Play Store already does a weird thing to some niche apps where you have to have to click twice on an app to even see full details like screenshots. For example, look up the app "SecondScreen".

Widget stacks and per-screen customization as well.

Another article blurring the lines of a skin and a launcher. I don't care what your default launcher does, not gonna use it anyway. System-wide features, on the other hand...

What I don't understand is do any of the OEMs giving this feature also combine it with passthrough power? So besides not charging the phone at 80%, it would keep it working using the wire instead of the battery.

But sideloading and OEM stores (Samsung, Huawei) have been available for years?

I don't understand the second one "Distribute third-party app stores as apps, so users can switch app stores by downloading a new one from Google Play, in just the same way as they'd install any app".

In real life you don't see big supermarkets spread their flyers in competitors' stores, how does that make sense digitally?

Having used custom ROMs for years, it can get tiring to fight with SafetyNet, find root backup apps that still work, dealing with bugs the developer may not be able to reproduce and, of course, even finding decent phones that have decent ROMs. I refuse to buy a Pixel until they have a decent SoC and price.

So for my next phone I'm currently considering an OEM that supports phones for long and has decent customization by default - Samsung. As I've never owned Samsung phones before, I don't know whether I'll like their OS, but so far it looks good enough.

So it took 4 major releases to make the quick settings reasonable again... I'm actually glad most other OEMs did not follow when Google did the change in 12.

every app wanted to have its own persistent notification

When? Which apps? I've been using Android since KitKat and I only remember persistent notifications by apps that needed them (to keep working, stay in memory).

That said, I agree that a permission would be nice, as I am skeptical of the use cases shown in the article mockups. I think it should stay an ongoing notification thing as anything else would indeed take more space.

But it would use less energy afterwards? At least that was claimed with the 4o model for example.

Yes, by default every Chromium browser is affected. It is just a matter of

• whether they want to extend it to the enterprise time (which Edge and Opera won't do IIRC)
• whether they'd try to keep it working after enterprise time (maybe Brave and Vivaldi, but it could take a lot of effort)
• whether they even have an alternative place to download extensions from if CWS takes MV2 extensions down (Brave has some workaround for few extensions, not sure about others)

Maybe there will be some devs working on Ungoogled Chromium to keep the support, but they also have to think where users would even get the extensions from.

We will now [Oct 9] begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable. This change will be slowly rolled out over the following weeks. Users will be directed to the Chrome Web Store, where they will be recommended Manifest V3 alternatives for their disabled extension. For a short time, users will still be able to turn their Manifest V2 extensions back on. Enterprises using the ExtensionManifestV2Availability policy will be exempt from any browser changes until June 2025.

https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/migrate/mv2-deprecation-timeline#october_9th_2024_an_update_on_manifest_v2_phase-out

So there is no single date for normal users, but June 2025 is fixed for enterprise (and expected date for Brave, Vivaldi)

Probably Google Play Services, motion sensors, heuristics

Surely you can use it, the tab switching just requires more taps compared to competitors.

Edit: that said, I just found this extension which I expected someone to make by now.

Firefox used to allow a lot more extensions though, until they switched to Fenix UI and restricted them to a selected few. And then they expanded the support again.

Firefox's new UI still lacks a tablet-optimized interface, for example.

uBOL is entirely declarative, meaning there is no need for a permanent uBOL process for the filtering to occur, and CSS/JS injection-based content filtering is performed reliably by the browser itself rather than by the extension. This means that uBOL itself does not consume CPU/memory resources while content blocking is ongoing -- uBOL's service worker process is required only when you interact with the popup panel or the option pages.

uBOL does not require broad "read/modify data" permission at install time, hence its limited capabilities out of the box compared to uBlock Origin or other content blockers requiring broad "read/modify data" permissions at install time.

Emphasis mine. No background processes, including a website-reading permission does indeed sound more optimized for mobile, where people may have limited resources.

I'd be super down for one that folds flat, and does away with the huge camera bump. Get me a nice stylus, a foldable keyboard and a simple folding support to hold the phone at an angle, and that's essentially a desktop that can fit into your pockets.

So essentially your concerns are the camera bump and stylus? As the other features you mentioned are already there.

Serious question though, has any other company matched their 4o model yet? Maybe Claude?

Except when you ask it how it works