// 9TO5GOOGLE — MOBILE & WEB
Android has always been chaotic in the best ways possible
Good morning. Today I’m mourning the end of BioWare, running my Google TV setup through Claude to remove all the bloatware, watching all the iPhone Duo reviews without spending $2,000, and attempting to understand everything I can about PHP in light of two massive vulnerabilities that AI helped uncover.
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Inbox is written by Daniel Bader. Read previous issues here, and then catch up with Ben Schoon’s excellent Weekender column published every Sunday.
The through-line in every iPhone Duo review yesterday was this: excellent hardware (though a bit too heavy) and a chaotic software experience. When Apple’s foldable launches on Friday, it will remind early adopters of what Android used to feel like whenever a new form factor was introduced: exciting, janky, and slightly aggravating.
I think 9to5Google readers understand that Android is for tweakers. It’s why so many of you sign up for Android betas on daily-driver hardware; it’s why there’s a thriving community of indie developers filling gaps in the ecosystem. Android’s freedom and flexibility (and cost) make it particularly well suited to the cavalcade of use cases and designs we see in the market today.
That openness confers other, more nebulous benefits; it’s far easier to emulate games on Android along with other legally grey activities that won’t be mentioned here. If there’s something you want to do on Android, chances are you can figure out a way to do it.
It seems like the iPhone Duo’s early adopters will be faced with a similar conundrum: the ability to do more on a device that is likely to frustrate and delight in equal measure. As Ben explains in his iPhone Duo review roundup, “the app situation clearly seems to be running into the same early problems as Android foldables hit. Apps simply aren’t optimized for a radically new form factor yet.”
But as with all things iPhone, app and software improvements are likely to come quickly and consistently over the next few months and years. Ben eloquently sums up the situation: “Apple has a vision for its foldable and, while it’s tripped up on a few things on attempt #1, it’s undeniably a good start.”
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I was the guest on this week’s Sideload episode, and we talked about my favorite thing: AI. In particular, how we use AI in our daily lives.