Sunday, May 22, 2016

Google I/O makes owning and Android device depressing

I watched a number of the Google I/O 2016 videos on YouTube. Tons of new stuff coming our way which is great. I am happy that Google is innovating in a lot of areas. So why is it depressing? Because I have a Samsung Note 4 phone that is still back on 5.1.1. My wife's Note 2 is on 4.4. Only 7.5% are on Marshmallow.

It is great that Google broke out some of the features like the new constraints based layout manager to support libraries but a lot of the other features I can't use because Samsung + TMobile has not updated. It sucks to be stuck in the past.

My next phone will be a Nexus phone so I can get updates close to the speed that iOS users are accustomed to getting. I know I can't code against all of them but at least I can enjoy them and I can test things like multi window support on my devices.

I have to be honest with myself. The things that Samsung added such as the stylus and multi window I don't use that often. Not all apps support them. I am happy to see Google adding that as a base feature to Android especially for tablets when I think it will be very helpful. I can give up the stylus for a Nexus phone. I like the large size of the Note but there are similar Nexus devices out there.

This really is an area I totally wish Android was more iOS like. New version of the OS and pretty much everyone can get it nearly right away. Yes, at some point you have to cut off devices that are older than 4 or so years. Otherwise here you go, enjoy all the new features. Instead I sit here not even enjoying the stuff they talked about two years ago.

At least my tablet has Marshmallow on it so I can test there.

Samsung, you do some cool stuff but then you do some real a-hole stuff so I have to move on.