Re:Apple’s AR is closer to reality than Google’s
by bitmapbrother on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @12:22AM
(#14642552)
A flagship phone in the Android world is anything that uses the latest and greatest SoC. And right now that's usually anything with an SD 835, Exynos 8895 and Kirin 960.
>It’s been my observation for a while now that you can’t rely on any given Android phone to have the latest OS installed. They usually don’t. (EDIT: And that usually means features can’t be relied upon for app developers, which is why it’s relevant here.)
The major features usually require an OS update, but Google has been compartmentalizing the OS for some time and making things downloadable from the Play store or available via Google Play Services. They also use a Support Library to backport new API's to older OS versions.
Re:Apple’s AR is closer to reality than Google’s
by pjmlp on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @03:08AM
(#14643075)
Those updates don't ship neither kernel nor driver updates, which are actually what matters in AR, given the sore state of OpenGL and Vulkan support across Android devices.
It doesn't matter what SoC a device has, if the OS only sees a buggy OpenGL ES 2.0 driver.
Re:Apple’s AR is closer to reality than Google’s
by function_seven on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @01:39AM
(#14642808)
Thanks. My understanding seems a couple years out-of-date.
My interpretation of “flagship” is the Pixel or (formerly) the Nexus lines. What Google considers the flagships. I could also be interpreting that incorrectly. I’m just used to Samsung, LG, and Moto having some level of control and obstruction on when their phones get OS-level updates. Not sure if the Play store apps have enough system-level permissions to implement whatever core services would be needed to support an SDK for other apps to use.
“Same old rhetoric” seems a bit unfair. It’s been my observation for a while now that you can’t rely on any given Android phone to have the latest OS installed. They usually don’t. (EDIT: And that usually means features can’t be relied upon for app developers, which is why it’s relevant here.)