GoKawiilBack in 2010 or so, when Android was still trying to establish itself as a worldwide mobile platform, I took a leap and bought a tiny, cheap Samsung Galaxy 5 (not S) to test the waters. I fell in love with the Android Market, the idea of home screen widgets, the powerful multitasking, but most of all, I fell in love with what Android represented: freedom, openness, and choice.
Today, in 2026, countless phones and brands later, having tested thousands of apps and tricks, and written even more articles about the platform, the image that I have of Android is so different that I don’t recognize it anymore. The recent sideloading restrictions felt like the last dagger into my old and outdated vision of Android. Maybe I should let go of my nostalgia and embrace what this new Android is all about?
Which version and vision of Android do you prefer? 51 votes The old Android. Free, open, full of choice. 43 % The middle-years. Some restrictions with lots of remaining freedom. 12 % Today's Android. It's safer, more stable, and more capable. 27 % Each version was right for its own era. 14 % I just don't like any version of Android. 4 %
What made me fall in love with Android is all but gone
In the early 2010s, Android was the rebels’ platform — a perfect playing ground for whatever you wanted to do on your smartphone. There was no one-size-fits-all rectangular glass slab, but myriad shapes and form factors. My favorite was my HTC Desire Z, a sliding phone that revealed a full QWERTY keyboard in landscape mode. It was a joy to type on, and the Z-hinge was a satisfying feat of over-engineering. Ch-KLICK! Qwerty mode on! It made me feel like I was carrying a Transformer in my pocket. Nowadays, the most excitement I get is from slapping a magnetic accessory on my Pixel 10 Pro XL. Not the same thing.
Beyond form factors, Android hardware often brought interesting innovations. microSD slot expansion, 3.5mm headphone jack, customizable LED notification lights, IR blasters to control nearby TVs or other electronics, and modular designs; there was something new to explore every year, if not every few months. I still remember messing up my college professors’ presentations with the “secret remote” in my phone. Today’s foldable phones and tri-folds are impressive feats of engineering, but they somehow don’t bring me the same joy as plugging an iblazr camera flash (a funky old Kickstarter project) into the headphone port of my LG G5.
Software was another huge expression of freedom and choice on Android. From Titanium Backup to SuperSU, Xposed Framework, Greenify, Chainfire3D, Cerebrus, and Viper4Android, there were so many legendary hardcore geeky tools that let me push my phone beyond its limits and beyond what Google allowed.
I fell in love with the unrestrained version of Android and its unlimited hardware and software freedoms. All of them are gone.
No matter where I found an app, be it the Android Market, XDA Forums, or some enthusiast’s GitHub, I could grab the APK file and install it. It didn’t matter if my phone was rooted, had an unlocked bootloader, or was running a wholly unsanctioned custom ROM. There was no SafetyNet, no Play Integrity, and no Play Protect. It was the wild west, and it was beautiful and free. When HTC stopped updating the Desire Z, I went through a gloriously traumatizing three-hour rooting process that involved “forking children” in the phone’s terminal to install a stock Ice Cream Sandwich ROM, a custom kernel, and multiple mods on top of that. In comparison, Google today wants you to enable Developer options and wait 24 hours before you install an unverified app. Oh, how the times have changed.
Long before Scoped Storage was a thing, you could access any file from any app. I used that to copy and save game progress files from phone to phone, back up and restore downloaded music and podcasts (I was living on a very expensive and slow internet connection then), and access any random files I needed from various apps. Now, when I use my favorite writing app Jotterpad, I can’t even access the .txt files directly.
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