Android 12 is where they started making everything worse with the quick action and settings redesign, and it’s been going downhill since.
android 11 is more like win10, it has lots of built in bs that can mostly be mitigated. i’d say win7 = android 7~8, and 4.1~4.4 for xp…
i’m still rocking android 11, never upgrading… hopefully i can switch to a linux phone before this gets unusable
android 11
Is this “insecure” or something? Like why are we at android 16 and is it mandatory?
Quite possibly. I don’t think I have anything running below A11 that still functions so that’s been my baseline. Most recent was my OP3 that had LineageOS’s A9 but the battery finally gave up the ghost a few months ago.
Agreed. 4.4 was the pinnacle of user-configurable Android. after that they started removing features and locking things down.
tbh JB 4.1~4.3 was the best. Had real performance improvements over ICS (project butter), KK had some weird stuff like the new sdcard policy.
wish i can still use it, but even firefox ditched support so…
Not disagreeing on that, my comment was more about configuration options. After 4.4 they started removing so much QoL stuff under the excuse of simplicity: the indicator LED, several volume controls, the headphone jack, made gesture controls default, etc.
Just be thankful it’s not “Liquid Glass”.
You should tell Gemini about it!
Seriously I don’t know what version started what but Android is slowly getting more and more annoying for me to use. It’s like Windows where you have to spend multiple minutes, if not hours, in personalizing and removing bloatware. But then an update brings or restore more shit.
I know it’s not all Android’s fault, but it adds up.
For example, I know they are forced by the EU to lower the volume after a while, but sometimes I use weak bone conducting headphones and I NEED the volume to be at max.
Or another are the mandatory presidential/amber alerts, where the government decides to make your phone scream an end of the world alarm because a child is missing 200 km away. I’d like to have normal notifications for that but no, only end of the world alarms.
This one is on Android though and I’ll need to find how to disable that annoying “you haven’t used those apps in a while so permissions were removed” thigny. I don’t open some apps often, like my backup app, but it’s still used, unless Android decides to revoke permissions automatically. Like, I don’t use Wahoo in winter but when I want to use it back in summer, it cant find my sensors because permissions have been revoked.
I’ve been annoyed and tired of using Android for a few years now. And I obviously won’t go to Apple. Maybe next time I’ll get a dumb phone and just carry a small computer with me for the rest.
Yep, to all of that.
disable that annoying “you haven’t used those apps in a while so permissions were removed” thigny
AFAIK, you can only do that on an app-by-app basis.
Settings -> Apps -> {App} -> Permissions -> Pause app activity if unused
That’s on Android 14, so YMMV if they took that away or made it worse since then.
On OnePlus phones, Oxygen OS 10 was peak (and imo just about perfect). Every single update since then has been a downgrade. I won’t buy another
You all need to give /e/os a try.
Got a link to a compatibility list? My phones been going strong for 8 years now, I’d hate to have to replace it to escape Google.
If you want the absolute cheapest for like a test drive, the cheapest (new) phone I found, that has the USA bands at least, is the Moto G 5G 2024, compatible with both Lineage and e/OS, only like $140 unlocked, you need to connect to the internet for 7 days before you can toggle the “Bootloader Unlocking” toggle in Developer Settings, idk why, and you need an unlock code from motorola website. I did it, and successfully installed Lineage OS.
Can’t really multitask with 4gh ram tho, so you can’t really do multiapp without stuff just closing in the background, but you get privacy for cheap
Though a warning from my experience, I tries to flash a OnePlus 8 that was carrier unlocked. There seems to be a second “unlock” that you need to provide at the time of flashing and oneplus’s site never returned a value.
On the flip side, flashing a pixel tablet was trivial, two Fairphone 5’s were trivial, and I actually bought a fairphone 6 with it already loaded from Murena.
What do you think is wrong with it? Is it android or UI7
AFAIK, it’s just the base Android UI because it’s the same in LineageOS and vanilla builds.
- The quick actions have gone to hell. There’s nothing quick about them anymore and customizing them is even worse than it already was.
- Every UI element is oversized and seems made for the hot doggiest of hotdog fingers
- The organization of the settings, especially the network/mobile settings, somehow makes even less sense than before
- You can’t configure a wifi profile without a gateway. God forbid I want to do anything on a local network.
- You can’t disable the connectivity checker and Android treats not being able to reach Google with not having internet. And if there’s no internet, you have about 5 seconds to catch the prompt to stay connected otherwise it’ll disconnect.
- Even if you do catch the prompt to stay connected to the no-internet wifi, the DNS resolver will not use its DNS server unless you’re in airplane mode. I’ve got a RasPi-based “internet in a box” mobile server that’s useless when accessing it via my phone (unless in airplane mode) because I had the sheer audacity to configure it to use proper DNS hostnames and SSL certs.
- The wallpaper / background config is just awful nowadays. I don’t know if that’s “Material You” or what, but just let me pick an image or no image or a solid color. Don’t present 3 different apps to handle changing the background, two of which do nothing.
- On the Google side, they’re shoving more Gemini shit in
- Now Google is gatekeeping even the apps you want to sideload
- Even with animations disabled, there’s still too many animations/transitions. I’m using an e-ink phone and this alone just destroys the experience.
- Gesture navigation is just terrible but at least you can dig through the settings to re-enable 3 button nav
- A litany of other small gripes
I know it barely scratches the surface, but the Accessibility settings menu has an option to disable animations. Failing that, there are settings within Developer Options (yes, I know) to speed up or disable most animations.
Yeah, I’ve got all those turned off. Actually, they came disabled by default (one of the OS customizations Minimal does in their base image). I usually turn those to at least .5x on my other phones to make things feel faster, lol, but in this case, they were already off.
But there’s still subtle transitions and some animations that aren’t affected by that. One of the latter is the animations on the lock screen when you’re entering your pin. Those have to be disabled separately in the security settings (and weren’t disabled by default by Minimal).
I remember being very pissed when I had my pixel and the latest update got rid of 4x5 grids.
