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What do we even mean when we say 'Android'?
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What do we even mean when we say 'Android'?

Posted: 11 May 2018 06:43 AM PDT

The thing that's given me greatest amusement at this year's Google I/O has been the number of iPhone users raising an eyebrow at Google's new focus on digital well-being and openly declaring that Android has leapfrogged iOS. As an avid Android acolyte, my reflexive response has been to say that Android has already been ahead of iOS in a number of important respects like its first-party apps, cloud services, and digital assistant. But then that got me thinking: which Android? Is it the Android on your 2016 Samsung Galaxy A7, or the Android on the latest Huawei P20 Pro, or the Android on Google's own Pixel devices? These are all different flavors of supposedly the same thing, but I'm not so sure.

I'm starting to believe we need a more nuanced, differentiated language to discuss developments within the Android ecosystem. The language of the past — the one where "Windows" broadly meant the same thing no matter the manufacturer of the PC, and "iOS" still means more or less the same experience across a majority of iPhones — is too narrow to cover the multiplicity of devices, businesses, and experiences "Android" represents.

Firstly, there's the distinction between "new and expensive" Android and "old and neglected" Android. All of the Android P advantages exhibited by Google at I/O 2018 will be the exclusive preserve of two classes of devices: new ones bought after the release of Android P and slightly older ones that were too expensive for their manufacturers to get away with not updating. Phone reviewers like me tend to underestimate how big of a problem this still is, because we keep jumping from one latest-and-greatest device to the next. So to many of us, Android is represented by the best Google's partners (or Google itself, via the latest release of its Pixel phone line) are able to produce at any one time.

But Android isn't merely a marketing promise for the future, it's a lived reality for more than two billion users. And their experience is often like mine was when I booted up a 2014 HTC One mini 2 last year: littered with app incompatibilities and left out of consideration for the latest updates. Let me tell you, the industrial design of that phone is still gorgeous, its ergonomics are lovely, and its display remains perfectly satisfactory — there's no reason why I should be forced into buying a new device just to keep apps like YouTube running on it. And if you think three years is a long time to support a phone, ask your iPhone-owning friends about that.

Apple continues to be able to update 76 percent of active iPhones to the latest version of iOS, while Google struggles at 5.7 percent of active Android devices.

Kudos to Google for beating Apple to the punch on phone usage awareness, limits, and easier controls for shutting down notifications in Android P. Embarrassing for Apple to be behind the curve on this. https://t.co/RrO8PoJaUt
— DHH (@dhh) May 10, 2018

Am I talking about Android's fragmentation problem again? Why yes, so long as it exists, we'll have to keep revisiting it. Because while Android P may give Google a paper lead over Apple for a period of time, if Apple does a corresponding digital well-being update in iOS 12, the effect and the reach of Apple's update will dwarf the impact of Google's update. Come this fall, Android P's flagship device will be the Google Pixel 3, which you might not be able to find in carrier stores (or even Google's own campus store), while Apple's iOS 12 will land on every iPhone X, iPhone, 8, iPhone 7, and likely iPhone 6S device.

That's just the way these things go: Apple's iOS is a broadly consistent experience across device generations, and its name is appropriate to use both to describe what is and what is to come. Google's Android, true to its confectionery naming scheme, is distributed more in slices than as a whole. Buy a Galaxy S9 and you're assured two slices — Oreo and whatever the P flavor will be called — but you can't ever be sure exactly when the second one will arrive and you're playing a lottery hoping for a third.

Don't get me wrong, the theoretical new Android P Pixel versus the theoretical new iPhone of this fall is a battle that has me leaning in favor of Google's offering (in part because we haven't yet seen what Apple is preparing for iOS 12), but is that enough to say that Android is, as of now, better than iOS? Probably not. And should we even be comparing individual phones, whose hardware plays as big a role as software, when trying to decide the superior operating system?

There's another glaring Android question in my eyes: what is Android in China? For me, Android is inextricably tied in with Google's diversity of excellent mobile apps, whether it be Google Maps, Google Photos, Google Keep, or Google Drive. I'm also increasingly relying on the Google Assistant to accelerate basic everyday tasks. The world's largest smartphone market, however, doesn't allow Google Play Services or the Play Store, and so an "Android" phone shipping in China is a fundamentally different device to one you might use in the rest of the world. It's fair to say that the predominant OS in China is WeChat, which has ballooned from a chat app into a do-everything user experience that sits on top of the traditional OS. So a vast chunk of nominally Android users are in practice WeChat users.

The way we talk about Android today puts that label on the hardware manufacturers that ship Android devices as well as the software running on them, and it doesn't differentiate between Android with Google services and Android without. When LG ships a phone with 54 pieces of bloatware preloaded, when OnePlus is caught collecting too much data on its users, or when Blu gets dumped from Amazon for its spyware, that's all "Android" in most people's minds. When Samsung scares little kids with its creepy animated emoji and frustrates old men like me with its dumb Bixby button, that's "Android" too.

There's a whole class of iPhone owners out there who think that Android is laggy, dated, and ugly software unworthy of a modern user's time. And there happens to be an entire market of Android-powered portable media players — the recent Fiio X7 II, for example, runs a buggy version of 2015's Android 5.1 — that live down to those lowly expectations. Android is so diverse, in fact, that you can say pretty much anything about it and you'll be able to find evidence supporting your claim.

I'm not about to propose any sort of "correct" language to describe Android, other than to urge that we start qualifying and more carefully defining what we mean when we use that term. The world has never previously had an operating system of Android's scale, with so many users and devices and versions all intermingling, and so it makes sense that we might need to invent new ways of talking about Android.

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Google sells the future, powered by your personal data

Posted: 10 May 2018 01:30 AM PDT

“We may analyze [email] content to customize search results, better detect spam and malware,” he added.

It doesn’t stop there, though. Google says it is also leverages some of its datasets to “help build the next generation of ground-breaking artificial intelligence solutions.” On Tuesday, Google rolled out “Smart Replies,” in which artificial intelligence helps users finish sentences.

The extent of the information Google has can be eyebrow-raising even for technology professionals. Dylan Curran, an information technology consultant, recently downloaded everything Facebook had on him and got a 600-megabyte file. When he downloaded the same kind of file from Google, it was 5.5 gigabytes, about nine times as large. His tweets highlighting each kind of information Google had on him, and therefore other users, got nearly 170,000 retweets.

“This is one of the craziest things about the modern age, we would never let the government or a corporation put cameras/microphones in our homes or location trackers on us, but we just went ahead and did it ourselves because … I want to watch cute dog videos,” Curran wrote.

Want to freak yourself out? I'm gonna show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018

What does Google guarantee?

The company has installed various guardrails against this data being misused. It says it doesn’t sell your personal information, makes user data anonymous after 18 months, and offers tools for users to delete their recorded data piece by piece or in its (almost) entirety, and to limit how they’re being tracked and targeted for advertising. And it doesn't allow marketers to target users based on sensitive categories like beliefs, sexual interests or personal hardships.

However, that doesn't prevent the company from selling advertising slots that can be narrowed to a user’s ZIP code. Combined with enough other categories of interest and behavior, Google advertisers can create a fairly tight Venn diagram of potential viewers of a marketing message, with a minimum of 100 people.

"They collect everything they can, as a culture," Scott Cleland, chairman of NetCompetition, an advocacy group that counts Comcast and other cable companies among its members, told NBC News. "They know they'll find some use for it."

What can you do about it?

Users can see and limit the data Google collects on them by changing their advertising preferences through an online dashboard.

The internet giant offers fine-tune controls to opt out of tracking via Google’s advertising cookie, as well as limiting whether you’ll see targeted ads based on your interest groups and categories. You can also see and delete many of the personal tracking data about yourself, including your entire search history and any geolocation data that may have been tracking your every physical movement if you were signed into Google services on your phone.

“We give users controls to delete individual items, services or their entire account,” said Google’s Stein. “When a user decides to delete data, we go through a process over time to safely and completely remove it from our systems, including backups. We keep some data with a user’s Google Account, like when and how they use certain features, until the account is deleted.”

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Google Leak Suddenly 'Confirms' Expensive Pixel 3

Posted: 10 May 2018 04:31 PM PDT

The Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL remain the world’s best smartphones (and with good reason). But, apart from one accident, the very existence of Google ’s hotly anticipated Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL has remained a mystery. Until now…

Shedding new light on Google’s plans is arguably the web’s most famous tipster Evan Blass, aka @evleaks. In a new tweet, Blass - who has an unparalleled record of on-point leaks - confirmed both the existence of the new Pixels and their launch date.

Concept Creator

Google Pixel 3 concept

Citing “a reliable source”, Blass confirmed Google will indeed retain its two phone strategy (unlike Apple which is moving to three iPhone X designs) and we will get both a ‘Pixel 3’ and a ‘Pixel 3 XL’. And both will be expensive.

As for the launch, Blass states Google will repeat the inaugural hardware event it held last year on October 4th and the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL will be the headline announcements. Google has yet to confirm this event or its timing but, given Blass’ assurance, I’d expect a similar late September/early October timeframe making the new Pixels two of the last major smartphone releases of the year.

Unfortunately, we still know next-to-nothing about the hardware changes Google will make to both phones (Wishlist: 3x optical zoom, much smaller bezels, no notch and louder stereo speakers - please). But Blass did add that Google will use the hardware event to also launch the second generation of its controversial Pixel Buds and introduce its first Pixel-branded smartwatch.

Concept Creator

Google Pixel 3 concept

For the record, I like the original Pixel Buds a lot more than most despite their fiddly design (audio quality and personal assistant integration easily top Apple’s AirPods) so some thoughtful tweaks here could result in a major hit. As for a Pixel watch, it feels like Google’s last chance to breathe life into its struggling WearOS (formally Android Wear) platform. For that, it’s probably now or never.

But the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL will be the main attractions (talk of a third model minus Pixel branding seems to be fading) and with the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL still delivering the best point-and-shoot smartphone photography on the market, all eyes will be on whether Google rests on its laurels this year or takes another seismic leap forward.

All eyes will also be on whether Google - at the umpteenth time of asking - can, at last, keep its new Pixels in stock…

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