They used to run on a model of “we know best” which is arrogant, but passable in a developing industry like earlier mobile where things needed work. Unfortunately, they still think they know best, and that closed-minded approach only works so long until you lose sync with the tolerance of the general public. Honestly surprised it took them this long. iOS and MacOS have both rotted terribly.
Take the UI aspects alone. Samsung “leaked” hints about a glass UI, saw user feedback, and pivoted. Apple released a glass UI because they would have never checked what users actually wanted, nor even bothered to see the user feedback from Samsung users and realize it’d apply to them as well.
real_squids@sopuli.xyz 16 hours ago
I wish android versions past 10 didn’t exist. They keep making it worse for aesthetic purposes. Like why are the buttons so huge when phone screens are at their biggest point yet.
Peffse@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
I will never understand why they removed the bluetooth tap to toggle, and replaced it with an open to a separate screen. That’s what long-press was for!
skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de 15 hours ago
The mobile companies are slowly hiding all radio controls to guarantee the user is too inconvenienced to keep turning them off. Guarantees more enriched telemetry gathering.
Happens at the app level too, although it may be less malicious and more crappy coding. Watch Duty on Android, for example, is really a pain of an app in that regard. You can disable android’s WiFi/Bluetooth scanning, but their app uses that Google service specifically instead of raw GPS, so you lose the ability to get location-based wildfire alerts. If you don’t consent to Google stalking.
What a trade-off, if you don’t give away your location Metadata, you can’t be kept safe from fires?
AnabolicSpudsman07@lemmy.ca 12 hours ago
It seems like regressing or breaking typical functionality is simply a tactic so companies can bring it back in 5 years and call it innovation.
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
My Pixel dis/enables it on a press. Long press for devices.
Zorque@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Works that way on my Samsung as well, you just have to hit the circle button instead of the larger bluetooth button that encompasses it.
Yaky@slrpnk.net 6 hours ago
Heck, my first smartphone ran Android 4.0. Compared to current Android 16 more than a decade later, the only practical change I could think of is granular permissions.
real_squids@sopuli.xyz 4 hours ago
I started with 2.3, it was a bit daunting. 4.4 though was so fun. Even up until like 7 or 8 I remember rooting via a simple app and then the world was your oyster.
On the topic of practical changes, it took them until 11 to add an audio output switcher to currently playing media notifs and even then they made them far uglier and less functional.