Technology @lemmy.world shoulderoforion @fedia.io 1w ago

Android will soon instantly log you in to your apps on new devices

arstechnica.com Android will soon instantly log you in to your apps on new devices

New phone day for Android users should get a whole bunch easier.

43 comments

LOL, instantly. What a joke.
No thanks.
- </thread>
- My thoughts exactly.
- Why? Samsung phones have already been doing this for years and it makes getting a new device so much easier. All I gotta do is login to my account and everything is transferred over.
  
  Honestly, it works so well that I can just start using the new phone without any extra effort. Literally everything is exactly where I left it on the old phone. It's one of my favorite new features in smartphones.
  
  In the past it used to take me at least two days to set up a new phone the way I like it, and several weeks to months to iron out the kinks and get back logged into everything. Now I can be up and running in under an hour. It's the best thing ever.
  
  Multiple accounts for one thing. Also I don't always want to stay logged in to everything.
  
  Doesn't fucking transfer over everything
I would not be against all of this (being able to change device while keeping all app data, including logins would be pretty cool), if it wasn't could based on Google's servers. No thanks.
- That's a good point actually.
  
  If I could self-host a server that my devices were authenticated with and constantly backing up to (and geo-tracking), then that would be useful.
  
  Currently I have syncthing and no authentication with anyone/thing else.
  
  This is a major reason I root, so backup apps like NeoBackup actually work.
  
  Then Syncthing keeps those backups in sync with a home machine.
  
  Lose my phone? No big deal, setup Syncthing on new one, let files sync, launch Neo, restore.
- Yup. If that was the case, I would probably use stock Android instead of using GrapheneOS. But no, Google insists on getting its fingers everywhere, so I insist on some inconveniences to prevent that.
  
  I would love the conveniences that stock Android offers, but I'm unwilling to accept the privacy compromises.
Hopefully graphene will rip this shit out
- They definitely will, since they don't even support any of Google's standard restore features by default.
  
  They use Seedvault instead, which doesn't have the capability to restore app logins. I have a feeling Seedvault may end up adding that as a feature in the future, though.
- It would be even cooler if they left it for users who want to self-host the BE for this.
You trust credencials to Google?
- Yes, why wouldn't we?
  
  You asked a question, I'm in the obligation of answering it.
  
  I am aware that what I am about to write is going to make ne sound, to say the least, a bit paranoid but it is how I opted to navigate in the current computer crazed world, where personal convenience is a default argument.
  
  I distrust anything I can't have a certain degree of control over. I don't use cloud services (it's someone else's computer, not mine), I don't use Google Maps, Android Auto, Speech Recognition, backup services, etc. I also kneecap as far as I am capable to the convenience services in my phone and when I manage to get a phone I can load with a non-Google OS, I will. I do without and I am happy as it is.
  
  Regarding passwords, I do not use password managers. At best, I'll use my browser to store a few and even then only if its low risk accesses. The rest I commit to memory and paper. It doesn't slow or hinder my daily life, I'm a functional member of society and deal daily with people that would consider me unbalanced if I told them the extensions I go to in order to preserve a small amount of my privacy.
  
  I don't evangelize. If it works for others, good for them. I does not for me.
  
  Because you literally put all your eggs in one basket...
When I recently upgraded my phone I was surprised how little got brought over automatically and how hard it was to migrate configurations. If it actually copies over all my preferences from old phone to new phone, then great. If it's just logins then that's not really useful.
- You have significantly more pleasent migrations when you use a custom launcher. Far as settings go Samsung S7 -> OnePlus 8 from what I recall got most of the settings I cared about. Notification settings for example, even app overrides
This does not affect people without Google Play Services so why complain? We need fewer reasons for people to buy Apple products so that devs are more inclined to build good native Android apps.

This is why I see it as a mild positive for us. For normal users, it's another step away from privacy and security towards convenience that they will accept. Yes, some will see this on-by-default feature and think "no privacy is possible anymore" but that's best solved by GrapheneOS etc. becoming more visible.
- Honestly, I don't have any issues with app selection on Android, my main issue is w/ app selection without Google Play Services running. I've moved to accessing most services (e.g. banking) on my phone's web browser, which works surprisingly well.
  
  If you have a recent phone, websites and PWAs are about as fast as native apps. I'm using a 2014 flagship Sony Xperia Z that came out with Android 4.4 and can barely run Android 13 — it will overheat and sytem UI (thankfully not apps) will restart if rendering stuff for too long. (The difference is staggering: basic old apps like Phyphox and static websites run indefinitely. Modern apps or JS-enabled pages like Voyager or 480p30 video for 10 minutes. Post-modern bloated crap or 720p30 video, 4 minutes. Imgur, new Reddit and 1080p video turn the phone into a hand warmer immediately and the framerate goes from 15 to <1 in 10 seconds, followed by a slew of ANRs and the battery percentage going down every 20^th frame rendered. Should I have applied more heatsink compound after replacing the battery? Yes but I'd argue no app with a simple purpose and basic GUI should require 5 W to the CPU while running at half rate.)
Seed-vault backup but worse!
I'm okay, thanks.
This is awesome provided it's implemented in a secure manner. Android should have facilitated this a long time ago.
I think the smart switch app has special permission to read other apps' data, so it copies your session data to your new phone.
- I just went through this the other week. I got a replacement phone identical to the one I had, and it worked for the most part. Most of the apps logged in but there's a good few that didn't and I had to do it manually.
  
  It even copied over my browser cookies.
I trust Sundar the creep🤡

43 comments