So, I got one of them googly phones. Namely, a Xiaomi Mi A1, one of those Android One smartphones where it's just vanilla Android without any bullshit. Supposedly. Four Gigs of RAM, 64 Gigs of Flash, a snapdragon 625 may not be the hottest SoC on the market but it's still plenty for what I'll be doing with it, and a good camera and screen.
And since my dad has the tech skills of a two months old toddler, he tagged along and got the same phone so he could leech off my "expertise".
So far, so, uh, kinda good.
Spent much of my time today playing whack-a-mole with the google assistant. My last name rhymes with google, so when I answer the phone or casually mention my name in a conversation, the google assistant on both phones pops up and starts farting around. With both of us, and both our phones. We must have some AI compatible voices or something.
Disabling the assistant doesn't work. It's still there, it just pops up a mournful message that you can enable it with just one click. Every single time, with no way to disable it. Which is only marginally less obnoxious than the assistant itself.
Long story short, I've resorted to installing the Nova launcher and then disabling the google app in the settings. Ain't nobody got time for this bullshit. I don't have enough patience, especially with my old man worshipping every single of my taps from a safe distance in the background.
I'm kinda bummed out by Android 7 though: one google widget on top of the home screen that cannot be disabled or removed. Swipe right to get to the fucking full screen google prompt. Hold the middle button for barely more than a femtosecond to get a popup with a google and/or google assistant and/or google now prompt. Say anything even remotely resembling "google" anywhere within earshot of the phone to get another popup with the fucking assistant. If you want to nitpick, and by now I do, then Chrome as the default browser is yet another google search page. WHY NOT JUST MAKE THE ENTIRE GUI A GOOGLE SEARCH, GOOGLE.
Also, at least in theory these damn things should already be updating to Android O. I need to check why the OTA updater is still stuck on Android 7. Then again, this year they should get uplifted to Android P, and I just know that two updates in rapid succession will make my poor pa burn this incarnation of heretical witchcraft.