this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
98 points (93.8% liked)

Android

17614 readers
253 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.

πŸ”—Universal Link: [email protected]


πŸ’‘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: [email protected]

For fresh communities, lemmy apps, and instance updates: [email protected]

πŸ’¬Matrix Chat

πŸ’¬Telegram channels / chats

πŸ“°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 [email protected].

  3. Describe images/videos, no memes: Please include a text description when sharing images or videos. Post memes to [email protected].

  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
top 35 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How are these industry-leading policies when Fairphone, a much smaller company, is promising 5 android updates and 8 years of security updates? And it's not like Fairphone doesn't have a good track record AFAIK.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fairphone is a leader in long time support, but it is a very very small and niche brand.

And, to be fair, they offered this for single model only so far. Track record is mixed: I saw people complain that Fairphone is very late with their updates.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fairphone is a leader in long time support, but it is a very very small and niche brand.

That does not exempt them from leading the industry, though.

And, to be fair, they offered this for single model only so far.

"The Redmi K60 Extreme Edition was launched in China last week. This update promise currently applies to this phone in China."

The 2015 Fairphone 2 got a final bugfix update last March, so even without a formal announcement, they managed to achieve that.

Track record is mixed: I saw people complain that Fairphone is very late with their updates.

Oh, they're definitively not perfect but update cycles is also not the sole things Faiphone is about.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That does not exempt them from leading the industry, though.

It does. The industry longer support time is currently driven by the industry leaders Xiaomi has to compete - Samsung, Google and Apple.

Oh, they're definitively not perfect but update cycles is also not the sole things Faiphone is about.

Sure. I do not say that Fairphone is bad or anything like that. But comparing support time one should also consider update speed and wiality. It could happen that 4 years of OS update delivers more than 6 years in a real life.

Btw, do you have a Fairphone?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It does.

It literally doesn't.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Got it, for you fairphone leads the industry and xiaomi, tries to match it. It looks like we live in different worlds.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

for you fairphone leads the industry

In long-term support of Android: Absolutely.

and xiaomi, tries to match it.

No, not even close.

It looks like we live in different worlds.

Indeed. I live in reality and you live in a fantasy world where five full Android upgrades and eight years of bugfixes are not leading the industry.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Indeed. I live in reality and you live in a fantasy world Personal attack? Nice!

Anyways, yes - I will stay in my "fantasy world" and will enjoy fast and long updates of my phone. Probably, our worlds will intersect when fairphone becomes visible outside of "others" in smartphone industry reports.

Have a nice day!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Tbf the Fairphone 5 uses a SoC that is specifically chosen for longer support.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I've got zero expectations, they made POCO F3 and F4 with same SoC but F3 is EOL, and F4 still gets updates.

Considering they neglected it in ideal conditions, how can we believe them to support less convergent set of devices?

Anyway, anyone can tell me why should we care about Android updates except for security? I'm totally bored by Android 14, not even one interesting thing in release notes. Maybe taking sharing menu out of OEM hands and updating it through Play Store, but seeing how they did something like that in Chrome makes it rather intrusive feature.

MIUI is even more boring, from MIUI 11 to 14 on POCO F3 I have noticed no changes in the skin, they added widgets for China-only but these see useful, just nice to look at. I love widgets, but c'mon.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

POCO F3 here

Android skins were always a mistake

Change my mind

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

(Galnet) MIUI at one point used to be the ROM to install back in the day.

Now, typing from this Mi 11 meme it's a whole different kettle of fish. Security app is what I would call snake oil leaning for towards spyware, then all the other uninstallable apps from MIUI are tracking apps / dupes.

To be honest though being able to uninstall YouTube should be a given but Google won't allow that either, even though it's a "website".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@ladfrombrad @QuazarOmega Root + trackercontrol + adaway does wonders

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I got rid of the ads already systemwide with NextDNS, though I never had them in system apps (maybe a regional thing?). About root, I prefer to stay away from it for the security implications, but if I had a simple button to install DivestOS on this phone I would click it immediately

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not only security implications, it's also the time sink and apps crying about Safetynet being unable to be passed I find the Pihole + browser extensions / Tampermonkey etc somewhat of a sweet compromise.

I keep getting nagged by someone to try either AdGuard or NextDNS on my Pi but also.....lazy/busy at work :(

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I think that's a fine setup!
Also, isn't Pihole the nerdy way to do it? I thought NextDNS was the lazy route XD

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yes, so much yes!
I never dabbled in ROM installation, but I really felt the bad things going on with the MIUI once I tried it, it's such a shame because the hardware is so good for the price and it's funny that it wouldn't have cost them more to put a stock Android, that would have most likely worked better, but then they wouldn't have got their hands on that sweet sweet data...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

PoCo F3 here too, yup, always have been. The worst is modem crashing when changing bands/tower.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Never had that thankfully, sounds extremely bad! But it's got its fair share of other annoying bugs

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Xiaomi's update rationale and schedule is all over the place. Sometimes a phone that doesn't get updated for over a year gets an update, while some get quarterly updates for 2 years, some 3, and some 1.5 years before getting 6 months of silence then one final half assed update. XD

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why do you think the F3 is EOL? It's still receiving updates. Most likely it won't be updated to Android 14, but it probably will get MIUI 15.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

On xiaomi blog they mentioned it will not get MIUI 15.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

This is just for one device… misleading title

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Would only buy a Xiaomi as a daily driver if MIUI Global isn't actually just bloatware and adware.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

redmi note 9 pro user here. Now on LOS. The default OS is full of telemetry. Even the calculator wants you to agree to personal data being used. Would avoid unless you only want the hardware and the model you want has active community rom support.

Also the Bootloader unlocking process is a PITA. You need a xiaomi account logged in to the phone for it for 2 weeks, then they may allow unlocking the BL but only through their unlocker app that frankly sucks. You may have to sit through the wait period twice if something goes wrong. Ask me how I know.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

To addon, it straight up refuses to work on AMD PCs, so I had to painstakingly borrow an Intel machine to completely free my Poco F1 from the shackles of Xiaomi.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I dunno seems fine on my redmi tablet.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I had a miui phone and they only update their own apps and the phone with ads or unwanted apps. They only gave one Android update after a year and no monthly security updates. Plus their updates break things or make phone slower. They say a lot of things but don't follow through.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Painfully true, MIUI is shit and they're never gonna fix it, I wish I changed ROM but I'm too lazy and I've never done it before

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

They need to stop making so many variations of the same phone and launching it in same series and then in their spinoff brands.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Good. If they bring this policy to the rest of the lineup. It will put pressure on other OEMs to provide similar support.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

So they will do like in the past? Before (until around mi6) they supported phones for years, now they EOL them a week after the launch the new toy the following week

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

but do we actually want 4 years of MIUI?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

But still miui-not-so-stable is 3-4 months behind mainstream android updates, unless you are in their miui beta progam.