Previously on Lemmy:
Past Discussions:
Sorry for the delay for the weekly. Server’s not that stable right now, maybe we should start the thread on Sundays instead.
I always like to switch things up once in a while because it’s fun. So, let’s get back to the brand discussion this week for the Google Pixel. We’ll do a discussion on repairability next week. Again, ideas are always welcome here.
I’ve never used a Pixel, but people around here should know that I’ve been very critical of Google’s product decisions over the years, and the Pixel is no exception. In my point of view, discontinuing the Nexus series, buying out the talents from the remains of HTC and starting an official “made by Google” phone is the equivalent of reddit buying out Alien Blue to make the official reddit app. I think it’s the event that scared big Android manufacturers like Samsung enough to start making their own ecosystem away from Google, as they are concerned that Google may start locking software features to their own phones instead of improving Android overall (rightfully so, I might add).
It really makes no business sense at all to turn your manufacturing partners into your competitors, but then again, it’s Google.
With that being said, the first years of the Pixels has been marred with growing pains. Whereas the Nexus line has always been barebones, no frills development devices, it seemed to me that the people who made Pixels don’t even use Android and are insistent on turning Pixel into iPhones, removing the headphone jack on the Pixel 2 despite the antagonistic ad from the original Pixel, Pixel exclusive software features like Google camera that necessitating the need of rom mods, as well as the quality issues that seems to be inherited from the Nexus days just really soured me from considering Pixels, as I think it’s against the spirit of openness that made Android great.
But it seems like in recent years, they finally figured out that a large percentage of people who bought Androids not because they can’t afford iPhones, but because they like Android, and I see the introduction of the “a” series as progress. The recent Pixel ad campaign also made me think that they finally figuring it out: people want different things, trying to turn Android into worse versions of iPhones was not going to work, so they should be trying to make the best Android for Android users instead.
(It’s also the reason I think all the previous reddit clones failed, but Lemmy will be the one that finally succeeds.)
Well, again, Google directly caused the Android fragmentation issues by de-GNUing Linux, so the bad parts of Android was because of Google from the beginning.
What fragmentation issues are you referring to? And what does it mean when you say they “de-GNU’d” android
Essentially, unlike the Linux on a PC or a server, every single Android phone has a very different Linux kernel built specifically for that particular phone, which is the reason that people need to build a custom rom (basically a device specific really old Linux kernel) for every phone instead of just installing something like a generic Ubuntu system.
Base Linux uses a lot of parts made by GNU, which is licensed under a strong copyleft clause, and Google doesn’t like that because they don’t like to share their source code, so, Google made an active effort to replace the GNU part of the base Linux kernel with something else to make Android to prevent that from happening.
Thanks for the explaination, ive been wondering for a while why i couldn’t run say, graphine os on an unlocked Motorola.
Android sucks so bad and its gotten worse from 11 on, i really hope we get a competitor soon.