I'm saying misleading because there is an interpretation of that sentence that is technically correct: Some people might use short passwords so that they can tell them to guests. With this feature, they can use longer secure passwords. In this interpretation, "keeping your passwords secure" would refer to the entropy of the password instead of how shared it is. However, when you normally read this sentence, this isn't the interpretation that comes to your mind.
I guess that some internal document written by people who understood the difference had something like "with this feature you can have now secure passwords and you are still able share them with guests". Then someone without awareness of this difference reformulated it into the current form.
The feature is a bit more than this. In the WiFi share screen, the network password is actually displayed in plain text as well. It does require a fingerprint/pattern/pin to show anything though.
Security is and always has been a sliding scale, despite always referred colloquially as being either present or absent. "Keeping your password secure" in English really means, "improving the security of your password".
I recently bought a Nokia 2.2, which in in the Android One program. Two main reasons: a removable battery and OS updates for two years and security for 3. At this point, there's very little difference between the hardware of flagships and commodity, especially considering the real-world use of smartphones. I mean, is anyone compiling programs on these things or doing anything particularly intensive? Not really. So given the choice between a $1000 phone and a $140 one, I choose the latter because in 2019 your really paying for the software.
Since Android 9, I really enjoy Android. It feels like a totally different experience with things like split screen, gesture nav, and smart replies. The Android team is doing a great job as of late. I look forward to getting this update. I hope we get to a point where the OEMs stop being the gate keepers of our phone's OSs and these devices become more like laptops, in the sense of being able to run whatever we want.
> a removable battery and OS updates for two years
This provokes me. Are we supposed to be happy with two years? The environmental impact of e-waste and the production of electronics should not be understated. I have a Nexus 5 as a backup phone. It works just as well as my main handset. I know how to duck the G-surveillance and I'm able to keep it alive because I have the knowledge to install roms. Not everyone does. Personally, I much prefer Android over iOS. But when someone asks me what phone they should get I always tell them to buy an iPhone. This is one of the reasons why.
I wouldn't mind the lower power that much, but camera is one of my main use cases for phone. Pixel is just so damn good at taking pictures. The cheap phones do have considerably worse cameras, no way around that.
I bought a Nokia 3.1 as a lower end test device, which also belongs to the Android One program. The device is so slow to respond to input in every way that it's become the device I use to test our apps absolute worst case performance on.
Even knowing it was meant to be a lower end device it routinely gets frustrating to use for even the most simple tasks, such as Chrome tab switching, keyboard response and even just plain navigation.
We have had similar, buy not as bad, reactions to other low end device we use for testing.
I genuinely feel sorry for people who use these devices as their primary phones.
>At this point, there's very little difference between the hardware of flagships and commodity, especially considering the real-world use of smartphones.
I recently started playing some games on my phone that require 3d rendering. Pretty sure it would struggle on an older phone. The 4GB of RAM I have feels slightly insufficient since the game gets closed by the OS if I switch to another resource intensive enough app.
I'm not going to say you should pay $1000 for a phone, but just because you have no issues with a $120 phone doesn't mean no-one does.
Samsung DeX (or similar) is a very interesting use case for more powerful hardware. But if that's not something you'd use, then I fully agree with you.
Apps are going to use whatever CPU and memory is available. It's the same reason a chat app can use hundreds of MB of memory on a desktop. Why optimize that lower when laptops ship with 16+ GB these days?
In my experience that $140 phone actually does end up being laggier and less responsive which can be super annoying when scrolling and tapping with your fingers. I'm not a hardware engineer, but somehow this seems to hold true even if the memory is sized the same and the CPUs seem comparable. There must be something deeper in the specs involved that leads to UI slowness.
> I hope we get to a point where the OEMs stop being the gate keepers of our phone's OSs and these devices become more like laptops, in the sense of being able to run whatever we want.
I own a Lenovo x13 convertible. Bios updates come in Windows executables only and whenever there is a Windows update the GPT is reconfigured, wiping my options to dual-boot Linux. It's been a while in the Laptop segment that there was free choice and you really had the feeling to own your device, sadly.
Of course one reason you’d want a faster processor is it will “race to idle” faster and increase your battery life (longer life with similar battery / equal life with smaller battery that’s charged quicker):
I agree. I recently purchased the Nokia 7.1 on eBay ($200) and it does everything I need in a phone and has nice build quality. I feel that there aren't really many applications that utilize the powerful hardware of modern flagships, so I don't see why I should pay the premium for it.
The website assets are optimized in a rather strange way. The total page weight of ~20MB is huge for mobile. The images are heavily compressed using WebP lossy with quite noticeable blockiness and washed out textures and fine details, but squeezed into 1MB, yet the videos are only lightly compressed, and make up most of the page weight. Had they been compressed with libx264 at good quality, the page weight would be more than 70% smaller, and there would not be any need to ruin the image quality that much.
The images are awful (at least in Firefox). They are compressed even worse than Google Developer Insight usually recommends. The text in screenshots is barely readable.
The dark theme is uncomfortable for my eyes (ok, maybe it's fault of my poor quality TN matrix, but anyway I don't want to see it). I doubt anyone wants to read white text on a black background.
The letters are gigantic and are optimized for hi-resolution monitors.
Also, as I understand despite new release Google still haven't solved the problem of apps and Google itself siphoning all available data from the phone.
Also I hate how Google manages updates. I had to install a Hangouts app. First, it copied the Google Account details I entered into it, into the phone and now all other apps can access them which I never wanted. Luckily I was smart enough to make a separate account for this purpose. Second, sometimes when I start it it says that it is updating Google Play Services (so I have to humbly wait until Hangouts does its important business) without even asking if I want that or not. Why does the messenger takes a work of a package manager I cannot understand. Probably, because they need to install new telemetry modules even if the user didn't activate Google Play. Very unpleasant impression.
Actually, if you stay on the page for a while and scroll up and down, it loads the light/dark alternates for all media on the page, bringing the total weight of the page to about 41MB. Yikes.
I wonder how many of the features advertised here will make it onto the Android 10 release of other OEMs. In Android 9 for example, the ability to select text via OCR in the recent apps screen was limited to only the Pixel devices for some strange reason even though all Android devices had access to that feature prior to the release of Google Assistant via the Google app.
In a similar vein, Digital Wellbeing was officially limited to Pixel devices and Android One devices although it could be sideloaded onto other phones (where it ran perfectly fine) running Android 9+.
The way they show and demonstrate gestures, along with the UI at the bottom, strongly suggests that they intend to eliminate the semi-"hard" buttons in favor of gestures. That would save space, give people a bit more control over fullscreen apps, and provide a less "modal" UI where the same gestures always work even if the buttons aren't available (such as when playing fullscreen video).
Also, "Get security updates faster." is huge; this is effectively saying "no matter who makes your phone, you still get updates".
Deprecating "Device admin for enterprise" makes it much safer to access work resources from an otherwise personal Android device, without giving your IT department the ability to remote-wipe your entire device.
> The way they show and demonstrate gestures, along with the UI at the bottom, strongly suggests that they intend to eliminate the semi-"hard" buttons in favor of gestures.
Yes, that's the case. When you're using gesture navigation the only visible UI left is the horizontal bar at them bottom. Apps adjusted for gesture navigation will also draw behind that line.
Gesture navigation is still an option which might not be enabled by default on all devices, but I strongly suggest trying it out. I used it quite some time with the latest release candidates of Android 10 and once you're used to it, you don't want to go back. Especially the back swipe is really nice.
> strongly suggests that they intend to eliminate the semi-"hard" buttons in favor of gestures.
If that happens, that's an OS that is unacceptable to me. It's bad enough that physical buttons were eliminated in favor of the soft buttons. That bothers me to this day, but I learned to live with it.
Eliminating even the horrible soft buttons, though, would be a bridge too far in terms of reducing usability.
I hope the gestures are better than when they first came out with the "pill". I tried it for a week and it was an awful experience. Maybe it's because I use the double tap on app switcher to quickly get to last app a lot and the pill was really bad for that (slow and would switch to wrong app half the time).
I used to really dislike work profile, but I gotta say it has gotten much better over the past few versions. For one, it seems like they're implementing a way for Calendar to share between personal/work in a single view, which was a huge pet peeve. They also allow for custom keyboard on your personal profile in Q which is great.
As a recent iOS user coming from Android, this almost makes me want to go back. I really do miss the Smart Reply and native Google Assistant features. But alas, iMessage pressure is real in my friend's group.
It's always nice to see how each Android release compares to iOS. Usually about 10% of the features while releasing to about .05% of the active phones. The vast majority of people won't see these features for another 3 years.
Just at the top of the page there's a screenshot of the Assistant. If you toggle dark mode (there's a floating button at the bottom of the screen to do so) the text changes from "when is my flight" to "what time is my flight".
Some of the features sound amazing "sound amplifier" sounds like a hearing aid like function. If it has a low audio delay and good function set to filter noise it could be revolutionary. I was looking for something like this in app form not too long ago.
I wonder how gesture navigation will work with some apps.
I wonder which features will make it into aosp/lineageos. I'm missing android smartlock in limeageos. If I could wish for a feature for android it would be "game mode" from oxygenos.
I guess I'm not impressed. - Edit: not a bad release
Live caption on device: Sounds great. Very useful if you are hearing impaired. If you just want captions for the words the are difficult to make out, some AI isn't going to help there. AI's are currently worse than I am at detecting words.
Smart reply: This looks useful. Not having to lose info as you create an appointment or less clicks copying and pasting directions. Yeah, great feature. Good job here.
Sound amplifier: Remember when everyone was up in arms because iPods could boost sound way too loud. (disregarding different source volumes and headphone sensitivity). So everyone limited the power output of their headphone jack. Well, now we've come full circle and we can blast our ear drums the way god intended, it just takes more button presses. This is like yeah, we took away a feature because of hysteria, now it's back.
Edit: Thanks for explaining this to me. This feature does indeed seem useful. Audio that is more clear, being able to hear what's around you, yeah this is great.
Gesture navigation: I hate this. Maybe some people like it. If you are one of those people, I'm happy for you.
Dark theme: I originally though this feature was dumb. Next we'll have gray theme, or blue theme. Battery savings just didn't seem that great. After using this for a while, I like dark theme, in an unexpected way. I find that the black colors are less stimulating and the phone is less of a distraction.
Digital wellbeing: I haven't found these features all that useful. Perhaps someone else makes use of them. I mostly see this as shaming for using the phone too much.
Focus mode: Remember that one android release that made it so you can easily block all notifications from an app. Well, later they made it so you can only easily block a category(can still block all just more presses). Then apps can create as many categories as they want(so you keep getting spammed). This time they didn't do the user friendly release, in order to focus you have to check each app you have installed. Completely backwards like they didn't really want to do this feature.
Family link: I'm not a parent, kids and phones sound like a nightmare to me. I hope this helps you parents. No opinion from me.
[+] [-] est31|6 years ago|reply
This is terribly misleading. The format used does contain the password so your password is still being shared:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code#WiFi_network_login
* https://github.com/zxing/zxing/wiki/Barcode-Contents#wi-fi-n...
I'm saying misleading because there is an interpretation of that sentence that is technically correct: Some people might use short passwords so that they can tell them to guests. With this feature, they can use longer secure passwords. In this interpretation, "keeping your passwords secure" would refer to the entropy of the password instead of how shared it is. However, when you normally read this sentence, this isn't the interpretation that comes to your mind.
I guess that some internal document written by people who understood the difference had something like "with this feature you can have now secure passwords and you are still able share them with guests". Then someone without awareness of this difference reformulated it into the current form.
[+] [-] wdfx|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coryfklein|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alistproducer2|6 years ago|reply
Since Android 9, I really enjoy Android. It feels like a totally different experience with things like split screen, gesture nav, and smart replies. The Android team is doing a great job as of late. I look forward to getting this update. I hope we get to a point where the OEMs stop being the gate keepers of our phone's OSs and these devices become more like laptops, in the sense of being able to run whatever we want.
[+] [-] unicornporn|6 years ago|reply
This provokes me. Are we supposed to be happy with two years? The environmental impact of e-waste and the production of electronics should not be understated. I have a Nexus 5 as a backup phone. It works just as well as my main handset. I know how to duck the G-surveillance and I'm able to keep it alive because I have the knowledge to install roms. Not everyone does. Personally, I much prefer Android over iOS. But when someone asks me what phone they should get I always tell them to buy an iPhone. This is one of the reasons why.
[+] [-] distances|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcknight|6 years ago|reply
Even knowing it was meant to be a lower end device it routinely gets frustrating to use for even the most simple tasks, such as Chrome tab switching, keyboard response and even just plain navigation.
We have had similar, buy not as bad, reactions to other low end device we use for testing.
I genuinely feel sorry for people who use these devices as their primary phones.
[+] [-] apexalpha|6 years ago|reply
Cameras.
[+] [-] Eridrus|6 years ago|reply
I'm not going to say you should pay $1000 for a phone, but just because you have no issues with a $120 phone doesn't mean no-one does.
[+] [-] JohnJamesRambo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nunodonato|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coryfklein|6 years ago|reply
In my experience that $140 phone actually does end up being laggier and less responsive which can be super annoying when scrolling and tapping with your fingers. I'm not a hardware engineer, but somehow this seems to hold true even if the memory is sized the same and the CPUs seem comparable. There must be something deeper in the specs involved that leads to UI slowness.
[+] [-] jhoechtl|6 years ago|reply
I own a Lenovo x13 convertible. Bios updates come in Windows executables only and whenever there is a Windows update the GPT is reconfigured, wiping my options to dual-boot Linux. It's been a while in the Laptop segment that there was free choice and you really had the feeling to own your device, sadly.
[+] [-] andrepd|6 years ago|reply
By the way, have you considered the fairphone 3?
[+] [-] flukus|6 years ago|reply
OS updates for 2 years assuming you buy it on launch day, for the vast majority of owners it will be significantly shorter than 2 years.
Also as a Nokia 3 owner, don't count on those updates actually working, mines been getting stuck in a boot loop when updating for a year now.
[+] [-] leokennis|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/race-to-sleep
Of course there is an optimum between price, workload and battery life that will differ per person.
[+] [-] thekyle|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chronogram|6 years ago|reply
Wow that's really not a lot of phones (just 1) available with Android One and a removable battery.
[+] [-] StreamBright|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Havoc|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vladdanilov|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codedokode|6 years ago|reply
The dark theme is uncomfortable for my eyes (ok, maybe it's fault of my poor quality TN matrix, but anyway I don't want to see it). I doubt anyone wants to read white text on a black background.
The letters are gigantic and are optimized for hi-resolution monitors.
Also, as I understand despite new release Google still haven't solved the problem of apps and Google itself siphoning all available data from the phone.
Also I hate how Google manages updates. I had to install a Hangouts app. First, it copied the Google Account details I entered into it, into the phone and now all other apps can access them which I never wanted. Luckily I was smart enough to make a separate account for this purpose. Second, sometimes when I start it it says that it is updating Google Play Services (so I have to humbly wait until Hangouts does its important business) without even asking if I want that or not. Why does the messenger takes a work of a package manager I cannot understand. Probably, because they need to install new telemetry modules even if the user didn't activate Google Play. Very unpleasant impression.
[+] [-] applecrazy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bytematic|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colordrops|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burtonator|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pranau|6 years ago|reply
In a similar vein, Digital Wellbeing was officially limited to Pixel devices and Android One devices although it could be sideloaded onto other phones (where it ran perfectly fine) running Android 9+.
[+] [-] JoshTriplett|6 years ago|reply
Also, "Get security updates faster." is huge; this is effectively saying "no matter who makes your phone, you still get updates".
Deprecating "Device admin for enterprise" makes it much safer to access work resources from an otherwise personal Android device, without giving your IT department the ability to remote-wipe your entire device.
[+] [-] Dunedan|6 years ago|reply
Yes, that's the case. When you're using gesture navigation the only visible UI left is the horizontal bar at them bottom. Apps adjusted for gesture navigation will also draw behind that line.
Gesture navigation is still an option which might not be enabled by default on all devices, but I strongly suggest trying it out. I used it quite some time with the latest release candidates of Android 10 and once you're used to it, you don't want to go back. Especially the back swipe is really nice.
How the final implementation came to be is covered by an excellent blog post from Google: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2019/08/gesture-na...
[+] [-] muddi900|6 years ago|reply
I have been hearing this for years.
[+] [-] iamaelephant|6 years ago|reply
They say this with literally every release of Android ever. It's just posturing, I'll believe it when I see it.
[+] [-] JohnFen|6 years ago|reply
If that happens, that's an OS that is unacceptable to me. It's bad enough that physical buttons were eliminated in favor of the soft buttons. That bothers me to this day, but I learned to live with it.
Eliminating even the horrible soft buttons, though, would be a bridge too far in terms of reducing usability.
[+] [-] ScoutOrgo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevin_thibedeau|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ehsankia|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] garysahota93|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wnevets|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhack|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uncheckederror|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mfontani|6 years ago|reply
None of the screenshots around the caption seem to use "true black", though!
[+] [-] matchbok|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mopay|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jl6|6 years ago|reply
I’ve been hoping that Android adoption of HEIC would increase the availability of software to view and manage such files.
[+] [-] cowmix|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BlackLotus89|6 years ago|reply
I wonder how gesture navigation will work with some apps.
I wonder which features will make it into aosp/lineageos. I'm missing android smartlock in limeageos. If I could wish for a feature for android it would be "game mode" from oxygenos.
[+] [-] mpalczewski|6 years ago|reply
Live caption on device: Sounds great. Very useful if you are hearing impaired. If you just want captions for the words the are difficult to make out, some AI isn't going to help there. AI's are currently worse than I am at detecting words.
Smart reply: This looks useful. Not having to lose info as you create an appointment or less clicks copying and pasting directions. Yeah, great feature. Good job here.
Sound amplifier: Remember when everyone was up in arms because iPods could boost sound way too loud. (disregarding different source volumes and headphone sensitivity). So everyone limited the power output of their headphone jack. Well, now we've come full circle and we can blast our ear drums the way god intended, it just takes more button presses. This is like yeah, we took away a feature because of hysteria, now it's back.
Edit: Thanks for explaining this to me. This feature does indeed seem useful. Audio that is more clear, being able to hear what's around you, yeah this is great.
Gesture navigation: I hate this. Maybe some people like it. If you are one of those people, I'm happy for you.
Dark theme: I originally though this feature was dumb. Next we'll have gray theme, or blue theme. Battery savings just didn't seem that great. After using this for a while, I like dark theme, in an unexpected way. I find that the black colors are less stimulating and the phone is less of a distraction.
Digital wellbeing: I haven't found these features all that useful. Perhaps someone else makes use of them. I mostly see this as shaming for using the phone too much.
Focus mode: Remember that one android release that made it so you can easily block all notifications from an app. Well, later they made it so you can only easily block a category(can still block all just more presses). Then apps can create as many categories as they want(so you keep getting spammed). This time they didn't do the user friendly release, in order to focus you have to check each app you have installed. Completely backwards like they didn't really want to do this feature.
Family link: I'm not a parent, kids and phones sound like a nightmare to me. I hope this helps you parents. No opinion from me.
[+] [-] dddddaviddddd|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] integrii|6 years ago|reply
What if my phone is really wide? What if I miss that gesture 40% of the time?
[+] [-] whalesalad|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pilif|6 years ago|reply