android == rubbish

[nikos]

i bought a mid-range tablet (alcatel pixi3 10") for the kids, with android 5. It only had 1GB ram, so I thought, no worries, I'll buy an external microSD to put extra stuff in it. Would you imagine that in this day and age, programs cannot install in a "external hard disc" (microsd). The official line of "support" is that microsd is just for my pics and videos. So after 10 or so apps it is game over

there are many guides that say how to offload apps to sd storage, only they don't work, including apps that are supposed to do this work for you. The only thing I didn't try yet was "rooting" the android, whatever this is. The shop informed me that rooting will invalidate the warranty...

so yeah, if android is the future, I'm glad I'm stuck with MS windows, with all its warts, at least it works

[FrizzleFry]

rooting is basically getting admin rights on an Android device... if you want to do any kind of system level tinkering with your device you would need to root it... of course most manufactures say that rooting will invalidate your warranty...

you do realize that the 1 GB RAM is not the limiting factor for installing apps... that would be the internal storage of the device of which the OS and needed partitions usually take around 4 GB... my Acer tablet has 16 GB internal and only about 12 GB of that is available...

[Tuxman]

Android leaves you the freedom to break it. Admittedly, that's bad for us tech-savvy people.

[nikos]

is there a hint of german irony?
what I'm saying is that as a consumer product is a minefield of ifs and buts and qualifications, for completely basic operations. What a "smart" user can do if he had all the time in the world to circumvent the limitations is irrelevant. I don't know the first thing about linux, and don't wish to learn anything either

when they talk about "android" you just don't know what you're getting.

[Tuxman]

Germans don't know irony.

You don't need to know Linux in order to tinker with Android's system internals. After all, it's just the Linux kernel with the NetBSD user land and a weird giant Java VM. Probably knowing a bit of Java could help though.

By the way: Last time I checked a "vanilla" Android, it had buttons to move apps to your SD card.

[nikos]

that's the problem, some "distros" have these buttons, some don't. YOu just don't know until it's too late. I remember once I bought a (cheap) tablet that had a special android version that didn't allow downloading from google store, but a special parallel store with knob-all apps. They may as well call it another name!

[Tuxman]

Easy solution: install a different "distro".

[nikos]

big brother incarnation
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/1/118241 ... e-warrants

[Kilmatead]

big brother incarnation

The irony of that link is that at the end of it the pseudo-news site "The Verge"'s content algorithm appends a video for another such device from Google (a silly watch thingy). This is roughly the same thing as having a news report about immigrants drowning in the Mediterranean followed by an advertisement for Life-Jackets that sync with the local coroner's office.

Big Brother may be spying on you, but it's obviously nothing personal.