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Discussion: Is Android going in the right direction?
(self.android)
- Android 14 has been trouble-free for me. Upgrades here and there along with a significant improvement to screen-off battery life. About 30%. I can also now throw my Home Assistant dashboard on the lock screen device controls shortcut.
- Yes. Unlike many other of Google's projects, Android is still fully staffed and improving in significant ways even if sometimes invisible year over year. One area where there's been a lot of improvement is separating the hardware-specific software bits from the rest of the OS. This is a major enabler behind the longer support lifespans we began seeing recently. It also makes third party ROMs much easier to support on devices with long term support. Security and privacy have been ramped up significantly too.
- Stay the course and keep with gradual improvements. Perhaps do a bit more work on the desktop mode. Android should be able to replace ChromeOS.
- Pixel 6 Pro, upgrading to Pixel 8 Pro
- Putting my developer hat on, I know it's fetch to hate on Google these days, not undeservedly, but Android has made huge leaps in ease of development and robustness for apps. It's also incredible open source OS platform for implementing all sorts of things. The explosion of TV boxes is a great example. Payment terminals is another. Portable shipping scanners (UPS, FedEx) is yet another. All the proprietary bits that people dislike on Play-enabled devices are added via pluggable APIs, same as always, and if you want different ones, you could plug your own.