this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
728 points (98.0% liked)

Technology

72971 readers
2784 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
L4s@hackingne.ws
728
Google Keeps Making Smartphones Worse (jacobin.com)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by JairajDevadiga@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
181 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Google’s Android, the world’s most widely used mobile operating system, started life as open-source software. In its quest for ever-greater profits, the tech giant has been gradually eroding Android’s open-source nature over the last decade.

Originally published on The Lever, but that one asks you to sign up.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Flukas88@feddit.it 33 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Sadly iOS is not much better

[–] chaosCruiser@futurology.today 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

But is it even slightly better? It's debatable. Both are completely awful, but I guess iOS is just terrible in different ways.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

My last iPhone was a iPhone 5. Or 6, maybe?

Fast forward, and I've been on Android until right now, when I got an iPhone 16 in a loss-leader sale.

...And I am astounded by how much worse it is. My old jailbroken iPhone's UI was both simpler and 100x times more customizable and useful than all these bizzare required gestures; I spent days trying to teach my Mom and grandpa how to use it, to no avail. At the same time, its as uncustomizable as ever.

I had basically every feature the 16 has now, like the action button, and more. And it somehow feels slower in browsing than my SD845 Android 9 phone.

It wasn't perfect back then, but the App Store is flooded with garbage now.

I literally want my iPhone 5 back. WTF has Apple been doing?

[–] chaosCruiser@futurology.today 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They've been busy reading the history books to find out what Android did 4 years ago so that they can start developing those same features today. Any remaining time and effort went into creating vacuous marketing hype.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Irony is Android felt way more intuitive, including to my non techy family, even in the worst case (EG Samsung devices with their spammy UI).

[–] JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

You can't sideload on iOS at all.

[–] flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

You can, but it is a pita. Having to buy dev certs and sign the .ipa file, etc. But technically, if you really want to, you can.

[–] Flukas88@feddit.it 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In eu you kinda can for some degree

[–] chaosCruiser@futurology.today 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Would be really curious to find out how that works. Got any good sources?