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Comment by wowamit | Hacker News Reader

To say that I'm ditching Android is a pretty incomplete statement - because there is no one Android. It really matter which flavour of Android we are talking about. And which specific device. For example, the bloatware might not be a problem on a unlocked Pixel device.

At this point, both iOS and Android are in pretty stable states. It comes down to individual preferences. Author primarily seems to have an issue with Google, which again is justified.

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To say that I'm ditching Android is a pretty incomplete statement - because there is no one Android.

I’m sure the author would be glad to add that to the list of complaints. One OS might say, “Surprise! You got the wrong version/model/puppy for your use case!”. The other one won’t.

I do not have any extra bloatware from any manufacturer, due to the fact that I run a Xiaomi Mi A1 as my daily driver, but I still would appreciate the choice to be able to manually install only the apps that I would use, e.g. Firefox instead of Chrome. I do have 64Gb of internal storage, but I obsess about every lost megabyte due to something I don't use( even when disabled or not used, Chrome still runs functions on the phone, so it runs in the background ).

That sounds a lot like bloatware to me

> but I still would appreciate the choice to be able to manually install only the apps that I would use, e.g. Firefox instead of Chrome.

I have a Xiaomi Mi A1 with Firefox and no Chrome anywhere. I flashed LineageOS with the Open GApps nano package (which does not include anything you can also get from the play store, like Chrome) and don't even know what the stock experience is like. So far I didn't experience any major problems running a non-stock ROM.

Chrome is the webview for all apps, might be tricky to remove.

It's not, though.

WebView is the built in web view mechanism for all apps that don't want to roll their own web view, and Chrome for Android is a browser that makes use of that WebView mechanism. Strictly speaking, a browser is just an interface that lets you interact with web pages.

And you're not locked into WebView: if you actually wrote your own, you're entirely free to deploy it. It's just insanely hard to write a web render engine these days so for most people there's no point in the slightest: it just makes your application bigger.

One example where it _does_ make sense is Firefox for Android, which comes with its own engine, because as long as the Android core classes area available, it should be able to run. Not "stop working" just because someone tailored their Android build to not include WebView.

I understand your point and you are right. There is a difference between theory and practice - in practice, it is Chrome.

Plainly no: in practice, it is the Android SDK WebView class, not the 140MB Chrome app.

From Google search results:

Android WebView is a system component powered by Chrome that allows Android apps to display web content

Boy, this is really starting to remind me of the controversy over bundling IE in Windows 98. Makes me think that all products eventually end up as bloated due to market pressure.

You can install Bromite (un-googled Chromium) WebView from f-droid repository https://www.bromite.org/fdroid

When you write an app, will you test that it works with that?

When disabled, the operating system exposes none of the app's hooks to start any part of it, so it is not true that a disabled app still runs functions on the phone. It is even possible to swap out the WebView implementation for other apps. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47577525/get-webview-imp...

iOS has just as much bloatware, and much of it can't even be disabled, let alone uninstalled.

For privacy, consider that iOS does not let you disable AGPS data collection. On Android, it is opt in. iOS does not let you open addresses in an offline maps application by default, so Apple gets all your address lookups. iOS does not let you replace your default SMS app, so Apple gets all the phone numbers you want to send a message to in order to see if that phone number is associated with an iMessages account. On Android, you can set your default SMS app to Signal to get automatic private messaging by default. Worst of all, iOS does not let you develop for your own phone without registering an Apple ID.

Apple talks a good privacy game, but there is no substance there. You are jumping out of the frying pan and into the fryer.

You can absolutely uninstall default apps and you don’t have to use iMessage.

Both of your claims don't disagree with mine. The point is there are some bloatware apps that you can't uninstall, including Safari and iMessage. You don't have to use iMessage, but unlike on Android, it is impossible not to use it if you use SMS.

> the bloatware might not be a problem on a unlocked Pixel device

Or an Android One device.

Which simultaneously addresses the author's complaint that Androids cost as much as iPhones.

Pure Android doesn't have to.

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