Happy weekend!
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With the release of Android 14, which is slowly making its way to more devices, it seems like a good time for a community discussion on the direction of Android development.
Discussion Questions:
- What do you think about this latest release?
- Do you think things are going in the right direction?
- Is there anything you’d like to see prioritized in future releases?
- Which device are you on?
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In my opinion, no. At least not under the reins of Google.
Android 11 added scoped storage, severely limiting file access from apps, although app developers have found ways to work with it.
Android 12 did a lot of UI redesigning, including the horrible Internet toggle and it just seemed like there is way too much whitespace.
Android 13 did something right: Made you confirm if you want notifications from apps. IDK why it took this long for such a basic feature even iOS had for forever.
Android 14… Nothing really useful, but they are limiting sideloading of old apps that tend to be super efficient on storage, memory, and CPU. It’s a defeat in the ongoing war between Google and sideloading. They also are trying to force the volume down when it’s too high for too long, even when it’s paired with a Bluetooth device at low volume, another braindead move with possibly good intentions but terrible execution.
With other OEMs (Samsung, BBK, Xiaomi, etc), they still sometimes add useful stuff, but I have a Motorola, so I don’t have much of an opinion on the extra stuff.
Google is saving their actually innovative and useful features for the Pixel line of phones. Many of these features are really software that Google arbitrarily locks to the Pixel.
And many of the Google stuff has just been getting worse and worse, they’ve been getting more and more pushy on me when I do something they don’t like (disable location, for example). Google likes the idea of trying to make Android more like iOS and restrict user freedom. This is why Android market share is declining in the US: If you want iOS, buy an iPhone.
Yesterday, I was trying to simply automate turning on/off Wifi via Tasker at a set time. Turned out Google has removed API access for this pre Android 12 only and can’t be done. If Google wants to be make an IOS clone, then it is doing very wrong, IMO.
In android 14, they still allow sideloading via stuff like F Droid or apk’s downloaded from internet? Or does the user has to confirm a prompt everytime? At the rate Google is restricting stuff, maybe some years down the line, the only way to sideload apps would be via adb.