os2baba

Face Id totally sucks compared to Touch Id. Especially the way Google's implemented it on their phones at the back. Apple nailed unlock on the 5s with Touch ID. Google improved the speed and detection and put it in the back. When I pull the phone out of my pocket, with my finger resting on the sensor, the phone's unlocked halfway through the motion to bring up the phone to view it. With Face Id, there is the half a second delay that just screws up the whole efficiency. Yeah. First world problem. But they took something better and replaced it with something inferior.

Yeah, my Pixel 2 XL screen totally sucks with the blue shift. But I'll take that over the notch. How it doesn't bother everyone is beyond me. Also, I'm not sure why, but the Pixel 2 XL is easier to see outside than the X. I thought that the X is brighter. But it isn't. 

Boy! Way to completely miss the point of Instant Apps!!

It's not to solve the fragmentation problem.  WTF? There is, for the most part, no OS fragmentation for developers. When I write an Android app, I don't write a million versions for a million devices. I write one app with 4 sets of resources for 4 screen sizes and depending on whether I'm targeting tablets or not, a few layouts in XML. And using the Support Library, I can write apps that go all the way back to Froyo (I think) - but I just typically go back to Lollipop (which gives me 63% of users). Nobody's asked me for an older version. If that had, I'll just set min version to Kitkat which gives me 95% of the devices. So to sum up, from my perspective as a developer, fragmentation is a non issue.

However, from my perspective as a consumer, fragmentation is indeed a problem for Android. Consumers don't get OS updates and Security updates in time. However, with Play Services, they still get large swathes of what is traditionally considered as OS updates. Still that's not good enough. And IMO, this is just about the only area where Apple's totally nailed it - and from Day 1.

So what's the advantage of Instant Apps? I'm not sure how big of an impact it will be and how many developers are going to take advantage of it. Time will tell. But the intent is twofold. First is Discovery. If you are browsing and you come across something interesting and go to the organization's web page, you may find that they have a app(let) that you could use right away. Without having to go into the Play Store and installing the app on the phone, you could try out the functionality by simply clicking a button and the app running instantaneously on your phone. It's never installed and like a web page, once you exit it, it's gone from the phone. That's the second advantage. If you don't want to clutter up your phone with a bunch of apps that you use infrequently, this is a good way to get the best of both worlds.

Last week, I wanted to view the Sqlite database of an app I'm building and I went to the Play Store and downloaded 6 apps to try them out. With Instant Apps, it would have been a much faster process, limiting the amount of time I spent evaluating them. That's not one of Google's use cases. But it would be useful, if it happened - even from the Play Store.

jimmy.jimmy said:

This is not about marketing agreements, this is about stopping handset manufactures from installing their own apps.  Microsoft tried the same thing by not letting OEMs change the default desktop and we all know how that turned out.  They are still paying the price for that to this day.

It's not the same situation at all.  Google does not prevent handset manufacturers from installing their own apps.  It just insists that they have to install the Google apps *as well*.  Big difference.  Plus, Android itself lets you choose which app to be used as the default, the first time and if you desire, every time an operation is performed that launches an app that implements an Android Intent.  On Android, the first time an operation is performed Google's apps don't even get any kind of preference.  They are shown in a list along with every other app that can satisfy the request.

The fact is that the vast majority of Android users simply prefer Google's versions to the mostly sub standard fare that Android OEMs like Samsung provide - hence the term bloatware is not directed at Google's offerings, but rather those of the OEMs.

Microsoft's license actively prevented a competitor's app (or OS) from being installed on the machine.