Earlier today, someone decided to post to the Android issue tracker complaining about the lack of multiuser support for smartphones. Within a few hours, a developer at Google responded and closed the issue, remarking that “the development team has implemented this feature and it will be available as a part of the next public build.” Sounds pretty definitive to us.
On tablets, the use case for multiple accounts (of course, Android has always been multiuser) is clear. The device is often shared among family members, so each user having her or his own account is very useful. For smartphones, though, this feature seems more for business use cases than for home user, where most people will have their own phone.
Pretty sure business users are going to love this: one device, two accounts. One for work, one for play.
I know this because many games let the kids share their new high scores to their parent’s Twitter.
I really hope they add a “turn off account when not active” feature.
The current implementation of multi-user on tablets is “every user account running simultaneously”. Which means, if you have gmail sync enabled on 3 accounts, that sync is running all the time, for all 3 accounts! Even if one of the accounts isn’t enabled or used for a week at a time, it’s still syncing.
Any apps that run in the background will always be running in the background, for every user that has it enabled.
They really need to make the “lock screen” a “login screen”. If you don’t login, the apps for that account don’t run. And if you do login, you have the option of logging out or switching users. The difference being, if you logout, then all the apps associated with that user (including syncing) stops; but if you simply switch users, then the apps keep running.
Without that, multi-user on a phone will suck just as bad (actually worse, considering the battery sizes) than it does on tablets.
(Android 4.4.4 on phone and tablet at home.)
Yeah, I bet they just enable it on phones as is. I doubt they’ve improved it. I think you can do that with various roms, including cyanogen.
As you pointed out the battery drain isn’t really worth the benefit.
Yes, as it is now on tablets it really is a mess and for any practical purposes basically unusable. Log in/log out functionality (with all its consequences as you described) is an absolute requirement if they want Android to grow into a real OS for more than phones. Also the lock screen functionality need someone to sit and think about it, because right now it’s useless too.
Every time I use a tablet I feel frustrated with Android being just a “toy” OS and wish that Linux proper would be running there instead.
BB10 has had this from day one, I believe. From what I’ve seen it works very well on those devices. I’ve also seen hacked up versions of it on some Android phones in the past, but it never really seemed to work well in my experience.
I really wish Microsoft would implement this on Windows Phone. It makes for a great business device, but really the only way I’ve found to separate my personal and work use on it is to keep one set of tiles at the very top of the screen, the other set at the very bottom, and mutual app tiles in the middle. Even with that it’s purely visual/spatial, it’s not really two separate accounts.
BB10 requires a BES10 server (Blackberry Enterprise Service) to provide this separation between work and personal data and apps (licensed software).
Given the PITA that BES10 is, I doubt many enterprises and administrations choosed to go that way (and BB10 works well enough as an enterprise device without it).
BES4 software (for legacy BB devices) worked pretty well though.
I actually recently switched back to my old BB9700 on a BES4 server (after fscking with the efs partition on my Galaxy S3), and it’s still a solid device and solution as of today, even though it shows its age.
Where I see this being successful is with something like Samsung SAFE, which provides me with a “Secure” container for items like corporate e-mail on my Galaxy S4.
I could see Google providing secured containers as part of Google Apps for Business, where they could have your corporate email in one, and your personal GMail in a regular container.
I could also see them offering this in conjunction with Samsung for an “enhanced” option requiring two-factor authentication.
Of course, I also see Apple copying this like they did Notification Center.
… license this patent from Nokia? It’s not restricted for tablets though. Just phones.
Edited 2014-08-07 04:37 UTC
Kids and other people borrow phones all the time. To make a call, to play cut the rope, to watch some pics, whatever. And then all your private data is exposed. Email, pictures, chats, notifications, the lot.
The puritan attitude that no curtains are needed because you should have nothing to hide does not cut it with more sinful types that may (gasp!) keep saucy chats and pictures of selves and others that may not be appropriate for indiscriminate exposition. Or with the righteous who do not want to expose those details about that jewel they are buying their wife, which they don’t want her to see until it is the right moment.
There *REALLY* should be a very simple, system-wide way to label things (programs, albums, pictures, chats) for private consumption only, and a very easy way to instantly hide everything so labeled (with a gesture?), so that you could show your holiday pics to your colleagues or hand-out your phone to your kid for a game, without embarrassing surprises.
Shouldn’t this be as easy as this:
* Register a couple of accounts. Let’s say every child gets a kids-account, every adult gets a work and a private account
* Register a fingerprint (or maybe a voice sample) for every account as the unlocker. This can be a fingerprint on the touchscreen, no TouchID button required!
**Make a more secure login method optional
**Use a different finger for your work and private account
* When you start an app, the system detects which user is starting it by detecting the fingerprint
simply saying: runas/sudo based on touch instead of login
(If this isn’t patented yet this can be considered as my contribution to humanity. Now go implement it!)
And loose 2 fingers to robbers?*
*Ok. I’m joking. Fingerprints from glass You have left at restaurant will suffice…
But why expose kids to such threat?
If You have anything worthwhile on Your hw, last thing You want to do is to tie Your kids physical selfs to it…
I don’t think you understand. If my kid clicks on email it would detect it is him and open his email. If I click on email it would open mine. So we don’t log in and out of our phone, we use the equivalent of runas/sudo on a per app basis. We are touching anyway to start the application, so why not use that touch as the authentication?
But is fingerprint detection at the touchscreen layer even a reliable process right now? On some Android phones it’s all one can do to get it to register taps properly in the first place, let along distinguish fingerprints.
I know a little about fingerprint recognition from my experience in law enforcement, and for proper identification you need to have the center of the finger captured, not just the tip. Maybe the threshold is less for simply distinguishing between a few people like this, but again I don’t think we’re quite there yet with current consumer displays. The last big break I read about with this tech was a year ago, and it was on a tabletop display requiring bulky hardware to do the recognition:
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516956/touch-screen-ids-users-…
None of that is to say I disagree with you; indeed, I think this would be awesome if they could shrink it down to handheld size and make it reliable. I just think it will be a few more years before we see it, if ever.
It is exactly like you said. Not good enough for security in general, but good enough for normal at-home usecases
Well, if it can be shrunk down to fit on a display without making the phone bulkier, sure. What the iPhone does for simple unlocking doesn’t obscure or affect the regular display, but can’t be integrated with it either or I’m sure Apple would have. We need that kind of simple identification but over the entire touchscreen. Then I’ll be impressed.
So your pointer finger for personal use, and your middle finger for work? Hmmm, mnemonic!
(Love my job, actually, but if you’re gonna throw softballs…)
Many IT departments will supply a single device for an on-call group. Multiple accounts would be great for that; each on-call staff can have their own account, contacts, etc.
Of course, this paradigm is going away. It used to be support staff got a company owned phone. Then it went to just a monthly stipend so you can use your own phone. Then the stipend disappeared. Then reimbursement for internet – which is required for your job – disappeared. Now, companies are telling us we need to have a smart phone, a data plan that will cover the company’s needs, and we have to let our employer install their applications on our phone for their benefit – all at our expense.
Gotta admin – this struck a nerve…
Depending on the labor laws in your state (assuming you’re in the USA) this might be illegal.
Taking your example, I live California and if my job requires me to be available they must reimburse me for my cell phone/data plan if I use my own phone, or pay for a separate plan.
At my old job we even restricted people from access the Exchange server from their personal phones because technically they need to be compensated for responding to emails while off the clock.
Remember though this mostly applies to employees paid hourly, if your salary they don’t need to compensate you.
A lot of companies though (smaller ones) don’t do this and if you wanted to you could get them into trouble, but it could also cause problems for yourself if you want to continue to work there.
This could also be useful for non-phone small screen hand held devices – like nVidia Sheild, or even a media player if anyone wanted to tackle that at this point.