Sorry for a kinda clickbait title but it is what it is. I just watched a video about Android 15 changes and a lot of them are either not important or straight up bad.
I want to specifically mention increased background sensor usage (such as microphone) and the Find My Device network. These are serious privacy issues that just make lives of custom ROM developers and users harder by having to disable more and more stuff (that’s turned on by default of course), as well as a contribution to ewaste generation and general decrease of battery life.
I guess we are getting into the era of complete death of digital privacy and absolute surveillance. This is scary but not too unrealistic I guess. I just hope the devs of privacy-focused ROMs will be able to do something about it and purge these changes.
When the Find My Device network came to my device I was literally asked if I want my device to be part of it, so even though by default it’s an opt-out feature, everyone whose device can be connected to the network is asked if they want that to happen.
Seems like it’s just another switch toflick off and forget about
It doesn’t look like it’s going to ask the user on first setup of new phones though
it’ll be covered on screen 73 of the ‘agreement’ required to use the device.
Android OS updates have been somewhat lackluster since Android 8/9. The OS and smartphones in general are increasingly becoming mature products with little true differentiation.
They will try to leverage “AI” to accelerate upgrade cycles, but we’ll see how that goes.
Yep, and as someone that has carried a work iPhone and a personal Android for years now, they’re pretty close to the same too.
I mean, as far as usage/usability they do sort of what we want at this point.
Literally the only reason I use android is because of custom launchers and the ability to use a file explorer. Everything else is just the same
It’s important to note that Android ≠ AOSP (Android Open Source Project). Most of the actually interesting features advertised in a new Android release won’t be available to you if your not installing Google Services.
E.g. heavily advertised features like Android 12’s “Material You” adaptive themes aren’t even available on AOSP and thus GrapheneOS, CalyxOS or LineageOS.
New privacy features often already existed for years on custom ROMs like LineageOS.
This is why since around Android 10 I’m not even following new Android releases, at least not beyond reading glancing over an article. I didn’t even notice my phone updated to from 12 to 13 (GrapheneOS) until I noticed the new background apps menu, which is pretty much all of the changes.
Edit: Being able to set a language per app is a great feature of Android 13.
Edit 2: As pointed out in comments below, my Material You example was wrong.
A better example are heavily advertised translation and image editing features, which are sometimes locked to Pixel and definitely locked to installs with Google Services. Same is true for apps like “Digital Wellbeing”, which don’t work on AOSP but its features are advertised as Android features.
tl;dr
Android updates are even more uninteresting if your using a custom ROM, because most features won’t even be available in open source Android.
You’re right, thanks for correcting me.
Where do you get such information from? I’m using official LineageOS and it has Material You. There is indeed a separate implementation for Pixels afaik but the difference is very little
You’re right, my apologies for confidently spreading misinformation and thank you for pointing it out. Material You colors are available on LineageOS and GrapheneOS, probably CalyxOS too.
With Android 12 GrapheneOS and CalyxOS choosing different colors was not possible, maybe because they didn’t implement something at first, but with 13+ Material You works as intended.
I’ve edited my parent comment accordingly.
Reading up on the blog posts and technical overviews for the new Find My Device network all of it seems well anonimized and local device to device coms not using GPS, and can be declined if needed.
I mean, it’s still Google, but honestly I’ve been looking forward for this feature despite being very privacy conscious. I really want to use trackers on my bike, suitcase, etc.
Can you please not editorialize the post title when you make the video your post link?
Could they just please post an article instead of a video with 10% info, 90% drivel?
