
Android 6.0 Marshmallow Reviewed - yurisagalov
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/10/android-6-0-marshmallow-thoroughly-reviewed/
======
y0ghur7_xxx
"Another change to the Android permission system is that every app
automatically gets access to the Internet now, and users have no way of
turning this off."

google still does not get the fact that some apps do not need, and should not
be able to transmit or receive data from the network. We still need root and
install AFWall+ to secure our phones.

~~~
esteth
So many apps would require internet that users would become desensitized to
the permissions box and just say "yes" every time the box comes up without
even reading it maybe?

~~~
RyanZAG
That will happen anyway - see iOS where users nearly always accept
permissions, or Windows where users just click OK.

It's not the frequency or importance of popups. Users simply don't read them.
From watching users, the users who don't read them usually have an image in
their minds of what they're trying to accomplish and an image of the screens
they need to go through to get there. Any popup or notification screen is
instantly dismissed so that they can see the screen behind and try work out if
it's where they expect to be. It's maybe 25% of users who do this, but they do
it constantly regardless of what the popup is.

------
andrewstuart2
> Android is far, far behind the competition when it comes to device security.

No, it's not. Carriers and OEMs that have picked up AOSP and bloated it
needlessly are the ones who are behind. You wouldn't blame Linus Torvalds for
all the computers out there running outdated kernels, or for anybody still
using git 1.x.

The difference is that downstream companies have decided that since the _have_
the source, they might as well add a year of dev work on top of Android to
"improve" it. If they had these options for Windows or iOS, I'm pretty sure
they would do so (ever bought a new windows laptop with _no_ crapware?) and
bring security updates for those devices to a grinding halt.

~~~
madeofpalk
These phones boot up with 'Android by Google' and come with the Google Play
Store. Google blesses these phones and is aware of them. Ultimately, they're
the ones allowing manufacturers and carriers to add on and slow down/stop the
update release cycle.

I know it's not a straight comparison, but Apple managed to wrangle the
carriers into not making this a problem. Why can't Google?

~~~
andrewstuart2
Here, I think it's the multiple layers of people with their hands in the
source code.

Just because Google and OEM X have some agreement doesn't mean that Carrier Y
trusts OEM X not to muck up their network (or their bloatware). So carriers
end up adding their own drawn-out testing process for their own reasons,
probably including time to update their carrier bloatware.

I should point out as evidence that I use a major carrier and run a Nexus
phone, and I have no issues whatsoever getting Google updates, security or
otherwise. I expect to have Android Marshmallow on my handset by the end of
the week.

~~~
madeofpalk
But why can't Google enforce trust between AT&T and Samsung to ensure updates
are received in minimal time?

As a platform vendor, IMO that's their job. At a bare minimum , to ensure
their users get the security updates they need.

~~~
wldcordeiro
If you recall the history of Android, Google had to make concessions with
regards to control of the operating system to the carriers and other partners.
So now years down the line we're dealing with the repercussions of their
compromise.

------
ambirex
"There is still no solution for getting Marshmallow out to the billion+
devices out there."

I can't wait for this one to be solved

~~~
devit
Install CyanogenMod 12.2/13.0 when it comes out (probably in 1-3 months
according to past performance)

~~~
jasode
I think you've lost sight of the context of the comment you're responding to.

A billion non-geek, non-HN, non-ArsTechnica device owners are not going to re-
flash their phones with a custom ROM. Those consumers will have to get Android
updates as a seamless upgrade from their phone carrier, or not at all.

In other words, the " _I can 't wait for this one to be solved_" was not a
personal plea for help but instead, a commentary on the old software the 1
billion consumers are stuck with.

~~~
bagels
Google should really just take over the software side of the Android phones.
The current model is a failure.

This could provide us with:

No more (at least non-google) bloatware

No more needless recreated basic features (AT&T messaging, navigation, Samsung
Messaging, etc.)

Can actually update the OS for security problems

~~~
wyldfire
Too late. This would fracture Android's identity. As the networks currently
pay a subsidy they're effectively Android's customers, at least in part. They
like the bloatware.

The device manufacturers are able to embed their brand's identity into the
device. They're members of OHA and they like "needless recreated basic
features."

~~~
josteink
> As the networks currently pay a subsidy they're effectively Android's
> customers, at least in part

The networks have nothing to say in this in 90% of the world. They're not
phone-vendor's customers. They merely want the latest data-gulping phones _on_
their network so they can charge their real customers (people like you and me,
which are also the phone-vendor's customers) money for consuming bandwidth.

I get that things are messed up in the US, but don't generalize this to the
rest of the world.

Most networks and cellphone operators around the world sell generic phones,
with unmodified software, unlockable bootloaders and carrier-provided SIM
cards.

And for those phones, which you will find in big parts of the world, having
Google responsible for software-updates would work just fine.

------
mrbill
FYI, to get to the System UI Tuner section mentioned:

\- if you have animations disabled in Developer Settings, re-enable them

\- Reboot

\- Pull down the quick settings toggles, long-press the gear/settings icon at
top right. It should spin and then tell you UI Tuner is enabled

\- You can then find it in Settings, and can re-disable animations

I had animations disabled and it took me forever to figure out why I couldn't
get it to work.

------
acabal
Interesting how deeply integrated Google services are becoming in Android.
With Android at something like an 80% marketshare, I wonder if and when
they'll get hit with an anti trust action a la Microsoft in the early aughts.
MS got in hot water for bundling IE with Windows, but here we have Google
basically making the entire OS default to Google services for device-wide
basics: voice recognition goes through Google by default, Google-branded
search is the default on your home screen, etc. etc. (At least on Nexus
devices and in OS images; I haven't used anything else.)

Curious as to how they're getting away with it. Maybe because it's open-
source, so someone could replace the default if they worked hard enough? On
the other hand, in the MS anti trust days it wasn't hard to choose a different
default browser--and it was certainly easier than changing source code.

~~~
smt88
There was an article recently suggesting that they're being investigated for
exactly what you describe (by EU officials, I believe).

I don't mind Google's bundling as much because you can still use Android
without it. Old versions of Windows and current versions of iOS are irritating
because can't remove those default apps. They're just always there, and
sometimes you can't even replace them with alternatives.

~~~
acabal
Maybe; but on a Nexus at least, you can't delete a lot of the basic Google
services. For example you can "disable" Google Wallet (or whatever it's called
now), but you can't "delete it permanently". It'll always be in your settings
page, waiting to be reactivated. It's the same deal with things like Google
Music.

In the MS anti trust days, you couldn't delete IE either. But you could use
Firefox instead, and just pretend like IE wasn't there. Android seems like
that kind of situation to me--you can't delete the Google defaults, but in a
deep, dark advanced menu you can disable them at best, after a scary warning.
In other words, you can use alternatives to Google apps, but you have to
pretend like the defaults aren't there--but they always are.

~~~
mcintyre1994
There's also something weird going on with disabling - it's probably just an
obnoxious bug but I've had hangouts disabled for at least a year on my Nexus 5
and I get "unfortunately hangouts has crashed" at least daily.

~~~
CrazedGeek
I've had the same issue before, and IIRC it's a problem with Google Play
Services, not Hangouts or disabling in general. Still stupid though.

------
bsimpson
I just flashed Marshmallow on my Nexus 5, and the setup process was
embarrassingly buggy: On each text input screen, the text field was offscreen,
covered by the keyboard. Meanwhile, there was a big blue box taking up all the
visible screen that served no purpose aside from providing some negative space
for the title when the keyboard was closed. There was also a grey margin on
the left and right of the whole layout that looked like another display bug.

I would have taken a screenshot, but since the phone wasn't setup yet, I
didn't think it would work.

I thought I should try landscape orientation to make it recalculate the
layout, but I couldn't scroll at all in landscape. The screen reflowed
correctly, but the page was unusable in that orientation.

I know that setting up a new device is not a common experience, but I'd hope
Google would have better QA in place for a major release like this. Then
again, having spent over a decade using Google products, I should know better
than to presume anything about their QA process.

~~~
tacomonstrous
Was it a dirty flash? I didn't have any issues on my N5 with a clean flash.

~~~
bsimpson
Nope. Clean as can be.

------
mixmastamyk
With both iOS and Android both going to white backgrounds I've got (seemingly)
no where else to turn. These devices are really hard to use at night, and I
despise them every time I use them after 7pm or so and have to squint.

Who decided that the world shall enforce white backgrounds for everything,
while eliminating user control? Even Windows 3.1 had themes.

~~~
iamstephenliu
Join the Windows side. We have Dark mode.

~~~
pavlov
Yeah, and actually Windows 10 Mobile feels even blacker than before.

I think that's because the fonts have become smaller and all the vector
graphics now use a very thin stroke style, so there's less lighted pixels
against the black background.

------
josteink
> As a side note, it's important to know the difference in Android between
> "targeting" an SDK and what that has to do with the minimum supported
> Android version an app will run on. The short answer is nothing. If an app
> targets the Marshmallow SDK, it doesn't mean it will only run on
> Marshmallow, it means that the app is aware of the new features and can use
> them. Apps have a "target SDK version" and a "min SDK version"—basically the
> newest and oldest Android versions that an app supports. Any competent app
> will gracefully degrade on older Android versions.

The amount of technical insight and accuracy in a this review does actually
impress me.

I believe stuff like this not to be common knowledge even among a more
technical crowd like HN, yet there it is in a geek/consumer-oriented OS
review.

------
irl_zebra
Does anyone know how to make all pages appear on a single list? It kind of
hurts to have to click through 12 separate pages to get through the whole
review.

~~~
Analemma_
That's one of the features Ars offers to premium subscribers:
[http://arstechnica.com/subscriptions/](http://arstechnica.com/subscriptions/)
, so I don't think there is a supported way. There are Chrome/Safari
extensions out there for "single-pagifying" articles though.

------
ZenoArrow
Any news on whether Marshmallow offers audio latency improvements over
Lollipop?

~~~
lnanek2
Anecdotal, but at least M preview 3 on my Nexus 6 is much worse. Hangs for a
second some places, etc.. I'm a developer so I had to install it to test the
new permission system in my apps, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. They
also broke most of the mock location provider apps out there by changing that
developer setting for no reason.

The number of settings in general seems much less (I'd kill for a setting to
disable that immersion mode that hides my back/home button, personally, but no
luck) so I think they are going full steam toward Apple style, they know what
is best for you.

~~~
MAGZine
GP is talking about Android's well-known problem of having horrendous audio
latency, with no workable solution for app devs.

[http://superpowered.com/androidaudiopathlatency/#axzz3nj4FLE...](http://superpowered.com/androidaudiopathlatency/#axzz3nj4FLEj1)

------
cpncrunch
I'm a little concerned by "app standby". What is it going to do to apps like
wheresmydroid, which the user wants to always be running in the background,
but only interacts with them very occasionally?

~~~
guelo
Seems like a high priority gcm message would work fine for them.

------
nkozyra
All of those Google Now changes are in 5.1.1, not new to Marshmallow.

~~~
tssva
Google Now On Tap was not available on 5.1.1.

~~~
nkozyra
Right, I'm referring to the first page/section.

------
ck2
I really want kitkat 4.4 back

Lean mean, fast and stable.

Just fix stagefright and stagefright 2.0 and it's a wrap.

~~~
tdkl
Let's go even more leaner - 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, smoother then ICS and without
cloud collection services like Now and Google Play Services. That was the last
pure AOSP Android as we grew to like it.

~~~
ck2
but kitkat has ART which fixed a great many things and power efficiency

you can rip out the "cloud services" if you have root

~~~
tdkl
ART wasn't even default in Kitkat being not stable enough.

------
throwawaygeu
Only thing I care - can apps now write to my microsd card?

~~~
IanCal
Apps have been able to selectively write to external storage for some time,
have they not?

[http://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.perm...](http://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.permission.html#WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE)

If you were asking something else about SD cards, then you probably want to
check this part of the review:
[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/10/android-6-0-marshmall...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/10/android-6-0-marshmallow-
thoroughly-reviewed/7/#h2) (which would have been found if you'd searched for
"sd card", it's in the table of contents)

~~~
throwawaygeu
Since 4.4 apps could only write to "their own folder" on sd card. A "SECURITY"
measure (only android and some retailer like samsung file manager had full
access). Making sd card close to useless without root for some people (want to
change tags on your mp3? Move to tag changing app folder, change tags, move
back).

And no, I have not read article yet, will do later. Was expecting tl;dr ansver
to my question.

~~~
IanCal
I'm pretty sure I've had file managers for a long time, but I certainly have
one installed now that can move files around on the SD card on android 5.1

> Was expecting tl;dr ansver to my question.

Seemed rather odd to spend the time writing out the question and reply
compared to just doing a quick search.

~~~
throwawaygeu
So, should I interpret your lack of answer to my last question as "oh dang, my
file manager is actually part of rom used by _company name_ , and from kitkat
you really can't edit sd card contents from apps" ?

~~~
IanCal
No, you can interpret from that I didn't spot a notification coming through of
a reply. This isn't reddit, there's no reason to be so confrontational.

You could have used the last three days to try downloading any one of many
file managers on the play store and seeing if they did what you wanted.

Or you could have bothered to do a tiny bit of searching and found that the
security restrictions changed when lollipop came out.

------
allencoin
>PAGE: 1 2 3 4 5 ... 11 12 NEXT →

Gotta increase those ad impressions.

------
mtgx
Can you even disable Now on Tap while having Google Now enabled? (as a user)

The who should _not_ be enabled together. One is about giving your Google
services' data to Google and the other is about giving _all of your other
data_ to Google as well.

I can't wait until real privacy laws arrive in the EU.

~~~
kllrnohj
Try reading the article next time:

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/10/android-6-0-marshmall...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/10/android-6-0-marshmallow-
thoroughly-reviewed/3/#h1)

" The assistant app only gets data about the current view if the user long-
presses on the home button—it's not a passive scanner.

If all of this sounds like a privacy nightmare, the assistant feature can be
turned off in the settings. Head to Settings -> Apps -> Configure Apps (the
gear button) -> Default Apps -> Assist and Voice Input and turn off
everything. Here, users can also set which app has access to the Assist API
(there can only be one) and pick between sending the app text-only or text and
a screenshot."

------
kleiba
_Now on Tap performs a Google Search or brings up a Google Now card by using
the context of the current screen. Just hold down on the home button and a
card will pop up related to the current screen. If the main screen displays a
YouTube video of a famous actor, you 'll get more information about that
person.

To make this work, holding down the home button allows Google to "read" the
screen by combing through the Android text fields and view hierarchy, sending
Google that text plus a screenshot. This will work not only in Google apps and
in the browser but in third-party apps too, as long as they use the standard
Android framework bits. Apps can be data providers for the feature, too; for
instance, in the famous actor example above, the IMDB app could provide a link
into the app to display the actor's filmography._

I know, I'm old, but every time some "feature" like this pops up somewhere, I
still can't believe that people don't mind using it.

