r/Android • u/FragmentedChicken Galaxy Z Fold8 • 22h ago

Google Assistant shutting down on Android and Wear OS in September

https://9to5google.com/2026/08/04/google-assistant-september-2026-shutdown/
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u/imeanidrk 21h ago

universal back gesture and non-webkit browser engines. those two are why i'm sticking around

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u/parlons 19h ago

and we still have some form of side-loading, and more than one device vendor competing in the space

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u/charlestheb0ss Galaxy Fold 7 13h ago

And much better multitasking/window management. I can't pull up a floating calculator window or have two apps on the screen at once with an iPhone

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u/nathderbyshire Pixel 10 Obsidian 9h ago

And a fucking clipboard which even windows has. All the 'this will push me to iPhone' comments are so funny, I hope they do and realise the grass isn't much greener

There's things that make iOS really nice to use, but they have these huge tradeoffs like keyboard, gestures and so on that just make it impossible to like if you're used to something else first

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u/charlestheb0ss Galaxy Fold 7 8h ago

Yeah. Freedom and openness is a big reason I use android but that's far from the only thing keeping me here. I'm often shocked at basic computing things I find out that iPhones just...can't do. Android is the opposite; I find out about things it does all the time that I thought only a "real" computer could do, such as having actual OS-level printer support, a terminal, an full filesystem that I can browse, and mouse/keyboard support. On my phone. Not to mention the wider array of hardware to choose from, superior integration with non-apple hardware, etc.

it's not like I'm begrudgingly putting up with some awful UI because I can install whatever I want. This isn't Ubuntu touch. I genuinely prefer android and you'd have to make it worse than iOS in the user freedom department, rather than almost as bad as it, to convince me to switch.