I refuse to use Android 12

03 Oct 2021


Android 12 will come out of Google's backside tomorrow and I'm not upgrading.¹

First point across, Android 12 looks even flatter than previous releases and by the screenshot, it looks like they're using less colours. This is an annoying trend in UX design where they decide that making everything look flatter and 2D is the way to go.

It's not. The design styles of Windows XP, Vista and 7 were all good because they gave your computer flair. macOS prior to 10.10 Yosemite and iOS prior to 7 had the iconic skeumorphic design that Apple was known for that made it stand out from the competition.

Android didn't really have it's own UX as most manufacturers slapped their own experience on it (HTC Sense, TouchWiz, One UI etc.) and prior to 2017, I had a cheap eBay bin phone from China² that had a mostly stock AOSP UI with no customisation.

Secondly, older versions of Android are still supported and unsupported versions of Android still have developer support!

Numerous apps have a minimum API version for Android 4.4 that has been discontinued for years! I could use WhatsApp and Instagram on Android 6 on my knockoff phone (2015 up to 2017), Android 6 on my Sony Xperia Z1 (2017) and Android 7 on my LG G5 (2017 up to 2021), all currently unsupported versions of Android.

Android 8.1 is currently the oldest supported version of Android, but Android 3 (Tablet only) and 4.0 (Smartphone and Tablet) are the minimum versions required to access Google services.

If I can still use my Samsung Galaxy A20 on Android 11 to access the Play Store and I can still install apps from F-Droid; I'm content.

All in all, new version of OSes in general nowadays aren't exciting. The last time a Windows version was truly hyped up was in the 90s, the last time a Mac OS upgrade was hyped up was probably 10.10. None of these new versions offer any new advancements worth upgrading for so I'm sticking with 11.

Footnotes

[1] tl;dr it looks like shit and be honest with yourselves most apps target android 4.x anyway

[2] Ever heard of the brand DOOGEE? It was so botnet that when I was eating my dinner and consooming YouTube it'd pop up with ads for sex toys.


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