Happy weekend!
You might have noticed that [email protected] has reached 15K subscribers, with over 400 active visitors per week!
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?
P.S. Subscribe to [email protected] if you haven’t already. It’s the best place to ask questions, seek advice, or to help steer others in the right direction for all things related to Android.
You must log in or register to comment.
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.
I can’t decide if I agree or disagree with you, but perhaps readers and yourself would enjoy some added discussion through a shared love of Android and wanting to see Android succeed.
Scoped Storage is perhaps the best change in Android 11. This was the end of applications polluting your file system with junk that doesn’t get removed when you uninstall an app. There’s also a privacy issue with applications unintentionally exposing data to any other application that might try to access it. In my experience as a developer, you have to force developers to comply with good security policy or else it’s seen as a cost center to be avoided rather than a feature. For apps that can’t work with scope storage, Google provided an escape hatch through all files access, but they only allow applications to request to this permission in specific cases.
The Android 12 internet toggle makes me feel stupid. I understand the difference between different methods of connecting to the internet. It feels like extra taps for no reason for all but the lowest common denominator of users. Let’s strive for greatness and not sufficiency.
Android 14 sideloading restrictions are necessary from a security and privacy perspective. A lot of compatibility work goes on to enable old applications to work, and this often involves bypassing checks in the interest of not breaking things. I believe this intended to address malware in developing markets where alternate app stores are used. Even so, I don’t agree that Google should make this mandatory. A sufficiently scary warning message about potential malware would be a more reasonable first step, perhaps with a countdown timer to encourage users to actually read before bypass.
The Pixel line of phones is seeing increasing success. I understand the company focusing on products that make money. Google has a complicated relationship with vendors by being both collaborator and competitor at the same time.
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.
They still allow sideloading through F droid and the like, as long as the app is specifically made for a newer Android version. There is a prompt to confirm (as with the Google Play Store), but this is good because it makes the user aware that they are installing an app.
I don’t know what opinion to form. The openness of Android is constantly abused, but Google seems to be overcorrecting by locking it down more than iOS in certain cases and reducing choices for users to use/customize their device as they like. I can’t backup my damn Minecraft worlds without paying Microsoft $4/month for a server to act as an intermediary, or I have to download an unvetted third-party Minecraft addon. On iOS, the “walled garden”, you can use the Files app or connect to your computer and backup.
Would decoupling Android from Google help Android’s long-term future? Let some non-profit organization with different goals take over? With that said, it’ll be a big challenge for them to figure out licensing, funding, development, etc.
I’m on a Pixel 6a running Android 14. Material You has grown on me. I still dislike gesture navigation. Would love to see more lockscreen customization.
I get where Google is coming from by seizing control from vendors under threat of losing access to Play Services. I generally feel positive about those specific changes because I’m not a fan of vendor-specific implementations to solve common problems. Nearby Share, for example, is a great idea that only works if everyone’s using a compatible solution.
However, openness and customization is part of what makes Android great. The ROM community is under the SafetyNet gun where Google could pull the trigger at any moment and effectively lock out unapproved operating systems from running many applications. Google overstepping further hardly makes the news.
I’m concerned, because if you look at this problem from a vendor point of view, who else can you go to? You need a thriving ecosystem to make your phone attractive. There’s a high ceiling on the maximum pain Google could inflict before the bottom falls out.
Android is precariously positioned.
Is Android going in the right direction?
Not really, IMO. As a user of Android since v1.5 Cupcake, it’s disappointing to see how locked down Android has become over the years. I still recall how I took a leap of faith when I ditched the then highly customisable and feature-full Windows Mobile, to the barebones Android - I believed in the opensource nature of Android, thinking how exciting it was to be on what could be a developer’s and power user’s dream mobile platform. Although the Android dev scene at the time was nascent, I could forsee an explosion of root utilities, mods and custom ROMs. And I was right - the early Android dev scene was so exciting. From cool and useful utility such as DriveDroid or Chainfire’s CF.Lumen, to innovative custom ROMs such as Paranoid Android with their per-app DPI, Halo, Pie controls etc, the early Android scene was full of activity and really exciting as a power user.
But even as Android got more and more locked down and killed my favorite apps, mods and ROMs, I still enjoyed following many of it’s developments such as the projects Butter, Svelte, Volta, Treble and Mainline. However, I can’t recall anything major or exciting in recent years.
As someone else here mentioned, nowadays all the good stuff seems to be Pixel exclusives (like motion deblur, 7 years or software updates etc). Plus, Google keep pushing more and more stuff towards their proprietary Play Services stack, encouraging developers dependency on them - including anti-freedom features such as Play Integrity (SafetyNet). All of this makes it increasingly harder to break free from Google’s grasps, and as former fanboy of a company which once claimed to “not be evil”, it makes me sad that the ecosystem I once looked fondly towards, is now something that I’m looking to move away from.
Oh wow you made my revive those days when I was changing the ROM of my One Plus 3 every week because there was so many on development and adding new features. So many great memories having control of my device.
I do agree with some points. However, most of these changes are somehow related to security. As someone working in FinTech, play integrity and the likes are something you cant escape, as rooted devices,ROMs, emulators and such are 90% are ‘hackers’. Shame google didn’t think of a way to bake it into Andorid itself… Having it in their services is locking Android so much.To add, lately all the “new” features are something that Samsung already had for years. Like Knox work profile container added to Android. Samsung seems to be evolving Android more than Google which is just sad.
Windows is both more open, and more secure, than android in every practical sense, while being closed source.
I’m a fervent believer in open-sourcs, but Google and their advertising funded business model has poisoned Android.
Oh great I am a hacker now because I installed a modified ROM! I will go to my boss and ask for a promotion.
They’ll give the excuse of ‘security’ for any anti-consumer feature, but I’ll never accept exchanging control over my device for ‘security’.
Would you sacrifice NFC/Wallet features to have that freedom back? I personally would not.
I do see a genuine market for a phone you can root and apply custom ROMs etc on, but not do banking or public transport tickets or anything else that needs a layer of trust between the merchant and the phone user.
Android these days is mixed. The app ecosystem is mature and I still have more freedom than Apple in terms of home screen, app store, browser, a real filesystem, etc. The phones are all quite capable and powerful. I can sync texts reliably across devices, use my phone’s location to trigger smart home automations, and my watch syncs effortlessly with my phone. All of these were issues for years that are now pretty much solved! Haven’t felt a need to upgrade my Note 20 Ultra yet, but might go to a foldable in the next year if the right deal pops up.
I’m disappointed about how Google has locked down some features in the name of security, like the ability for apps to access text messages. The Play Store is so enshittified. It’s been a long time since I was able to discover new apps there: these days I don’t feel secure installing apps from there and prefer to stick to F-Droid when I can.
I also am disappointed by how the Android market has consolidated so much. There was such a diversity of OEMs in the 2010s and I miss the HTC, LG, Nextbit, Essential and others which weren’t afraid to rock the boat and try new form factors. Foldables are one of the only exciting product categories. Everything else feels pretty predictable, iterative and on rails.
14 is the most underwhelming release I’ve ever used, to the point I didn’t even notice when my phone updated
The only good things about the latest version are the custom clock feature and the easter egg.
Android is maturing. Big changes are becoming increasingly rare, therefore, I think Android and perhaps also hardware vendors should move to a two-year release schedule. I think it’s time to accept that annual releases are no longer necessary.
Now that we fully understand the use cases of the smartphone, I believe Android should provide an advanced mode or power user mode that extends beyond Developer Options for developers. I’d like to hand an Android phone to my grandmother in Basic Mode and know she can’t possibly mess up, but also I want to be more enabled in a Power Mode where not screwing up my device is my responsibility. I think the casual and advanced user are different beasts and should be respected separately.
Finally, I want to see mainline support for desktop mode. Android can increase demand for high-end devices and rejuvenate the premium segment if it shows that it fits new use cases to justify the money. Many users no longer own a laptop computer. Android should move now to capture this form factor.
Written from my Google Pixel 8 Pro.
Honestly, the MD3 You had been to my liking. I agree lots of features are getting Pixel Exclusive nowadays, but let’s not blame Google for this. The general space of Android in last 2 releases has been refinement over time but obviously with contestable decisions like AppData folder access and others. On the other hand, Android OEMs are not innovating enough in Android Space like they used to do at one point. They are just focusing on UI changes and not features.
- Android 14 has been trouble-free for me. Upgrades here and there along with a significant improvement to screen-off battery life. About 30%. I can also now throw my Home Assistant dashboard on the lock screen device controls shortcut.
- Yes. Unlike many other of Google’s projects, Android is still fully staffed and improving in significant ways even if sometimes invisible year over year. One area where there’s been a lot of improvement is separating the hardware-specific software bits from the rest of the OS. This is a major enabler behind the longer support lifespans we began seeing recently. It also makes third party ROMs much easier to support on devices with long term support. Security and privacy have been ramped up significantly too.
- Stay the course and keep with gradual improvements. Perhaps do a bit more work on the desktop mode. Android should be able to replace ChromeOS.
- Pixel 6 Pro, upgrading to Pixel 8 Pro
- Putting my developer hat on, I know it’s fetch to hate on Google these days, not undeservedly, but Android has made huge leaps in ease of development and robustness for apps. It’s also incredible open source OS platform for implementing all sorts of things. The explosion of TV boxes is a great example. Payment terminals is another. Portable shipping scanners (UPS, FedEx) is yet another. All the proprietary bits that people dislike on Play-enabled devices are added via pluggable APIs, same as always, and if you want different ones, you could plug your own.
I got the update recently, and don’t really notice anything interesting? It has been running slower recently though
edit: Some apps are busted now too. Spotify is having playback issues for example
No. Everything went to shit in 12 with material 3/material you. It looks so bad. Bring back material 2.
Also of course there’s the whole privacy nightmare that android with Google services is.
I uovoted your comment because I strongly agree that Google services are bad for users, not just in terms of privacy, but also control over your device. And the opinions about the material you theme is just subjective, even though I think it looks fine.
Been using android since the first galaxy. Never have I experienced such a fuck up as when I let my pixel 7 pro update to 14. And this is from someone that used to run random custom stuff going back a few years.
Android 14 caused my phone memory to become corrupt and I had no choice but to factory reset, losing everything not synced. Apparently this was due to running two separate user profiles.
Somehow Google was too busy finding ways to get and sell more of our data and forgot to test if this basic feature fucking works.
Not looking forward to Monday when I’ll have to jump through flaming hoops to set up my work micrishaft authenticator / profile / intune crap again.
Other beef with 14, custom launchers are broken. I have never been able to stand the stock launcher, it is like babies first launcher. No customisation options and the stupid search bar can’t be removed. A few apps I use on a regular basis claim to to not be compatible, even though they ran fine for several days in 14 till the whole thing shit itself.
On the UI front I feel as if everything seems to get more bland each release with less interesting customisation than we had circa android 5.
I’ve been firmly in iPhone-land quite a while and dabbled only a bit since my phone-switching days so my current perspective will be possibly dated and definitely from someone on the outside, casually following what’s new in Android but I did have a great time bouncing between platforms back in the day. (RIP webOS, BB10 and Windows Phone)
I had a Moto Z Play back in the day (that battery life but like that and the Priv it replaced, a bit big for my taste) and I ditched it when a then-critical feature to me: “Ok Google with Screen Off” was removed around the time Google Assistant and the Pixel 1 was rolling out. It was a Play Services and/or Assistant/Google Now update that removed the option from settings, I uninstalled them to keep it temporarily and when I looked it up, all I could find was a curt official “the feature is not supported” response on some support board. I knew the Snagdragon-whatever chipset it had supported it, and I was using it just fine in the past - it felt like gaslighting, I saw people throwing around the “your battery life would suffer” excuse or that it was never supported despite it being the time when chipset support for hotwords when sleeping like Hey Cortana, Hey Siri were a notable feature and the Z Play had it.
Imagine my reaction when I see that feature being advertised as a Pixel exclusive(? At least it was advertised as a Pixel feature) so that was it.
in hindsight, Google’s shenanigans to promote their own in-house projects over Android as a whole seems pretty in-character now. Even as iOS features aren’t as big like “ooo iOS’s facsimile of multitasking!” there’s still the “that’s neat” or small QoL moments coming out like auto-deleting 2FA texts when they’re used. And I just don’t seem to see any of that in recent releases. I saw “AI color themes!” and a new time layout? and I’m not shortchanging the features already there like holding volume down to mute, but it just feels like they’ve decided base Android is good enough and slowed down or stopped in favor of figuring out whatever exclusive Pixel features and what to keep from the non-Pros.
But with the move of so many things to Play Services, are features still coming out that way outside of the usual point release?
Fwiw Android has had auto deleting 2fa codes in it’s messaging app for at least 2 years now
Neat! Is that in AOSP, Google Messages, one of the OEMs, just an option in whatever third-party app you use?
I’m wondering if breaking major app updates outside of OS updates then means new features are less visible.
deleted by creator
which is why we need to support developers of custom ROMs who are giving us lightweight open source alternatives.
Is there any way we can help steer the direction of AOSP?
