Google doesn’t care about Android widgets anymore, but Samsung does

[phillynews215]

Home screen widgets have been a part of Android from the very beginning and the first T-Mobile G1 in 2008. And for a long time, widgets were one of the first answers when you asked an avid Android user why they wouldn’t use an iPhone. They ranked high on my personal list of reasons to use Android back in the day. Times have changed since 2008, though, as has Android, and what used to be one of Android’s greatest strengths feels like an afterthought today. Apple added widgets to iOS in 2020 with iOS 14, and it’s impressive how quickly they have been embraced by users and developers alike. Almost every app on my iPhone has a useful, high-quality widget that I enjoy using, which isn’t something I can say about my Android phone these days.

But perhaps that shouldn’t surprise us when Google, the mastermind and commander of all things Android, seems to put more effort into its app widgets on the iPhone than it does for its own operating system. I would call that a problem, wouldn’t you?




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