Tag: android

Android lags years

2020’s high-end Androids sport the single-core performance of an iPhone 8, a phone released in Q3’17
mid-priced Androids were slightly faster than 2014’s iPhone 6
low-end Androids have finally caught up to the iPhone 5 from 2012

You’re reading that right: single core Android performance at the low end is both shockingly bad and dispiritingly stagnant.

Android fork consequences

Those modifications lead to headaches, though, including the well-established problem of delays in shipping security updates. They can also, as Stavrou and his team have uncovered, result in firmware bugs that put users at risk. “The problem is not going to go away, because a lot of the people in the supply chain want to be able to add their own applications, customize, add their own code. That increases the attack surface, and increases the probability of software error. They’re exposing the end user to exploits that the end user is not able to respond to.”

Microsoft capitulation

Tech culture is very fond of persistence, stubbornness, perseverance, and the idea that you should never give up. We’re surrounded by stories of visionaries who were told they’d never succeed and went on to change the world. But sometimes, you should put selection bias aside and, yes, give up.

This applies to big companies perhaps even more than for startups. Big companies have entire strategy teams devoted to working out what to do next and how to do it, and budgets to hire strategy consulting firms for millions of $ to produce 100-page decks with more strategies and ways to achieve them. Such people have little interest in saying ‘give up – it won’t work’ (perhaps because that might mean you don’t need a strategy team anymore). And there’s no SmartArt for failure.

Microsoft today, I think, is a case study in knowing when you should indeed give up, and what you should do after that.

Tmobile pivots from bloatware

the skeptic in me sees tmobile’s zany moves as born out of desperation.

No Corporate Logo, No Bloatware, no crap you don’t want on the #Nexus6 from T-Mobile​:

That’s Un-carrier – listening to our customers and giving them what they want, not sticking a stupid corporate logo and a bunch of crap software I know you guys don’t want on your #Nexus device.

We know you guys buy a #Nexus6 to avoid that kind of thing!

Google did want to highlight the Virtual Preload (VPL) capabilities on Lollipop, so we made MyAccount available if you want it… But you can totally delete it. That’s what we do.

Hope you like what we’ve chosen to do there (or more importantly, what we’ve chosen not to do).

Des Smith, Sr. Product Manager, T-Mobile US and business owner of Nexus 6 and Nexus 9.

Microsoft should become a services company

WHAT SHOULD MICROSOFT DO?

  1. Choose between devices and services.
  2. Abandon devices.
  3. Embrace services.
  4. Fork Android and offer a version of AOSP (Android Open Source Project) with Microsoft services, app store (more on this below), and, most importantly, patent protection to Chinese manufacturers.
  5. Build an AOSP Play Store with word-for-word copies

this is very insightful, especially the part about patents being a moat against chinese manufacturers cleaning up worldwide: once they leave the lax IP of china behind, they are vulnerable to lawsuits. this is perhaps the real reason behind “rockstar”, a coalition of google competitors huddling together for protection.

Android / Windows

this is just spectacularly bad. par for the course for intel who really really suck at software: moblin, meego, tizen, smart tv, the list of stillborn projects out of intel is pretty long.

Intel plans a CES coup: Android and Windows in the same computer. Dual OS could dilute Windows dominance, if Microsoft doesn’t kill it first