this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
194 points (89.8% liked)

Android

17677 readers
67 users here now

The new home of /r/Android on Lemmy and the Fediverse!

Android news, reviews, tips, and discussions about rooting, tutorials, and apps.

🔗Universal Link: !android@lemdro.id


💡Content Philosophy:

Content which benefits the community (news, rumours, and discussions) is generally allowed and is valued over content which benefits only the individual (technical questions, help buying/selling, rants, self-promotion, etc.) which will be removed if it's in violation of the rules.


Support, technical, or app related questions belong in: !askandroid@lemdro.id

For fresh communities, lemmy apps, and instance updates: !lemdroid@lemdro.id

💬Matrix Chat

💬Telegram channels / chats

📰Our communities below


Rules

  1. Stay on topic: All posts should be related to the Android OS or ecosystem.

  2. No support questions, recommendation requests, rants, or bug reports: Posts must benefit the community rather than the individual. Please post to !askandroid@lemdro.id.

  3. Describe images/videos, no memes: Please include a text description when sharing images or videos. Post memes to !androidmemes@lemdro.id.

  4. No self-promotion spam: Active community members can post their apps if they answer any questions in the comments. Please do not post links to your own website, YouTube, blog content, or communities.

  5. No reposts or rehosted content: Share only the original source of an article, unless it's not available in English or requires logging in (like Twitter). Avoid reposting the same topic from other sources.

  6. No editorializing titles: You can add the author or website's name if helpful, but keep article titles unchanged.

  7. No piracy or unverified APKs: Do not share links or direct people to pirated content or unverified APKs, which may contain malicious code.

  8. No unauthorized polls, bots, or giveaways: Do not create polls, use bots, or organize giveaways without first contacting mods for approval.

  9. No offensive or low-effort content: Don't post offensive or unhelpful content. Keep it civil and friendly!

  10. No affiliate links: Posting affiliate links is not allowed.

Quick Links

Our Communities

Lemmy App List

Chat and More


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

TL;DR: Apple dominates the US smartphone market, but EU regulations may offer Android a chance for resurgence by enforcing messaging interoperability and standardizing hardware features.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

100% of iPhone users have iMessage. And they can use the same app to talk to 100% of their contacts.

Fragmentation is a huge problem for everything else. What percentage of Android users have any particular one of those apps you listed?

I only grudgingly install WhatsApp when I travel to Europe. Discordv and Slack are not really competitors in this space (though I'm sure there's a small subset of users who use them that way). I have Signal and Telegram and yet I still use SMS with most of my contacts because that's the only one that is guaranteed to work.

I've tried getting my friends onto Signal, with some amount of success. But many have eventually stopped using it because I was the only one they used it with. A couple of my iPhone-using family members reported that they stopped getting notifications from Signal because they used it so infrequently that iOS basically disabled it (I guess it does that after a month of disuse but I'm not sure exactly).

It's a losing battle. We've fallen back to SMS.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fragmentation is a huge problem for everything else. What percentage of Android users have any particular one of those apps you listed?

WhatApp is installed on little bit under 100% among all Android phones and iPhones in most EU countries and should the EU actually tackle messenger interoperability, iMessage is definitively not the main target. The most die-hard Apple fans I know use iMessage for a little bit when new features were introduced. Then they go back to WhatsApp like everybody else.

To be clear: I'm not an advocate of WhatApp here, I'm merely explaining that the EU does not care at all about Apple's chat service nobody in the EU uses. Should any legislation even affect iMessage, it'll be more coincidental, not targeted at it.

[–] Swarfega@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know about the rest of the world but in the UK text messages used to cost 10p for each one you send. Multimedia messages were like 40p. Really expensive. WhatsApp came about and made both of these free. The rest is history.

Ironically, SMS are generally free these days but nobody obviously uses them. My SMS app is just full of OTP codes being sent to me.

[–] balder1991@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This seems to have happened in most of the world. The US still sticks to SMS because it is free since before chat apps became a thing. SMS was a terrible experience because you would pay per message thanks to carriers’ greed. It didn’t keep up with the demand for constant communication.

Nowadays in Brazil SMS is also free, but by the point they did that, WhatsApp had already become ubiquitous, and had much better features such as sending location, consistent experience with features over different devices, group chats with moderation, voice messages, free voice calls to any user over the world, etc., besides being built from scratch as an SMS substitute (would simply use your mobile number). No one would willingly go back to SMS.

Seems like only some Asian countries defaulted to a different app such as Kakao Talk.

There was Kik Messenger back then but it was more like an anonymous chat app.

[–] Swarfega@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

You're from Brazil? I just want to say, if English is not your native language you'd have a hard time convincing me it isn't.

SMS is the same in the UK these days. Free. MMS isn't though. They still like to scam the older users who know no better.

[–] happyhippo@feddit.it 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A couple of my iPhone-using family members reported that they stopped getting notifications from Signal because they used it so infrequently that iOS basically disabled it

THE BEST OS ever /s

[–] stankmut@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Android does the same thing. I stopped getting telegram notifications because I hadn't opened it up in a month. It's a privacy feature. If you haven't used an app in a while, it removes all the permissions it had.

[–] gamey@feddit.rocks 3 points 1 year ago

It's sad and I don't have it but here in Europe Whatsapp doesn't seem far from 100%!

[–] exohuman@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

It’s so dumb. I have the same problem. I have an iPhone and I try to get them to use Signal, but they just keep using SMS and we keep getting garbage video being sent over group text since some of the group uses Android. When I complain they start putting stuff in Google Photo Albums instead of just using a decent messenger.