Android
The new home of /r/Android on Lemmy and the Fediverse!
Android news, reviews, tips, and discussions about rooting, tutorials, and apps.
πUniversal Link: !android@lemdro.id
π‘Content Philosophy:
Content which benefits the community (news, rumours, and discussions) is generally allowed and is valued over content which benefits only the individual (technical questions, help buying/selling, rants, self-promotion, etc.) which will be removed if it's in violation of the rules.
Support, technical, or app related questions belong in: !askandroid@lemdro.id
For fresh communities, lemmy apps, and instance updates: !lemdroid@lemdro.id
π¬Matrix Chat
π°Our communities below
Rules
-
Stay on topic: All posts should be related to the Android OS or ecosystem.
-
No support questions, recommendation requests, rants, or bug reports: Posts must benefit the community rather than the individual. Please post to !askandroid@lemdro.id.
-
Describe images/videos, no memes: Please include a text description when sharing images or videos. Post memes to !androidmemes@lemdro.id.
-
No self-promotion spam: Active community members can post their apps if they answer any questions in the comments. Please do not post links to your own website, YouTube, blog content, or communities.
-
No reposts or rehosted content: Share only the original source of an article, unless it's not available in English or requires logging in (like Twitter). Avoid reposting the same topic from other sources.
-
No editorializing titles: You can add the author or website's name if helpful, but keep article titles unchanged.
-
No piracy or unverified APKs: Do not share links or direct people to pirated content or unverified APKs, which may contain malicious code.
-
No unauthorized polls, bots, or giveaways: Do not create polls, use bots, or organize giveaways without first contacting mods for approval.
-
No offensive or low-effort content: Don't post offensive or unhelpful content. Keep it civil and friendly!
-
No affiliate links: Posting affiliate links is not allowed.
Quick Links
Our Communities
- !askandroid@lemdro.id
- !androidmemes@lemdro.id
- !techkit@lemdro.id
- !google@lemdro.id
- !nothing@lemdro.id
- !googlepixel@lemdro.id
- !xiaomi@lemdro.id
- !sony@lemdro.id
- !samsung@lemdro.id
- !galaxywatch@lemdro.id
- !oneplus@lemdro.id
- !motorola@lemdro.id
- !meta@lemdro.id
- !apple@lemdro.id
- !microsoft@lemdro.id
- !chatgpt@lemdro.id
- !bing@lemdro.id
- !reddit@lemdro.id
Lemmy App List
Chat and More
view the rest of the comments
I mean let's be real here, Android merely copied what Apple was doing at the time. And before I'm lynched by a mob here, Android surpassed Apple quickly in that regard, but it's one of the few times early in the development of the Android ecosystem that they were just following the leader here.
The App Store came before the Play Store, and Google didn't really set itself apart in that arena until many years later when they actually redesigned the store.
... which in itself wasn't anything revolutionary either. The concept of an app store goes all the way back to the early 90s, and even in the smartphone era, there were several app stores on the scene for other mobile platforms before the iPhone was even a thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_store#History
Exactly. I was using online app Stores in 2006 and 2007 to buy, download and install apps on my Windows Mobile phones.
Password managers, device themes, various other apps - you name it, they were all available.
People act like the App Store was some miraculous new thing apple invented, but these existed long before iPhone.
Windows Mobile also had other nice things that iPhone took years to get like copy/paste, GPS navigation, voice control, SD card support (iPhone still doesn't have it), theming etc
The only thing apple did was use a glass screen instead of plastic and made a finger friendly and good looking UI. That's it.
Yes these made the phone more appealing to the average user who only knew flip phones but for us nerds using Windows Mobile, it wasn't a massive step forward.
HTC had already been making finger friendly themes but they could be a little sluggish because the CPU market hadn't really taken off yet.
There was a Russian company that I bought many themes from for my HTC. They were really nice. I just can't remember the name anymore.
Probably 4pda.ru?
But yeah, WinMo was awesome back then. I still miss some of it's features and customisability - no read-only system partition, no SafetyNet crap, physical buttons which could be remapped to anything (AE Button Plus), writing proper scripts using MortScript, modify whichever file you like without any issues. I still remember using this nice Windows XP theme on my HTC Tytn, with the slide-out QWERTY keyboard it really felt like I was using a mini PC.
It's so sad that Android has become so closed now in spite of being technically opensource.
I think it was called SBP Soft I think. But I can't find it even in the wayback machine
Yes I wish Google would let Android be open properly.
I've been an exclusively android user since the original motorola Droid, but I still say you're massively understating the innovation by Apple here
The App Store and Android Market launches were pretty damn close. The iOS app-store launched July 2008 and the first Android consumer device (G1) shipped September 2008 and it had the market from day 1.
Worth noting that iOS users had to wait a full year for the app store after the iPhone 1 launch because Jobs didn't want it at first. I had both devices fairly early on and on the iPhone side we were running "apps" on jailbroken devices months before the app store existed.