New OS versions feel like threats.
this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2025
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New Android 6 features tailored to steal more of your data behind your back. And now $500 more expensive!
Desktop mode finally? Anything meaningful?
Poor Seang Chau. They wrote this blog post in a total of three paragraphs, but Google was still like "WOULD YOU LIKE AN AI SUMMARY?" at the top.
Literally took me about 45 seconds to read all of the features, but Google is over here burning down another rainforest to process an AI summary of a three paragraph blog post with three pictures.
Three whole paragraphs?! tl;dr
Nothing really useful. What I would like to see is better battery life and truly Open Source Android which can be easily degoogled and customized and works on many different devices. An entire ecosystem of Android mods, like me have for Linux. Yeah, that would be nice.
I heard they are adding a desktop mode to android 16, curious if it would be possible to use phone and have a similar experience to an actual PC by connecting monitor and mouse/keyboard, well just using a browser, at the very least.
EDIT: found it
Future updates will also bring even more productivity enhancements to Android, allowing you to connect tablets and phones to an external display for an expanded desktop experience
I connected android phone to external monitor using USB-C like a year ago. I'm not sure what's new here.
The desktop experience. Unless you've been using Samsung deX, which this is built upon.
Was it a Samsung phone? They've had Dex for some time but it was a Samsung specific feature as far as I know.
GrapheneOS. No need to even degoogle.
Just a shame to have to buy google hardware (as well built as it is)
The best way would probably be buying used.
I'm talking about an ecosystem and you listed one mod. I use graphene OS, it's great overall but I would like to have a choice. Maybe I don't want to use a Pixel phone? Maybe I want different set of features?
I also use LineageOS, which also comes sans Google as a flavour, but it's far less secure and much rougher about the edges than GrapheneOS. I choose hardware by alternative OS support. If you want a new tablet the only option is Pixel.
Small updates are fine but I find it a bit deceptive to increase the version number from 15 to 16 just for this
Yeah, good luck with that, ain't gonna happen. Best we can hope for is open source teams being able to modify android into that.
Now to wait 10 months for samsung to update.
Mhh, the System Update page for 16 on my Pixel is dedicated to AI bullshit, nothing actually useful... Nice
They really need to take more time with major updates, what good is releasing a new version every year when it's just new AI slop?
Its all soo boring now. The two major changes I got literally yesterday was to lock out pages in te app drawer and only have a scroll and to separate quick actions and notifications...both of which were new features years ago
Yeah, so far i noticed two "new" features in Android 16; the Contacts app now lists local weather info and birthdays which is nice I guess and Themed Icons are finally not listed as being in beta anymore...
The rest is AI stuff and features that are of no use to me (which doesn't mean everything's bad but it doesn't feel like a major upgrade; more like a Pixel Feature Drop).
Features:
- Some small back-incompatibilities to irritate devs.
- Moving menues around to irritate users.
- More logs to spy on users.
- More lags and freezes to stimulate upgrades.
- Some evil shit for the sake of evil.
- New wallpapers.
- Some AI shit nobody asked for.
- ... More shit...
- Even more shit...
If there was ever a reason to get grapheneOS...
New wallpapers? Sign me up! /s
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These are all app features, not OS features.
The emoji thing is built into the keyboard, but it doesn't do like on-device generation or anything. They just have a list of pre-made(maybe AI generated) combos. I'm guessing they are AI generating them, then having humans approve it, before including it in the keyboard emoji list. It's kinda neat, in that it expands the options, but really not much. Overall the OS really feels the same. I haven't looked forward to an Android update in many years.
Also, as someone who doesn't use Google's launcher or keyboard, yeah, I get almost none of these features.
Everything in Android is an app tbh, even the launcher is a completely normal app.
The launcher is, but not everything new in Android 16 could be just an app. The new desktop mode, for example likely requires much deeper integration with the OS.
I mean yeah, you're right about the desktop mode, but 90% of new user facing features are going to be in one app or another generally.
Technically the desktop mode itself might also be an app, though a window manager or desktop environment isn't something we conventionally think of as an app.
No idea when I'll get to touch a new enough Android to play with it. My old Oneplus is on shaky custom rom support and my daily driver is an iPhone (which will likely get much longer software support and is newer to begin with)
I suppose the distinctions between the OS and "just an app" are blurred on any OS. One might argue anything that isn't the kernel is just userland software on conventional Linux.
On Android, anything a third party could deliver without system or root privileges is "just an app". That includes keyboards, launchers, messaging apps, image editors, and smarthome device managers, but not direct management of network connections, notifications, or direct interaction with other apps (i.e. outside of intents or over the network).
If you've used an Android device with root access, you've seen things that fail this test. Anything that needs root to work can't be delivered to most Android users unless it's part of the OS or a system app.
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