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/wifip...

cryptoz 12y ago

Google's handling of Android bugs is unpleasant and difficult to swallow. The QA seems minimal and little or no attention is paid to user filed bugs. The barometer on the Nexus 5 is still broken after a year+ of software updates. Infuriating. The bug with hundreds of stars is marked obsolete! The barometer is still broken. I'd like to debug and fix it but other things have priority, and I don't feel confident that if I were able to fix, that my change would be merged. Oy! https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=62938 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=62938 Edit: I should mention, they did fix part of it after about 6 months in the wild (the part where the barometer crashed all the sensors). What they haven't fixed is that the barometer doesn't actually reliably work. Edit #2: Interestingly, I might have to eat some of my words. I'm just testing on 5.0.1 for the first time and haven't been able to reproduce the issues present from 4.0 through 5.0. Maybe it's actually fixed in 5.0.1!! Of course, I've only been testing for 10 minutes and it could still surface. For reference, the remaining bug is that the barometer periodically reports seemingly random values. 5mb, 730mb, 1004mb, 740mb, 300mb, 3mb, 750mb, etc. Now it seems to be stable and generally reporting the same values. Interesting. Edit #3: A pastebin showing that it seems to be working after a few minutes of use. http://pastebin.com/RdBqbWzC http://pastebin.com/RdBqbWzC Edit #4: If you're curious why I care, it's for PressureNet to make a better weather forecast :) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.cumulonimbus.barometernetwork https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.cumulonimbu...

mfisher87 12y ago
Most major companies, to me, seem to be following Apple's example and forcing a shorter support lifecycle for each device, expecting users to simply replace their "obsolete" device with the newest one.
- titaniumdecoy 12y ago
  This is a common but completely unfair criticism of Apple. Plenty of people complained when iOS 7 was made available for the iPhone 4 (because the hardware was too slow to run it properly). And Apple still sells and supports relatively ancient hardware (the iPad mini) as a result of their current strategy of selling last year's model as the second-best option.

deleted 12y ago

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Kapura 12y ago

Lizard Squad strikes again!

arthursilva 12y ago

Android dev is smelly, even if you target 4.0+. Any mid sized app need several workarounds/hacks in order to work properly.

droidist2 12y ago
Absolutely. Android dev makes me appreciate the relative robustness and elegance of front-end web dev, and that's saying something.
cpncrunch 12y ago
We target 2.3/3.0 and have required very few workarounds/hacks. iOS is a hell of a lot worse - there are various bugs either introduced or "fixed" (requiring a workaround) in each release.
- e28eta 12y ago
  We may be writing very different kinds of iOS apps, but most of our SDK upgrade problems stem from (often accidental) misuse of Apple's APIs, or a documented change that Apple made.

dsr_ 12y ago

For the casual onlooker: that's not closed as in resolved, that's closed as in irrelevant. The people who are unhappy with those bugs probably consider them very relevant.

josephhainline 12y ago

You say "bugs" but many of these are clearly feature requests. There's a pretty big difference.

mik3y 12y ago

It's not a shock; if anything I'm surprised they didn't shut down the issue tracker altogether. It's been little more than a glorified pastebin of generally poor-quality, unreviewed reports. Perhaps this is a sign someone's going to start triaging things, but I'd doubt it..

51Cards 12y ago

I saw several email alerts come through as these were being closed. 3 of them were submitted by myself and at least one I would say is still relevant in Android 5.0 That said with the history of how bugs have been handled there I wasn't very surprised.

krschultz 12y ago

At some point in a long living project, you have to declare some bugs are #wontfix. You are just lieing to yourself if you think you will ever get to the end of the bug backlog. It also can become an anchor, the team is focused solely on fixing bugs here and there instead of moving the ball forward (and hopefully fixing more fundamental problems along the way). I've made the call to mass close tickets like this. It's never fun, but sometimes you have to do it. These ticket seem to fall into two buckets. 1) Pre Android 5.x bugs. I can understand why they don't want to invest here. Effort is definitely better spent trying to get more devices onto Android 5.x 2) Feature requests for apps. I bet a lot of these are either on a roadmap for a future version of Android, or are simply never going to be added.

diafygi 12y ago
Then mark them as WontFix with a comment explaining why. Marking Obsolete without comment and restricting further comments is a huge slap in the face to your biggest supporters (those who went through the trouble of trying to contribute positively by filing/commenting/starring the bug).
- mrec 12y ago
  Yup. They did the same thing with Chrome a couple of years back - just had a bot go through and close everything older than some threshold en masse. As you might expect, I don't bother reporting Chrome bugs any more.
  - keithpeter 12y ago
    Suppose the Chrome team closed everything older than some cut-off date but explained why (perhaps on a blog) and encouraged people to open new tickets about issues that carried forward to currently supported versions. Would that gesture have kept you motivated to report bugs?
    - mrec 12y ago
      IIRC there was something (unconvincing) on a blog, and they did (nominally) encourage people to open new tickets for issues they cared about. No, that didn't keep me motivated. Words are cheap; actions speak louder. If they really wanted to encourage people to open tickets, they wouldn't robo-close them. There are a lot of ways they could have avoided that mess. Keepalive anything with recent comment traffic is one that springs to mind, since those comments are often along the lines of "yup, still an issue as of version X.Y.Z" or "Hey, it's been N years, any word on a fix?".

munchhausen 12y ago

This is very unpalatable, and makes me reconsider whether my next phone will, again, be an Android device. This sort of "fuck you" attitude towards legitimate feedback and valid bug reports from users doesn't bode well for Google, and indicates that any talk of "openness" of Android is just that - empty talk. If the Android development process is going to be a 100% closed, cathedral-type endeavour, I might as well get an iPhone.

valvar 12y ago
You say that as if iPhone is the only alternative, while in fact there (will soon be) lots of alternatives. Right now there's the Jolla, which I personally own (and it's fantastic), but soon we'll also see the Neo900 which will be almost as free and open as you can get, and on the horizon Firefox OS and Ubuntu phones are looming.
- spiralpolitik 12y ago
  While all are worthwhile ventures they are all too late to the market to make a difference. We are now in the middle years of the smartphone market. The time for new entrants ended in 2010. It's iOS and Android locked in a struggle that neither can completely win from here on out.
  - madez 12y ago
    What do you care who "wins"?
    - tdkl 12y ago
      He probably wants the most for his money and in this case iOS/Android is the way to roll in 2014.
  - valvar 12y ago
    What does that matter? All I personally want is a good and open phone, and right now I've got that, and it looks like we'll have even more alternatives in the future. Just giving a heads-up to other hackers...

TillE 12y ago

That's a shame. I had 1285 (USSD API) starred, which would have allowed for some interesting carrier-specific apps. Do any mobile OSes let apps get a USSD response?

edent 12y ago
Same here - that's how I found out about this. ISTR that Symbian let you run & receive USSD commands.
wasyl 12y ago
Same for me, I got an email recently that bug I starred has been closed. Pretty disappointing, this would open so many possibilities

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

mariuolo 12y ago

Just wait long enough until the bug becomes obsolete. It's the same as the Ubuntu(™) way. The user (if still alive) can re-submit it for the newer version, if applicable and the cycle goes on.

droidist2 12y ago
Haha, Attrition Driven Development?

edent 12y ago

6 years after being reported, Android still doesn't support downloading .ics files. https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1257 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1257 Makes it impossible to add events from websites. It's very frustrating that there doesn't seem to be anyone at Google who looks at bugs. It's all about creating "cool" experiences without the tedious work of fixing bugs.

runn1ng 12y ago
That seems like a feature request, not a bug, to me.
- hayksaakian 12y ago
  If you can download everything else normally without an error, but downloading a file with .ics crashes then its a bug. If you want special functionality associated with .ics files as you download them then that's a feature. Which is this?
fpgeek 12y ago
Um, as the comment thread in the bug demonstrates, it isn't that simple. Android does support downloading .ics files, you just need to install a third-party app to handle the calendar integration. Is that ideal? Of course not. But it is bog-standard prioritization to close issues that have easy workarounds in favor of issues that don't (and that's before you get to the possible patent complications someone mentions late in the thread). More generally, I'd argue that this is a missing feature in the proprietary Google Calendar app, and not an OS issue at all.

jspaetzel 12y ago

I'm not sure if you guys actually even looked at what these requests were but most of them are irrelevant and rightly so... obsolete/irrelevant features. To choose one particular example that stood out to me from the first page with 198 stars: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1140 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1140 I wont even get started on how much information this is lacking for it to be actually executed. The point being that most of the ones in the list have not even been touched in over a year and more closely resemble a Christmas wishlist than actual issues. They should be closed since they are cluttering up the workflow of real problems and it would be a waste of an engineer's time to respond to them all adequately. If they are still relevant a year later maybe you should go through and do something productive like creating a new issue with updated details.

deleted 12y ago
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joelhaasnoot 12y ago
I do support for an app with several million downloads. While it may not make sense on a technical level, it's really powerful for your app and your users to reach out and explain this. For us this is a quick two line reply that the wish is on the wishlist and may be picked up later. Many of the wishes you get are completely logical, some are for very specific use cases, and some are completely off topic. We still track them in a list, and each ticket becomes a vote (we happen to use Trello). It gives us a great view of what users want, miss and would like to see. And yes, our engineers also answer support emails.
- jspaetzel 12y ago
  I think this would be great if they could do that.. but when it comes to millions of users I dont think even google can handle that much feedback publicly without falling seriously short. It's amazing they are able to address as many issues as they do, after all there are like 14000 open issues right now in that tracker.
  - 12y ago

MichaelEGR 12y ago

Closing the very recent and ongoing with no hope in sight BLE bugs which are very real and heinous is BS: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=58381 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=58381 BLE stack is even worse in Lollipop.

oahziur 12y ago
Totally agree, and the BLE peripheral mode only support Nexus 6 and Nexus 9. It was working on Nexus 5 on L Preview, and then unsupported... https://code.google.com/p/android-developer-preview/issues/detail?id=1570 https://code.google.com/p/android-developer-preview/issues/d...
tdkl 12y ago
This comment exactly explains the frustration : https://code.google.com/p/android-developer-preview/issues/detail?id=1570#c31 https://code.google.com/p/android-developer-preview/issues/d... Hardware supports it, but Google for some unknown reason just disables software support, it did it in the past with 4.3 BLE support and apparently nothing changed.

allendoerfer 12y ago

Enterprises are able to pay huge maintenance fees. Single consumers are not and game theory teaches us, that they are unable to unite to get it (free rider problem). So I fear, that we need stronger consumer protection for software products. I do not know the situation in the US, but in the EU we have a mandated 2 year warranty for almost every product with very few sensible exceptions (food and the like). We need the same for software. Features that are advertised have to be guaranteed. Of course software has bugs, so the law has to be about software getting fixed, not being perfect. Actually that is the same with physical products as they do not have to be replaced, they can be repaired, so this does not even make a difference. There has to be some lightweight definition of non-functional requirements. This one is difficult and dangerous as the big players could unite and regulate the small ones out. Related to that, double or triple the warranty periods. This is not so much an issue with smartphones and the like, as they become obsolete by superior successors or fashion, but with stuff like printers, vacuum cleaners or electric toothbrushes. Of course, this would hurt companies like hell and will never happen. I imagine in the long run, it would actually be super beneficial to those, who remain, because it would create a brand "Sold in the EU" much like "Made in Germany" with all the mythos of the deregulated Autobahn but the highly regulated warranties :D

maccard 12y ago
> Related to that, double or triple the warranty periods. I'm not convinced that this solves anything. When you buy a 50 euro/dollar vacuum do you expect it to have the same life expectancy as the 500 dollar vacuum made with higher quality parts? If the company is required to provide a 6 year warranty for a machine that they estimate to last 2 years, they will simply stop producing the cheaper vacuums, meaning everyone who wants a vacuum has to now pay 500 dollars. My knowledge of Vacuum cleaner economics is limited, granted, but I can't see how this works out well in the longer term for anyone, other than the people who would have anyway purchased the more expensive product (that normally comes with a lifetime/extended warranty from the manufacturer anyway)
- allendoerfer 12y ago
  Valid point. Several things apply: You have to adjust the price for the cheap vacuum cleaner in your mind. You are actually talking about several of them, because of their reduced lifetime. Prices do not necessarily reflect the actual costs of the product directly sometimes not even remotely. Printers or game consoles for example are hardly or not at all profitable. The main purpose of prices is to differentiate the product classes, otherwise it would be harder to tell, which one actually is the higher class product. So that part of the pricing would not move at all. Economics of scale. The higher quality parts will be produced in greater mass and become cheaper. Innovation. If there is a need for cheaper vacuums, somebody will eventually find a way to build one. Finally, the main point: Planned obsolescence [0]. Products are actually designed to break directly after the 2 year guarantee. One could argue, that designing costs would actually fall, due to the obsolete step. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

curiously 12y ago

Had a phone from 2010ish. Recently switched to a Motorolla G smartphone with latest Android on it. I am absolutely amazed how far Android has come. It feels so smooth and good. I thought about jumping to iPhone but my view of Android has changed drastically. (My old phone was Galaxy Nexus and it was rife with randomly restarting during calls and sluggy OS).

mpdehaan2 12y ago

Managing any project with thousands of contributors is very hard - namely, duplicate bugs, low quality bug reports, bugs that are no longer valid given OS or version changes, etc. I can't imagine how hard it is to manage something on the scale of Android, where it's so consumer-oriented, half of everyone with a phone (roughly) potentially could be using the bug tracker. There may be some interesting room to build a bug tracker that can better semantically sort, and ensure better quality bug reports - templates for bug reports are a start, but there are very few if any good triage tools for the people on the other end of the system. In this case, yes, there should have been at least a canned template response such as "if this still affects you,..." etc, but even that is difficult - with 50 people replying to a bug report, it's a good way to get 50 duplicates. Ultimately, it's a sign where open source project management practices get increasingly hard the larger a project gets, and while it may be possible to keep up with the contributors, keeping up with userland can be an even larger feat. In some ways, proprietary software has a it a LOT easier, and I don't envy the task. While not every project can hire 15-30 extra people to manage and prune a gigantic issue tracker - Android probably can, and probably should, given the spirit of what it is. Longer term, I still think we can do a lot better with bug tracker technology to provide more semantic views into what's there and needs to be done - eliminating the need to keep things pruned in this way. But we are no where close yet.

chralieboy 12y ago
StackOverflow provides a good example of how this could work. They identify duplicates as you type the questions and have many moderators dedicating time, for free, on cleaning things up. Of course that doesn't solve the difficult matter of actually fixing the bugs, but I'm sure the Android developers would sincerely appreciate it. Closing duplicates or reports with little information sets a standard for the bugs that do get fixed.
chralieboy 12y ago
StackOverflow provides a good example of how this could work. They identify duplicates as you type the questions and have many moderators dedicating time, for free, on cleaning things up. Of course that doesn't solve the difficult matter of actually fixing the bugs, but I'm sure the Android developers would sincerely appreciate it. Closing duplicates or reports with little information sets a standard for the bugs that do get fixed.

realrocker 12y ago

Since many of these bugs are also simultaneously raised by OEM's they are closed internally without feedback. And feedback to what bug, they are so many for the same! Also lot of them are feature enhancements and are really opinionated actually to work on. It could be better but it's not that bad. You won't believe the hoops you gotta jump to get anything done. Too many stakeholders in AOSP!(which has both pros and cons). I work on the AOSP for an OEM.

fidotron 12y ago

This should be just another wake up call to the fact that Android just isn't open. Unless you're inside the OHA your view doesn't count, and even then you have to go along with Google's vision of the future. End users might think they have it bad, but the development experience is basically an exercise in dealing with whatever hyped up shiny unfinished turd is floating down from on high. It's a shame because some aspects of the system are really damn good, but there is just so much crap. Having seen all this develop has persuaded me that the future is lower level APIs. On the web that means asm.js, Canvas, indexeddb etc. (discarding HTML and CSS), and on Android it means C++ and OpenGL and staying the hell away from as much of the higher level parts as possible. (Bonus points for increased code portability). The reason for this is the lower level ones seem to reach stable predictability much faster. It is better/easier to bundle any high level UI toolkit in the application itself than to have to support rendering on four different versions of the toolkit.

TillE 12y ago
I'm not sure what you think "open" means. You're still free to fork Android and do what you want with it. Google's negligence in fixing a variety of issues doesn't change that one bit.
- fidotron 12y ago
  You aren't really free to fork it at all. Forking the SDK is explicitly not allowed, but the killer is if you want to make one device which carries the Google Apps you have to agree that all Android devices you make will. (i.e. you are forced to bundle Google Play Services on all devices). This is why Amazon do what they do and it remains a separate ecosystem.
  - digi_owl 12y ago
    I seem to recall that there is some fairly stringent marketing elements involved as well. If you carry the Google apps, you can't put them deeper than one level below the launcher or something.
  - 12y ago

thomaslutz 12y ago

What's even more infuriating is that devices with LTE like razorg get delayed multiple weeks if not months with software updates. Still waiting on Android 5 with what I thought is the 'better' device compared to razor.

tehabe 12y ago

Some of the bugs I reported were also marked "obsolete", but they were mostly fixed in Android 5.0, so I can't really complain about it. But yeah, the handling of bugs is awful, no comparison to the way Chromium handles bugs. They might not be perfect. But it feels much better handled.

therealmarv 12y ago

I know Android devs have a internal bugtracker, so there are two bugtrackers at least (internal and external). This horrible external bugtracker on Google Code is maybe not as relevant as you might think. I can imagine it is a pain in the *ss to sync them.

lnanek2 12y ago

It's unfortunate, but Google pretty much ignores most outside bug reports and a bot marks them obsolete automatically. Rather than improving things, the situation has actually gotten worse and worse over the years and they started adding tags to prevent people from commenting. Even if Google rarely fixed things the comments were often pretty good for working together with other developers to come up with work arounds.