6 ms·

The stock Android dialer is a complete UX hellscape. Every other time I need to dial a number, I will be randomly interrupted by some dialogue to enable a feat

The stock Android dialer is a complete UX hellscape. Every other time I need to dial a number, I will be randomly interrupted by some dialogue to enable a feature or to learn about X, when I'm urgently trying to make a call. It's so f-ing rude and intrusive. And it's designed to trick you into enabling shit without giving you time to think it over. It's such a scummy thing to do, but hey, it's Google. Imagine having to make an emergency phone call, but you can't until you tap through all the prompts. Google basically broke core functionality to do this, and there's no way to disable this nonsense. Seriously, I just want my phone to be a phone, not some feature riddled shit app that does everything (poorly).

m4lvin 4y ago
That must be the Google Dialer app. The one in LineageOS which I guess comes from AOSP is perfectly fine and never bothers me about anything. Come to the dark side! ;-)
- dzikimarian 4y ago
  I am using stock Google dialer and don't have such experience either. Anyway, OP can always pick the one that works for him. There's lots of options.
encryptluks2 4y ago
I've literally never experienced this with the Google dialer app.
jeroenhd 4y ago
What phone are you using? That sounds like a terrible experience, I'll need to make sure I avoid it. For what it's worth, you can install a new dialer from the Play Store. Or you can grab an open source one from F-Droid. The Simple apps are quite popular because they just do one thing and do it well, i.e. https://f-droid.org/packages/com.simplemobiletools.dialer/ https://f-droid.org/packages/com.simplemobiletools.dialer/
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  Or just use an iPhone. This is the problem with Stockholm Syndrome. You think you're on the right side the entire time.
  - gausswho 4y ago
    The things two prisoners whisper through the gates...
  - bearmode 4y ago
    No thanks, I'd rather shoot myself in the eye than have to use Safari.
    - deepdmistry 4y ago
      You can use any browser on iPhone.
      - zdragnar 4y ago
        You can use any browser skin on an iphone. They're all the same web view.
        somehnguy 4y ago
        Right, but the underlying engine doesn’t matter much practically speaking. I don’t think I’ve ever run into a situation where the browser on iOS limited me from doing things I would want to do on mobile. I use FireFox on iOS because it syncs with FireFox on my laptop.
        jeroenhd 4y ago
        I disagree, plenty of posts here that start with "doesn't work on my iPhone". Apple forces you to adjust to their terrible browser engine by taking away your users' ability to install another browser. Many websites put in the effort to make their stuff work on Apple devices but that's far from a given.
saiya-jin 4y ago
I have strong suspicion you are not talking about Google's android dialer but some chinese ad-infested knock-off. When I used to have crappy Xiaomi, I had ads everywhere - settings, basic 'android' apps, most probably dialer too, definitely SMS sending app and so on. Threw it away and never looked back. There are premium androids who give users completely different experience, be it Samsung, Sony, Google etc etc etc. Literally hundreds of models to pick your match. On my S22 ultra I never saw a single similar ad since I bought it. I wish people stopped bashing android just because they cheaped out and then found out that cheap phones are actually cheap to get revenue back in baked-in ads (there are other concerns coming from Google as creator but that's a different topic, since there is no saints among phone manufacturers and lure of ads revenue is too strong even for Apple)
- lozenge 4y ago
  Samsung phones were actually highly ad laden until they realised it was hurting their brand about a year or two before you bought yours. I'm expecting ads to slowly slip back in.
  - calvano915 4y ago
    Huh? I've had numerous Galaxy phones since S8 and there's no issues with ads throughout the OS.
    - ahoy 4y ago
      Same. I've had an s8 and and s20, neither have this ads issue described.
- the_third_wave 4y ago
  Xiaomi makes fine hardware with overly intrusive firmware installed on it which they sell for competitive prices. The solution is the same as with any other Android device: install one of the many AOSP-derived distributions on it and you have fine hardware with clean firmware offering OTA updates and more freedom than any vendor-supplied distribution offers, not to mention waaaay more freedom than the Apple/iOS combo offers.
aulin 4y ago
You're probably talking about some chinese dialer on top of android, Google one is clean and essential. One thing I always struggle with is that phone becomes painfully slow and heats up like crazy on a call. The one thing it should do without effort seems like the heavier one on the hardware. Wonder how they managed to do phone calls 20-30 years ago if it's such a compute intensive task.
marak830 4y ago
Why do these bullshit comments always seem to end up on top?
- aaron695 4y ago
- imwillofficial 4y ago
  “Engagement”
dr_dshiv 4y ago
What about iOS where you cant copy in a number and then edit it? Every time I want to call a foreign number and need to add a country code I need to make a new contact and then edit that.
- dylan604 4y ago
  This one drives me crazy in all iOS phone number entry type situations. once you've dialed in the the 10 numbers, it makes it into whatever that little bubble is called that makes it no longer editable. you have to delete the whole bubble of 10 digits, and start typing the whole number again instead of being able to edit the probably single digit that needs correcting. However, I'm old enough to remember the pain of recognizing a mis-dialed number from rotary phones. Old enough to remember only needing to dial 5 digits. Then the pain of having to dial the full prefix going to 7 digits, growing to full horror going to full 10 digit. luckily by 10 digit, touch tone was in place.
  - andrewaylett 4y ago
    My parents technically don't have a four digit local number any more, but it's the same† national number as it was back then. BT moved two digits from the exchange code to the local part when they digitised the exchange. †: All UK national numbers gained an extra '1' after the leading '0'; I'm asserting that change doesn't count.
- wruza 4y ago
  Ohh. And if you think you're so clever and type that prefix before Paste-ing, it doesn't just paste, but replaces all digits you have typed. I also love it when sites omit a country code in their numbers like "(xxx) xxx-xxxx". Well, at least it's not a jpeg.
- tacker2000 4y ago
  This!! Why the hell cant you move the cursor thingy and edit the number?? We are on iOS 15 or whatever and they cant get this feature right??
midoridensha 4y ago
Are you sure that's Google and not your device manufacturer or your carrier? The dialer on my Android phone seems OK. I'm not going to claim it's the best UX ever, but it certainly doesn't interrupt me with dialogs about anything. Android phones are infamous for having carrier-required crap pre-loaded.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  I switched from LG to a pixel. I don't regret the better hardware or more frequent updates, but so many tiny things were substantially better on the LG. Biggest peeve: on the LG phones I had, you could use the volume buttons / menu to silence or turn down individual applications. On the pixel, out of the box you only get a global media volume control. Also have experience with the stock phone dialler putting up prompts while I am in the middle of doing something else, which never happened on LG. The other big annoyance is the timer portion of the clock app is significantly harder to use. All that said, I will happily take stock android on the pixel any day over any Samsung product.
  - wutbrodo 4y ago
    Yea, I feel like there's a big cargo cult element to the claims of carrier skins being crapware by default. I remember the moment I realized that the moto x (first post-Google moto phone) and the contemporary galaxy s both had solid advantages over the pixel. Eg Samsung beat pixel to the quick settings menu by YEARS (and by extension iOS by even more years), and this is now an industry standard.
  - pannSun 4y ago
    Notice how in this conversation, no precise program name or version was brought up. "The stock dialer on an LG", "the dialer on a Pixel"... On a computer (a real computer), the first words would be something like "On Firefox 106.0.2 64-bit", but phones have such abysmal user control that most of the time we don't even know what programs we're running.
    - zdragnar 4y ago
bearmode 4y ago
I have literally never experienced this on my Galaxy S10, or any Android before it. Is this new?
papascrubs 4y ago
To be fair, a good chunk of Android in total is a UX hellscape. This coming from a lifelong Android user. One of Android's greatest strengths (customization) is also it's greatest weakness.
- throwtheacctawy 4y ago

m4lvin 4y ago

That must be the Google Dialer app. The one in LineageOS which I guess comes from AOSP is perfectly fine and never bothers me about anything. Come to the dark side! ;-)

dzikimarian 4y ago
I am using stock Google dialer and don't have such experience either. Anyway, OP can always pick the one that works for him. There's lots of options.

encryptluks2 4y ago

I've literally never experienced this with the Google dialer app.

jeroenhd 4y ago

What phone are you using? That sounds like a terrible experience, I'll need to make sure I avoid it. For what it's worth, you can install a new dialer from the Play Store. Or you can grab an open source one from F-Droid. The Simple apps are quite popular because they just do one thing and do it well, i.e. https://f-droid.org/packages/com.simplemobiletools.dialer/ https://f-droid.org/packages/com.simplemobiletools.dialer/

jiggawatts 4y ago
Or just use an iPhone. This is the problem with Stockholm Syndrome. You think you're on the right side the entire time.
- gausswho 4y ago
  The things two prisoners whisper through the gates...
- bearmode 4y ago
  No thanks, I'd rather shoot myself in the eye than have to use Safari.
  - deepdmistry 4y ago
    You can use any browser on iPhone.
    - zdragnar 4y ago
      You can use any browser skin on an iphone. They're all the same web view.
      - somehnguy 4y ago
        Right, but the underlying engine doesn’t matter much practically speaking. I don’t think I’ve ever run into a situation where the browser on iOS limited me from doing things I would want to do on mobile. I use FireFox on iOS because it syncs with FireFox on my laptop.
        jeroenhd 4y ago
        I disagree, plenty of posts here that start with "doesn't work on my iPhone". Apple forces you to adjust to their terrible browser engine by taking away your users' ability to install another browser. Many websites put in the effort to make their stuff work on Apple devices but that's far from a given.

saiya-jin 4y ago

I have strong suspicion you are not talking about Google's android dialer but some chinese ad-infested knock-off. When I used to have crappy Xiaomi, I had ads everywhere - settings, basic 'android' apps, most probably dialer too, definitely SMS sending app and so on. Threw it away and never looked back. There are premium androids who give users completely different experience, be it Samsung, Sony, Google etc etc etc. Literally hundreds of models to pick your match. On my S22 ultra I never saw a single similar ad since I bought it. I wish people stopped bashing android just because they cheaped out and then found out that cheap phones are actually cheap to get revenue back in baked-in ads (there are other concerns coming from Google as creator but that's a different topic, since there is no saints among phone manufacturers and lure of ads revenue is too strong even for Apple)

lozenge 4y ago
Samsung phones were actually highly ad laden until they realised it was hurting their brand about a year or two before you bought yours. I'm expecting ads to slowly slip back in.
- calvano915 4y ago
  Huh? I've had numerous Galaxy phones since S8 and there's no issues with ads throughout the OS.
  - ahoy 4y ago
    Same. I've had an s8 and and s20, neither have this ads issue described.
the_third_wave 4y ago
Xiaomi makes fine hardware with overly intrusive firmware installed on it which they sell for competitive prices. The solution is the same as with any other Android device: install one of the many AOSP-derived distributions on it and you have fine hardware with clean firmware offering OTA updates and more freedom than any vendor-supplied distribution offers, not to mention waaaay more freedom than the Apple/iOS combo offers.

aulin 4y ago

You're probably talking about some chinese dialer on top of android, Google one is clean and essential. One thing I always struggle with is that phone becomes painfully slow and heats up like crazy on a call. The one thing it should do without effort seems like the heavier one on the hardware. Wonder how they managed to do phone calls 20-30 years ago if it's such a compute intensive task.

marak830 4y ago

Why do these bullshit comments always seem to end up on top?

aaron695 4y ago
imwillofficial 4y ago
“Engagement”

dr_dshiv 4y ago

What about iOS where you cant copy in a number and then edit it? Every time I want to call a foreign number and need to add a country code I need to make a new contact and then edit that.

dylan604 4y ago
This one drives me crazy in all iOS phone number entry type situations. once you've dialed in the the 10 numbers, it makes it into whatever that little bubble is called that makes it no longer editable. you have to delete the whole bubble of 10 digits, and start typing the whole number again instead of being able to edit the probably single digit that needs correcting. However, I'm old enough to remember the pain of recognizing a mis-dialed number from rotary phones. Old enough to remember only needing to dial 5 digits. Then the pain of having to dial the full prefix going to 7 digits, growing to full horror going to full 10 digit. luckily by 10 digit, touch tone was in place.
- andrewaylett 4y ago
  My parents technically don't have a four digit local number any more, but it's the same† national number as it was back then. BT moved two digits from the exchange code to the local part when they digitised the exchange. †: All UK national numbers gained an extra '1' after the leading '0'; I'm asserting that change doesn't count.
wruza 4y ago
Ohh. And if you think you're so clever and type that prefix before Paste-ing, it doesn't just paste, but replaces all digits you have typed. I also love it when sites omit a country code in their numbers like "(xxx) xxx-xxxx". Well, at least it's not a jpeg.
tacker2000 4y ago
This!! Why the hell cant you move the cursor thingy and edit the number?? We are on iOS 15 or whatever and they cant get this feature right??

midoridensha 4y ago

Are you sure that's Google and not your device manufacturer or your carrier? The dialer on my Android phone seems OK. I'm not going to claim it's the best UX ever, but it certainly doesn't interrupt me with dialogs about anything. Android phones are infamous for having carrier-required crap pre-loaded.

zdragnar 4y ago
I switched from LG to a pixel. I don't regret the better hardware or more frequent updates, but so many tiny things were substantially better on the LG. Biggest peeve: on the LG phones I had, you could use the volume buttons / menu to silence or turn down individual applications. On the pixel, out of the box you only get a global media volume control. Also have experience with the stock phone dialler putting up prompts while I am in the middle of doing something else, which never happened on LG. The other big annoyance is the timer portion of the clock app is significantly harder to use. All that said, I will happily take stock android on the pixel any day over any Samsung product.
- wutbrodo 4y ago
  Yea, I feel like there's a big cargo cult element to the claims of carrier skins being crapware by default. I remember the moment I realized that the moto x (first post-Google moto phone) and the contemporary galaxy s both had solid advantages over the pixel. Eg Samsung beat pixel to the quick settings menu by YEARS (and by extension iOS by even more years), and this is now an industry standard.
- pannSun 4y ago
  Notice how in this conversation, no precise program name or version was brought up. "The stock dialer on an LG", "the dialer on a Pixel"... On a computer (a real computer), the first words would be something like "On Firefox 106.0.2 64-bit", but phones have such abysmal user control that most of the time we don't even know what programs we're running.
  - zdragnar 4y ago

bearmode 4y ago

I have literally never experienced this on my Galaxy S10, or any Android before it. Is this new?

papascrubs 4y ago

To be fair, a good chunk of Android in total is a UX hellscape. This coming from a lifelong Android user. One of Android's greatest strengths (customization) is also it's greatest weakness.

throwtheacctawy 4y ago