Android's power user ecosystem couldn't be matched in iOS. Even without root, Tasker can automate every single aspect of the OS - Want to send and receive WhatsApp messages over email?[1], Want better accessibility e.g. Voice summary of news?[2], Want a butt triggered pomodoro timer?[3]. Termux runs a Linux container and it can run complete Linux distribution inside it with PRoot[4]. Best of all, Tasker & Termux can communicate with each other for endless possibilities.
Of course Google can mess it up with their policy/API changes for Playstore, but that's where 3rd party app stores like f-droid comes in and can ensure open-source apps like Termux can be published without hurdles. Not to mention the privacy focused apps on f-droid.
And if one doesn't want anything to do with Google, LineageOS has proven itself to be a viable replacement for stock android.
[1] https://abishekmuthian.com/send-and-receive-whatsapp-message...
[2] https://abishekmuthian.com/voice-summary-of-news/
[3] https://abishekmuthian.com/butt-pomodoro-a-butt-triggered-po...
Does anyone actually care about any of these things? I'm a long time Android user and I've installed both Tasker and Termux. Never found anything useful for them and uninstalled them.
I work in a software company, with lots of people who experiment with home automation etc - the kinds of things where this could be useful.
Instead everyone uses RPis, and controls them with apps from their iPhones.
I'm sure there are a few people who actually do this stuff. But in my experience they are the kinds of people who enjoy working around barriers, so would find a different way to achieve the same things anyway.
On HN, sure. The other 3.6 billion smartphone users out there? No. The top voted opinions on HN are niche and don't represent the general population in any way. You can see this effect on other threads. Here are a few classic examples.
- Everyone on HN hates Facebook, and yet 2 billion+ people use it every day.
- Privacy is a paramount concern on HN, more important than anything else, and yet billions of people don't care as long as their dick pics are safe (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRWxk7o-QlI).
- HN users hate ads and would happily pay for the privilege of eliminating ads. In the real world? Youtube has 2 billion monthly active users, only 1% of whom pay to eliminate ads.
- The ideal HN smartphone is one that has software support for years, is rootable, can have it's OS changed on a whim, can install any app from any app store. Hardware should be modular, with a swappable battery, camera etc. So Fairphone, basically. Units sold - 200k in 5 years. iPhone, the exact opposite of this in every respect (except software support) - 1 Billion in 5 years.
What I've said is so obvious it's self evident. But now and then people do get surprised and maybe annoyed when they find the world doesn't reflect the gospel truth preached on HN. At the time of this writing, your comment is actually downvoted ... for implying that the general population might not be Tasker-Termux installing, life automating power users.
When someone says "never/no one" in a casual conversation, they don't mean "it's physically and mathematically impossible for this to happen, I'm sure the chance of this is 0%". They mean: "the vast majority of people".
Techie communities can be tiresome with all the nitpicking.
I swear that if I posted a comment saying "nobody puts their dick in the vacuum cleaner shaft" while discussing the best vacuum cleaner design, somebody would feel the need to object and say they did it.
This lack of understanding of the general population is the issue.
I'm arguing that Tasker/Termux users aren't really your normal power users at all. Instead they are hackers, and would be satisfied by any form of stitching bits together to accomplish some task.
If Tasker/Termus didn't exist they'd be equally happy accomplishing the same things with custom hardware sensors or carrying a RPi around or whatever. They aren't actually doing anything useful with the software that couldn't be accomplished slightly less conveniently in other ways - the joy of the hack is the accomplishment.
When you view it like this, the market satisfaction argument looks different.
I'd be surprised if there are more than ~10 people (even on HN) who use the ability of Tasker and Termux to communicate with each other - and I bet those 10 people would be equally happy using some other solution they hacked together.
I think it's the act of hacking a solution together that they like, rather than it being a truly useful thing that can't be accomplished equally well in other ways.
1. By default my phone remembers the last media volume level used with headphones. This does make some sense, but it is easy to accidentally get maximum volume blasted in your ear. I use Tasker to automatically reset the volume to a safe level when I plug in my headphones.
2. I find that the automatic screen brightness on my phone doesn't work well at all. In a dark room, it would not set the brightness to its minimum level. It also would not turn the brightness to maximum even in direct, bright sunlight. I prefer to just set the brightness manually, and avoid the poor guesses of the automatic brightness algorithm (which is claimed to be "smart" and aware of my preferences). The only problem with manual brightness control is that it's common to end up in bright sunlight with a very dim screen. It is impossible to use the phone under such conditions. So, I used Tasker to add a gesture. If I shake my phone relatively hard, twice, in an up and down motion, it sets the screen to maximum brightness. I use this all the time.
another thing i have tasker do is write down the hours i work every week by detecting the bluetooth tv in work and then the times my car stops in the morning and starts when i head home. then on friday if there are any hours that haven't been sent, tasker puts them into an email and i review it before sending.
i often think about switching to an iphone for the camera or some other reasons, but then i think about all the stuff ive made in tasker and how i probably won't be able to replicate it all on ios
Apple's Shortcuts app supports a number of automation scenarios — for example, I would implement the feature you mentioned with a rule which tells Toggl to start an entry when my location is within a certain radius of work and stop it when I leave. You can also create or add to a note, send emails, etc. Since I have the Pythonista app, that could even extend to running arbitrary code.
If you meant Termux on Android 11, Here's the quote from the developer-
>"Most of things work on Android 11. Only few packages have issues (including zsh) and restricted /proc/net which renders network information utilities like netstat unusable without root. Rest seems working correctly unless hit by some known issue not related to Android 10+."[1]
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/termux/comments/mj142i/whats_the_fu...
Some of those issues are manageable when making use of Java APIs, naturally not all of them, and even less if one refuses to touch Java.
What do you mean by that and how does it affect not being invoke exec() in android 10 without making changes to SELinux?
The public API is based on Java and a couple of NDK APIs, clearly enumerated by Google as stable APIs.
They can either adapt themselves to this reality, make use of those APIs in a mingw like way, creating wrappers, or die in their faith that Android is Linux, alongside countless attempts to GNU/Linux phones.
But there is hope, just like with mingw, termux can use the OS official APIs to launch processes.
Used to be you had to jump through hoops to get other stores at all and now it's just a few clicks away.
And the security tradeoffs therein.
>But I’m sure you’ve not used an iPhone enough to realize that.
Was that ad hominem necessary? I've used iOS devices regularly w/o Jailbreak since 2010 until last year. I've spent several thousand dollars personally and my business money on Apple products. My comment was purely regarding the technical nature of the OS and was not directed against any brand. I know people are religious about brands, but private businesses don't deserve such dedication and I feel it's unhealthy overall.
This is a massive assumption.
To me it's the difference between installing a full linux OS on a chromebook vs running it in chroot (crouton) or google's new virtualized method. They both have their trade offs while running a full linux OS pretty much has 0 trade offs. That's all that I was getting at. Of course there are pros to having a more locked down model at the expense of performance or being able to run something directly on metal at times. iOS is a strange combination of either being insanely secure or not so much, but in either case the raw performance and stability is almost always there in comparison.
I think it has more to do with the fact that better and more innovative hardware is the only way Samsung can differentiate from other Android vendors and that they don't have the sticky ecosystem that Apple has so they need people to keep upgrading.
IPhone is an aspirational brand with awesome marketing, so things like notch which don't make much sense are copied by everyone.
If you like throwing out your phones every two to three years, then sure.
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+12+Battery+Replacement/1...
And you just can’t buy original battery, they’re available only to selected service centres.
Currently it takes an hour at most to do at any repair shop. It's good enough. What matters is that it's possible for a reasonable price.
Not as important these days.
Besides, getting a battery replacement for an iPhone costs sub 80 bucks, which is probably about the same as we would have had to pay for batteries for the older models - and they were more likely to break because you can't get waterproof phones with replaceable batteries.
I like having a waterproof phone.
And! And! Someone managed to unlock the bootloader. So there's a variety of decent roms one can run on it. All aging now, a little bit too old at this point, but this 2016 device was swinging mightily until it became utterly bereft & unsupportable.
It's just so pathetic that we rely on these shitty ass vendor OSes. The v20 is a case study in how amazingly awesome devices are when consumers have any right what-so-ever to maintain & work with their devices. By hook here! One uses the "dirty santa" exploit (with pixelated santa junk) to unlock the blasted thing. And with that it is a semi-modern, loveable device. By community effort. By contributor effort. No thanks to Google nor LG.
But modern phones are more impervious. This 2016 device is one of the last devices that (unintentionally) allowed access. After this, everything slid downhill. Everything went to shit. Android collapsed into a pitiful shitmound. Libre was squeezed out. Consumerism & obsolescence are enforced in firmware now, almost ubiquotously. What a pathetic trash heap Android is. John Deere tractors have nothing on the disposable technology that Android levers against it's users. It's a vile situation. Unlock the bootloaders you frigging jerkwads. This is hell you perpetuate against your users! Stop this madness.
However, when you unlock your bootloader, you lose access to things that demand devices be trusted by Google. So Netflix no longer even shows up in the Play Store, you can no longer use NFC pay, etc. And ROMs are not what they used to be (though the update process being lighter and quicker is a nice change).
It's too bad, but I get why it is the way it is.
A very popular Android modification tool Magisk has been waging a long running battle against Android to try & get by SafetyNet & other validations. However the increasing securitization at a hardware level is leaving less & less possibility[2][3] for users to access their devices as they would like.
I can't remember what movie it is, but I keep thinking about some movie with a person trying not to get kidnapped, and the victim being told early on: "if anyone says 'you're safe and secure' don't trust that person", which, sure enough, latter gives way to the believed-good but actually-bad guys driving off with her saying this & her appropriately freaking out. We are secure all right, secure against ourselves. What we are doing- creating ever more perfect anti-user enclaves- is vile. The security world has such a ferociously ruthelessly absolutist view on security, is so ready to declare threads & build bigger moats & walls, but users & freedom keep getting screwed. Such woe.
[1] https://developer.android.com/training/safetynet
[2] https://www.xda-developers.com/safetynet-hardware-attestatio...
[3] https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/29/googles-dreaded-saf...
I've always found this who argument hilarious given that a majority of people put a bulky, ugly case on their phones.
If you want more battery and don't care about bulk, get a battery case.
Not even remotely true. The LG V20 is very thin and still has a removable battery.
EDIT: Huh, I looked it up and I'm completely wrong. Battery sizes haven't changed.
Fast charging degrades the battery slightly faster than slow charging but it's not the end of the world in my opinion. I'm guessing it's much better to not keep your phone battery at a high state of charge for a long time, much of the chemical reactions that degrade the battery happens at high state of charge, than avoiding to fast charge it to 80%.
I wouldn't love a Linux phone but app support is going to be in need of help unless it can run android apps
If it wasn't for the Apple silicon (and the advantage is clearly Apple's) it would be just come down to whether you preferred iOS enough to overcome the obvious feature advantages on the Android side.
I remember Samsung flagships from 2013-2014. That thing had eye tracking, ie it scrolled the page for you as you read it. That’s just one example, the phone was packed with those. How many of those features are useful in daily life though? It’s as if Samsung is trying to pack as many features as they can to compensate for something.
That is, whatever iPhone decides to do, they just copy it.
I don't know if it is because the business just decide to follow market trends or if the designers are secretly Apple fanboys.
E.g. - >60Hz displays - 5G (e.g. S10 5G was released >1 year before iPhone with a 5G). - Notchless phones, etc.
This is why if you watch Apple presentations, they'll always say "best iPhone ever", not "best phone ever".
- ASUS is on it's 5th? gaming focused phone (with attachable fan and all) [1]
- You have folding, flipping and stretching [2] phones
- You still have plenty of great niche hardware keyboard phones [3]
The issue is that these mostly fill niches, as the majority of people are happy enough having the a clean simple phone.
[1] https://rog.asus.com/phones/rog-phone-model/
Oh my god you're not kidding.
Possibly you mention about some manufacturer that advertises vapor chamber as "water cooling". I don't like their advertisement because it's just a improved heat pipe.
Plenty? In what way? There seems to be one company that makes a keyboard phone with outdated CPUs and other hardware, to make ends meet and be able to produce such a phone economically.
https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk/cosmo-communicator
https://www.techradar.com/news/new-blackberry-5g-phone-with-...
I'd completely despaired of ever finding a modern smartphone with a full physical keyboard on it. It's been 8 years since I had one.
Now to do some research and find a US carrier that it'll work with.
Back in 2007 there was a period where I was doing a lot of work on deployed standalone application servers at remote client sites, some of which had little to no internet connection.
We'd audit servers before I traveled and send me with the "right software patches", but it didn't always work out perfectly and tethering was pretty primitive back then.
I loved being able to call someone, have them check something out of sourcesafe, then throw it up on one of our servers, where I could SSH in from my phone, grab files, edit them, then shove them on my MicroSD card, pull that, shove it in a USB adapter and patch an install for a server with no internet connection.
SUPER hinky by today's standards, but it felt pretty amazing at the time.
https://shop.fairphone.com/en/fairphone-3-plus
I'm too spoiled on having snappier phone specs to enjoy something like this, myself.
> removable batteries
Those usually require relatively flimsy backs that slide fit onto the phone. This has problems with water proofing and it's a part that can wear and eventually fit poorly or fall off. It's a lot easier to waterproof/resist a phone when you can seal the whole back of the phone off from the outside world. It also allows using soft polymer batteries that can eek out a bit more volume without the protective bits removable batteries need to be safe(r) to handle.
On the more cynical side maybe they figured it'd induce people to replace their phones more often though I don't have data showing how much of a factor bad battery is in replacing a phone versus other stuff like better performance or FOMO.
> IR blasters
Honestly don't think I had a phone with one of these since my Palm Centro in high school and college and I don't think I ever used the IR feature on there. The only real use I see is slow data transfers (better accomplished with Bluetooth now) and controlling TVs. The latter isn't a huge draw for most people I bet because people generally either have one remote (that more often can control everything if setup properly either through ARC and HDMI control signals or the cable box remote also sending the TV signals when needed) or many remotes and are willing to spend money on a nicer universal like a Harmony. There's probably still some out there today but it seems like an extra part that most people won't care about so the extra fractions of a cent + to include it gets wiped out to increase profits over a few million phones.
> SD cards
This one is maybe a little more cynical. There's some justification for reducing the number of intrusions in the waterproofing seals and increasing the internal volume available to squeeze more battery in. I think another reason is to induce people to buy the more expensive version of a phone. If you include SD card expansion storage it's harder to upsell people on the larger more expensive storage options because usually SD cards are cheaper than the equivalent sized storage in a phone
> headphone jacks
This one I think is a mixed bag. Including the jack sets some hard design limits on the shape of the edge of the phone and it's a pretty large hole to plug against water and other intrusions. I think Apple might have had more coldly calculated reasons for doing it with the close launch of their own AirPods. Some phone companies have similar offerings where you could see a calculated plan to increase profits.
I think we're maybe also just reaching the more mature phase of the smartphone design. There's a basic set of features most people care about and optimizing for that pushes companies in a pretty similar direction. There's some margin for small experimentation around the edges but those induce compromises in the core features people judge on so that limits the market and profit of making those choices.
There's technology like foldable screens that might shake things up but they're pretty new with some big compromises at the moment so they haven't really hit the core incentives and forces that are corralling phones into the same tight design and feature list.
Headphone jack needing to be waterproofed is a bit of a lie, as there have been IP68 phones with a headphone jack. It's simply wanting to cut down on prices.
Another argument against SD cards is that a lot of stuff people do on their phones requires a certain baseline performance, e.g. 4K60 video recording, burst photography etc.
Other stuff like fast loading of apps from disk isn’t necessarily required, but reflects poorly on the phone if it’s slow. It could also cause issues for games which might expect to be able to stream a lot of data from disk.
Of course, it’s perfectly possible to buy SD cards which are plenty fast enough to support this stuff but:
a. SD card speed classes are a bit of a nightmare even for techy people
b. 99% of people will just buy the cheapest card they can find on eBay, which is likely to be some knock-off crap
Throw in the fact that no expandable storage forces people into a purchase-time upgrade with a hefty markup applied and it’s not hard to imagine why it’s all but disappeared.
I am definitely on the cynical side of thinking that it was just marketing spin to justify taking away features to increase profits.
I'm especially curious how rain has damaged phones - I use them in Ireland where you can just say "scattered showers" and have a 50% chance of an accurate forecast. Never thought twice about using any in the rain, and never bought a "waterproof" phone. I always assumed the puddle/pool scenario was what the waterproofing fuss was. Or are people using phones in hurricanes or monsoons or something?
I don't know about those, but we get fairly heavy rainfall every now and then here in Norway. The kind where your underwear gets soaking wet for no other reason than being outside.
I keep my phone in the front pocket of my pants, and after losing two phones to such events I decided that was enough for me.
Now I can check when the bus is due or take that call even if it's raining (heavy or not) and I don't have to think about it.
>IR Blaster The IR blaster is one of the most used apps on my V20. It can control anything from my circa-1980s stereo system to my modern surround sound AVR. And all without any proprietary apps which never get updated or having to connect to WiFi! I've put all my remotes in a drawer and forgot about them because I can do it all from my phone. I think this feature would get a lot more use if it was included on more phones, considering an IR LED is about $0.01 to include. Why do "smart" devices resort to overcomplicated and insecure Bluetooth/WiFi control interfaces when we had this problem solved since the 80s?
Waterproofing is a poor excuse. Most phones that removed these features are not waterproof. Samsung themselves proved that you can have all these things in a waterproof phone with the Galaxy S5.
(Almost?) all Xiaomi phones still have an IR blaster, which is a pretty big share of the the overall market. Some Huawei models do, too.
However anybody buying their first phone, anybody selling the old phones or anybody wanting to take advantage of fast charging would need a new(er) charger they might not have.
I love wireless headphones myself. But you’ve got to admit that it’d be much harder to sell those if phones had 3.5mm jack. It’s as if corporations do anything to increase revenue...
samsung galaxy xcover pro: removable battery, headphone jack, SD card. That's just one example.
Apple can "get away" with it because to a lot of people it's a luxury/lifestyle brand. Android vendors copy them because they want to create new revenue streams by removing features/out of nothing too!
With all these features they are removing, I personally can't ever see myself buying a device solely based off of that one feature and so I compromise.
I'm not happy with having to compromise but it's not a perfect world and I'm not so set in my opinion that I would consider not buying it based off of X feature (to an extent)
The G6 has some reliability flaws around its USB port and camera focus mechanism. I bought two of them used, and the 3rd new because it had a 2 year warranty. The warrantied one I sent in twice under warranty. The 2nd time, they sent me back an "upgraded" G6+ with amazon branding and a locked bootloader, which was unacceptable to me. I politely asked for the G6 or another phone with an unlockable bootloader, and a month later they sent me another G6+. It took 3 months to get that straightened out, but I ended up with a like-new refurbished G6.
LG definitely lost money just on the one phone I bought new due to the reliability issues, and probably burned through $100+ in unnecessary stupidity with their warranty process.
I tried buying a used V20 (I think) at some point, but the display had severe burn-in, and I was able to return it.
I think LG just went slightly too mediocre on each of their phones to optimize costs, missing the forest for the trees. The G6+ would probably be a nearly perfect phone that I would happily pay money for, if it wasn't bootloader locked and infected by amazon. The only reason I have an itch to replace my G6 right now is because of the mediocre camera; I miss so many precious toddler moments that my wife's pixel doesn't. I'll bet every G6 ever made complains about "moisture in the USB port". The V20 clearly has a screen burn-in issue.
I bought a used-but-modern mid-range Samsung tablet to mount on an exercise bike, but it turns out none of the biking apps support it. I was annoyed at first because I hate consumer electronics without a purpose, but it turns out it works well as a tablet and I use it all the time. I've owned other tablets over the years, and they all sucked. Clearly Samsung has some idea of what they're doing.
The LG G6 was a great phone to buy used, and it's not too horrible to open up to repair. Probably has something to do with LG giving up...
As for waterproofing, the Samsung Galaxy S5 proved that you can have both a removable battery/SD card and maintain waterproofing. Plenty of action cameras have removable batteries too that don't compromise waterproofing.
Android phones used to offer unique and useful features like removable batteries, headphone jacks, IR blasters, SD cards, etc. Now it seems that Samsung and Google are obsessed with copying whatever Apple does, even their controversial decisions like removing the headphone jack, even after making fun of Apple for doing it. No thanks, why would I buy a shittier iPhone with a worse OS?
When my LG V20 bites the dust or becomes obsolete I don't know what I'll replace it with. I hope that the Linux phone ecosystem matures by then otherwise I might buy an iPhone.