Buying Android phone is increasingly just the entry fee for Google’s AI ecosystem.
The direction of travel is clear: Google is pushing AI harder and harder to redefine its ecosystem and bring new, powerful features to users. Android’s core OS remains free, but Google increasingly appears to view it less as a product and more as a delivery mechanism for its AI services. As those services become more central to the modern smartphone experience, many of the platform’s most ambitious features are also becoming subscription products.
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I am sorry to be that guy, but think about switching to another Android ROM (like GrapheneOS) or a Linux phone.
Android will only get worse from here, the Roms and Linux will get better.
Wake me up when they are viable daily drivers
been daily driving graphene for a bit over a year now and it does everything i did on the stock pixel. banking and authenticators work perfectly
I still hate that they started using “AI” to control display brightness. Since then I constantly have to change my brightness and it still somehow manages to always get it wrong.
Is that why my wife’s pixel suddenly dims then slowly brightens repeatedly even when the light is not changing?
I’ve had pre-ai devices that did that
Wait, they’re gonna take all the bullshit AI stuff i fight to constantly turn off and conveniently lock it off behind a paywall I’ll never subscribe to ? Can someone explain why this is bad?
I hope Google goes bankrupt,especially after the Android sideloading change.
What I hope is that they lose Android to the anti trust lawsuit they’re currently in
It’s in the US, they just buy Trump something nice and they’ll be let to be a monopoly. What needs to happen is for the EU to grow balls and stand up to US monopolies, by stripping any copyright, patent, or trademark protections of the offending companies.
Personally I don’t think the side loading will kill them. It’ll happen and nothing will change.
Perhaps the ai bubble burst could damage them enough, but they are way to big of a monopoly to fall. And android alternatives still scare people as unlike PC, you may brick your phone, or be locked out of apps due to play services
I’m hopeful for the Motorola grapheme OS phone breaking some of that hold. It’s slated for release next year.
When my current phone ages out, my next phone has HarmonyOS.
I hope you speak Mandarin. App availability outside the PRC seems to be pretty close to zero. Unless you think it’s time for round 3 of a webapp-based OS? iPhone OS couldn’t do it in 2008 and webOS couldn’t do it in 2010, but 5G exists now, so it should at least be better. I’m still not sure about good.
I live in China. My SO has a HarmonyOS phone already. Interestingly it has a setting to display everything in English (among a lot of other languages).
Sounds like that’s one more viable option for ~15% of the world’s population, then! The rest of us have to wait for something that can run Android (or I guess iOS somehow) apps.
Or, you know, wait until Huawei shakes out the big features and ensures they’re bug-free before they start selling outside of the PRC.
You don’t think that China is their end-game, do you?
bring new, powerful features to users
Everyone’s a power user when the feature requires 10 GW
If they were smart, they would make the subscription tier so you won’t have these “features”.
Rent-seeking and modern business culture go together like guillotines and techbrodudes.
I actively avoid the AI systems they keep adding to my pixel, they’re dumb. Even Gemini replacing assistant was dumb, it can’t control my smart home? What’s the point of it then
Unlike everyone here that seems to have a plan, I am pretty stuck on what my next steps will be. I do not want to support this or anything that they have been pushing lately, but at the same time im not sure where to go either. I hate iphone so thats not a question, nor are they any better either. So what else can i go to thats also going to support everything i currently do on my phone plus the apps that may no longer be available wherever I end up going to.
I am waiting for motorola and grapheneOS to release something.
