We go through this every time a new version comes to Google’s own phones while we wait for it to come to the rest. And the outcome is always the same – Pixel phones (and previous Nexus phones) look the way Google wants them to look and the rest of the phones look however the company that made them want them to look. That’s because you can’t see Android – it’s simply software that supports the things you’re looking at.
It’s confusing. And tech bloggers (myself included) don’t help ease the confusion very well when we write about the things we see on a software update for the Pixel. It’s too difficult to try and break everything down every time we write something, and while we are good at a lot of things, we tend to shy away from “difficult”. To compound it all, when we do try to break “Android” down, we usually make it worse. I’m going to try here because I’m feeling courageous and want to face “difficult” head on today. If I don’t come back, tell my wife I love her.
Android is quite a complicated term, entity, and operating system.
> It’s confusing.
no its really not…..
article author seems to think being able to alter a button bar makes an os different?
cursor keys because of chromeOS, I always remember using cursor keys well before chromeOS came out… actually quite handy if you connect a keyboard to you tablet…
That author owes me 5 min of his life now.
Treat different OEM phones as different products. If you listen to people who buy Samsung phones, they swear by them but they also tend to like the Samsung customizations. Let’s just treat samsung phones as samsung phones and not lump it in.
Then when reviewing a new phone. they should talk about how it compares to older samsung phones and the update/support policy samsung has for their devices. If you buy this phone, you get 1 year of patches or whatever the timeline is. Then you can make informed decisions.
That doesn’t mean you can’t compare it to what google did with a pixel or apple with iphones. It’s just a reality that most people are brand loyal and don’t really care that much about other phones. Samsung fans are just as passionate about their devices as Apple fans.
I know many people who have samsung phones. I don’t know any that specifically like them for the UI customizations or that they “swear by them” . But you know small sample size and all.
Most people with their smart phones: ” Meh, it works. makes calls, email, text, Instagram, facebook and the like” Not a lot of tribalism with most people.