The new home of /r/Android on Lemmy and the Fediverse!
Android news, reviews, tips, and discussions about rooting, tutorials, and apps.
πUniversal Link: !android@lemdro.id
π‘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
π¬Matrix Chat
π°Our communities below
Stay on topic: All posts should be related to the Android OS or ecosystem.
No support questions, recommendation requests, rants, or bug reports: Posts must benefit the community rather than the individual. Please post to !askandroid@lemdro.id.
Describe images/videos, no memes: Please include a text description when sharing images or videos. Post memes to !androidmemes@lemdro.id.
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.
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.
No editorializing titles: You can add the author or website's name if helpful, but keep article titles unchanged.
No piracy or unverified APKs: Do not share links or direct people to pirated content or unverified APKs, which may contain malicious code.
No unauthorized polls, bots, or giveaways: Do not create polls, use bots, or organize giveaways without first contacting mods for approval.
No offensive or low-effort content: Don't post offensive or unhelpful content. Keep it civil and friendly!
No affiliate links: Posting affiliate links is not allowed.
Our Communities
Lemmy App List
Chat and More
It was five years after her first Android phone that I noticed that when asked to install an app, my aunt proceeded to download an APK from a random website and installed that rather than using the Play Store. In fact, I think she didn't even know the Play Store was a thing, and she was on her third android phone already.
She isn't tech-savvy, she did that because that is how she did on Windows. After that, I just accepted that things need to change in a way that might annoy me.
Are you suggesting we get rid of Side loading?
Far from it, but there are things that appear obvious or properly explained, only that in reality, it is not.
Android 14 is making ADB necessary for really old apps(or ones that deliberately target old APIs to circumvent restrictions). That one is annoying, but makes sense.
That's not to say I'm a fan of every decision, for instance I don't like that Google removed the ability for apps to toggle WiFi and Bluetooth, that should be a permission. But it is really surprising how non tech-savvy folks can screw up basic stuff we think are well hidden.
I feel it was rather clear that's not what they were saying
I did not get you. What enthusiasts you are talking about, android enthusiasts? They are fine to have Google account and be able to utilize it to the full potential.
I would call myself android enthusiast. As in I compiled my on LineageOs and love tinkering around with custom Roms. I really dislike these proprietary blobs, like shar( and the app that manages screen on time, like why isn't this included in ASOP) I say, I get the top funktions out of my phone by rooting it.
I see. You over-generilize your style to "enthusiast" term - most of android enthusiasts like android as it is - I mean they buy android phones and enjoy the platform (which includes many Google anchored features).
Why Google should spend efforts and add features needed explicitly for people which hate Google and which are doing whatever possible to avoid it?
I understand that they don't have to add them, it just would be nice if they also mad it open source or don't take anything away.
Mostly FOSS enthusiasts who see any move by Google that makes Android more "closed source" as negative.
Foss enthusuasts like Foss software and use it.
Android is not really a Foss and never was. new features which reasonably rely on Google account change nothing. One can also complain that Google docs is coupled with Google - bad Google did not implement something which work offile without Google account, same for apps backup and sync etc.
features like Nearby Share rely on Google accounts garners a lot of hate from the FOSS/enthusiast crowd
I don't think these are FOSS enthusiasts. They're people that want free stuff without putting any effort into it. Big difference. The real FOSS enthusiasts would simply build their own competing implementation based on the open source version of Android AOSP. Amazon / Microsoft / Huawei have exactly this to varying degrees.
Agree. Foss enthusiasmus are buzy with the Foss stuff instead of hating some proprietary things (unless these things intentionally break their Foss stuff).
I mean, Google's nearby share (and the Apple equivalent) are just worse versions than Syncthing.
We already got a competitor that's better. Set it up once and it's done. Regardless if you're near or not, or have a Google account or not.
And yet you can feel that all Google wants to do is break the service.
That's not the use case for those features. Syncthing synchronizes files between devices. If I want to send a photo or file to my friend, do I have them log into the same account and then synchronize all my files? Obviously not.
Whelp. Guess my mind didn't even go to that use case. Was just thinking about my personal devices
These are two different functions for two different scenarios.
3pp versions of nearby share exist for many years. People can use them if they do not like Google's implementation.