Android aftermarket development and its boring state
So many ROMs.
So many features.
But they all look the same.
I mean, I love that there are many options, but aren't you bored of going to XDA and finding only ROMs that follow the [9.0] EDGY NAME IN CAPS formula?
They all look stock. Android is supposed to be about personalization. Where are the highly customized UIs? Why are all fanboys so scared of breaking the scheme that Material has inforced upon us, and then whine about how Android is inconsistent? I wish that something like MIUI would appear again, like, a ROM made by a no name that ended up making a gigantic empire.
I wish to see someday another developer, making its own thing.
Breaking the AOSP UI mold.
[NOTE] This is reposted from reddit (it was made by me tho) because I wanted to discuss it here.
Maybe my interest in it has just changed, but it seems like that whole scene has shrunk considerably in the last 5 or so years. Stock android got a lot better recently, likely as a result of that very scene. Honestly for me I'd rather take that stock android and use apps to customize it than mess with rooting (if you can even find a guide for your non-flagship phone), installing a bootloader, and swapping out custom roms. Not to mention that as rooting gained popularity, certain apps began detecting it and don't support rooted devices. Doesn't seem worth all of the effort to me anymore.
Which isn't to say I've lost my tinkering spirit. Far from it, as I've had a blast playing around with i3wm on my work laptop. The desire to customize and tinker is there, but just not on my phone anymore.
Rooting isn't just for using CuStOm R0mS, it's for living without gapps.
I stopped looking around for roms. I always go for LineageOS.
Customization on phones is an illusion. You can use a different launcher and icons, but we are all stuck with the same whatsapps, facebooks and instagrams.
Yes. Maybe i'm too used to the level of customization Linux offers, so the Android ones are more superficial to me even with root, magisk and other utilities.
This has always been my goal: Bide time on factory ROM until either LineageOS is supported, or if I can get Ubuntu Touch going (Rare).
I think I might have finally fallen for the trap, though: I do not believe the Note 9 will ever able to get LineageOS :(
Stock android has also become more closed-source, so it may not be that surprising that the scene has shrunk.
Thats why we need postmarketOS to take off. We don't need roms, we don't need android, we just need a proper linux stack running on our phones. So we get the freedom to do with our hardware whatever we need/want to .
Hmm. While Linux is an interesting concept, I don't think we should break from the Android codebase.
Why on earth not?
What is actually bad about android? I don't mean Google android, I mean actual android? All it really is is a linux kernel with a java or kotlin runtime. That makes it much easier to run a single program on different hardware. And there is build in ways to run native code if a developer wanted to.
No one said Android is bad. Sure, those are reasons why Android may be a fine choice in many contexts, but they are not an argument as to why one should never move to a full Linux stack (as @nachodorito implied).
Linux provides a level of customization that neither Android nor iOS can match. Given that is the point of the thread, it makes sense that people might prefer that as a stack over Android. Sure, Android is good at what it does, but there's no reason we have to limit ourselves to it.
One of the nice things about postmarketOS is that they intend to make as many packages as possible system-independent, so that developers only have to update a set of core packages to support a new system. The idea is to make it much easier than Android to support systems after the original manufacturer has given up, but also might make it easier to support a wider breadth of phones too. With the onset of the Librem 5 on the market, many Linux DEs are starting to think about supporting mobile workflows, which is exciting!
It has an extremely large portion of the market share. Nothing is wrong with Android, what is wrong is that there aren't more options.
There needs to be a little more competition in the area.
This is a good point, they're harder to do in general, but breathing fresh air is something great.
I feel there's only so much that can be done with a bit of smartphone software. At this point we aren't really seeing brand new ideas, just improvements on older stuff. Stock android basically has all the necessary things and the Play Store can for the most part fill in anything else that's needed. There isn't much room for new stuff now, at least in the current Android ecosystem.
Locked bootloaders, complicated hardware and missing drivers are not helping.
The golden age of Cyanogen is gone.
Was sad to see when I went looking for ROMs for my LG V20 because the software felt slow and what not, users basically said it's not worth it. Particularly because the battery is replaceable and I have 2 spares. Aside from battery optimization, the ROMs running for the V20 just take away too many LG/phone specific features to be considered worth it.
Now I'm just thinking how long I will stick with this phone until I switch. Meh.
The more customization you add, the harder it is to keep up with upstream.