Google's long term strategy with Android is baffling to me. Apple has had better mobile hardware for years. Apple has higher consumer trust. Apple has better app selection (for most people). Apple has been increasingly implementing the core features that differentiate Android devices, like USB-C and RCS. Every Android user lost to the increasing iOS market share is another customer Google has to pay exorbitant fees to a competitor to access.
And Google's strategy is to continue removing differentiating features from Android that also help them mitigate the threat of antitrust? Surely the marginal revenue from the inconsequential number of sideloading users isn't attractive enough to justify that kind of strategic blunder.
I don't see any iOS advantage with the apps anymore. That was maybe true in the very beginning, during the gold rush time of the app store. But not since then. In which category are there better iOS apps? Browsers? No, strictly worse. Youtube app? No, worse. Texting? Worse or equal (Whatsapp). Podcast client? I assume worse, since there is no Antenna Pod. Social media apps? The iOS variants of those apps are afaik in no way better. What else is there, where is the advantage?
Also, while the Play store is an equally ad-riddled and unsearchable hellhole, at least Android does have with F-Droid a high quality alternative. iOS has nothing.
But sure, removing the F-Droid advantage can only hurt Android, the direction of your comment still stands.
I don't know about categories overall, but I'm attached to my iPad and won't switch to Android in part because Affinity is not available there, nor is there any near equivalent as far as I can tell.
I still think Overcast is nicer to use than Antenna Pod.
Microsoft Office apps work much better on iDevices, in my experience. (I know they exist for Android, but I've never had much luck editing there, where it actually works pretty nicely on iDevices.)
I don't game much, but my kids like gaming on iDevices much better than Android. (I have an Android tablet that I use for testing things, and they consistently reject it in favor of iPhone or iPad.)
Flowkey (music instruction app) works much better with my MIDI keyboard on iDevices than on Android (where it doesn't work and has to resort to microphone, which is buggy as hell).
I'm sure some of this is just a matter of the platform being more polished in general, but these are some apps that keep people in my house on iDevices despite having plenty of access to Android. The quality of the Youtube app doesn't move anyone, nor do the browsers.
Almost all of the prosumer apps on iOS offer a consistently better experience. This is maybe less relevant on phones than on tablets, but music production, video editing, digital painting and drafting, etc...
There's a saying in mobile development that in most companies the Android version of the app is a second class citizen. It usually brings substantially less money and so less money are invested in it. As a result the Android team is often understaffed and the app is almost always behind in feature development, less polished and with overall worse UX and more bugs compared to the iOS app.
Also iOS still has a community of iOS only indie devs that publish polished apps for iOS, it's very common to find very popular iOS app with very curated UX that are exclusive to that platform and have a good fanbase.
Everything else I agree with, but the Android camera APIs do not allow developers to build good device independent camera apps the way they are available on iOS.
The iOS YouTube app is not worse than the one in Android. Texting in iOS is arguably better or, at the very least, there is one more app to choose (Messages). And I’m curious to know what makes Antenna Pod so much better than the thousands of other podcast apps out there.
Social media apps have historically been worse in Android, because of lax app and privacy controls.
> What else is there, where is the advantage?
Personally, I’d rather not have Google buried deep inside all aspects of my phone.
The iOS version of most social media apps is better. IOS simply has better API integration to it's hardware, where with android, many OEMs (hell this was even the case to a certain extent with older pixel phones), do a number of things that make the hardware not as easily accessible as quickly from the OS API for said feature.
This is especially relevant for the camera, but also various other sensors and hardware modules that exist inside these phones.
That said, in recent years there are just a number of other areas that android is much better at such as deeper AI integration, which goes back to even prior to the current LLM craze.
If you’d like an example, every single person who flies has an iPad to use an app called FOREFLIGHT. It doesn’t exist in android. Other EFBs exist on android but they are not as good. To a point that among things a new pilot student has to buy, like headsets and such, is an iPad.
For one, I can actually use gesture controls without constantly triggering backswipes. Even something as droll and first party as Google Photos suffers this problem, where, say, cropping a photo and pulling too close from the screen edge will result in a backswipe detection instead.
Another example is Sonos, where the iOS app contains TruePlay to tune your speakers. They can do this because there is relatively few iPhone models (microphones). But this is a general, noticeable trend, where developers will add more / better / polished features to the iOS app.
>I don't see any iOS advantage with the apps anymore. That was maybe true in the very beginning, during the gold rush time of the app store. But not since then. In which category are there better iOS apps?
I researched iOS vs Android last year so some of my info may be out of date but this is what I collected.
Apple iOS exclusives (or earlier app versions because devs prioritized iOS):
ChatGPT iOS app -2 months before Android
Sora -2 months before 2025-11 Android
Bluesky iOS app -2 months before Android (February 2023 iOS invitation-only beta; April 2023, it was released for Android)
Blackmagic Design camera 2023-09-15 -9 months before Android 2024-06-24
Halide camera app https://old.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/17klq40/what_are_some_good_examples_of_iphoneexclusive/k7efznt/
Zoom F6 https://zoomcorp.com/en/us/software-product-page/software-sub-cat/F6-control-app/ https://apps.apple.com/us/app/f6-control/id1464118916
Godox Light https://www.diyphotography.net/godox-finally-launches-android-app-for-the-a1-but-only-for-some-phones/
ForeFlight Mobile https://support.foreflight.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004919307-Does-ForeFlight-Mobile-work-on-Android-devices https://old.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/1883eya/the_authoritative_answer_to_why_isnt_foreflight/
Adobe Fresco
Procreate
FlexRadio SmartSDR SSDR 2023-10-27T13:15:09+00:00 https://community.flexradio.com/discussion/8029186/smartsdr-for-android-device
Google Android app exclusives
TouchDRO for milling
Kodi media player
There really aren't many popular/prominent Android-only apps that's intended for direct consumer download from the Google Play Store. Instead, Android dominates in OEM use as "turnkey" and "embedded" base os as the GUI for their customized hardware devices:
Amazon Fire Stick, car infotainment, music workstations, sewing machine GUI, geology soil tester, etc
If it's a typical mainstream user (browser + Youtube/Tiktok + WhatsApp etc), they won't see any iOS ecosystem advantages over Android.
I switched from Android to iPhone last year, and this just isn’t true. There’s so many tiny issues with android apps that just don’t exist on iPhone, because the android apps have to work on all these different devices. You don’t even have to look for the kinds of apps you’re talking about because things like Safari and Apple Podcasts work really well. I know people have a lot of complaints, but things on the iPhone really do “just work”.
iOS has less device models to target for. This makes it easier to support and deliver a more consistent experience, especially for gaming. I have also heard a few other points back in the day, but I am not sure how true they are now. One is that some social media apps might offer better quality in app camera experience. Another is that iOS userbase is more willing to spend money so devs are more likely to target iOS.
That made me realize how little I go to the Play store these days to just browse compared to the early days of Android.
I personally can't stand Apple products ... dbut with Google doing their crap and Samsung acting like Microsoft with all the crap they load in I have to disable just to make the phone usable; I've seriously thought about moving to iPhone the past couple of years.
So many amazing open-source developers just don't want to publish their app to app store because of the fees. On android, this is way way easier. If google keeps making this difficult, then i'll just have to switch to linux phone
There is not a single android app that is ever better than its iOS counterpart. At the very top margin, the android app is equivalent to its iOS counterpart. But there’s really only Gmail, photos, and Google Maps, and the big tech co apps that this small exception covers. Android apps don’t have to be worse from a technical standpoint, but in reality they are always worse than the equivalent iOS app.
There's many iOS only apps that either don't have anything comparable on android or the alternative is just nowhere near as good (a lot of it is more creative-focused stuff)
I don't understand how, almost 20 years after the release of these platforms, there are fully grown adult mobile OS fanboys still out there that either consciously or unconsciously spread lies about the difference between the platforms. Not just the parent comment, but this entire comment tree. For both iOS and Android. It's an almost religious cult-like type of behavior that reminds me of teenagers back in the early 2010s engaging in flamewars in YouTube comments arguing in favor of whichever gaming console they happen to own.
In that context, it made sense because they were kids, but also, these platforms were new with not much information out there, and the users were basically forced to pick one platform or the other because of the diminishing returns from owning both. 15 years ago, a PS3 or an Xbox 360 cost around $500, which adjusted for inflation is around $800 today. Not worth dropping an extra $800 for a few exclusive titles.
In the context of Android and iOS, you can gain access to both of these platforms quite easily... I mean, presumably, you already own an Android or iOS device already. For $150 you can get a decent device on the used market. Not state-of-the-art, but pretty good, all things considered. And with that you can gain a holistic perspective.
I seriously just don't get how you can stay faithful to either Android or iOS. They both are awful. I sort of see it as a necessary evil, pick your poison sort of thing. But some people get Stockholm Syndrome and never bother to try the alternatives I guess? I find that really odd.
iOS has the advantage of having a more closed app store, google play will shove whatever ad infested slop in your face and show you thousands of generic ad infested solutions to your problem, whereas iOS will usually have an easier to find not as sucky solution
This is a really ideology driven push. I don't think you really think the iOS browsers are worse, there's just less choice, because they all fundamentally use WebKit. Having to use Chromium is a worse experience, and not being able to use Gecko under Firefox is not a clear upgrade - particularly as WebKit is so tightly integrated with the hardware, leading to less battery use. If you really don't like WebKit for whatever reason, I get it. But that's not worse.
Whenever there is an app with full feature parity (WhatsApp) you assume at best it can be equal, based on nothing. You have specific apps that work for you, and that's great, but my practical experience is much different: whenever I haven't had a choice in an app (think banking apps, carrier apps, local library apps, the Covid apps) the experience has been much better on Apple. Whenever there is a choice in apps, they're often cross-written in something that allows easy porting, and very similar, or the native Apple solution is much smoother. It's rare that an app just feels better on Android, and usually limited to cases where a specific app is only available on Android or, you know, Google.
Honestly, you’re so wrong about the app situation that it’s almost staggering. iOS apps tend to be more stable, better polished, have better integration with system features (like the Dynamic Island), and even often have more features. This isn’t even an unfounded opinion, it’s a material problem for Google and led them to vastly investing in automated testing and quality efforts
App addressable user base is another problem for Google, one that they have mentioned in developer conferences. It’s a big part of why they’ve been trying to ship a tablet and unify android and Chromebook. If Google isn’t careful they could find themselves in a downward spiral situation, stuck between apple on one side, and android forks on the other.
And the last answer is, as always, money
- browser is deemphasized on iOS, and so it’s weaker feature set matters less
- iOS is generally easier to develop for because of less device differentiation
- on average iOS has significantly wealthier users who tend to be higher return or paying customers (seriously, look it up). This in turn leads companies to invest more heavily in iOS.
- easier integration due to a narrow system services ecosystem (no Google vs Samsung slapfights)
- unified platform advantage (apps written for iOS easily port to the watch and tablet, unlocking larger markets, and justifying greater spend in developing apps)
- apples review process is significantly stricter (for better or for worse)
Yes, Apple doesn’t have something like fdroid, and that’s really disappointing and honestly a legitimate dealbreaker for a lot of people
For context, I'm a long-time iPhone user, who switched to a Pixel 8a about 18 months ago.
> Apple has had better mobile hardware for years.
I can't say I noticed a difference in quality when switching. Maybe some people can, but for me it was just a different, but still well-made phone.
> Apple has higher consumer trust.
I can't speak for consumers in general, but this is certainly no longer the case for me.
I also used MacOS for 20 years, and switched to Linux about a year ago because I didn't like the direction Apple was headed. It may be my choice of reading material (HN), but I receive almost daily confirmation that this was a sound decision.
> Apple has better app selection (for most people).
Not selection, necessarily, but certainly quality.
As a side note, my iPad (my sole remaining Apple device) quietly updated to iOS 26 a few days ago. Despite having spent months reading about how bad it is, I was still genuinely shocked.
Again, I can't speak for "consumers", but for me Apple now has a far worse user experience.
I’ve been an iPhone owner for a while, but recently was required to get an Android phone to be a secondary work device. I got a Pixel 10 Pro—- brand-new, Google’s flagship device—- and within about a week there was a rattling noise from the camera module any time the phone moved.
The consensus online appears to be “oh, yeah, that’s the OIS module, you have to expect it, they all do that”. Well, iPhones also have OIS and they don’t do this.
Android might be “good enough” in hardware now but it’s definitely still behind.
Why the surprise, they do the same with search, they do the same with their Google workspace (the degree to which they are pushing AI is really hurting the product).
Google stopped being aware of their customer's needs a really long time ago, they are so arrogant they think the audience is now fully captive.
> Google stopped being aware of their customer's needs a really long time ago
Google's customers are advertisers. They cater to that segment very well. They only need to attract users with "free" and cheap services so that advertisers think their campaigns are reaching enough eyeballs. Whether or not that's the case, and whether or not the end user has a good experience, is hardly relevant.
the audience is captive. Do you have a choice to move from android, if you didnt want to have an apple device? Do you want to use a different search engine other than google? Is there another email provider than gmail (for the non-technical person - i know you can run your own). Is there another browser other than chrome (and dont say firefox or edge - because both don't compete)?
Google behave in ways that they think makes them more profit. When users cannot migrate (nor even threaten to), then it simply means they can do this.
Google's AI in their docs suite is so bafflingly bad. I wanted their AI to automate a sheet for me and it just choked. I switched to Claude for making a sheet that I ended up hosting in my local NAS using Microsoft Excel format.
Realistically a 200 euros Xiaomi phone, to most users, is as good as they need it for seeing videos online and chatting.
If you want to spend more, at each price tier you have plenty of choice including: better hardware, better cameras, more memory, etc.
E.g. I do need dual (physical) sim phones. So I ain't buying iPhones ever for this very need.
Consumer trust is very debatable: I have been locked out of my apple id for 2 months in 2021, and that was a work machine I was locked out from. Tragic. Apparently it's not my hardware if Apple decides it's not.
Nowadays I only own an M3 Max because my employer gave it to me. But I don't even use it unless on the move, as I have a way more powerful desktop computer.
It's true, but the main reason I haven't just switched to an iPhone is the ecosystem that lets me write apps without having to pay Apple money or use their computers.
If Google is narrowing their moat on this, there are a lot fewer reasons for me, personally, to stay on the platform.
Price hasn't been a particularly compelling difference between iOS and Android for a while. Here in the states, you can get a new iPhone 13 for $200 USD, which is 170 euros at today's exchange rate.
That's a prepaid cell phone company (no contracts); not sure how many months (if any) you have to pay for to unlock the phone. Renewed and unlocked ones are about $270 on amazon.
""Apple has better app selection (for most people). Apple has been increasingly implementing the core features that differentiate Android devices, like USB-C and RCS.""
You mean Apple has been forced by regulators to implement core features like USB-C and RCS?
Sure, but uninformed consumers won't see it that way. Maybe in their circles it just sounds like a great idea and they thank Apple for implementing it.
Saying they were forced to implement USB-C is really overstating things. Apple loooved USB-C - so much so that their ill-fated butterfly switch laptops went all-in on it. They also helped design it. It's highly likely they were planning a move to USB-C anyway and the EU just pushed it forward a year.
"Google's long term strategy with Android is baffling to me. "
How does one know there is a long-term strategy
History has shown that so-called "tech" companies often act in a reactionary manner^1
1. Often, the act is of one of copying what someone else has done. Other times it might be response to regulation
One could argue Android itself was a reaction to iOS
This is one example of the reactionary copying phenomenon but HN replies may choose to focus only on this one example and not on the overall "tech" company phenomenon of reactionism as exhibited through endless copying
> One could argue Android itself was a reaction to iOS
It quite literally was a reaction to iOS considering it was originally a copy of the BlackBerry OS (the older one in their keyboard phones) until the iPhone came out and they pivoted to copying iOS instead.
EDIT: to get ahead of any negative replies about them copying iOS, I’m fully aware that they work quite differently under the hood and Android has had various features before iOS, etc. I mean they were creating from a UI/UX standpoint a copy of the BlackBerry when Google bought them, and then when the iPhone came out they completely changed the UI/UX paradigm to match.
Android was in development well before iOS was released, really the only big change was the touchscreen, which is obviously revolutionary, but that's a long-way from "Android is a reaction to iOS".
Android has a reputation for being unsafe precisely because of sideloading (as well as low Google Play fees, looser app review, accessibility services and remote access).
This policy is bad for us HNers, but objectively good for the 95+% of people who will never sideload a legitimate Android app, but are extremely likely to get caught by scammers.
The heavy US skew of HN really distorts the arguments here, as Android-based scams aren't as common in AMerica due to the prevalence of iOS in that region.
The Play Store was riddled with scam apps last time I used it. Be it fake apps that pretend to do something while doing at best nothing ("system optimizers", "antivirus" apps) over user data mining apps (often targeted at children or young people) to hundreds of clones of commercial or open source apps - you do not have to search very long to find the real scams.
Making sideloading harder has only one goal - growing the wall around the garden a bit higher, piece by piece, layer by layer, while everything within slowly grows more toxic.
If they actually cared about scams on Android, when I explicitly searched for <App I'm going to pay for anyway> in the Play Store, they wouldn't put <Some other random app that pays money to appear above the app I searched for> at the top instead lol
If there's a reputation, that means it's reasonably widespread. 5% doesn't seem like much.
Does this mean there are so many advanced users sideloading apps to compromise them?
Except users aren't so advanced that they are getting scammed because of side loading?
Or might it be the cascading delays in security updates that don't seem to reach devices between Google, manufacturers, and telcos? This is a much more massive (the 95%) of security hole and backdoors for scams to enter.
These arguments don't really seem to fit together or make sense.
Happy to get some links to read more about all of the statements.
There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that Google is doing this to protect users from scams. It is purely driven by their desire to control the platform and eliminate things like ad-blocking youtube apps. You're far too credulous of evil corporations' stated motives.
Scams are the justification, F-Droid hasn't had any scam apps throughout it's existence, and it's not clear every functionality it currently has will be preserved with this change like auto-updating apps and easy installation of the store itself.
Google could let users add their own signing keys (like browsers allow), and it might be they will let students or power users do this, or they could do what F-Droid does in packaging FOSS apps without developers having to provide extra PII information. If they do neither of these things, it de facto means they're only after control at the expense of normal users.
To resolve the problem, scammers would deceive the victims into downloading a malicious app, in an Android Package Kit (APK) file format, sent through WhatsApp.
On the topic of looser app reviews on the Play store vs the App store. I can give you a long list of fake iOS apps where you enter a 4 digit code to watch free movies. People who think Apple is manually reviewing apps are delusional.
Apple only implemented USB-C due to pressure from the EU.
One area Android has a clear advantage is Android TV devices verified by Google, because there is a much wider array of streaming apps of all kinds available. However google doesn’t seem to focus on this very much, and if you look for forum recommendations for google android streaming devices it’s very often the NVIDIA shield pro from 2019. Hopefully that device will I’ll be supported for a few more years because there seems to not be good easily available alternatives.
Because antitrust laws are strong in a few countries. While most of the 2nd or 3rd world antitrust laws are non existent. Google's strategy is to squeeze those markets. They have higher population too and hence many more advertising to sell and much more control of the "online experience" in those countries.
> Surely the marginal revenue from the inconsequential number of sideloading users isn't attractive enough to justify that kind of strategic blunder.
If the rumors are true that the whole anti-sideloading thing is mostly because some governments complained, it might not have to do with a business strategy at all.
Why not limit these restrictions to these specific locations? Surely there's already lots of location-specific and carrier-specific customizations like shutter sound in Japan, different radio frequencies and many more. It still sucks for those who live in these countries, but at least they know who to point their finger at.
I'm similarly baffled for the reasons you state but your breakdown of the market differentiations is a little hyperbolic.
> Apple has had better mobile hardware for years
Apple has never had better hardware (on mobile). Apple has had better software support & integration for their hardware that has lead to e.g. strong camera quality advantages (iOS camera app has been able to use the hardware better to produce photos people want despite some Android OEMs having objectively better camera modules since those OEMs have to work through a lot of Google contracts & software extraction).
The hardware has never been better - their holistic ecosystem has just made integrations with it smoother.
> Apple has better app selection (for most people)
This has been true but it's always been marginal, & the "for most people" qualifier has contracted significantly in recent years. Both Google's & Apple's 1P offerings have declined in quality & popularity, but Google have increased lock-in & reliance on theirs in ways Apple can't, while the 3P offerings on Android have improved significantly relative to iOS. Gone are the days of companies releasing exclusively on iOS, or the Android version being an afterthought with missing features - if anything it's swung in the other direction.
To be clear, I think your points still stand: Google's recent strategy doesn't make sense for Google. I just don't think it's as glaringly clear cut as you make out.
One aspect that's worth keeping in mind is the non-US market. Apple has a 58% market share in the US but it's 28% worldwide. Outside of the US market the impact of that "every Android user lost to the increasing iOS market share" is significantly diluted (tbh I'm not sure it's even increasing outside of the US at all) & emerging markets are growth areas.
This is just straight up false. Qualcomm's current top of the line processors are about 3 years behind what you can get in Apple's cheapest product (that being the 16e), and the budget phones (and by "budget" I mean "the 600 dollar ones") are another 3 years behind that.
iPhones don't generally become too slow to realistically use until their support lifetime expires. Androids are like that out of the box unless you spend over a thousand dollars, and those only last for about half the time (a combination of inferior hardware and inferior software). It doesn't matter if you have a 120Hz screen if the UI only updates at 20.
This is why the only killer feature for Android (outside the cameras) is adblocking- which, of course, is what Google wants to prevent. They don't want you to run real Firefox (with the only effective adblock remaining), and they want you to pay for YouTube Premium rather than using NewPipe (or some other ReVanced successor) so you can't get out of paying 10 bucks to listen to a video with the screen off.
Cost? Apple stuff is expensive and unaffordable or inaccessible to a lot of the world. Google'd Android is the only option if you can't shell out for an iPhone (assuming you don't want to buy an unsupported 5+ year old device second/third-hand).
I have a feeling, despite Google's communications, this is all an attempt to thwart the numerous ad-free YouTube apps.
Another reason it should have been broken apart years ago. It's laughable that the biggest ad company in the world owns the largest video site in the world, largest browser in the world, largest search engine in the world, and largest mobile OS in the world.
NewPipe (FOSS available on F-Droid) is nice alternative to ads-infested YouTube. I disabled YouTube and YouTube Music apps on my mobile, and I use NewPipe instead. You can even download YT videos or audio from YT videos using it.
The biggest differentiator is price. An entry level Android phone is about $300 while an iPhone is in the $1000 range. And to be honest, anything more than an entry level Android is luxury these days. I say that because that's what I have and I have never felt held down, except maybe for pictures, but it is good enough for my (lack of) skills as a photographer.
So, Android may actually benefit from a lack of differentiation: like iOS, for a third of the price seems like a good value proposition.
Well you misunderstand enshittification. It will never get better again. Both Google and Apple have enshittified their phones. You can verify this on the App Store, on the Play Store, both of which have now more than 50% of search result screen space dedicated to ads, more when it comes to scams [1]. AND you can verify this in the financial statements of Apple and Google, where you see what we've always seen in Google: steadily increasing at a fixed rate profits from ads on the play store in Google's case, and steadily increasing at a fixed rate profits from "Services", which is App Store ads.
In Apple's case this has been the only Apple business to grow at all in several of the recent years. In fact there's quite a few Apple businesses that look like they are "revenue neutral", most famously iPads. Google is better, but not by much. Cloud is growing fast ("but why?" is a question that's unanswered. I mean, "because of AI", of course, but ... seriously?)
So not only are they enshittified, and you see them getting worse and worse over time, but the financial statements show: if you're expecting this to get any better either in the Apple or Google case, you're insane. Because clearly ads for scams are worth it for advertisers, and most other types of ads are not worth it. The situation evolves more and more towards the cable channel situation of 20 years back.
You could also reverse the view. The simple question: "are people willing to compromise on hardware quality to get less ads?" has a very clear NO answer. "Are governments/institutions that are totally dependent on these systems willing to pay to either improve phones or make an alternative available?", again has boatloads of evidence that the answer is NO, in all caps.
[1] Search for "credit card" or "lose weight" and judge for yourself. Top results are promoting Apple or Google themselves, everything else are ads, and very bad deals that trivially will neither accomplish the promised financial independence nor weight loss. Or should I put it like this: the credit card deals advertised are so bad they might achieve weight loss. By the way ads designed to mislead, which the top ads for either search obviously are, are what both Google and Apple promised time and again never to do.
I don't know how it works at Google, but unless they're giving away Pixel phones for free to their employees (or at a very, very strong discount), they have no business forcing their employees to use their products.
Here is how a job works: worker works, company gives money. Workers do whatever the fuck they want with the money they earn.
Android gets a bad rap because of security and Apple has exploited this in their marketing campaigns to the max. So the moment Google does something to address this glaring hole in their security model the 1% vocal minority throws a fit. You’ll still be able to side load, but because it has extra friction they’ll threaten to switch to iOS. To which I say - go for it. Google doesn’t care about people who side load apps like an automatic reloading the chamber. You’re an insignificant percentage of their base.
Personally, I would rather see Android only run signed and sanctioned apps to prevent the technologically illiterate from getting pwned. If you want to be able to side load then sign up to be a developer and go to town on your device.
I think they are worrying about antitrust, and believe (probably correctly, unfortunately) that whether they get hit by antitrust or not is entirely political. There's more than enough evidence, for any justice department which wants to. They're not going to change that by keeping Android moderately open.
What they can do, is make themselves politically useful to whoever will be in charge. Right now the war on general purpose computing is in high gear, due to panic over AI models, social media manipulation and (as always) kids. That's the only ticket to avoid an antitrust crackdown.
Their strategy is growing markets, especially in india, and africa, and of course China. It's where the chinese oem dominate. Beside chinese OEM, i think the only other player is Samsung. So google strategy seems to be to circumvent people from misusing their OS by blocking certain services (mainly ads). This is done via apps from fdroid, and rooting and what not. If google can control how people uses their devices (block vpn based adblocking, or rooting all together), they have better grip on the market. At the end of the day, Android is front for an ad platform.
> [Google's] strategy is growing markets, especially in india, and africa, and of course China.
Really? China? Where Google services are banned and Android phones come with local OS versions that cut them out? "High-friction sideloading" won't affect anyone in China. It won't be part of their experience at all.
I gave an iPhone a shot fof like a week but had to return it because it didn't have alternatives to the apps I was using on Android. Apps like BitCalculator, Convertbee, Aegis, a decent calculator with sin/cos/log and the ability to write expressions like the default on Android, Wireguard and a decent browser with an ad blocker. No Safari doesn't qualify.
It’s incredibly sad to watch Google abandon the values that inspired so much trust and belief that there is a better way to build a company.
Long time Pixel user here who has always believed the story that Apple has the closed, but refined, higher quality experience and Google has the slightly freer, but coarser UX.
I was convinced to make the switch this year and the Apple iPhone 17 Pro + whatever iOS version is, by far the worst phone I’ve ever owned.
Photos are worse, low light is worse, macros are worse, the UI is laggy, buggy and crashes.
The keyboard and autosuggest is shockingly bad.
Incredibly popular apps on iOS (YT, X, etc) are just as bad and often worse.
iMessage is a psyop. The absolute worst messaging app in history with zero desktop access for non-Mac users?!
If you’re on Android, and especially pixel, please know that Apple has completely given up and no longer executes at the level you remember from 10-15 years ago.
The whole software world is shit now. The foundations were stable decades ago. Like Windows kernel, WinAPI, .NET, WPF, Linux kernel. But end user software is so terrible. Windows 11 with ads and unhelpful AI. macOS which is a bit less terrible, but still too bloated. Linux with its eternal changes between X, Wayland, Alsa, Pipewire, Pulseaudio, sysvinit, systemd, and endless choices. Both iOS and Android are terrible. iOS was perfect 10 years ago, it's absolute clownfest now. I would blame AI vibe coders, but it started before. I don't know who to blame. Why can't we just build solid minimal non-bloated OS that will last for decades without major rewrites. We've got so good foundations but so terrible end product.
Well no, Chinese phones are above Apple material-wise (better battery, better cameras, better cooling) and on par SoC-wise since last year. That's what makes Google's strategy so baffling.
> Apple has better app selection (for most people).
It's entirely the same. I have gone back and forth regularly for the past 10 years. Android is completely on par app-wise. Apple has the iMessage lock-in in the US obviously but not in the rest of the world. Apple might have a slight advantage on the pro segment with the iPad but I don't think it has a huge impact on phones.
The really baffling thing to me is that while they lock down Android, they pay to put Gemini on iOS. Google has a real competitive advantage with IA and they just gave it to Apple.
It's clear to me that they are two companies fighting each other inside Google: the ex-Motorola who wants to be Apple and the service side who wants to be Microsoft.
I personally fear that they are making the bed of the regulators who will probably come for Play Protect at some point to open the door for alternative OS providers at least in Europe. But maybe they think it's coming anyway and are strengthening their position and trying to milk what they can in the meantime.
The lock in with Safari is horrifc though, the browser on a $20 prepaid android phone is better than the browser on your most expensive ios device. Apple says well you need to write a native app, stop using the web and PWA's. Allow Apple to mediate absolutely everything.
While I agree with the principle, and we as tech professionals and enthusiasts should be lobbying hard for law makers and regulators to open iOS up to allow for different browsers, there’s a couple flaws here without these precedents or activism.
The alternative here is not Firefox gaining more market share, it’s further encroachment of Chrome and derivatives. You’re not getting this big win for browser diversity. I’m not sure what you really gain here as Safari works fine for near most everything most people do.
Also I don’t think PWA’s have proliferated on desktop or Android despite Google’s efforts in raising awareness for them. It seems to me like consumers largely aren’t into web app shells. They either visit a web app in their browsers or use the App Store apps, by a large margin
Better mobile hardware is highly specific. Crappy batteries worse than literally all competition? Check for first what, 5 or 6 generations? For many people, battery life is single most important attribute of their phone.
Also USB-C ain't some differentiating feature of android, rather rest of the world and electronics. Fully apple's fault here, it could have been their standard as the one, but greed is greed.
Screens were always better on Samsungs flagships (apple buys screens there too) - mildly higher resolution, refresh rate and contrasts but these are rather unimportant. As an non-apple tech user, apple phone hardware has very few things that interest me or put them above the others.
Its better integration with software that did put them above, since it was optimized for a very narrow band of hardware so could get far even with subpar hardware (till M chips came but these days they are almost on par with Snapdragons). But that software has a list of issues much bigger than hardware above so no, thank you.
AnkiDroid, a fully self-contained version of Anki for Android, not requiring pairing with a desktop app and completely free, does not exist or iOS. Or did not, last time I checked. So that would be a deal breaker.
Maybe by now there is some Android emulation for iOS that can do it?
> Surely the marginal revenue from the inconsequential number of sideloading users isn't attractive enough to justify that kind of strategic blunder.
Or you could analyze this at the actual face value: the damage to Google’s brand caused by malware campaigns, especially faux-banking apps robbing people in some regions, is greater than the damage from making sideloading harder for some edge case users.
Not everything is a giant conspiracy; this move has always looked pretty clear cut to me from Google’s standpoint and I’ve never really seen any evidence to the contrary.
Except only a few countries in the world have wages where their citizens can afford Apple.
While I can afford Apple, out of principle I am not buying anything above 300 euros, that requires me to also buy another computer for hobby coding, and a dev license.
All my use of Apple hardware is via projects where pool devices are assigned to the delivery team.
Mobile providers usually offer loans ("service contracts") where people get phones outside their financial standing (I regularly see high end iPhones and foldable phones of €1-2k run by people in a country where average monthly salary is less than €1k): if a highly visible device like your phone can be had for 10% of your monthly salary, people will, unfortunately, opt for it.
I tend to not use Apple not due to cost (I honestly believe it's OK to pay a premium for quality; I might disagree they offer it today though, as I do use a couple of their devices at work), but because of how closed their ecosystem is (and yes, all my personal devices are running some sort of Linux, and Android phones are rooted and with bootloader unlocked).
I think what is happening here is the moat is breaking. With llms getting good enough to make a program, how long until it is a whole OS...? And then how long until regulars figure out play store and play appa not needed???
Agreed. The only thing they have going for them is that you can degoogle your android device, but you can't deapple your iphone, and here they are making moves that suggest they may back off from that position.
> core features that differentiate Android devices, like USB-C and RCS
It's obvious you've never used Android if you think these are core features LMAO. No one cares that much about connector type, more the fact it's using an industry standard versus proprietary. No one cares about RCS, everyone uses WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Messenger, Line, etc...
Core features are stuff like being able to search for a business through the phone app, Maps telling you where you parked your car, unprompted, compatibility with the casting protocol, the ability to make ANY app the default for a particular task, the ability to sideload, the fact you can switch phone brands and get whatever hardware you want but your core OS with all your accounts stays the same. Basically the ability to do what you want win your OS and no one restricting your phone's features.
As for Google's strategy, it's the same as Valve's. Having a platform they can't be locked out of since both MS and Apple have shown they'll abuse their market power.
Thinking Apple hardware is better is utterly laughable when you look at non-US Android devices.
Much better camera sensors, much better silicon carbon batteries etc in Oppo, Vivo, Honor and Xiaomi devices than anything Apple produces. Form factors Apple still hasn't figured out, such as 7th gen Foldables, Flip foldable phones etc, Camera zoom lenses that can be attached...
Apple's certainly been working to destroy their consumer trust though!
At least on my end the political knee bending by Tim Cook and their recent iOS and MacOS updates have me firmly on the side of not giving any more money to Apple. (Sadly, I still pay for Apple One for hy family, so I'm not perfect. But... hey, it's a start. Speak with your wallets).
And I will be considering alternatives when my machines which I will be running to their end stop working.
It's really such a shame cause I really liked their privacy stances, accessibility work, and focus on user experience.
Now I say, screw Apple, and encourage people to boycott and be wary of upgrades.
"Slow phone with slow animations" is a crazy assessment, I switched from Galaxy S7 to iPhone XR in 2018 because the Galaxy was (like every other Android I had) slow to do everything, applications would crash randomly and my phone would just give up and reboot without warning. Not to mention all of the killer Android features that Google had gotten rid of up to that point (RIP notification ticker, I miss you so much). What's the point of being able to sideload and customize when none of it works on a day to day basis? And when Google/other Android phone manufacturers insist on their phones being more and more similar to iPhone/iOS, the reasons to stay on Android go away too.
> No Aux port, no usb. Slow phone with slow animations. But maybe this is fixed, its been 10 years.
It has been 10 years and none of this is true today, also the average person doesn’t care about an aux port.
> Solid no here. Being able to install stuff from fdroid is amazing.
Not sure if you’re serious here, the app selection is far better on the App Store (and also Google Play Store) due to the nature of not being restricted to purely FOSS apps.
> You forgot to mention how poor iPhone security is.
Citation needed, iOS has the second best mobile security and is at worst equivalent to stock Android. The only OS that surpasses iOS by a large amount is GrapheneOS.
> People have died due to Apple's poor security.
This could also be said for any other OS/maker? Nothing is 100% secure/private.
Not from me and my peers. All nerds/devs/sysadmins.
> Apple has better app selection (for most people).
Again, based on what?
> Apple has been increasingly implementing the core features that differentiate Android devices, like USB-C and RCS.
Only when forced.
> Every Android user lost to the increasing iOS market share is another customer Google has to pay exorbitant fees to a competitor to access.
What are you even talking about?
Don't get me wrong, iPhones are great devices, but I prefer the Android ecosystem time and time again.
Oh come on fanboy, Apple doesn't have meaningfully better hardware, consumer trust, or app selection (for most people the opposite is true!)
Oof, Apple adopting core 'Android' features... Yea, finally? Increasing iOS market share? Where? Not most places
I think it's weird you come at this from an antitrust angle when I would totally make the argument the other way.
If there's pressure to remove this feature, then it's from companies that make apps that anyone can pull up in Revanced and they can patch it and can be running a version of a piece of software that shouldn't exist with "premium" features enabled. I don't think there's an argument against it really besides that. At least not an honest, intelligent argument....
Ultimately, I doubt many would jump to Apple. Inertia would insist: People just won't upgrade. Which is already occurring, people are keeping their devices longer, especially Apple users. And they wonder why their battery stops working... Oy vey!
>Apple has had better mobile hardware for years.
Classic Apple glazer take. This is why I still made another 100% with Apple stock over past 5 years because stupid people got gaslight into buying their overpriced stuff that is marginally better if at all.
Yeah, at no point has Apple ever had meaningfully better hardware than the competition. They have always been a more expensive version of the same hardware you can get from their competitors, just this one has an apple logo. But a lot of people, even smart people, are fooled by the marketing.
Are you joking? Look at the latest Xiaomi, Oppo and other Chinese manufacturers, Apple would love to have the hardware they are shipping right now. From batteries to cameras and screens, apple is way behind on hardware tech. Yeah they are better than Samsung - but Samsung has also massively fallen behind what's the state of the art.
>>is another customer Google has to pay exorbitant fees to a competitor to access.
Last time I checked, it's apple paying Google, billions of dollars a year? And it will be even more now that Apple announced they are going to use Gemini as their AI base model.
> Last time I checked, it's apple paying Google, billions of dollars a year?
You checked wrong. Google pays Apple on the order of $20 billion to be the default search on iOS - this is so significant it accounts for ~5% of Apple's annual revenue
> Look at the latest Xiaomi, Oppo and other Chinese manufacturers, Apple would love to have the hardware they are shipping right now.
If any of these manufacturers decide to include an EMR pen in the body of the phone, like Samsung's S-Pen, they'll have me as a customer. The S-Pen so completely changes the experience that I am unwilling to go back.
> Look at the latest Xiaomi, Oppo and other Chinese manufacturers, Apple would love to have the hardware they are shipping right now.
This is true, but their phones don't ship with Google services out of box (at least the last time I checked). So in reality, "Google's Android" is really mostly Samsungs and Pixels.
I think what is missing here is the growing trend of scammers convincing people they are their bank (or whatever) and walking them through enabling side-loading and then installing malware (sometimes to address some urgent security issues with their account).
This is meant to counter an actual issues that is affecting many many users.
If you can convince the user your are their bank, can convince them to install software and walk them through how to do it and enable side loading, you can also convince them to input their logging into any webpage.
If that was the only reason, they would proactively cooperate with alternative app-stores like F-Droid to allow them to provide a lesser friction flow for open source releases. My question would be why I they see themselves as the only possible trust anchor here. A high friction method to install a different app store, once, IMHO would be OK.
You cannot save these people by technical means. They'll just fall for something else instead.
The only one who can protect them is a family member or appointed guardian.
Or maybe, just maybe, we start doing something about the criminals and those who protect them. It's ridiculous how these industrial-scale scam operations are allowed to exist.
I have no trust in a solution that mostly benefits the proposer.
By all means let people curate and use safe lists of software, but let's not pretend that making the life harder for the few registries containing solely open source and vetted software is in any way about making people safer.
Is the solution to make it harder? Or is the threat of scammers and the insecurity of the OS used as false flag to make installing software outside of the profitable walled garden much much harder?
It seems you think what is missing here is some FUD, which is what I believe you are feeding us with here.
If there's anyone people need to be protected against, it's Alphabet and Apple and the entities they let in intentionally, rather than specter of "growing trend of scammers".
This is revisionist history to make things sound scary and evil. The term sideloading was first published before Google existed.
Go to the XDA forums and search for the word "sideload". You can filter for results before 2020 if you like, you get hits going back decades.
It's been in common use since the day we got smartphones. The term dates back to the 1990s. I remember reading the word when I bought my HTC Evo at launch. It's an industry standard term and has been for longer than Google has existed.
You know this is the internet and anyone can fact check anything at any time? Including you!
Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
>Sideloading is a neologism to scare users and lawmakers, it just means "Installing software" and should be a basic right.
No it's not. The term originated far before this debacle, and carries a meaningful distinction than just "installing". Specifically it means installing from a non-first party source. You might not agree the restriction should exist, or that even the concept of first party source at all, but for communication purposes it's worth having a simple word to describe that concept, rather than something like "installing from a non-first party app store".
>No it's not. The term originated far before this debacle, and carries a meaningful distinction than just "installing". Specifically it means installing from a non-first party source
It's amazing how many confidently wrong people are springing up out of the wordwork to present revisionist history about the meaning of "install" like it's ancient wisdom. Pre-mobile computing treated "install" as neutral and primary and had no built in relation to centralized distribution. Sideloading as a term of art originally, in practice came into usage for transferring media to devices, and some cloud file hosts briefly used it to mean load a file to an online drive without downloading it to computer. It's usage was varied, irregular, and not at any threshold of popular acceptance for one meaning or another.
Windows, Dos, Linux, and online self-hosted services had no notion of "sideloading", or at least no usage of that vocabulary and did not use this notion of "install" that is now being retrospectively declared a longstanding historical norm. Even now, that's not a term used in Windows or Linux. Even Apple, who very much in practice utilize this controlled distribution model but even they don't use this sideloading/installing verbal distinction. In Apple's lexicon installing is neutral with respect to where an app comes from.
So it's staggering to see a specific term of art that deviates from historical precedent that only is used in an Android context and only relatively recently in the history of computing be referred to as if its observing a longstanding precedent across all of computing. It's nothing of the sort.
> Specifically it means installing from a non-first party source
What "first-party" source? Apple invented out of thin air the notion of a "first-party" software source or that computer users can only install software approved by a central authority.
The idea the manufacturer of a product is a "first party" is BS.
You are the first party. If I own the device, I am the first party.
The manufacturer is now a second or third party after you own the device, and for most ideas, a third party, especially if they don't truly offer real support of the device.
I take the opportunity to let people know that there are alternatives to Google/Apple duopoly on mobile. Link: https://www.ubuntu-touch.io/
Sure, GrapheneOS is often suggested but Ubuntu Touch is a really interesting alternative, their own store and ecosystem.
The community is amazing and welcoming. If there are Android apps which you can't do without, they can be emulated and used anyway. Imagine switching to Linux and then using Wine for the apps you really still need.
Yes, it's not perfect but Linux isn't either. If you think you're sufficiently tech savvy and want to make a change, give Ubuntu Touch a try. Find a cheap second hand supported device and play around, make some fun apps. (devices currently supported: https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/ )
To me it's like being back when there was only Windows and Macs as viable home computer OS, and people were getting their feet wet with Linux and all its flavours. Now, it's the same but for mobile.
Ubuntu Touch has amazing UX, IMO. Sadly it's been non-viable for practically forever, and is non-viable today unless you want to use a 7-year-old out-of-production device. It's practically abandonware with a few hobby maintainers at this point, as much as it had potential compared to other alternatives.
I was under the impression that Ubuntu Touch worked just fine with the Fairphone 5 which is very much not a "7-year-old out-of-production device". I'm currently writing this from a Fairphone 4 (with CalyxOS, not Ubuntu Touch though).
I have struggled with getting anything functional on a Fairphone running Ubuntu Touch. The problem is you can't really run any Linux app, it has to be written to support their specific display manager. Running regular Linux apps is possible but not properly documented and I haven't gotten it to work. Android apps through Waydroid sort of works, but is unstable and not suitable for daily use.
I really want Linux on mobile to be a thing, but I haven't found it yet. PinePhone is abandoned, Purism just isn't a finished product, Planet Computers doesn't even build a phone with Linux support anymore.
The only thing that's current and active I've seen is a Hong Kong startup https://furilabs.com/. I've got one on my desk to try, hoping it will be something usable as a daily driver.
It's never going to work. Any competitor that isn't Android won't have app support (e.g. you won't even be able to message people in 90% of the world where WhatsApp, Telegram, Line, etc. are the de facto communication method for almost the entire population).
So you need some way to run Android apps... which is totally possible, but at that point why not just use Android?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I suppose emulating Android apps on a non-Android system will have the same problem as trying to run them in an Android without Google Services or in a rooted phone, i.e., banking (and similar) apps detecting it and refusing to run?
Were it not for that, I would never have stopped using Huawei, IMO the best phone brand by a mile. But I'm too busy a person to depend on hacks and having to regularly find new workarounds to access my banks.
I think you're right about certain apps refusing to run in an emulated environment.
I'm beginning to think we need to consider such apps, and the hardware they run on, as the outsiders. Keep a cheap "normal" Android phone for those apps, and those apps alone. Then keep a "real" second device for everything else. Up to you which one gets the SIM card and provides connectivity for the other (and ordinary phone services).
I'd rather go back to old-fashioned hardware dongles from banks – but hey, lacking that, maybe I'll just think of the first of those two devices as a clunky, overly expensive one of those.
This is far from the only alternative. There are also Mobian, PureOS, postmarketOS and more. Unlike Ubuntu Touch, they allow you to run ordinary Linux desktop apps. Also there is hardware not tied to an ancient Android kernel, designed to run desktop GNU/Linux: Pinephone and Librem 5. The latter is my daily driver.
> I take the opportunity to let people know that there are alternatives to Google/Apple duopoly on mobile.
In my country (which will AFAIK be one of the first ones to get the new app install restrictions), so far I haven't found any.
You're not allowed to import phones which are not certified by ANATEL, and AFAIK all currently sold certified phones are either Android (from several hardware brands), Apple, and feature phones.
> To me it's like being back when there was only Windows and Macs as viable home computer OS, and people were getting their feet wet with Linux and all its flavours. Now, it's the same but for mobile.
There's one VERY IMPORTANT distinction: back then, you could easily take a Windows or Mac computer and install Linux in it. For mobile, it's never been that easy; strong cryptographic signing of the operating system, combined with endless churn of the hardware design (there's no "PC compatible" equivalent for phones), and there being no way to keep the data partition intact when installing a custom ROM, make it much harder for people to "get their feet wet" with alternative operating systems.
Ubuntu Touch so far has the best hardware compatibility for things like camera and battery life. But it also insists on doing a lot of its own thing like using Mir instead of X and click packages. Running programs inside Libertine often crashes for me and is cumbersome. It makes developing for it harder. clickable needs Docker installed just so you can build and run your own apps on the device! Instead of letting you launch things quickly from terminal.
It make some things that should be easy on Linux harder. I.e., there's no Firefox + mobile tweaks like other linux mobile OSes, in part because it wants you to use Morphic.
But other linux mobile OSes dropped support for Halium/libhybris and even the very few that still have it don't seem to match Ubuntu Touch's level of hardware support.
Thank you for the much needed hopeful note. Maybe I'll try doing exactly that, sounds like a fun hobby. My biggest worry about Linux on mobile is that banking apps will stubbornly refuse to offer support to these platforms, basically forever.
Unfortunately, apps have always been the barrier to entry for competing options.
If your platform doesn't have apps, then your platform won't have users, which won't attract developers and BigCo's to write apps for your platform. Rinse and repeat.
This is how Windows Phone was wiped out, despite them spending *a lot* of money trying to attract companies and developers to write stuff for their OS.
Windows Phone was fantastic because it had no apps. Wish it managed to stake out and maintain a decent portion of the phone market. If 30% of the population could say "Oh sorry TicketMaster, I can't install your app, please just email me a pdf or text me a link to your tickets that I can just open in a web browser" the that would benefit everyone, even non-WP users.
I see an announcement from 2016 saying they're adding React Native support. Does it actually work? That'd allow low-effort ports onto their platform, and I'd much rather see them succeed than be stuck with the current duopoly.
The issue with buying phones like that, is they are just insanely expensive.
Without shipping/tax, that phone is CAD$1500, whereas I can buy a refurbished Samsung S22 for CAD$350 (all in), that has roughly the same specs, but for 1/5 the price.
I understand small companies can't use economies of scale like Samsung/Apple, but it's still really bad, and the majority of consumers wouldn't even take a second glance at it from the price.
Notice that, per
https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk/devices-specification , the newest OS they ship is Android 11. I owned a Gemini and I liked the hardware, but they don't update software and I consider that a deal breaker.
I would like to see a high friction flow for installing all the crap from the Play Store to "protect and educate users". "Are you sure you want to install this app? It's only got a score of 2.8 and only 7 reviews, and will ask for all of these permissions?"
Even if it has 4.8 and 7000 reviews it's often fake 4.8 because the reviews are botted / paid / dark patterned (e.g. when you pop up star rating on your users and beg them "rate the app plz" and when the users tap anything but 5 stars you say "k, ty" and keep those "bad" reviews for yourself)
That was just an example to communicate my idea: a better way to validate authenticity of the app could and should be used.
But to your point specifically, Play store and App Store have APIs to rate from within the app: when the pop up shows, app author does not have an option to avoid getting a 1-star rating (they are also time-restricted, eg. at most once every 180 days for Apple IIRC).
What devs do though, is to preempt it with "Are you enjoying our app?", and only giving you a formal rating pop-up if you answer "Yes".
I want even worse restrictions on my parent phone so they dont install spyware. I want "install ONLY from fdroid". I trust their one server in a basement more than Google at this point.
The hilarious part in all of this is watching Epic Games sue Google over how bad the "high friction" flow was for them to sideload their hefty bundle of Google Play violations and win the rights to be back in the Play Store.
It's OK now that Epic can have a one-click download for Fortnite to shove all the friction back into the sideloading experience.
If the make sideloading high-friction, either via account-bound or apk upload or permissions from MNO/ISP, I will leave android. I have a bunch of my own apps that only I use, not released to the public, if I cannot use them, I have zero reason to stay on android.
I think one of the reasons they want to lockdown the system is to prevent guys like me from locking THEM out of my home/ecosystems, as and example, I build my own launchers, specifically for TCL TV's, which runs Android TV and has Developer Mode + adb. Which means I remove all the bloat & ad garbage, which they want to prevent.
We will get to the point where google will remove your ability to set custom dns servers and only use theirs.. just wait & see friends.
Anywhoo, when this side loading fence materializes, I will jump ship to apple.
Why jump to another abuser when you could seriously start looking into alternatives? Ubuntu Touch has a really active community and it's very stable, you can even emulate android apps which you might absolutely need.
I don't see Apple as the obvious next step; the obvious step, when one is pissed off with abuse of power is open source, not Apple.
The point isn't that things are better on this axis on iOS, but that things are better on numerous other axes, to the point where many people are only using Android at all because it feels slightly more open and free than iOS... if Google wants to play Apple's game, then the only reasons to bother with the mess that is Android are gone, and so you'll see people switch to iOS.
Seems like you'll still be able to use your own apps just fine under this scheme.
It also seems pretty obvious that the ignorant phone-users of the world who get scammed are the reason for this change. The revenue lost from people like you is really not worth any amount of engineering effort.
> Matthew Forsyth, Director of Product Management, Google Play Developer Experience & Chief Product Explainer, said the system isn’t a sideloading restriction, but an “Accountability Layer.”
And... What about accountability for hosting distributing spyware, malware loaded apps from Google Playstore and hundreds of copy cat, misleading apps?
Why can't they pose a question when the phone is setup?
- Yes, I want to sideload
- No I dont want
If the user says NO then to later enable it to allow sideload Yes, the user needs to factory reset phone. Done.
>And... What about accountability for hosting distributing spyware, malware loaded apps from Google Playstore and hundreds of copy cat, misleading apps?
The rules don't apply to billion dollar corporations. Meta is showing 15 billion scam ads per day.
A somewhat unrelated thing, is I got bombarded with ads for a 'mental health mindfulness' service on one of the major international news websites.
I decided to Google the company after a few days. I was immediately confronted by thousands of reports by angry users, complaining about how after they tried the app, they got locked into a yearly subscription at exorbitant prices and it was impossible to cancel. The company itself is registered in some offshore tax haven.
They used to scare us, that if we went to those shady pirate websites, somebody would steal our credit cards and steal our money. Well...
This right here exposes the bullshittery about the reasons behind preventing sideloading on Android phones.
For Google everything is about protecting revenue, even when doing so exposes their users to real harm, and that's why they will not address the issue of copycat apps, poor practices on play store security or anything else that lowers the number of downloads on apps on play store. But, heaven forbid, I want to download an app that doesn't create revenue for them onto a phone I OWN, Google spends money lavishly.
The Internet cranks are right. Google is run by bean counters and all the invective the cranks heap on the Google leadership is entirely earned.
So I was actually planning on upgrading from a Pixel 7 Pro to a Pixel 10 around the time this announcement came out last year, but have put it on hold as I wait to see what form these changes take.
Like if it was "you need to do the developer 7-tap of the version label in settings", it'd be like "whatever". But given how long this process has taken, I suspect that is not what they've planned - it wouldn't take this long to develop, it certainly wouldn't take this long to explain.
So I suspect that we're actually in the "Maybe Later" phase of "Google wants to control which apps you install: [ ] Yes [ ] Maybe Later". And I mean, if their proposed solution turns out to be "Me and 25 of my closest friends can install apps I make by phoning home to Google servers", then like, I can do that on iOS too. And if I'm not going to have meaningfully more control of my Android device, I may as well just go to iOS where Apple at least have a better privacy record and don't seem to have have an all-encompassing goal of "where can we put AI features to drive AI usage metrics up the most?"
Honestly just install grapheneos on your Pixel, that is what I did and bought a Pixel for that reason alone. I use all Google play services and it works great, only payment with phone doesn't work.
Yes I agree: if you already have a Pixel, try GrapheneOS on it. Then if it can wait (Pixel 7 is still supported for a while, isn't it?), GrapheneOS may support a non-Google phone in 2026, so it may be worth waiting.
When this whole thing got announced, I purchased a new Pixel 9 and flashed it with GrapheneOS.
I am hoping that in about 6-8 years (when I realistically need to update) the landscape might be a bit better. Or who knows, maybe I'll just continue using GrapheneOS.
So far I have not had a single issues with it. Apps the rely on attestation do not work, but honestly it's only two applications out of hundreds so I can live with it.
I also financially support GrapheneOS on a monthly basis (15$). This is just too important of an project not to.
Graphene OS spends its social capital on hallucinating attacks from other projects and bullying other projects by sending their followers against them, based on those hallucinated attacks. It also has a completely intransparent project structure based around a supposedly retired mean developer, who then just did not (and still does almost all commits). That's not a project where the EU can invest money in, and the confidence users on HN tend to put into that project is baffling.
The EU should pile money into /e/OS. It's maintained by an EU company (Murena) and has European hardware options - Fairphone (NL), SHIFTphone (Germany), and Volla (Germany). Yes, I know some of them use US Qualcomm chips, but you have to start somewhere.
GrapheneOS can choose to simply not apply the same restrictions but now that they're partnering with another vendor to get security updates earlier, I'm not sure what the future holds in this aspect.
This is only an issue for Google compliant Android so projects like LineageOS will be fine. Depending on their implementation, this may even just be restricted to AOSP with Samsung and others just ignoring the extra restrictions.
But, if they make compliance a requirement for being part of their parent programme, GrapheneOS will be in a tough spot.
Ironically, I've found that blocking the attestation API for some apps that supposedly require it (such as the latest versions of Waymo) might make them work anyway. lol
My next phone will be on GrapheneOS or EOS as well, the last straw was Samsung removing the bootloader unlock with an update (not even sure what they've done is legal)
I would love to run GrapheneOS if it didn't involve giving any money to Google to get up-to-date hardware, brand new. (Yes, I know I can buy and run it on a used Pixel.)
I'm with Google on this one. Idiots and old people (the public) use these devices daily. These are the very same people that send money to Nigerian royalty and expect to hear back about a great reward. This is mostly a CYA move with hard data behind it. If they completely removed side load, that would be a different story.
Yeah in fact I don't really see what's new in this article except that it hints that it will allow install of software from unverified developers via big scary warnings. Which seems like an improvement from what has been announced previously that only software from verified developers would be allowed.
I already have to configure apps to allow them to install apps on my Pixel... it's like "okay yeah I want to allow F-Droid and Obtainium to install apps" done. Maybe that's not the default or something? Who on earth wants popup ads in Chrome installing shit? And why would anyone want any random app to be able to install additional apps?
You pay a cost either way: live in a world with better funded and incentivized scammers and in a community less wealthy by a corresponding amount, or have a slightly less convenient sideloading experience.
I guess if you take the old saying extremely literally, you could conclude that every fool is guaranteed to be parted with 100% of their lifetime available money regardless of what anyone else tries to do to stop that, but that’s not true – and why old sayings (with a respectable 75% of the words right) taken literally aren’t a good basis for decision-making.
These scammers are parasites on society, they add nothing while draining resources away from honest people.
If you participate in society, that net drag will affect you in subtle ways. Like if you have money invested in something, that thing doesn’t go up in value as much as it would have if x% of society isn’t simply parasitic.
Exactly. I'm sick and tired of all the apps/websites that mandate 2fa. All of that adds friction when I'm a big boy who knows how to choose secure passwords. For that matter, why even invest resources into fraud detection or law enforcement? All of that money is coming out of somewhere, and why should my tax dollars go toward catching fake nigerian princes when it's just helping idiots anyways?
Wait a second... making a product that is safe and easy to use requires removing or mitigating potential hazards involving product. Building safeguards around a feature that can be used to hurt people in significant ways is exactly that, isn't it?
My grandmother was tricked into buying cryptocurrency for a scam. All the apps that they used on her Android and iPhone were in the respective app stores.
Removing side loading has little to nothing to do with it from my point of view because the app stores are not doing a good job of verifying apps.
This bit of article is what I'm hopeful will happen:
> That explanation broadly matches what we’re seeing in recent versions of Google Play, where new warning messages emphasize developer verification, internet requirements, and potential risks, while still allowing users to proceed.
As TFA does not mention it, and I don't see any top-level comments discussing it, this is a continued rollout of a "feature" first piloted in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. See:
Of course, HN reaction has always been skeptical about this including in earlier news. But the reporting on it, and the countries in which it is piloted in, seems to me to involve government/banking industry cooperation with or pressure on Google to combat cyber fraud. These polities are prime targets for Android cyber fraud of this sort due to Android penetration, and seemingly (to me) also cultural proximity to scam operators, and tech-illiteracy among the vulnerable demographic. (And anticipating a reply I got from a previous article on my comment on this feature---no, it's just not feasible to comprehensively educate retirees against evolving tactics by scam operators and expect that to be a sufficient sole countermeasure.)
These measures are indeed the result of governments blaming their citizens getting scammed on phone manufacturers. There's not a lot Google can do here.
However, Google is choosing to extend these changes worldwide. That's where the problem really starts. People in Asia and Brazil may vote for idiots who will shift the blame for their citizens' lack of basic digital education onto others, but that doesn't mean that countries where this type of fraud barely exists should also be subject to these extreme measures.
There is no doubt that sideloading by uninformed users can be used as a backdoor.
It's also not a surprise that banks/industry that's accountable to recover the losses for tricked customers is looking to someone else to solve it for them.
However, if this was "piloted", do we have the numbers of how much has it decreased the number of scams or their impact?
I wouldn't go as far as to say that it is impossible to "educate the public", but it is indeed extremely hard. But click-through pop-ups have succeeded when?
I know in some people's eyes saying this will make me a Google shill but this reminds me of the manifest v3 thing. What makes it to the top of HN is mostly clickbait a las "Google is cracking down on ad blockers" or in this case "Google is preventing side loading". These articles don't link to primary sources (Google) and they (intentionally?) miss all nuance.
Yeah for every HN user complaining about it there are hundreds of people sideloading apps (not realizing what they're doing - under promise of loans or other advantages) and then getting their phone ransomed
The image at the top of the article is actually what already happens in Android and has done for years. At first, I thought that this meant that the article was very outdated, but no, this is from January 2026.
I imagine the text of the article is fine, but I'm a little bit disappointed that Android Authority chose to lead with that image and caption and make it seem that this is what the future flow would look like. You'd think they'd know better.
Those of us who use Android phones now - and install FOSS apps form F-Droid or just any apps from elsewhere other than the church of Google - might be thinking: "Oh, I need to work out how I'll have decent app access after this happens."
But what we should really be thinking is: "Oh, I need to _donate_ to projects which aim to patch Android-based phones to remove these restrictions; or to projects which aim to replace (most/all of) Android completely".
We need to speak with our wallets in addition to just ranting about Google.
The frog had to be pretty well lobotomized to keep it from jumping out. One can recreate the ”experiment” with a lobotomized frog and mostly get the result described though
Exactly. For most people not having a bank app, probably no digital payments due to that, and no government-issued digital ID is too much friction to even consider any alternative.
The highest risk is the play store itself. Gambling and addiction.
So, when does Google add "high friction" there, instead of encouraging it?
Ah, well, it's the money! Than stop bending the truth.
Call me what you want but it is my belief that the reason google is locking down and Apple refuses to budge is that in the near term future our mobile devices will become our identity online and in public.
Apple already offers digital ID in some states. They can do this partly because they can guarantee to the gov’t the ID is genuine because the user cannot modify the system.
Google needs to be able to do the same thing.
Age verification laws for online services will actually require something like a digital ID and Apple and Google want to be the providers.
Guys, a discussion of which big tech company is better is equivalent to talking about which cancer is the best to have.... Can we all agree that each operating system has good features but they share a terrible feature of being strapped to a giant vampire squid exfiltrating your data and selling your secrets to the highest bidder? Instead of wasting bandwidth on these two companies can we go and figure out how to force cell phones (and consoles and numerous other things) open like the PC was/ mostly still is?
I wish the EU would step up and bring sideloading on iOS. iPhone hardware is great but the software is severely lackluster. I know a few developers there and they are not exceptional by any means. Chiefly because Apple pays much less than their competition so they do not attract the best talent
Some manufacturers like Xiaomi already have a very annoying flow for enabling developer options and using ADB. You need to have a SIM card inserted, need to create a Xiaomi account and there's several popups with timers you have to wait through.
Wait so did this rollback? Initially they were about to forbid any install from non verified accounts, then allow them but just a limited number, this article seems to suggest there will just be extra steps?
Yes, after that they said that there will be an on-device flow to load apps from outside the Play Store after all. They didn’t describe how that will work and I didn’t see it discussed as commonly as the original announcement; I only saw it mentioned by the way in a Reddit thread.
I was never an iOS user, or developer - exactly because Android was more "open", exerted less control over a user of the device.
The same reason I use Linux for 25 years (not ideological, but it just makes most sense by far). In time where this view (win11 vs. Linux) is starting to make sense to more and more people, few rare config nuances are getting easier to solve due to LLM-s, going into the opposite direction with a mobile OS calls for users to also start seriously considering more open alternatives and making a path for users of our app to do the same.
Semi-related question: how invasive is the Temu App on Google Play Store nowadays. Last time I read about it, it posed a bigger threat to users than the average side-loaded app.
If auto-updating apps stops working on fdroid, I'll be installing Graphene, Lineage or taking a shot at something like postmarket/ubuntu touch/plasma mobile. I've used Lineage as a daily driver before for a while, so I'll probably just go back to that and tell developers to support the platform I'm using. It doesn't rent seek on developers or users.
When Google inquired in court how that could be if Apple doesn't even allow any form of side-loading, including other app stores (which Google does allow)
The judge said, I shit you not, Apple doesn't have any competitors on their platform, therefore they can't be anti-competitive.
Probably one of the worst most off the rails rulings ever. Google took notes and is now following Apple. You can thank the courts
Would switch to PostmarketOS tomorrow if there was any fully supported hardware (camera, 4G calling, etc.). All programs/apps I use are FOSS and standardized anyway.
You're free to search XDA Forum. 2007 was the earliest mention I saw, but conversation seems to start in earnest around 2009 and never stops. Consistent hits in search from the last TWENTY YEARS.
This is not new. It may be new to you but any scary and evil connotations are your own ignorance. The term has been in common use for decades.
I'm sure I'm missing something but wasn't this already the case where the first time you try to install an APK, you had to go into Settings and mark the relevant application as a trusted source for installing APKs from?
Some friction is probably wise. I remember them introducing the requirement to individually allow each app you're installing things from. The question is, how much more friction will they add? I suspect they will add prompts per install, too.
There is nothing sleazy happening "on the side", I am simply installing an application of my choosing on some hardware that I purchased.
As long as it remains possible (without extra developer verification, etc, etc), a bit of extra friction is probably OK, as is assigning accountability to the person who chose to install an app outside of the "official" store.
But it has to remain possible. Otherwise can someone name any advantage that Android has over iOS?
Eventually my so called smartphone will be a device for authenticating against a few services that require a special application, that I can also tunnel a serious device through for doing the things that I actually want to do.
It would be interesting to know why they're doing this, but it's unlikely it'll ever become public knowledge. I also don't think it is important, the people responsible should be in jail for a lot of other reasons anyway.
Sideloading is already painful. I tried installing Sora (which is not available in my region's Play Store). The phone didn't allow me to start the app (complaining about integrity) unless I disabled the Play Store Integrity Checks. It wasn't straightforward in saying what the problem is and how can I bypass the check.
I think we should stop calling it "sideloading". I don't think the history of the term matters. By using that term, you imply that running the code you want on the hardware you own is somehow a secondary or second-class activity.
Call it "installing" or "jumping the garden wall".
Friction hopefully means "you have to plug in a USB cable" and not "you have to associate your phone with a particular Google account, then go through a process with Google's customer service to approve your phone for sideloading" etc.
Apparently this "high friction" is a term entirely invented by Android Authority based on finding a few new generic warning messages about sideloading in the Android source?? I guess if there's no news, you have to play word games to make some.
Articles like this where we lament being trapped in an ecosystem duopoly are contemporary with articles saying that software engineering is over and LLMs can just vibe code anything you imagine. What's keeping the duopoly in charge?. Code signing?
You think a local model will get to that point? Some AGI revolution like your describing is impossible for humanity as a whole even if LLMs get that smart. The same companies control the supercomputers and your access to them.
Is the solution for sideloading to also have the same APK in the Play Store? That way, Google would have received the AAB and generated a signed APK that is used from the Play Store and also offered via sideloading.
At least they aren't removing it like originally planned. A warning from `adb sideload` or `adb install` that can be bypassed with an environment variable is reasonable IMO.
I'd really like to see details before drawing conclusions. If it really is just an extra up-front warning screen or something then yes that's reasonable. If it's something that unfairly disadvantages F-Droid compared to the much less safe Google Play store, then it's unreasonable.
How does this relate to the announcement from a while back about introducing signatures that tie back to Google? (IE trusted developer program or whatever they're calling that horse shit.)
I am not very well educated when it comes to alternative stores landscape.
But I do know that in Russia there's now Rustore: https://www.rustore.ru/en
which functions by automatically downloading and updating APKs for you.
During the APK install, however, you do see the ugly Android prompt about how this app may be dangerous.
Rustore has its own app payment system, which obviously circumvents Google Play fees.
This works on regular Android phones.
Are there other examples of such stores? Perhaps it's Google's answer to that.
Unfortunately both Russia and Ukraine are slacking in losing the war so it doesn't seem that making payments to Russia will be easy soon. Now of course if they were Uzbeki or Kazakhstani stores it would be completely different.
iOS has fallen behind, I am struggling to use apps and even type on new liquid glass. My 2TB photo library is useless with the current photos app. I am trying out Pixel 10 on the side and I HIGHLY recommend it! Android does not suck anymore. I am in process of migrating stuff over slowly.
Plenty of users will benefit from restricting it or even disabling sideloading entirely. I know my mother in her 70s can't be trusted with downloading random crap from the internet.
I agree with high friction sideloading. it is the best of both worlds. no friction sideloading is too easily exploited by scammers. having a member of my family exposed to this kind of thing in the past taught me some things.
"Installing" has the connotation of doing it directly from the Play Store. This is also known as "Downloading" (because the data is on a server, in the cloud, and you're fetching it "downstream" to a local device.)
"Sideloading" doesn't refer to the installation process, but to the file transfer process. You're sideloading when you transfer, e.g. APKs from your notebook to your Android. Or, from a USB stick into your phone or something.
In general, though, "sideloading" also refers to any "non-app-store" installation. It's a kind of colloquial shorthand. It's not really a technical term. But it's adequate for getting the point across.
If you just called it "installing" without qualifying it, how would anyone know that it's a different process, or that it's accomplished not by navigating to the app store? It seems that you would invite ambiguity here!
As someone from Germany, I don't want Google to nanny family members computing devices. They don't want it either.
It is completely absurd for an ad company in a surveillance state an ocean away to play IT services for everyone. This has already gone to far.
Rather, there should be tools for value-aligned IT services and technically minded family members to help.
Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
I absolutely HATED the first time I had to deal with it... at least now it works a little better.. but the first version didn't actually tell you that you needed to go into security settings right after to enable the install.
Still not a big fan of it... though admittedly mostly just install stuff via brew/cask more than direct downloads as a result.
...which is so much of a complicated nuisance that most people simply give up. If this will go the way I think it will prepare to have to skip 10 things, write 3 ADB commands and submit a video of you spinning around for 30 seconds just to install your pirated game.
Just to install a proper call recorder or a better Work Profile manager.
Turning a possibility to install software outside of the app store should be about as normal as the fact you're using a laptop or desktop to install your pirated games.
Yeah, you.
If someone having access to "side load" an app has it to install a pirated game, then you have your OS, where you are not limited only to Apple/Amazon/Google store, simply for installing pirated software.
Google's long term strategy with Android is baffling to me. Apple has had better mobile hardware for years. Apple has higher consumer trust. Apple has better app selection (for most people). Apple has been increasingly implementing the core features that differentiate Android devices, like USB-C and RCS. Every Android user lost to the increasing iOS market share is another customer Google has to pay exorbitant fees to a competitor to access.
And Google's strategy is to continue removing differentiating features from Android that also help them mitigate the threat of antitrust? Surely the marginal revenue from the inconsequential number of sideloading users isn't attractive enough to justify that kind of strategic blunder.
I don't see any iOS advantage with the apps anymore. That was maybe true in the very beginning, during the gold rush time of the app store. But not since then. In which category are there better iOS apps? Browsers? No, strictly worse. Youtube app? No, worse. Texting? Worse or equal (Whatsapp). Podcast client? I assume worse, since there is no Antenna Pod. Social media apps? The iOS variants of those apps are afaik in no way better. What else is there, where is the advantage?
Also, while the Play store is an equally ad-riddled and unsearchable hellhole, at least Android does have with F-Droid a high quality alternative. iOS has nothing.
But sure, removing the F-Droid advantage can only hurt Android, the direction of your comment still stands.
I don't know about categories overall, but I'm attached to my iPad and won't switch to Android in part because Affinity is not available there, nor is there any near equivalent as far as I can tell.
I still think Overcast is nicer to use than Antenna Pod.
Microsoft Office apps work much better on iDevices, in my experience. (I know they exist for Android, but I've never had much luck editing there, where it actually works pretty nicely on iDevices.)
I don't game much, but my kids like gaming on iDevices much better than Android. (I have an Android tablet that I use for testing things, and they consistently reject it in favor of iPhone or iPad.)
Flowkey (music instruction app) works much better with my MIDI keyboard on iDevices than on Android (where it doesn't work and has to resort to microphone, which is buggy as hell).
I'm sure some of this is just a matter of the platform being more polished in general, but these are some apps that keep people in my house on iDevices despite having plenty of access to Android. The quality of the Youtube app doesn't move anyone, nor do the browsers.
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> In which category are there better iOS apps?
Almost all of the prosumer apps on iOS offer a consistently better experience. This is maybe less relevant on phones than on tablets, but music production, video editing, digital painting and drafting, etc...
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There's a saying in mobile development that in most companies the Android version of the app is a second class citizen. It usually brings substantially less money and so less money are invested in it. As a result the Android team is often understaffed and the app is almost always behind in feature development, less polished and with overall worse UX and more bugs compared to the iOS app.
Also iOS still has a community of iOS only indie devs that publish polished apps for iOS, it's very common to find very popular iOS app with very curated UX that are exclusive to that platform and have a good fanbase.
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> Social media apps? The iOS variants of those apps are afaik in no way better. What else is there, where is the advantage?
This is incorrect. The IOS versions of social media apps extract way less data from the device than on android, and is thus more privacy friendly.
Sure the best way would be for people not to use them, but if you "have" to, then it's better to use those on IOS.
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iOS apps consistently get updates a few weeks to months earlier than the Android version. Including some of Google’s own apps, sometimes.
To give examples:
- https://www.phonearena.com/news/google-photos-update-to-reac...
- https://www.t3.com/tech/iphones/google-maps-gets-an-iphone-u...
Both of the above are updates to Google apps that released on iOS but are planned on Android. Haven't seen any examples of the reverse.
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Camera apps.
Everything else I agree with, but the Android camera APIs do not allow developers to build good device independent camera apps the way they are available on iOS.
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The iOS YouTube app is not worse than the one in Android. Texting in iOS is arguably better or, at the very least, there is one more app to choose (Messages). And I’m curious to know what makes Antenna Pod so much better than the thousands of other podcast apps out there.
Social media apps have historically been worse in Android, because of lax app and privacy controls.
> What else is there, where is the advantage?
Personally, I’d rather not have Google buried deep inside all aspects of my phone.
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The iOS version of most social media apps is better. IOS simply has better API integration to it's hardware, where with android, many OEMs (hell this was even the case to a certain extent with older pixel phones), do a number of things that make the hardware not as easily accessible as quickly from the OS API for said feature.
This is especially relevant for the camera, but also various other sensors and hardware modules that exist inside these phones.
That said, in recent years there are just a number of other areas that android is much better at such as deeper AI integration, which goes back to even prior to the current LLM craze.
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> In which category are there better iOS apps?
Audio, and it's not even close. On iPadOS you get full-fledged DAWs like Cubasis and Logic.
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If you’d like an example, every single person who flies has an iPad to use an app called FOREFLIGHT. It doesn’t exist in android. Other EFBs exist on android but they are not as good. To a point that among things a new pilot student has to buy, like headsets and such, is an iPad.
For one, I can actually use gesture controls without constantly triggering backswipes. Even something as droll and first party as Google Photos suffers this problem, where, say, cropping a photo and pulling too close from the screen edge will result in a backswipe detection instead.
Another example is Sonos, where the iOS app contains TruePlay to tune your speakers. They can do this because there is relatively few iPhone models (microphones). But this is a general, noticeable trend, where developers will add more / better / polished features to the iOS app.
>I don't see any iOS advantage with the apps anymore. That was maybe true in the very beginning, during the gold rush time of the app store. But not since then. In which category are there better iOS apps?
I researched iOS vs Android last year so some of my info may be out of date but this is what I collected.
Apple iOS exclusives (or earlier app versions because devs prioritized iOS):
Google Android app exclusives
There really aren't many popular/prominent Android-only apps that's intended for direct consumer download from the Google Play Store. Instead, Android dominates in OEM use as "turnkey" and "embedded" base os as the GUI for their customized hardware devices:
If it's a typical mainstream user (browser + Youtube/Tiktok + WhatsApp etc), they won't see any iOS ecosystem advantages over Android.
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> In which category are there better iOS apps?
Just one example, but aviation.
Foreflight is iOS-only. Literally the only reason I have iOS devices is because of app availability in this category.
I switched from Android to iPhone last year, and this just isn’t true. There’s so many tiny issues with android apps that just don’t exist on iPhone, because the android apps have to work on all these different devices. You don’t even have to look for the kinds of apps you’re talking about because things like Safari and Apple Podcasts work really well. I know people have a lot of complaints, but things on the iPhone really do “just work”.
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iOS has less device models to target for. This makes it easier to support and deliver a more consistent experience, especially for gaming. I have also heard a few other points back in the day, but I am not sure how true they are now. One is that some social media apps might offer better quality in app camera experience. Another is that iOS userbase is more willing to spend money so devs are more likely to target iOS.
> while the Play store is an equally ad-riddled
That made me realize how little I go to the Play store these days to just browse compared to the early days of Android.
I personally can't stand Apple products ... dbut with Google doing their crap and Samsung acting like Microsoft with all the crap they load in I have to disable just to make the phone usable; I've seriously thought about moving to iPhone the past couple of years.
So many amazing open-source developers just don't want to publish their app to app store because of the fees. On android, this is way way easier. If google keeps making this difficult, then i'll just have to switch to linux phone
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iOS apps are truly sandboxed, they cannot carry out stunts like this:
https://localmess.github.io/
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There is not a single android app that is ever better than its iOS counterpart. At the very top margin, the android app is equivalent to its iOS counterpart. But there’s really only Gmail, photos, and Google Maps, and the big tech co apps that this small exception covers. Android apps don’t have to be worse from a technical standpoint, but in reality they are always worse than the equivalent iOS app.
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There's many iOS only apps that either don't have anything comparable on android or the alternative is just nowhere near as good (a lot of it is more creative-focused stuff)
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It’s not “strictly worse” for browsers unless you care about esoteric web spec features that few sites actually need today.
Safari works fine. 99% of users legitimately do not give a fuck.
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The YouTube app on iOS is superior to the Android app for one
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I don't understand how, almost 20 years after the release of these platforms, there are fully grown adult mobile OS fanboys still out there that either consciously or unconsciously spread lies about the difference between the platforms. Not just the parent comment, but this entire comment tree. For both iOS and Android. It's an almost religious cult-like type of behavior that reminds me of teenagers back in the early 2010s engaging in flamewars in YouTube comments arguing in favor of whichever gaming console they happen to own.
In that context, it made sense because they were kids, but also, these platforms were new with not much information out there, and the users were basically forced to pick one platform or the other because of the diminishing returns from owning both. 15 years ago, a PS3 or an Xbox 360 cost around $500, which adjusted for inflation is around $800 today. Not worth dropping an extra $800 for a few exclusive titles.
In the context of Android and iOS, you can gain access to both of these platforms quite easily... I mean, presumably, you already own an Android or iOS device already. For $150 you can get a decent device on the used market. Not state-of-the-art, but pretty good, all things considered. And with that you can gain a holistic perspective.
I seriously just don't get how you can stay faithful to either Android or iOS. They both are awful. I sort of see it as a necessary evil, pick your poison sort of thing. But some people get Stockholm Syndrome and never bother to try the alternatives I guess? I find that really odd.
Just wanted to chime in to say Antenna Pod is really good.
> I assume worse
You know what they say about assuming.
ForeFlight
iOS has the advantage of having a more closed app store, google play will shove whatever ad infested slop in your face and show you thousands of generic ad infested solutions to your problem, whereas iOS will usually have an easier to find not as sucky solution
Foreflight is iOS only. There is nothing even a third as good on Android. I literally have a one app iPad just for this. Sigh.
This is a really ideology driven push. I don't think you really think the iOS browsers are worse, there's just less choice, because they all fundamentally use WebKit. Having to use Chromium is a worse experience, and not being able to use Gecko under Firefox is not a clear upgrade - particularly as WebKit is so tightly integrated with the hardware, leading to less battery use. If you really don't like WebKit for whatever reason, I get it. But that's not worse.
Whenever there is an app with full feature parity (WhatsApp) you assume at best it can be equal, based on nothing. You have specific apps that work for you, and that's great, but my practical experience is much different: whenever I haven't had a choice in an app (think banking apps, carrier apps, local library apps, the Covid apps) the experience has been much better on Apple. Whenever there is a choice in apps, they're often cross-written in something that allows easy porting, and very similar, or the native Apple solution is much smoother. It's rare that an app just feels better on Android, and usually limited to cases where a specific app is only available on Android or, you know, Google.
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sorry this is not correct. (do you consistently use both?) iOS apps are consistently better, because people prefer using swift
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Honestly, you’re so wrong about the app situation that it’s almost staggering. iOS apps tend to be more stable, better polished, have better integration with system features (like the Dynamic Island), and even often have more features. This isn’t even an unfounded opinion, it’s a material problem for Google and led them to vastly investing in automated testing and quality efforts
App addressable user base is another problem for Google, one that they have mentioned in developer conferences. It’s a big part of why they’ve been trying to ship a tablet and unify android and Chromebook. If Google isn’t careful they could find themselves in a downward spiral situation, stuck between apple on one side, and android forks on the other.
And the last answer is, as always, money
- browser is deemphasized on iOS, and so it’s weaker feature set matters less
- iOS is generally easier to develop for because of less device differentiation
- on average iOS has significantly wealthier users who tend to be higher return or paying customers (seriously, look it up). This in turn leads companies to invest more heavily in iOS.
- easier integration due to a narrow system services ecosystem (no Google vs Samsung slapfights)
- unified platform advantage (apps written for iOS easily port to the watch and tablet, unlocking larger markets, and justifying greater spend in developing apps)
- apples review process is significantly stricter (for better or for worse)
Yes, Apple doesn’t have something like fdroid, and that’s really disappointing and honestly a legitimate dealbreaker for a lot of people
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For context, I'm a long-time iPhone user, who switched to a Pixel 8a about 18 months ago.
> Apple has had better mobile hardware for years.
I can't say I noticed a difference in quality when switching. Maybe some people can, but for me it was just a different, but still well-made phone.
> Apple has higher consumer trust.
I can't speak for consumers in general, but this is certainly no longer the case for me.
I also used MacOS for 20 years, and switched to Linux about a year ago because I didn't like the direction Apple was headed. It may be my choice of reading material (HN), but I receive almost daily confirmation that this was a sound decision.
> Apple has better app selection (for most people).
Not selection, necessarily, but certainly quality.
As a side note, my iPad (my sole remaining Apple device) quietly updated to iOS 26 a few days ago. Despite having spent months reading about how bad it is, I was still genuinely shocked.
Again, I can't speak for "consumers", but for me Apple now has a far worse user experience.
Personally I feel that their emphasis on privacy by design was a very winning marketing strategy. Not sure if it played with the general pop.
I’ve been an iPhone owner for a while, but recently was required to get an Android phone to be a secondary work device. I got a Pixel 10 Pro—- brand-new, Google’s flagship device—- and within about a week there was a rattling noise from the camera module any time the phone moved.
The consensus online appears to be “oh, yeah, that’s the OIS module, you have to expect it, they all do that”. Well, iPhones also have OIS and they don’t do this.
Android might be “good enough” in hardware now but it’s definitely still behind.
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Why the surprise, they do the same with search, they do the same with their Google workspace (the degree to which they are pushing AI is really hurting the product).
Google stopped being aware of their customer's needs a really long time ago, they are so arrogant they think the audience is now fully captive.
> Google stopped being aware of their customer's needs a really long time ago
Google's customers are advertisers. They cater to that segment very well. They only need to attract users with "free" and cheap services so that advertisers think their campaigns are reaching enough eyeballs. Whether or not that's the case, and whether or not the end user has a good experience, is hardly relevant.
> they think the audience is now fully captive.
It is, for the large sub-$800 segment of the smartphone market.
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> they think the audience is now fully captive.
the audience is captive. Do you have a choice to move from android, if you didnt want to have an apple device? Do you want to use a different search engine other than google? Is there another email provider than gmail (for the non-technical person - i know you can run your own). Is there another browser other than chrome (and dont say firefox or edge - because both don't compete)?
Google behave in ways that they think makes them more profit. When users cannot migrate (nor even threaten to), then it simply means they can do this.
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I can't remember a youtube change that did not degrade my experience on their platform.
Google's AI in their docs suite is so bafflingly bad. I wanted their AI to automate a sheet for me and it just choked. I switched to Claude for making a sheet that I ended up hosting in my local NAS using Microsoft Excel format.
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Not everybody wants/cares for an iPhone.
Realistically a 200 euros Xiaomi phone, to most users, is as good as they need it for seeing videos online and chatting.
If you want to spend more, at each price tier you have plenty of choice including: better hardware, better cameras, more memory, etc.
E.g. I do need dual (physical) sim phones. So I ain't buying iPhones ever for this very need.
Consumer trust is very debatable: I have been locked out of my apple id for 2 months in 2021, and that was a work machine I was locked out from. Tragic. Apparently it's not my hardware if Apple decides it's not.
Nowadays I only own an M3 Max because my employer gave it to me. But I don't even use it unless on the move, as I have a way more powerful desktop computer.
It's true, but the main reason I haven't just switched to an iPhone is the ecosystem that lets me write apps without having to pay Apple money or use their computers.
If Google is narrowing their moat on this, there are a lot fewer reasons for me, personally, to stay on the platform.
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Price hasn't been a particularly compelling difference between iOS and Android for a while. Here in the states, you can get a new iPhone 13 for $200 USD, which is 170 euros at today's exchange rate.
https://www.metrobyt-mobile.com/cell-phone/apple-iphone-13?i...
That's a prepaid cell phone company (no contracts); not sure how many months (if any) you have to pay for to unlock the phone. Renewed and unlocked ones are about $270 on amazon.
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""Apple has better app selection (for most people). Apple has been increasingly implementing the core features that differentiate Android devices, like USB-C and RCS.""
You mean Apple has been forced by regulators to implement core features like USB-C and RCS?
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s...
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...
Sure, but uninformed consumers won't see it that way. Maybe in their circles it just sounds like a great idea and they thank Apple for implementing it.
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Saying they were forced to implement USB-C is really overstating things. Apple loooved USB-C - so much so that their ill-fated butterfly switch laptops went all-in on it. They also helped design it. It's highly likely they were planning a move to USB-C anyway and the EU just pushed it forward a year.
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"Google's long term strategy with Android is baffling to me. "
How does one know there is a long-term strategy
History has shown that so-called "tech" companies often act in a reactionary manner^1
1. Often, the act is of one of copying what someone else has done. Other times it might be response to regulation
One could argue Android itself was a reaction to iOS
This is one example of the reactionary copying phenomenon but HN replies may choose to focus only on this one example and not on the overall "tech" company phenomenon of reactionism as exhibited through endless copying
> One could argue Android itself was a reaction to iOS
It quite literally was a reaction to iOS considering it was originally a copy of the BlackBerry OS (the older one in their keyboard phones) until the iPhone came out and they pivoted to copying iOS instead.
EDIT: to get ahead of any negative replies about them copying iOS, I’m fully aware that they work quite differently under the hood and Android has had various features before iOS, etc. I mean they were creating from a UI/UX standpoint a copy of the BlackBerry when Google bought them, and then when the iPhone came out they completely changed the UI/UX paradigm to match.
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Android was in development well before iOS was released, really the only big change was the touchscreen, which is obviously revolutionary, but that's a long-way from "Android is a reaction to iOS".
What's the long-term strategy with Android. How does one know it exists
> One could argue Android itself was a reaction to iOS
and it definitely was, to mitigate the risk of losing sight of the web users behaviour
This isn't about pure revenue, it's about scams.
Android has a reputation for being unsafe precisely because of sideloading (as well as low Google Play fees, looser app review, accessibility services and remote access).
This policy is bad for us HNers, but objectively good for the 95+% of people who will never sideload a legitimate Android app, but are extremely likely to get caught by scammers.
The heavy US skew of HN really distorts the arguments here, as Android-based scams aren't as common in AMerica due to the prevalence of iOS in that region.
The Play Store was riddled with scam apps last time I used it. Be it fake apps that pretend to do something while doing at best nothing ("system optimizers", "antivirus" apps) over user data mining apps (often targeted at children or young people) to hundreds of clones of commercial or open source apps - you do not have to search very long to find the real scams.
Making sideloading harder has only one goal - growing the wall around the garden a bit higher, piece by piece, layer by layer, while everything within slowly grows more toxic.
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If they actually cared about scams on Android, when I explicitly searched for <App I'm going to pay for anyway> in the Play Store, they wouldn't put <Some other random app that pays money to appear above the app I searched for> at the top instead lol
I can say that my parents have never once complained about a scam on their phone caused by sideloading.
In fact I don’t know anyone among any of my friends or family that have ever had that issue.
Every last one of my non-technical friends and family have been hit by spyware on their windows devices.
To say I’m extremely skeptical that this has anything to do with protecting users is an understatement.
In fact I’m willing to go out on a limb and say it’s a nearly non-existent issue outside of people being targeted by nation states.
Would love to see some numbers backing up the claim that sideloading is resulting in mass exploiting of Android devices because I can’t find them.
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That's a bit of a surprising postulation.
If there's a reputation, that means it's reasonably widespread. 5% doesn't seem like much.
Does this mean there are so many advanced users sideloading apps to compromise them?
Except users aren't so advanced that they are getting scammed because of side loading?
Or might it be the cascading delays in security updates that don't seem to reach devices between Google, manufacturers, and telcos? This is a much more massive (the 95%) of security hole and backdoors for scams to enter.
These arguments don't really seem to fit together or make sense.
Happy to get some links to read more about all of the statements.
There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that Google is doing this to protect users from scams. It is purely driven by their desire to control the platform and eliminate things like ad-blocking youtube apps. You're far too credulous of evil corporations' stated motives.
Scams are the justification, F-Droid hasn't had any scam apps throughout it's existence, and it's not clear every functionality it currently has will be preserved with this change like auto-updating apps and easy installation of the store itself.
Google could let users add their own signing keys (like browsers allow), and it might be they will let students or power users do this, or they could do what F-Droid does in packaging FOSS apps without developers having to provide extra PII information. If they do neither of these things, it de facto means they're only after control at the expense of normal users.
For example:
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/android-users-lose-2-...
On the topic of looser app reviews on the Play store vs the App store. I can give you a long list of fake iOS apps where you enter a 4 digit code to watch free movies. People who think Apple is manually reviewing apps are delusional.
And yet the times that I have dealt with Android phone issues (2 times in the last year), it has been an app that was popping up full screen ads.
Both phone users have no idea how to sideload, everything was installed from the Play store.
Apple only implemented USB-C due to pressure from the EU.
One area Android has a clear advantage is Android TV devices verified by Google, because there is a much wider array of streaming apps of all kinds available. However google doesn’t seem to focus on this very much, and if you look for forum recommendations for google android streaming devices it’s very often the NVIDIA shield pro from 2019. Hopefully that device will I’ll be supported for a few more years because there seems to not be good easily available alternatives.
The killer apps that gave Android an advantage on TV are now mostly available on tvOS. To me, these were VLC and RetroArch.
Apple was among the first to implement USB-C in early 2015. A whole year before Samsung and the likes.
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Because antitrust laws are strong in a few countries. While most of the 2nd or 3rd world antitrust laws are non existent. Google's strategy is to squeeze those markets. They have higher population too and hence many more advertising to sell and much more control of the "online experience" in those countries.
> Surely the marginal revenue from the inconsequential number of sideloading users isn't attractive enough to justify that kind of strategic blunder.
If the rumors are true that the whole anti-sideloading thing is mostly because some governments complained, it might not have to do with a business strategy at all.
Why not limit these restrictions to these specific locations? Surely there's already lots of location-specific and carrier-specific customizations like shutter sound in Japan, different radio frequencies and many more. It still sucks for those who live in these countries, but at least they know who to point their finger at.
Realistically, they have nothing to lose. There a duopoly. It’s not like people pissed at this are going to migrate away.
Sure, a small proportion might move to Linux Mobile.
Most of the rest of the population will just stick to Google, because they don’t have a choice.
In many countries, your government or some other essential service demands that you have either an Apple or Google device.
I'm similarly baffled for the reasons you state but your breakdown of the market differentiations is a little hyperbolic.
> Apple has had better mobile hardware for years
Apple has never had better hardware (on mobile). Apple has had better software support & integration for their hardware that has lead to e.g. strong camera quality advantages (iOS camera app has been able to use the hardware better to produce photos people want despite some Android OEMs having objectively better camera modules since those OEMs have to work through a lot of Google contracts & software extraction).
The hardware has never been better - their holistic ecosystem has just made integrations with it smoother.
> Apple has better app selection (for most people)
This has been true but it's always been marginal, & the "for most people" qualifier has contracted significantly in recent years. Both Google's & Apple's 1P offerings have declined in quality & popularity, but Google have increased lock-in & reliance on theirs in ways Apple can't, while the 3P offerings on Android have improved significantly relative to iOS. Gone are the days of companies releasing exclusively on iOS, or the Android version being an afterthought with missing features - if anything it's swung in the other direction.
To be clear, I think your points still stand: Google's recent strategy doesn't make sense for Google. I just don't think it's as glaringly clear cut as you make out.
One aspect that's worth keeping in mind is the non-US market. Apple has a 58% market share in the US but it's 28% worldwide. Outside of the US market the impact of that "every Android user lost to the increasing iOS market share" is significantly diluted (tbh I'm not sure it's even increasing outside of the US at all) & emerging markets are growth areas.
>Apple has never had better hardware (on mobile).
This is just straight up false. Qualcomm's current top of the line processors are about 3 years behind what you can get in Apple's cheapest product (that being the 16e), and the budget phones (and by "budget" I mean "the 600 dollar ones") are another 3 years behind that.
iPhones don't generally become too slow to realistically use until their support lifetime expires. Androids are like that out of the box unless you spend over a thousand dollars, and those only last for about half the time (a combination of inferior hardware and inferior software). It doesn't matter if you have a 120Hz screen if the UI only updates at 20.
This is why the only killer feature for Android (outside the cameras) is adblocking- which, of course, is what Google wants to prevent. They don't want you to run real Firefox (with the only effective adblock remaining), and they want you to pay for YouTube Premium rather than using NewPipe (or some other ReVanced successor) so you can't get out of paying 10 bucks to listen to a video with the screen off.
Cost? Apple stuff is expensive and unaffordable or inaccessible to a lot of the world. Google'd Android is the only option if you can't shell out for an iPhone (assuming you don't want to buy an unsupported 5+ year old device second/third-hand).
I have a feeling, despite Google's communications, this is all an attempt to thwart the numerous ad-free YouTube apps.
Another reason it should have been broken apart years ago. It's laughable that the biggest ad company in the world owns the largest video site in the world, largest browser in the world, largest search engine in the world, and largest mobile OS in the world.
NewPipe (FOSS available on F-Droid) is nice alternative to ads-infested YouTube. I disabled YouTube and YouTube Music apps on my mobile, and I use NewPipe instead. You can even download YT videos or audio from YT videos using it.
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If google push too hard, someone will make a "youtube mirror" - ie. a complete copy of youtube at a different domain.
The actual data could be hosted p2p across all the users devices, and any missing data retrieved one-time-only from real youtube servers.
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The biggest differentiator is price. An entry level Android phone is about $300 while an iPhone is in the $1000 range. And to be honest, anything more than an entry level Android is luxury these days. I say that because that's what I have and I have never felt held down, except maybe for pictures, but it is good enough for my (lack of) skills as a photographer.
So, Android may actually benefit from a lack of differentiation: like iOS, for a third of the price seems like a good value proposition.
The iPhone 16e (came out less than 6 months ago) starts at $600 without carrier subsidy. That’s about half of what you claimed.
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This is a legitimately crazy take, yes the differentiations are less but how we got there isn’t so altruistic
I’m firmly in the Apple ecosystem and every one of those examples were not Apple’s unilateral decision
I think seeing the noose circling around both Apple and Google’s necks better explains the quagmire that Google is in
Apple was getting ahead of a European consumer protection ruling to switch to a single interoperable cable, USBC was there
Apple and Google worked to make RCS better for years, as Apple was ignoring it and Google was using a non-standard RCS
What confuses me is that easy "sideloading" has been the main thing that kept down the proliferation of degoogled custom ROMs.
Secure boot prohibits custom ROMs on most android devices
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Well you misunderstand enshittification. It will never get better again. Both Google and Apple have enshittified their phones. You can verify this on the App Store, on the Play Store, both of which have now more than 50% of search result screen space dedicated to ads, more when it comes to scams [1]. AND you can verify this in the financial statements of Apple and Google, where you see what we've always seen in Google: steadily increasing at a fixed rate profits from ads on the play store in Google's case, and steadily increasing at a fixed rate profits from "Services", which is App Store ads.
In Apple's case this has been the only Apple business to grow at all in several of the recent years. In fact there's quite a few Apple businesses that look like they are "revenue neutral", most famously iPads. Google is better, but not by much. Cloud is growing fast ("but why?" is a question that's unanswered. I mean, "because of AI", of course, but ... seriously?)
So not only are they enshittified, and you see them getting worse and worse over time, but the financial statements show: if you're expecting this to get any better either in the Apple or Google case, you're insane. Because clearly ads for scams are worth it for advertisers, and most other types of ads are not worth it. The situation evolves more and more towards the cable channel situation of 20 years back.
You could also reverse the view. The simple question: "are people willing to compromise on hardware quality to get less ads?" has a very clear NO answer. "Are governments/institutions that are totally dependent on these systems willing to pay to either improve phones or make an alternative available?", again has boatloads of evidence that the answer is NO, in all caps.
[1] Search for "credit card" or "lose weight" and judge for yourself. Top results are promoting Apple or Google themselves, everything else are ads, and very bad deals that trivially will neither accomplish the promised financial independence nor weight loss. Or should I put it like this: the credit card deals advertised are so bad they might achieve weight loss. By the way ads designed to mislead, which the top ads for either search obviously are, are what both Google and Apple promised time and again never to do.
they see apples recurring revenue and lust over it, and the correlation is the walled-garden and they want it too
personally, it makes me less enthusiastic about android as i don't need another iphone but n=1, so maybe it will work out for them....
People who are reaponsible for Android all use Google phones. They dont care about android. They dont use it. They dont understand their use cases.
If you are hired by a manufacturer of say cola, you cannot drink the competition cola.
Those in google laugh when asked to show their phones - and then show iphones. In any other business they would be terminated.
I don't know how it works at Google, but unless they're giving away Pixel phones for free to their employees (or at a very, very strong discount), they have no business forcing their employees to use their products.
Here is how a job works: worker works, company gives money. Workers do whatever the fuck they want with the money they earn.
I think an edit is in order, as your post, in the current form, doesn't make any sense.
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Android gets a bad rap because of security and Apple has exploited this in their marketing campaigns to the max. So the moment Google does something to address this glaring hole in their security model the 1% vocal minority throws a fit. You’ll still be able to side load, but because it has extra friction they’ll threaten to switch to iOS. To which I say - go for it. Google doesn’t care about people who side load apps like an automatic reloading the chamber. You’re an insignificant percentage of their base.
Personally, I would rather see Android only run signed and sanctioned apps to prevent the technologically illiterate from getting pwned. If you want to be able to side load then sign up to be a developer and go to town on your device.
I think they are worrying about antitrust, and believe (probably correctly, unfortunately) that whether they get hit by antitrust or not is entirely political. There's more than enough evidence, for any justice department which wants to. They're not going to change that by keeping Android moderately open.
What they can do, is make themselves politically useful to whoever will be in charge. Right now the war on general purpose computing is in high gear, due to panic over AI models, social media manipulation and (as always) kids. That's the only ticket to avoid an antitrust crackdown.
Their strategy is growing markets, especially in india, and africa, and of course China. It's where the chinese oem dominate. Beside chinese OEM, i think the only other player is Samsung. So google strategy seems to be to circumvent people from misusing their OS by blocking certain services (mainly ads). This is done via apps from fdroid, and rooting and what not. If google can control how people uses their devices (block vpn based adblocking, or rooting all together), they have better grip on the market. At the end of the day, Android is front for an ad platform.
> [Google's] strategy is growing markets, especially in india, and africa, and of course China.
Really? China? Where Google services are banned and Android phones come with local OS versions that cut them out? "High-friction sideloading" won't affect anyone in China. It won't be part of their experience at all.
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I gave an iPhone a shot fof like a week but had to return it because it didn't have alternatives to the apps I was using on Android. Apps like BitCalculator, Convertbee, Aegis, a decent calculator with sin/cos/log and the ability to write expressions like the default on Android, Wireguard and a decent browser with an ad blocker. No Safari doesn't qualify.
It’s incredibly sad to watch Google abandon the values that inspired so much trust and belief that there is a better way to build a company.
Long time Pixel user here who has always believed the story that Apple has the closed, but refined, higher quality experience and Google has the slightly freer, but coarser UX.
I was convinced to make the switch this year and the Apple iPhone 17 Pro + whatever iOS version is, by far the worst phone I’ve ever owned.
Photos are worse, low light is worse, macros are worse, the UI is laggy, buggy and crashes.
The keyboard and autosuggest is shockingly bad.
Incredibly popular apps on iOS (YT, X, etc) are just as bad and often worse.
iMessage is a psyop. The absolute worst messaging app in history with zero desktop access for non-Mac users?!
If you’re on Android, and especially pixel, please know that Apple has completely given up and no longer executes at the level you remember from 10-15 years ago.
The whole software world is shit now. The foundations were stable decades ago. Like Windows kernel, WinAPI, .NET, WPF, Linux kernel. But end user software is so terrible. Windows 11 with ads and unhelpful AI. macOS which is a bit less terrible, but still too bloated. Linux with its eternal changes between X, Wayland, Alsa, Pipewire, Pulseaudio, sysvinit, systemd, and endless choices. Both iOS and Android are terrible. iOS was perfect 10 years ago, it's absolute clownfest now. I would blame AI vibe coders, but it started before. I don't know who to blame. Why can't we just build solid minimal non-bloated OS that will last for decades without major rewrites. We've got so good foundations but so terrible end product.
Apple makes a lot more money. Google wants to do what Apple does, to make more money like Apple.
Google might also get paid to enable surveillance.
> Apple has had better mobile hardware for years.
Well no, Chinese phones are above Apple material-wise (better battery, better cameras, better cooling) and on par SoC-wise since last year. That's what makes Google's strategy so baffling.
> Apple has better app selection (for most people).
It's entirely the same. I have gone back and forth regularly for the past 10 years. Android is completely on par app-wise. Apple has the iMessage lock-in in the US obviously but not in the rest of the world. Apple might have a slight advantage on the pro segment with the iPad but I don't think it has a huge impact on phones.
The really baffling thing to me is that while they lock down Android, they pay to put Gemini on iOS. Google has a real competitive advantage with IA and they just gave it to Apple.
It's clear to me that they are two companies fighting each other inside Google: the ex-Motorola who wants to be Apple and the service side who wants to be Microsoft.
I personally fear that they are making the bed of the regulators who will probably come for Play Protect at some point to open the door for alternative OS providers at least in Europe. But maybe they think it's coming anyway and are strengthening their position and trying to milk what they can in the meantime.
How are they on par SoC-wise? Last time I checked, Qualcomm was still trying to catch up to Apple.
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> they pay to put Gemini on iOS. Google has a real competitive advantage with IA and they just gave it to Apple.
What Google loses by pushing iOS AI customers to ChatGPT outweighs what they gain by trying to convince people to switch phones for access to Gemini.
Chinese phones have great hardware at great prices, unfortunately they suck at software.
So unless you want to spend the time and effort to switch to and work with the quirks of LineageOS or similar, you get an overall worse experience.
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Advertising folks not engineers are now in charge of Google, and they are gaining influence at Apple now as well.
This is the real threat. Brand loyalty is a distraction.
The lock in with Safari is horrifc though, the browser on a $20 prepaid android phone is better than the browser on your most expensive ios device. Apple says well you need to write a native app, stop using the web and PWA's. Allow Apple to mediate absolutely everything.
While I agree with the principle, and we as tech professionals and enthusiasts should be lobbying hard for law makers and regulators to open iOS up to allow for different browsers, there’s a couple flaws here without these precedents or activism.
The alternative here is not Firefox gaining more market share, it’s further encroachment of Chrome and derivatives. You’re not getting this big win for browser diversity. I’m not sure what you really gain here as Safari works fine for near most everything most people do.
Also I don’t think PWA’s have proliferated on desktop or Android despite Google’s efforts in raising awareness for them. It seems to me like consumers largely aren’t into web app shells. They either visit a web app in their browsers or use the App Store apps, by a large margin
Better mobile hardware is highly specific. Crappy batteries worse than literally all competition? Check for first what, 5 or 6 generations? For many people, battery life is single most important attribute of their phone.
Also USB-C ain't some differentiating feature of android, rather rest of the world and electronics. Fully apple's fault here, it could have been their standard as the one, but greed is greed.
Screens were always better on Samsungs flagships (apple buys screens there too) - mildly higher resolution, refresh rate and contrasts but these are rather unimportant. As an non-apple tech user, apple phone hardware has very few things that interest me or put them above the others.
Its better integration with software that did put them above, since it was optimized for a very narrow band of hardware so could get far even with subpar hardware (till M chips came but these days they are almost on par with Snapdragons). But that software has a list of issues much bigger than hardware above so no, thank you.
AnkiDroid, a fully self-contained version of Anki for Android, not requiring pairing with a desktop app and completely free, does not exist or iOS. Or did not, last time I checked. So that would be a deal breaker.
Maybe by now there is some Android emulation for iOS that can do it?
> Surely the marginal revenue from the inconsequential number of sideloading users isn't attractive enough to justify that kind of strategic blunder.
Or you could analyze this at the actual face value: the damage to Google’s brand caused by malware campaigns, especially faux-banking apps robbing people in some regions, is greater than the damage from making sideloading harder for some edge case users.
Not everything is a giant conspiracy; this move has always looked pretty clear cut to me from Google’s standpoint and I’ve never really seen any evidence to the contrary.
Except only a few countries in the world have wages where their citizens can afford Apple.
While I can afford Apple, out of principle I am not buying anything above 300 euros, that requires me to also buy another computer for hobby coding, and a dev license.
All my use of Apple hardware is via projects where pool devices are assigned to the delivery team.
Mobile providers usually offer loans ("service contracts") where people get phones outside their financial standing (I regularly see high end iPhones and foldable phones of €1-2k run by people in a country where average monthly salary is less than €1k): if a highly visible device like your phone can be had for 10% of your monthly salary, people will, unfortunately, opt for it.
I tend to not use Apple not due to cost (I honestly believe it's OK to pay a premium for quality; I might disagree they offer it today though, as I do use a couple of their devices at work), but because of how closed their ecosystem is (and yes, all my personal devices are running some sort of Linux, and Android phones are rooted and with bootloader unlocked).
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This is one of Apple's marketing strategy.
Faux luxury.
Totally works in the US too on teens, moms, and lower middle class people.
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> Apple has higher consumer trust.
That is quickly eroding and has never been justified other than by marketing.
> Apple has better app selection (for most people).
Android has always had a much better selection of open source software, which, at least to me, is the thing that matters most.
I think what is happening here is the moat is breaking. With llms getting good enough to make a program, how long until it is a whole OS...? And then how long until regulars figure out play store and play appa not needed???
Agreed. The only thing they have going for them is that you can degoogle your android device, but you can't deapple your iphone, and here they are making moves that suggest they may back off from that position.
> core features that differentiate Android devices, like USB-C and RCS
It's obvious you've never used Android if you think these are core features LMAO. No one cares that much about connector type, more the fact it's using an industry standard versus proprietary. No one cares about RCS, everyone uses WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Messenger, Line, etc...
Core features are stuff like being able to search for a business through the phone app, Maps telling you where you parked your car, unprompted, compatibility with the casting protocol, the ability to make ANY app the default for a particular task, the ability to sideload, the fact you can switch phone brands and get whatever hardware you want but your core OS with all your accounts stays the same. Basically the ability to do what you want win your OS and no one restricting your phone's features.
As for Google's strategy, it's the same as Valve's. Having a platform they can't be locked out of since both MS and Apple have shown they'll abuse their market power.
Apple has better app selection? Where? Does it have Tasker? Or browsers that aren't reskin of safari?
Thinking Apple hardware is better is utterly laughable when you look at non-US Android devices.
Much better camera sensors, much better silicon carbon batteries etc in Oppo, Vivo, Honor and Xiaomi devices than anything Apple produces. Form factors Apple still hasn't figured out, such as 7th gen Foldables, Flip foldable phones etc, Camera zoom lenses that can be attached...
Apple has a huge hole in their screen that I hate.
Apple's certainly been working to destroy their consumer trust though!
At least on my end the political knee bending by Tim Cook and their recent iOS and MacOS updates have me firmly on the side of not giving any more money to Apple. (Sadly, I still pay for Apple One for hy family, so I'm not perfect. But... hey, it's a start. Speak with your wallets).
And I will be considering alternatives when my machines which I will be running to their end stop working.
It's really such a shame cause I really liked their privacy stances, accessibility work, and focus on user experience.
Now I say, screw Apple, and encourage people to boycott and be wary of upgrades.
> Apple has had better mobile hardware for years.
No Aux port, no usb. Slow phone with slow animations. But maybe this is fixed, its been 10 years.
>Apple has higher consumer trust.
lmao, this is just a user error problem. None have trust. If they trust, yikes. Thats a negative that Apple can brainwash people.
>Apple has better app selection (for most people).
Solid no here. Being able to install stuff from fdroid is amazing.
>Apple has been increasingly implementing the core features that differentiate Android devices
As long as you are okay with waiting 4 years. Sure.
You forgot to mention how poor iPhone security is. People have died due to Apple's poor security.
"Slow phone with slow animations" is a crazy assessment, I switched from Galaxy S7 to iPhone XR in 2018 because the Galaxy was (like every other Android I had) slow to do everything, applications would crash randomly and my phone would just give up and reboot without warning. Not to mention all of the killer Android features that Google had gotten rid of up to that point (RIP notification ticker, I miss you so much). What's the point of being able to sideload and customize when none of it works on a day to day basis? And when Google/other Android phone manufacturers insist on their phones being more and more similar to iPhone/iOS, the reasons to stay on Android go away too.
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Most Android devices also don't have aux ports. iPhones have USB now too.
Losing the ability to easily sideload apps is what we're talking about.
How do iPhones have worse security than Android???
> No Aux port, no usb. Slow phone with slow animations. But maybe this is fixed, its been 10 years.
It has been 10 years and none of this is true today, also the average person doesn’t care about an aux port.
> Solid no here. Being able to install stuff from fdroid is amazing.
Not sure if you’re serious here, the app selection is far better on the App Store (and also Google Play Store) due to the nature of not being restricted to purely FOSS apps.
> You forgot to mention how poor iPhone security is.
Citation needed, iOS has the second best mobile security and is at worst equivalent to stock Android. The only OS that surpasses iOS by a large amount is GrapheneOS.
> People have died due to Apple's poor security.
This could also be said for any other OS/maker? Nothing is 100% secure/private.
> Apple has had better mobile hardware for years.
Better on what? Versus what?
> Apple has higher consumer trust.
Not from me and my peers. All nerds/devs/sysadmins.
> Apple has better app selection (for most people).
Again, based on what?
> Apple has been increasingly implementing the core features that differentiate Android devices, like USB-C and RCS.
Only when forced.
> Every Android user lost to the increasing iOS market share is another customer Google has to pay exorbitant fees to a competitor to access. What are you even talking about?
Don't get me wrong, iPhones are great devices, but I prefer the Android ecosystem time and time again.
>Every Android user lost to the increasing iOS market share is another customer Google has to pay exorbitant fees to a competitor to access.
What? Are you referring to the 36% of ad revenue Google pays to Apple? I don't think Google is too concerned about that.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/apple-gets-36percent-of-goog...
Oh come on fanboy, Apple doesn't have meaningfully better hardware, consumer trust, or app selection (for most people the opposite is true!)
Oof, Apple adopting core 'Android' features... Yea, finally? Increasing iOS market share? Where? Not most places
I think it's weird you come at this from an antitrust angle when I would totally make the argument the other way.
If there's pressure to remove this feature, then it's from companies that make apps that anyone can pull up in Revanced and they can patch it and can be running a version of a piece of software that shouldn't exist with "premium" features enabled. I don't think there's an argument against it really besides that. At least not an honest, intelligent argument....
Ultimately, I doubt many would jump to Apple. Inertia would insist: People just won't upgrade. Which is already occurring, people are keeping their devices longer, especially Apple users. And they wonder why their battery stops working... Oy vey!
> And Google's strategy is to continue removing differentiating features from Android that also help them mitigate the threat of antitrust
Sigh. When will HN learn that the vast majority of customers dont see those as differentiating features.
One of the key things separating humans from other animals is being able to put yourself in another’s shoes.
>Apple has had better mobile hardware for years. Classic Apple glazer take. This is why I still made another 100% with Apple stock over past 5 years because stupid people got gaslight into buying their overpriced stuff that is marginally better if at all.
Yeah, at no point has Apple ever had meaningfully better hardware than the competition. They have always been a more expensive version of the same hardware you can get from their competitors, just this one has an apple logo. But a lot of people, even smart people, are fooled by the marketing.
These "better" claims are simply not true. But it's surely a marketing Koolaid they sell.
That said, Android options are dwindling which is not a good thing. Remember LG? They are gone.
[dead]
>>Apple has had better mobile hardware for years
Are you joking? Look at the latest Xiaomi, Oppo and other Chinese manufacturers, Apple would love to have the hardware they are shipping right now. From batteries to cameras and screens, apple is way behind on hardware tech. Yeah they are better than Samsung - but Samsung has also massively fallen behind what's the state of the art.
>>is another customer Google has to pay exorbitant fees to a competitor to access.
Last time I checked, it's apple paying Google, billions of dollars a year? And it will be even more now that Apple announced they are going to use Gemini as their AI base model.
> Last time I checked, it's apple paying Google, billions of dollars a year?
You checked wrong. Google pays Apple on the order of $20 billion to be the default search on iOS - this is so significant it accounts for ~5% of Apple's annual revenue
If any of these manufacturers decide to include an EMR pen in the body of the phone, like Samsung's S-Pen, they'll have me as a customer. The S-Pen so completely changes the experience that I am unwilling to go back.
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> Look at the latest Xiaomi, Oppo and other Chinese manufacturers, Apple would love to have the hardware they are shipping right now.
This is true, but their phones don't ship with Google services out of box (at least the last time I checked). So in reality, "Google's Android" is really mostly Samsungs and Pixels.
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Sideloading is a neologism to scare users and lawmakers, it just means "Installing software" and should be a basic right.
Also software installation in Android has been high friction for a while. Installing an APK on my phone is at least 10 clicks.
I think what is missing here is the growing trend of scammers convincing people they are their bank (or whatever) and walking them through enabling side-loading and then installing malware (sometimes to address some urgent security issues with their account).
This is meant to counter an actual issues that is affecting many many users.
If you can convince the user your are their bank, can convince them to install software and walk them through how to do it and enable side loading, you can also convince them to input their logging into any webpage.
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If that was the only reason, they would proactively cooperate with alternative app-stores like F-Droid to allow them to provide a lesser friction flow for open source releases. My question would be why I they see themselves as the only possible trust anchor here. A high friction method to install a different app store, once, IMHO would be OK.
> This is meant to counter an actual issues that is affecting many many users.
No, that's an excuse. Google just wants a tighter grip on their software chain, which is understandable if they were Apple but they're not.
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Should we whitelist the whole web for this reason too? Why does that trend use apps and not websites?
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You cannot save these people by technical means. They'll just fall for something else instead.
The only one who can protect them is a family member or appointed guardian.
Or maybe, just maybe, we start doing something about the criminals and those who protect them. It's ridiculous how these industrial-scale scam operations are allowed to exist.
I have no trust in a solution that mostly benefits the proposer.
By all means let people curate and use safe lists of software, but let's not pretend that making the life harder for the few registries containing solely open source and vetted software is in any way about making people safer.
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This has been going on since the Internet became widespread and Windows users started regularly downloading random executables from random websites.
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Is the solution to make it harder? Or is the threat of scammers and the insecurity of the OS used as false flag to make installing software outside of the profitable walled garden much much harder?
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It seems you think what is missing here is some FUD, which is what I believe you are feeding us with here.
If there's anyone people need to be protected against, it's Alphabet and Apple and the entities they let in intentionally, rather than specter of "growing trend of scammers".
What do they use the app to do?
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This is revisionist history to make things sound scary and evil. The term sideloading was first published before Google existed.
Go to the XDA forums and search for the word "sideload". You can filter for results before 2020 if you like, you get hits going back decades.
It's been in common use since the day we got smartphones. The term dates back to the 1990s. I remember reading the word when I bought my HTC Evo at launch. It's an industry standard term and has been for longer than Google has existed.
You know this is the internet and anyone can fact check anything at any time? Including you!
[flagged]
Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
That is my own opinion as an Android developer and ex custom ROM maintainer, I've not read that blog post.
Instead of ad-hominem, can you explain what do you really disagree on?
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Cromulent for describing something of secondary importance or shadowy nature yes, but the entire idea is that that is wrong.
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>Sideloading is a neologism to scare users and lawmakers, it just means "Installing software" and should be a basic right.
No it's not. The term originated far before this debacle, and carries a meaningful distinction than just "installing". Specifically it means installing from a non-first party source. You might not agree the restriction should exist, or that even the concept of first party source at all, but for communication purposes it's worth having a simple word to describe that concept, rather than something like "installing from a non-first party app store".
>No it's not. The term originated far before this debacle, and carries a meaningful distinction than just "installing". Specifically it means installing from a non-first party source
It's amazing how many confidently wrong people are springing up out of the wordwork to present revisionist history about the meaning of "install" like it's ancient wisdom. Pre-mobile computing treated "install" as neutral and primary and had no built in relation to centralized distribution. Sideloading as a term of art originally, in practice came into usage for transferring media to devices, and some cloud file hosts briefly used it to mean load a file to an online drive without downloading it to computer. It's usage was varied, irregular, and not at any threshold of popular acceptance for one meaning or another.
Windows, Dos, Linux, and online self-hosted services had no notion of "sideloading", or at least no usage of that vocabulary and did not use this notion of "install" that is now being retrospectively declared a longstanding historical norm. Even now, that's not a term used in Windows or Linux. Even Apple, who very much in practice utilize this controlled distribution model but even they don't use this sideloading/installing verbal distinction. In Apple's lexicon installing is neutral with respect to where an app comes from.
So it's staggering to see a specific term of art that deviates from historical precedent that only is used in an Android context and only relatively recently in the history of computing be referred to as if its observing a longstanding precedent across all of computing. It's nothing of the sort.
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So... installing software?
>Specifically it means installing from a non-first party source.
Just like 99% of software running on computers in the world today? How is it different from "installing software"?
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> Specifically it means installing from a non-first party source
What "first-party" source? Apple invented out of thin air the notion of a "first-party" software source or that computer users can only install software approved by a central authority.
before phones that was just called installing software
The idea the manufacturer of a product is a "first party" is BS.
You are the first party. If I own the device, I am the first party.
The manufacturer is now a second or third party after you own the device, and for most ideas, a third party, especially if they don't truly offer real support of the device.
I take the opportunity to let people know that there are alternatives to Google/Apple duopoly on mobile. Link: https://www.ubuntu-touch.io/
Sure, GrapheneOS is often suggested but Ubuntu Touch is a really interesting alternative, their own store and ecosystem.
The community is amazing and welcoming. If there are Android apps which you can't do without, they can be emulated and used anyway. Imagine switching to Linux and then using Wine for the apps you really still need.
Yes, it's not perfect but Linux isn't either. If you think you're sufficiently tech savvy and want to make a change, give Ubuntu Touch a try. Find a cheap second hand supported device and play around, make some fun apps. (devices currently supported: https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/ )
To me it's like being back when there was only Windows and Macs as viable home computer OS, and people were getting their feet wet with Linux and all its flavours. Now, it's the same but for mobile.
Ubuntu Touch has amazing UX, IMO. Sadly it's been non-viable for practically forever, and is non-viable today unless you want to use a 7-year-old out-of-production device. It's practically abandonware with a few hobby maintainers at this point, as much as it had potential compared to other alternatives.
I was under the impression that Ubuntu Touch worked just fine with the Fairphone 5 which is very much not a "7-year-old out-of-production device". I'm currently writing this from a Fairphone 4 (with CalyxOS, not Ubuntu Touch though).
I have struggled with getting anything functional on a Fairphone running Ubuntu Touch. The problem is you can't really run any Linux app, it has to be written to support their specific display manager. Running regular Linux apps is possible but not properly documented and I haven't gotten it to work. Android apps through Waydroid sort of works, but is unstable and not suitable for daily use.
I really want Linux on mobile to be a thing, but I haven't found it yet. PinePhone is abandoned, Purism just isn't a finished product, Planet Computers doesn't even build a phone with Linux support anymore.
The only thing that's current and active I've seen is a Hong Kong startup https://furilabs.com/. I've got one on my desk to try, hoping it will be something usable as a daily driver.
I work at Furi Labs; and am writing this comment from my FLX1 daily driver. Let me know what you think when you give it a shot :)
there is also jolla, their new device is supposed to be shipping this year
It's never going to work. Any competitor that isn't Android won't have app support (e.g. you won't even be able to message people in 90% of the world where WhatsApp, Telegram, Line, etc. are the de facto communication method for almost the entire population).
So you need some way to run Android apps... which is totally possible, but at that point why not just use Android?
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I suppose emulating Android apps on a non-Android system will have the same problem as trying to run them in an Android without Google Services or in a rooted phone, i.e., banking (and similar) apps detecting it and refusing to run?
Were it not for that, I would never have stopped using Huawei, IMO the best phone brand by a mile. But I'm too busy a person to depend on hacks and having to regularly find new workarounds to access my banks.
I think you're right about certain apps refusing to run in an emulated environment.
I'm beginning to think we need to consider such apps, and the hardware they run on, as the outsiders. Keep a cheap "normal" Android phone for those apps, and those apps alone. Then keep a "real" second device for everything else. Up to you which one gets the SIM card and provides connectivity for the other (and ordinary phone services).
I'd rather go back to old-fashioned hardware dongles from banks – but hey, lacking that, maybe I'll just think of the first of those two devices as a clunky, overly expensive one of those.
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At the moment I would recommend FuriLabs solution. https://furilabs.com/
It already has a built in Android VM that allows seamless FDroid and Aurora Store usage.
Since FuriOS is a based Debian distro, it should be reduced friction to use PostmarketOS or UbuntuTouch.
That looks surprisingly good (I see there's a 5G modem).
Does it make phone calls + send texts + manage battery reasonably?
Also, what does "non-rugged" design mean?
(I've had a few pieces of niche phone hardware before, and none of them had good answers to even one of those questions.)
> alternatives to Google/Apple duopoly on mobile. Link: https://www.ubuntu-touch.io/
This is far from the only alternative. There are also Mobian, PureOS, postmarketOS and more. Unlike Ubuntu Touch, they allow you to run ordinary Linux desktop apps. Also there is hardware not tied to an ancient Android kernel, designed to run desktop GNU/Linux: Pinephone and Librem 5. The latter is my daily driver.
> I take the opportunity to let people know that there are alternatives to Google/Apple duopoly on mobile.
In my country (which will AFAIK be one of the first ones to get the new app install restrictions), so far I haven't found any.
You're not allowed to import phones which are not certified by ANATEL, and AFAIK all currently sold certified phones are either Android (from several hardware brands), Apple, and feature phones.
> To me it's like being back when there was only Windows and Macs as viable home computer OS, and people were getting their feet wet with Linux and all its flavours. Now, it's the same but for mobile.
There's one VERY IMPORTANT distinction: back then, you could easily take a Windows or Mac computer and install Linux in it. For mobile, it's never been that easy; strong cryptographic signing of the operating system, combined with endless churn of the hardware design (there's no "PC compatible" equivalent for phones), and there being no way to keep the data partition intact when installing a custom ROM, make it much harder for people to "get their feet wet" with alternative operating systems.
Ubuntu Touch so far has the best hardware compatibility for things like camera and battery life. But it also insists on doing a lot of its own thing like using Mir instead of X and click packages. Running programs inside Libertine often crashes for me and is cumbersome. It makes developing for it harder. clickable needs Docker installed just so you can build and run your own apps on the device! Instead of letting you launch things quickly from terminal.
It make some things that should be easy on Linux harder. I.e., there's no Firefox + mobile tweaks like other linux mobile OSes, in part because it wants you to use Morphic.
But other linux mobile OSes dropped support for Halium/libhybris and even the very few that still have it don't seem to match Ubuntu Touch's level of hardware support.
> like using Mir instead of X
X11 is dead. It's over. At least Mir is now a Wayland client.
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Thank you for the much needed hopeful note. Maybe I'll try doing exactly that, sounds like a fun hobby. My biggest worry about Linux on mobile is that banking apps will stubbornly refuse to offer support to these platforms, basically forever.
Unfortunately, apps have always been the barrier to entry for competing options.
If your platform doesn't have apps, then your platform won't have users, which won't attract developers and BigCo's to write apps for your platform. Rinse and repeat.
This is how Windows Phone was wiped out, despite them spending *a lot* of money trying to attract companies and developers to write stuff for their OS.
Windows Phone was fantastic because it had no apps. Wish it managed to stake out and maintain a decent portion of the phone market. If 30% of the population could say "Oh sorry TicketMaster, I can't install your app, please just email me a pdf or text me a link to your tickets that I can just open in a web browser" the that would benefit everyone, even non-WP users.
I see an announcement from 2016 saying they're adding React Native support. Does it actually work? That'd allow low-effort ports onto their platform, and I'd much rather see them succeed than be stuck with the current duopoly.
(So, I'd probably put in the effort.)
I was looking into buying one of those: https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk/
No experience, but if they lock out Android I probably will.
The issue with buying phones like that, is they are just insanely expensive. Without shipping/tax, that phone is CAD$1500, whereas I can buy a refurbished Samsung S22 for CAD$350 (all in), that has roughly the same specs, but for 1/5 the price. I understand small companies can't use economies of scale like Samsung/Apple, but it's still really bad, and the majority of consumers wouldn't even take a second glance at it from the price.
Notice that, per https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk/devices-specification , the newest OS they ship is Android 11. I owned a Gemini and I liked the hardware, but they don't update software and I consider that a deal breaker.
I would like to see a high friction flow for installing all the crap from the Play Store to "protect and educate users". "Are you sure you want to install this app? It's only got a score of 2.8 and only 7 reviews, and will ask for all of these permissions?"
Even if it has 4.8 and 7000 reviews it's often fake 4.8 because the reviews are botted / paid / dark patterned (e.g. when you pop up star rating on your users and beg them "rate the app plz" and when the users tap anything but 5 stars you say "k, ty" and keep those "bad" reviews for yourself)
That was just an example to communicate my idea: a better way to validate authenticity of the app could and should be used.
But to your point specifically, Play store and App Store have APIs to rate from within the app: when the pop up shows, app author does not have an option to avoid getting a 1-star rating (they are also time-restricted, eg. at most once every 180 days for Apple IIRC).
What devs do though, is to preempt it with "Are you enjoying our app?", and only giving you a formal rating pop-up if you answer "Yes".
I want even worse restrictions on my parent phone so they dont install spyware. I want "install ONLY from fdroid". I trust their one server in a basement more than Google at this point.
The hilarious part in all of this is watching Epic Games sue Google over how bad the "high friction" flow was for them to sideload their hefty bundle of Google Play violations and win the rights to be back in the Play Store.
It's OK now that Epic can have a one-click download for Fortnite to shove all the friction back into the sideloading experience.
And I want to see transparent price structures. Hey, this app is free. Installed. Only works with subscription. I hate it.
Edit: to clarify, I don't hate subscription, I hate that I cannot search for free apps in the store.
If the make sideloading high-friction, either via account-bound or apk upload or permissions from MNO/ISP, I will leave android. I have a bunch of my own apps that only I use, not released to the public, if I cannot use them, I have zero reason to stay on android.
I think one of the reasons they want to lockdown the system is to prevent guys like me from locking THEM out of my home/ecosystems, as and example, I build my own launchers, specifically for TCL TV's, which runs Android TV and has Developer Mode + adb. Which means I remove all the bloat & ad garbage, which they want to prevent.
We will get to the point where google will remove your ability to set custom dns servers and only use theirs.. just wait & see friends.
Anywhoo, when this side loading fence materializes, I will jump ship to apple.
Why jump to another abuser when you could seriously start looking into alternatives? Ubuntu Touch has a really active community and it's very stable, you can even emulate android apps which you might absolutely need.
I don't see Apple as the obvious next step; the obvious step, when one is pissed off with abuse of power is open source, not Apple.
Can I install my banking apps? Is there a Google pay equivalent?
As much as I want open source, I really don't think it's there yet for most people.
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Yeah, as an iOS dev, the grass is not greener on this side of the fence…
The point isn't that things are better on this axis on iOS, but that things are better on numerous other axes, to the point where many people are only using Android at all because it feels slightly more open and free than iOS... if Google wants to play Apple's game, then the only reasons to bother with the mess that is Android are gone, and so you'll see people switch to iOS.
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From that I can see from the early leaks, it may actually be if you live inside of the EU where alternative app stores are now a requirement.
iOS doesn't have the F-Droid ecosystem equivalent, but she F-Droid dies because of Google, there's a chance AltStore will be able to take its place.
It's not, but at least it will be equally ungreen.
Sideloading is already worse on iOS
Why to apple?
Seems like you'll still be able to use your own apps just fine under this scheme.
It also seems pretty obvious that the ignorant phone-users of the world who get scammed are the reason for this change. The revenue lost from people like you is really not worth any amount of engineering effort.
> Matthew Forsyth, Director of Product Management, Google Play Developer Experience & Chief Product Explainer, said the system isn’t a sideloading restriction, but an “Accountability Layer.”
And... What about accountability for hosting distributing spyware, malware loaded apps from Google Playstore and hundreds of copy cat, misleading apps?
Why can't they pose a question when the phone is setup?
- Yes, I want to sideload
- No I dont want
If the user says NO then to later enable it to allow sideload Yes, the user needs to factory reset phone. Done.
>And... What about accountability for hosting distributing spyware, malware loaded apps from Google Playstore and hundreds of copy cat, misleading apps?
The rules don't apply to billion dollar corporations. Meta is showing 15 billion scam ads per day.
https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortu...
> And... What about accountability for hosting distributing spyware, malware loaded apps from Google Playstore
This is no joke. The Playstore is filled with malware that pretend to be a different app. It takes days if not weeks to remove these apps.
I have twice now had to recover the devices of family members when they installed malware on Samsung phones running up to date firmware.
That malware to this level is even possible is another matter.
A somewhat unrelated thing, is I got bombarded with ads for a 'mental health mindfulness' service on one of the major international news websites.
I decided to Google the company after a few days. I was immediately confronted by thousands of reports by angry users, complaining about how after they tried the app, they got locked into a yearly subscription at exorbitant prices and it was impossible to cancel. The company itself is registered in some offshore tax haven.
They used to scare us, that if we went to those shady pirate websites, somebody would steal our credit cards and steal our money. Well...
This problem is significantly worse than the height of Windows XP spyware.
This right here exposes the bullshittery about the reasons behind preventing sideloading on Android phones.
For Google everything is about protecting revenue, even when doing so exposes their users to real harm, and that's why they will not address the issue of copycat apps, poor practices on play store security or anything else that lowers the number of downloads on apps on play store. But, heaven forbid, I want to download an app that doesn't create revenue for them onto a phone I OWN, Google spends money lavishly.
The Internet cranks are right. Google is run by bean counters and all the invective the cranks heap on the Google leadership is entirely earned.
Right. Or, the way I might put it, you could have set up a system that empowers trusted alternative distributors so that you're not killing F-Droid.
So I was actually planning on upgrading from a Pixel 7 Pro to a Pixel 10 around the time this announcement came out last year, but have put it on hold as I wait to see what form these changes take.
Like if it was "you need to do the developer 7-tap of the version label in settings", it'd be like "whatever". But given how long this process has taken, I suspect that is not what they've planned - it wouldn't take this long to develop, it certainly wouldn't take this long to explain.
So I suspect that we're actually in the "Maybe Later" phase of "Google wants to control which apps you install: [ ] Yes [ ] Maybe Later". And I mean, if their proposed solution turns out to be "Me and 25 of my closest friends can install apps I make by phoning home to Google servers", then like, I can do that on iOS too. And if I'm not going to have meaningfully more control of my Android device, I may as well just go to iOS where Apple at least have a better privacy record and don't seem to have have an all-encompassing goal of "where can we put AI features to drive AI usage metrics up the most?"
Honestly just install grapheneos on your Pixel, that is what I did and bought a Pixel for that reason alone. I use all Google play services and it works great, only payment with phone doesn't work.
Yes I agree: if you already have a Pixel, try GrapheneOS on it. Then if it can wait (Pixel 7 is still supported for a while, isn't it?), GrapheneOS may support a non-Google phone in 2026, so it may be worth waiting.
When this whole thing got announced, I purchased a new Pixel 9 and flashed it with GrapheneOS.
I am hoping that in about 6-8 years (when I realistically need to update) the landscape might be a bit better. Or who knows, maybe I'll just continue using GrapheneOS.
So far I have not had a single issues with it. Apps the rely on attestation do not work, but honestly it's only two applications out of hundreds so I can live with it.
I also financially support GrapheneOS on a monthly basis (15$). This is just too important of an project not to.
I think the EU should pile in as well. It's basically an oven-ready independent mobile OS.
Graphene OS spends its social capital on hallucinating attacks from other projects and bullying other projects by sending their followers against them, based on those hallucinated attacks. It also has a completely intransparent project structure based around a supposedly retired mean developer, who then just did not (and still does almost all commits). That's not a project where the EU can invest money in, and the confidence users on HN tend to put into that project is baffling.
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The EU hate GrapheneOS. They chased them out to Canada just last year because they didn't want to put in backdoors for law enforcement.
The EU should pile money into /e/OS. It's maintained by an EU company (Murena) and has European hardware options - Fairphone (NL), SHIFTphone (Germany), and Volla (Germany). Yes, I know some of them use US Qualcomm chips, but you have to start somewhere.
Europe is hostile towards Graphene users.
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GrapheneOS can choose to simply not apply the same restrictions but now that they're partnering with another vendor to get security updates earlier, I'm not sure what the future holds in this aspect.
This is only an issue for Google compliant Android so projects like LineageOS will be fine. Depending on their implementation, this may even just be restricted to AOSP with Samsung and others just ignoring the extra restrictions.
But, if they make compliance a requirement for being part of their parent programme, GrapheneOS will be in a tough spot.
The new phone is a nice reward for Google for this announcement
Nah, rather an upgrade from an ancient device. But good try there.
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Ironically, I've found that blocking the attestation API for some apps that supposedly require it (such as the latest versions of Waymo) might make them work anyway. lol
My next phone will be on GrapheneOS or EOS as well, the last straw was Samsung removing the bootloader unlock with an update (not even sure what they've done is legal)
I would love to run GrapheneOS if it didn't involve giving any money to Google to get up-to-date hardware, brand new. (Yes, I know I can buy and run it on a used Pixel.)
Which apps require attestation? People always mention banking apps but I'm curious what non-banking apps might pull this crap.
Airalo, an esim provider I use when traveling wouldn't load.
I'm with Google on this one. Idiots and old people (the public) use these devices daily. These are the very same people that send money to Nigerian royalty and expect to hear back about a great reward. This is mostly a CYA move with hard data behind it. If they completely removed side load, that would be a different story.
Yeah in fact I don't really see what's new in this article except that it hints that it will allow install of software from unverified developers via big scary warnings. Which seems like an improvement from what has been announced previously that only software from verified developers would be allowed.
I already have to configure apps to allow them to install apps on my Pixel... it's like "okay yeah I want to allow F-Droid and Obtainium to install apps" done. Maybe that's not the default or something? Who on earth wants popup ads in Chrome installing shit? And why would anyone want any random app to be able to install additional apps?
The old saying goes a fool and their money is soon departed.
Why should the rest of us be punished?
You pay a cost either way: live in a world with better funded and incentivized scammers and in a community less wealthy by a corresponding amount, or have a slightly less convenient sideloading experience.
I guess if you take the old saying extremely literally, you could conclude that every fool is guaranteed to be parted with 100% of their lifetime available money regardless of what anyone else tries to do to stop that, but that’s not true – and why old sayings (with a respectable 75% of the words right) taken literally aren’t a good basis for decision-making.
You are punished one way or the other.
These scammers are parasites on society, they add nothing while draining resources away from honest people.
If you participate in society, that net drag will affect you in subtle ways. Like if you have money invested in something, that thing doesn’t go up in value as much as it would have if x% of society isn’t simply parasitic.
>Why should the rest of us be punished?
Exactly. I'm sick and tired of all the apps/websites that mandate 2fa. All of that adds friction when I'm a big boy who knows how to choose secure passwords. For that matter, why even invest resources into fraud detection or law enforcement? All of that money is coming out of somewhere, and why should my tax dollars go toward catching fake nigerian princes when it's just helping idiots anyways?
/s
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I don’t think calling people who don’t really understand computer security a can be tricked “stupid” is fair or helpful.
Designing a product so that almost all of it’s intended users can operate it safely seems like the right decision.
Wait a second... making a product that is safe and easy to use requires removing or mitigating potential hazards involving product. Building safeguards around a feature that can be used to hurt people in significant ways is exactly that, isn't it?
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How is it unfair? Are you assuming only intelligent people use Android?
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My grandmother was tricked into buying cryptocurrency for a scam. All the apps that they used on her Android and iPhone were in the respective app stores. Removing side loading has little to nothing to do with it from my point of view because the app stores are not doing a good job of verifying apps.
This bit of article is what I'm hopeful will happen:
> That explanation broadly matches what we’re seeing in recent versions of Google Play, where new warning messages emphasize developer verification, internet requirements, and potential risks, while still allowing users to proceed.
If google really cared about security, they would place ad's for shady apps right above the 2fa or banking app I searched for to install.
Why wouldn't they just use websites instead? Imagine if you had to ADB from a PC to enable a website that isn't Google approved.
As TFA does not mention it, and I don't see any top-level comments discussing it, this is a continued rollout of a "feature" first piloted in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. See:
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/08/elevating-...
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-de...
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/google-android-dev...
Of course, HN reaction has always been skeptical about this including in earlier news. But the reporting on it, and the countries in which it is piloted in, seems to me to involve government/banking industry cooperation with or pressure on Google to combat cyber fraud. These polities are prime targets for Android cyber fraud of this sort due to Android penetration, and seemingly (to me) also cultural proximity to scam operators, and tech-illiteracy among the vulnerable demographic. (And anticipating a reply I got from a previous article on my comment on this feature---no, it's just not feasible to comprehensively educate retirees against evolving tactics by scam operators and expect that to be a sufficient sole countermeasure.)
These measures are indeed the result of governments blaming their citizens getting scammed on phone manufacturers. There's not a lot Google can do here.
However, Google is choosing to extend these changes worldwide. That's where the problem really starts. People in Asia and Brazil may vote for idiots who will shift the blame for their citizens' lack of basic digital education onto others, but that doesn't mean that countries where this type of fraud barely exists should also be subject to these extreme measures.
There is no doubt that sideloading by uninformed users can be used as a backdoor.
It's also not a surprise that banks/industry that's accountable to recover the losses for tricked customers is looking to someone else to solve it for them.
However, if this was "piloted", do we have the numbers of how much has it decreased the number of scams or their impact?
I wouldn't go as far as to say that it is impossible to "educate the public", but it is indeed extremely hard. But click-through pop-ups have succeeded when?
I know in some people's eyes saying this will make me a Google shill but this reminds me of the manifest v3 thing. What makes it to the top of HN is mostly clickbait a las "Google is cracking down on ad blockers" or in this case "Google is preventing side loading". These articles don't link to primary sources (Google) and they (intentionally?) miss all nuance.
Yeah for every HN user complaining about it there are hundreds of people sideloading apps (not realizing what they're doing - under promise of loans or other advantages) and then getting their phone ransomed
For every person getting ransomed by a sideloaded app there are ten people getting ransomed by apps they installed from the Play Store.
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The image at the top of the article is actually what already happens in Android and has done for years. At first, I thought that this meant that the article was very outdated, but no, this is from January 2026.
I imagine the text of the article is fine, but I'm a little bit disappointed that Android Authority chose to lead with that image and caption and make it seem that this is what the future flow would look like. You'd think they'd know better.
Those of us who use Android phones now - and install FOSS apps form F-Droid or just any apps from elsewhere other than the church of Google - might be thinking: "Oh, I need to work out how I'll have decent app access after this happens."
But what we should really be thinking is: "Oh, I need to _donate_ to projects which aim to patch Android-based phones to remove these restrictions; or to projects which aim to replace (most/all of) Android completely".
We need to speak with our wallets in addition to just ranting about Google.
Sometimes I wonder I we should instead fund massive marketing campaigns instead, because the vast majority of people have no idea it's even an option.
I heard that the frog boiling is a myth. You can't boil frog alive, it will jump out. As opposed to humans
That's because the frog has low switching costs from the pot to the outside world.
frog is not pot-locked-in
The frog had to be pretty well lobotomized to keep it from jumping out. One can recreate the ”experiment” with a lobotomized frog and mostly get the result described though
In the technofeudal new world order, your smartphone is not just a device, it is your gov issued digital ID/wallet
The Apple/Google OS duopoly exists by design, they view bootloader unlocking and sideloading as threats because they break that control
They want to be able to define and/or revoke your existence in the system
No escape, because no alternative
Exactly. For most people not having a bank app, probably no digital payments due to that, and no government-issued digital ID is too much friction to even consider any alternative.
The highest risk is the play store itself. Gambling and addiction. So, when does Google add "high friction" there, instead of encouraging it? Ah, well, it's the money! Than stop bending the truth.
Call me what you want but it is my belief that the reason google is locking down and Apple refuses to budge is that in the near term future our mobile devices will become our identity online and in public.
Apple already offers digital ID in some states. They can do this partly because they can guarantee to the gov’t the ID is genuine because the user cannot modify the system.
Google needs to be able to do the same thing.
Age verification laws for online services will actually require something like a digital ID and Apple and Google want to be the providers.
Guys, a discussion of which big tech company is better is equivalent to talking about which cancer is the best to have.... Can we all agree that each operating system has good features but they share a terrible feature of being strapped to a giant vampire squid exfiltrating your data and selling your secrets to the highest bidder? Instead of wasting bandwidth on these two companies can we go and figure out how to force cell phones (and consoles and numerous other things) open like the PC was/ mostly still is?
The real question is if you can still sideload:
1) a .apk that was not developer-verified
2) without informing Google of this
I wish the EU would step up and bring sideloading on iOS. iPhone hardware is great but the software is severely lackluster. I know a few developers there and they are not exceptional by any means. Chiefly because Apple pays much less than their competition so they do not attract the best talent
Some manufacturers like Xiaomi already have a very annoying flow for enabling developer options and using ADB. You need to have a SIM card inserted, need to create a Xiaomi account and there's several popups with timers you have to wait through.
Wait so did this rollback? Initially they were about to forbid any install from non verified accounts, then allow them but just a limited number, this article seems to suggest there will just be extra steps?
Yes, after that they said that there will be an on-device flow to load apps from outside the Play Store after all. They didn’t describe how that will work and I didn’t see it discussed as commonly as the original announcement; I only saw it mentioned by the way in a Reddit thread.
I was never an iOS user, or developer - exactly because Android was more "open", exerted less control over a user of the device.
The same reason I use Linux for 25 years (not ideological, but it just makes most sense by far). In time where this view (win11 vs. Linux) is starting to make sense to more and more people, few rare config nuances are getting easier to solve due to LLM-s, going into the opposite direction with a mobile OS calls for users to also start seriously considering more open alternatives and making a path for users of our app to do the same.
Semi-related question: how invasive is the Temu App on Google Play Store nowadays. Last time I read about it, it posed a bigger threat to users than the average side-loaded app.
The current system is already high friction. Enabling "advanced protection" in your google account additionally requires installing apps through adb.
If auto-updating apps stops working on fdroid, I'll be installing Graphene, Lineage or taking a shot at something like postmarket/ubuntu touch/plasma mobile. I've used Lineage as a daily driver before for a while, so I'll probably just go back to that and tell developers to support the platform I'm using. It doesn't rent seek on developers or users.
The Apple app store was ruled to not be monopoly.
When Google inquired in court how that could be if Apple doesn't even allow any form of side-loading, including other app stores (which Google does allow)
The judge said, I shit you not, Apple doesn't have any competitors on their platform, therefore they can't be anti-competitive.
Probably one of the worst most off the rails rulings ever. Google took notes and is now following Apple. You can thank the courts
"high friction" is a good euphemism for modern tech in general, how it feels to use.
reminds me of when theresa may said UK would become a "hostile environment", because it really feels like that in more ways than she meant.
a high-friction hostile environment is a good description for life.
Part of me thinks they wouldn't be doing this if their own ad team wasn't knowingly accepting money from fraudsters.
So, which 3rd mobile vendor and/or OS are you moving to?
Not OP but my GrapheneOS phone is fine with me installing things on it. It just seems like a better Android at this point.
Would switch to PostmarketOS tomorrow if there was any fully supported hardware (camera, 4G calling, etc.). All programs/apps I use are FOSS and standardized anyway.
If anyone wants to debate whether sideloading is a neologism, take it up with Sandisk circa 2007 https://xdaforums.com/t/sandisk-announcement.316860/
You're free to search XDA Forum. 2007 was the earliest mention I saw, but conversation seems to start in earnest around 2009 and never stops. Consistent hits in search from the last TWENTY YEARS.
This is not new. It may be new to you but any scary and evil connotations are your own ignorance. The term has been in common use for decades.
Side loading into a streaming box is an essential feature for me. I depend on a side-loaded app for Japanese TV.
But of course, I have that in a separate Android box, so I'm not forced to update to a new OS when replacing a TV (as I just did this week).
I'm sure I'm missing something but wasn't this already the case where the first time you try to install an APK, you had to go into Settings and mark the relevant application as a trusted source for installing APKs from?
Some friction is probably wise. I remember them introducing the requirement to individually allow each app you're installing things from. The question is, how much more friction will they add? I suspect they will add prompts per install, too.
The year of linux desktop unironically may be close. What is the situation with mobile?
There are community projects, but no Valve in sight.
Can we stop calling this "side loading" please.
There is nothing sleazy happening "on the side", I am simply installing an application of my choosing on some hardware that I purchased.
As long as it remains possible (without extra developer verification, etc, etc), a bit of extra friction is probably OK, as is assigning accountability to the person who chose to install an app outside of the "official" store.
But it has to remain possible. Otherwise can someone name any advantage that Android has over iOS?
Does high friction involve parties needing to identify themselves?
Eventually my so called smartphone will be a device for authenticating against a few services that require a special application, that I can also tunnel a serious device through for doing the things that I actually want to do.
It would be interesting to know why they're doing this, but it's unlikely it'll ever become public knowledge. I also don't think it is important, the people responsible should be in jail for a lot of other reasons anyway.
Add high friction to scammy ads on your platform, Google
Sideloading is already painful. I tried installing Sora (which is not available in my region's Play Store). The phone didn't allow me to start the app (complaining about integrity) unless I disabled the Play Store Integrity Checks. It wasn't straightforward in saying what the problem is and how can I bypass the check.
Can we please stop calling it "sideloading"? It's simply "installing" software on hardware that I own, and that I should have full control over.
Don't be evil
I think we should stop calling it "sideloading". I don't think the history of the term matters. By using that term, you imply that running the code you want on the hardware you own is somehow a secondary or second-class activity.
Call it "installing" or "jumping the garden wall".
Friction hopefully means "you have to plug in a USB cable" and not "you have to associate your phone with a particular Google account, then go through a process with Google's customer service to approve your phone for sideloading" etc.
Apparently this "high friction" is a term entirely invented by Android Authority based on finding a few new generic warning messages about sideloading in the Android source?? I guess if there's no news, you have to play word games to make some.
Articles like this where we lament being trapped in an ecosystem duopoly are contemporary with articles saying that software engineering is over and LLMs can just vibe code anything you imagine. What's keeping the duopoly in charge?. Code signing?
You think a local model will get to that point? Some AGI revolution like your describing is impossible for humanity as a whole even if LLMs get that smart. The same companies control the supercomputers and your access to them.
Is the solution for sideloading to also have the same APK in the Play Store? That way, Google would have received the AAB and generated a signed APK that is used from the Play Store and also offered via sideloading.
At least they aren't removing it like originally planned. A warning from `adb sideload` or `adb install` that can be bypassed with an environment variable is reasonable IMO.
I'd really like to see details before drawing conclusions. If it really is just an extra up-front warning screen or something then yes that's reasonable. If it's something that unfairly disadvantages F-Droid compared to the much less safe Google Play store, then it's unreasonable.
EU said that App Stores must have alternatives.
So F-Droid can just continue with their alternative app store.
If Google makes it harder than it needs to be, then I'm sure they will be fined/sued.
> if Google makes it harder than it needs to be, then I'm sure they will be fined/sued.
Aaaaand, Action! Cue EU hate messages.
How does this relate to the announcement from a while back about introducing signatures that tie back to Google? (IE trusted developer program or whatever they're calling that horse shit.)
This is in response to all the pushback they got from that
> Google says the added friction is meant to educate users about the risks of sideloading.
Or maybe the risks of monopolies and monocultures in computing.
I am not very well educated when it comes to alternative stores landscape. But I do know that in Russia there's now Rustore: https://www.rustore.ru/en which functions by automatically downloading and updating APKs for you.
During the APK install, however, you do see the ugly Android prompt about how this app may be dangerous.
Rustore has its own app payment system, which obviously circumvents Google Play fees.
This works on regular Android phones.
Are there other examples of such stores? Perhaps it's Google's answer to that.
F-Droid and derivatives are really popular in the FOSS community.
oh, right! Didn't have my coffee yet :-)
But one difference is Rustore actually has payments and subscriptions, which hurts Google more.
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Unfortunately both Russia and Ukraine are slacking in losing the war so it doesn't seem that making payments to Russia will be easy soon. Now of course if they were Uzbeki or Kazakhstani stores it would be completely different.
Funny way to say 'dark patterns'
My guess is the 'high-friction' part is some kind of mandatory waiting period of 1 to 3 days
iOS has fallen behind, I am struggling to use apps and even type on new liquid glass. My 2TB photo library is useless with the current photos app. I am trying out Pixel 10 on the side and I HIGHLY recommend it! Android does not suck anymore. I am in process of migrating stuff over slowly.
Steam phone incoming in 3... 2... 1...
"3? What's that?" - Valve
Why not just go full Apple right now and just rebrand iOS? That seems to be the ultimate outcome.
Can we also get total app isolation sandboxing and location, network, etc. spoofing while we're at it?
BOYCOTT.
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Ah yes, such enormous friction, to install F-Droid and install an app via it, instead of Playstore. Argh, sooo much friction, really unbearable. /s
Google is getting more ridiculous by the day.
The vast majority of Android users don't sideload apps. I used Android for years and only did it during dev. I don't know anyone who does it.
I had to sideload telegram, the version on Google Play has restrictions (censorship I believe) that the sideloaded version doesn't.
the vast majority != 100%
No need to restrict it then
Plenty of users will benefit from restricting it or even disabling sideloading entirely. I know my mother in her 70s can't be trusted with downloading random crap from the internet.
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I agree with high friction sideloading. it is the best of both worlds. no friction sideloading is too easily exploited by scammers. having a member of my family exposed to this kind of thing in the past taught me some things.
I don't agree with the word "sideloading" though. It's just _installing_.
"Installing" has the connotation of doing it directly from the Play Store. This is also known as "Downloading" (because the data is on a server, in the cloud, and you're fetching it "downstream" to a local device.)
"Sideloading" doesn't refer to the installation process, but to the file transfer process. You're sideloading when you transfer, e.g. APKs from your notebook to your Android. Or, from a USB stick into your phone or something.
In general, though, "sideloading" also refers to any "non-app-store" installation. It's a kind of colloquial shorthand. It's not really a technical term. But it's adequate for getting the point across.
If you just called it "installing" without qualifying it, how would anyone know that it's a different process, or that it's accomplished not by navigating to the app store? It seems that you would invite ambiguity here!
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Honestly, no. Not for everyone.
As someone from Germany, I don't want Google to nanny family members computing devices. They don't want it either. It is completely absurd for an ad company in a surveillance state an ocean away to play IT services for everyone. This has already gone to far.
Rather, there should be tools for value-aligned IT services and technically minded family members to help.
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I think i have an idea that would better protect normal users while not getting in the way for power users and developers:
1. All applications must be signed with a valid store key.
2. Anyone can import a store key after rebooting into the bootloader (similar flow as custom roms)
3. Google can maintain a list of malicious keys and reject them
Why is this better? Because it makes it much harder to trick grandma into installing an APK some site just dropped.
1. google can arbitrarily revoke key. Countries can revoke key.
3. Like the amazing malicious crapware from PlayStore that they allow. They don't reject that.
4. Grandma installs crap mainly from PlayStore
TBH this doesn't seem a particularly high friction change. It seems very like what we have to do already, or like what we do on OSX.
They did not specify what exactly is the new workflow is/what is high friction about it in the post no?
I absolutely HATED the first time I had to deal with it... at least now it works a little better.. but the first version didn't actually tell you that you needed to go into security settings right after to enable the install.
Still not a big fan of it... though admittedly mostly just install stuff via brew/cask more than direct downloads as a result.
> like what we do on OSX.
You are on macOS. Not others. You are following Apple. We don't.
> like what we do on OSX.
...which is so much of a complicated nuisance that most people simply give up. If this will go the way I think it will prepare to have to skip 10 things, write 3 ADB commands and submit a video of you spinning around for 30 seconds just to install your pirated game.
Just to install a proper call recorder or a better Work Profile manager.
Turning a possibility to install software outside of the app store should be about as normal as the fact you're using a laptop or desktop to install your pirated games.
Yeah, you.
If someone having access to "side load" an app has it to install a pirated game, then you have your OS, where you are not limited only to Apple/Amazon/Google store, simply for installing pirated software.
QED :)
> so much of a complicated nuisance that most people simply give up
Most people should give up.
The number of legitimate unsigned apps for MacOS that your grandparents should frictionlessly one-click-to-install is essentially nil.
Meanwhile, they're receiving countless bullying demands a day to install keyloggers and drain their bank accounts.
The threat model tradeoffs are clear.
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