Android 12 Beta Published With Performance Enhancements, Overhauled UI

[cynical]

Thanks for the reply. I think I understand that the app will know which precision level it gets. What I'm still wondering if the app will know that there *is* fine positioning on device and that they were *denied* access to that? Do you know? Thanks!

It's not like that. It's more like, they are requesting both and you can approve both or not. All they know is if the user gave approval to one, the other, both, or none. It doesn't indicate device capability, just what permissions the user is allowing the application to have.

[mbrf]

Way off. On Android if you create a Widget introduced by a random program it may or may not follow the system theme. A both great and bad example of that is one I use daily -- The PowerAmp Widget. It has settings to follow the system style while also having the ability to theme itself based on user parameters. I'm still using the same settings I was using with Android 3.0 with Android 11. It's great and bad because while it can follow the system looks, it doesn't have to. Some apps don't give you a choice one way or the other in how they look like the Motorola Weather Widget (which has gone downhill over the years...can't even set an accent color now). Android 12 is trying to fix that with their Material You guidelines.

On KDE all the Widgets follow the system color schemes. It's actually one of the things on the KDE Dev radar at the moment if you read @ngraham's blog. On macOS widgets all seem to do their own thing. It is a similar situation on Windows where you need either old MS stuff or 3rd Party stuff...both of which all seem to do their own thing. On GNOME everything is 3rd party from a plugin.

Alright - I just thought to have recalled a lot of controversy in the younger days of Wayland, where there was a lot of frustration regarding window decorations/styles, as there was a general misconception that it was dictated by the system on Wayland, which it wasn't on X.
I don't recall exactly why that was, because it's been years since I read up on these things.

Edit:
Just did a quick search to try to knock off some rust. I think that people initially thought that only server-side decorations were possible on Wayland, which I then took to mean that it's the default. But I knew back then, that I'd read that client-side decorations were possible - but being rusty couldn't really recall any details of this

Edit edit:
I'm reading a bit more, and it seems that server-side decorations was what people thought Wayland couldn't do, which makes so much more sense for so many reasons. I don't know how I've managed to flip it.
It makes so much more sense that X was what could do server-side, and that Wayland would struggle with it, due to Wayland keeping as many things separated and hidden from each other as possible. And it makes much more sense that people would have a hard time accepting that only the client could decide decorations, as it would be a stylistic mess of proportions.

[skeevy420]

I'm rusty in the matter, but is this not the default way of doing things in Wayland, or am I way off?

Also, I wish they'd put in some work to make their OS input+UI-first, to make Android a smoother experience.
... but more than anything, I can't wait for proper support for phone hardware within Linux, so it's possible to ditch Android. I'm often close to getting a PinePhone, I just wish the camara was better, and maybe a bit more RAM, though it's probably less necessary on a leaner OS.

Way off. On Android if you create a Widget introduced by a random program it may or may not follow the system theme. A both great and bad example of that is one I use daily -- The PowerAmp Widget. It has settings to follow the system style while also having the ability to theme itself based on user parameters. I'm still using the same settings I was using with Android 3.0 with Android 11. It's great and bad because while it can follow the system looks, it doesn't have to. Some apps don't give you a choice one way or the other in how they look like the Motorola Weather Widget (which has gone downhill over the years...can't even set an accent color now). Android 12 is trying to fix that with their Material You guidelines.

On KDE all the Widgets follow the system color schemes. It's actually one of the things on the KDE Dev radar at the moment if you read @ngraham's blog. On macOS widgets all seem to do their own thing. It is a similar situation on Windows where you need either old MS stuff or 3rd Party stuff...both of which all seem to do their own thing. On GNOME everything is 3rd party from a plugin.

[mbrf]

The closest thing that exists to that is KDE Plasma.

I'm rusty in the matter, but is this not the default way of doing things in Wayland, or am I way off?

Also, I wish they'd put in some work to make their OS input+UI-first, to make Android a smoother experience.
... but more than anything, I can't wait for proper support for phone hardware within Linux, so it's possible to ditch Android. I'm often close to getting a PinePhone, I just wish the camara was better, and maybe a bit more RAM, though it's probably less necessary on a leaner OS.

[willmore]

It works like your latter scenario. Prior to this change the app would request your location, and the degree of precision would be implied by the API used (ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION or ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION). The difference now is that the user gets a chance to be more specific about what degree they want to allow. Here’s a visual. The app will definitely know which it has access to.

Thanks for the reply. I think I understand that the app will know which precision level it gets. What I'm still wondering if the app will know that there *is* fine positioning on device and that they were *denied* access to that? Do you know? Thanks!

[t.s.]

if only they can add a linux distro similar to how dex use to have or chromebooks if i'm not wrong. one that has also gpu acceleration to it

They can. But they won't. Simpler than adding linux distro? USB passthrough like Samsung/ Apple/ Sony/ Huawei flagship phone, where you can use usb to hdmi (we can install linux on top of android, ssh/ vnc-ed to the linux and use it in our monitor.) . It's quite simple, and not that pricey to add those. But they won't do it that way.

[cynical]

I wonder if this is implemented, how they do so. Do they degrade it and say "you're getting degraded info" or when the app asks for location does it say "precise location only, please" and if the device (or per app) settings say to provide degraded, does the OS just say "Sorry, not available"?

It works like your latter scenario. Prior to this change the app would request your location, and the degree of precision would be implied by the API used (ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION or ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION). The difference now is that the user gets a chance to be more specific about what degree they want to allow. Here’s a visual. The app will definitely know which it has access to.

[loganj]

if only they can add a linux distro similar to how dex use to have or chromebooks if i'm not wrong. one that has also gpu acceleration to it

[jacob]

They need to change it regulary.. Otherwise "normal" people would complain that their new phone looks exactly the same like the old..
I mean, all the phones are basically large screens, with some sort of backside, that you typically don´t see when using it.. The only thing that you really see is the UI.

There is no real point in these UI-Changes most of the time, they are just there to make it look "new".
Add more whitespace (padding), make fonts bigger, simplify colors.. That´s what they do.. We moved from aqua buttons to win 3.11 or ncurses like UI without any gradients or 3D effects.. Color is removed as well..

I think this is a big fallacy. In reality there are few things users hate as much as UI changes for change's sake. Some people have learnt to do certain things, some have developed muscle memory but no-one wants to feel confused and start looking for the "save" option that can't be where it was for the past 10 years just because.

[Spacefish]

They need to change it regulary.. Otherwise "normal" people would complain that their new phone looks exactly the same like the old..
I mean, all the phones are basically large screens, with some sort of backside, that you typically don´t see when using it.. The only thing that you really see is the UI.

There is no real point in these UI-Changes most of the time, they are just there to make it look "new".
Add more whitespace (padding), make fonts bigger, simplify colors.. That´s what they do.. We moved from aqua buttons to win 3.11 or ncurses like UI without any gradients or 3D effects.. Color is removed as well..