On a duty, I often have to give advice to friends and readers who want to choose a new smartphone or are looking for an application that serves one purpose or another. In such cases, the conversation about updates is extremely rare. After all, users Android have long developed a conditioned reflex that makes them, without much hesitation, install any update. They, as a rule, do not even care what it carries in itself – thanks for at least it worked out. Recently, however, I've started to notice that users are increasingly looking for reviews on Android 10 and asking if they should install the most current version of the OS.
Android 10 – an update available to a few, but not everyone should install it
I installed Android 10 on my Honor View 20 last fall and have been using it as my primary smartphone ever since. Therefore, I had enough time to get an impression of the update. I will not list all the innovations Android 10, because I do not see the point in this, and I will not argue in vain either. Instead, I will talk about such features of the new version of the OS from Google that made me turn my attention and left either a positive or negative impression of myself.
User feedback on Android 10
Initially, to be honest, I didn't notice any difference with Android 9 Pie, on the basis of which the smartphone worked out of the box. Well, in any case, in performance and battery life. And the only key innovation Android 10 that everyone was talking about – the night theme – was not interesting to me. I still would not have been able to save charging with it, because my Honor View 20 has IPS, and not AMOLED – a display, and using it purely for myself was not an option, since my eyes can't stand looking at the dark background and start to water.
Android 10 allows you to prevent applications from running in the background. And not only applications, by the way
The understanding of the changes that took place happened only after about a week. At first, I noticed that the smartphone began to regularly notify me that some applications are running in the background and may become the cause of excessive power consumption. True, in my case it was only Telegram, WhatsApp, Instagram, and, in general, everything. Therefore, I did not block their background work, since I did not feel much difference from their use or non-use in autonomy. But the fact that such a function exists in general is an absolute plus, because later I blocked the background work of many programs. Perhaps she, like me, will really allow someone to save a charge.
How to prevent an application from following
But what really liked and came in handy was the request for permissions for applications to get access to geolocation services. That is, if the previously installed software could independently request information about your location both during work and in the background, like, for example, Uber, now for this it needs to request permission from the user. Of course, I don’t care who’s following me, but I know that this saves a lot of power, since geolocation services are very voracious. True, I noticed that over time, you already start to ignore the dialog box asking for the privilege, always clicking on 'Only when using'.
Working with geolocation in Android 10 has been brought to perfection. I like it
The control gestures that appeared in Android 10 did not appeal to me. Despite the fact that it is quite convenient for me to use them on iOS, some problems occasionally arise on Android. This is most likely due to an inconsistency between gestures and the operating system. As a result, when I want, for example, to call the side menu with settings in certain applications, in most cases there is a return back. Such situations often happen with the swipe up gesture, when I scroll through the contents of a web page, and the system returns me to the desktop. In general, horror how uncomfortable. The only thing I liked was the ability to quickly and conveniently switch between running applications using a swipe gesture.
Bugs Android 10
To make the gestures on Android convenient to use, they need to be adapted
But if I can turn off the gestures if I want and return to the control keys, then a bug in the 'Settings' application has already finished me. Looking ahead, I will say that Huawei is to blame here, which still has not bothered to fix it, but since there was no such thing on Android 9 Pie, I will write down the problem in the list of shortcomings Android 10. We are talking about a failure in the parameter search system, which does not allow you to go to the desired item from the search results. Moreover, if you find it manually, the transition is carried out without problems.
Should I install Android 10? I think so, but only if you have any smartphone other than Xiaomi, Redmi or Pocophone. Oddly enough, but since last year the triune brand has been experiencing obvious problems with updating its devices, either releasing an update, then recalling it back. And it’s also good if it is withdrawn, because there are cases when the release version of the OS simply disabled compatible devices or broke part of their functionality. Therefore, in the place of 'witnesses Xiaomi' I would be careful not to update. And the rest are welcome.