Whenever I search for questions I have about Android system apps, ADB, flashing, etc. I noticed all the search results are really scammy-looking websites with instructions that sound like they were translated from Chinese by an AI.
It doesn’t make a difference if I use Google, Duckduckgo or Bing.

Also, there seems to be hardly any official documentation for Android available. Even finding out what the preinstalled system apps even do, what exactly is needed for push messages to work, or what the different permissions do is impossible for me.

I know of xdaforums.com but when I look there I usually end up in a thread with 30+ pages full of users asking questions that get no helpful answer.

How come there is so little good information on Android? Or am I looking in the wrong places?

  • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    Yeah, that’s where a ton of custom ROM info has gone to. Pretty annoying since search engines won’t find it and all the different groups have different rules, all the info is behind “notes” managed by a bot and quite a few of them seem to be treated almost like social platforms instead of info platforms.

    • Pwnmode@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I hate this trend on the Internet. Looking through 30 pages of a forum may be tedious but it’s not behind a wall people might not know about. With Telegram and Discord it’s great for the community but even worse usually when you need an answer. If you search discord and the question was not replied to or your search term was not mentioned you may have to scroll through for a long time. Not to mention how quickly information can go away if the server is deleted or something.

    • kratoz29@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Actually there is a bot that lets you browse through Telegram too haha, and its global search ofc.

      I agree chat based ain’t better than forums, but it is pretty dead in XDA, at least for lmi, and you can always find the info faster and better in TG (again, for lmi).

      • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        It’s dead because people have moved to Telegram (or sometimes Discord). Sucks but I guess it’s faster. At least would be if you were actually allowed to ask questions lol. A lot will have really strict rules about asking questions.