[…]
In the new blog post, Google’s Matthew Forsythe confirms that the developer verification system is slated to come online on September 30 of this year. The initial deployment will be limited to countries with a high level of app scams: Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand.
[…]
Google released its new developer console back in March, inviting external developers the opportunity to pay $25 and verify their identities early. Developers who don’t register will find that their apps cannot be sideloaded on Google-certified Android devices once verification has rolled out. Google says that almost every app in the Play Store is now ready for the change, and a “large majority” of apps outside Google Play have completed verification.
[…]
Google says it will verify the apps in the following stores when it begins enforcing the new restrictions.
Google (Google Play)
Honor (HONOR App Market)
OPlus (OPPO App Market)
Samsung (Galaxy Store)
Transsion (Palm Store)
vivo (V-Appstore)
Xiaomi (GetApps)
[…]
The next step toward verifying apps will come this month as Google deploys a new system service on most certified devices. The package (com.google.android.verifier) will appear on phones and tablets running Android 8 or higher, allowing Google to block the installation of unverified apps. It will remain dormant until verification is activated in your specific region.
In July, Google plans to roll out the new developer APIs and begin testing for “limited distribution” accounts. This is Google’s solution for hobbyists who want to make their own apps and share them with a small group. Limited accounts won’t require a fee or government ID verification, but you can install these apps on up to 20 devices.
In August, the advanced flow will become available globally ahead of verification becoming mandatory in the first markets. As detailed a few months ago, the advanced flow will allow users to bypass verification, but the process isn’t easy. You’ll have to navigate to a buried menu, confirm you understand the risks multiple times, and wait a whole day before completing the process.
And that brings us to September, when Android devices in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand will begin checking verification status before installing apps. However, things get murky after that. Google will undoubtedly monitor how verification works as millions of users are suddenly limited to verified apps, which could affect how it moves forward. Google says it intends to expand developer verification in 2027, eventually making it a global device policy.
And now I’ll never be interested in creating software for android. I hope google’s LLMs are up to the task.
LineageOS is the way.
An additional sting for some of us -
In Australia, not only is 3G deprecated (I miss my Nokia n91), but 4G / 5G must be of the VoLTE variety. To date, there is no after market OS that is fully VoLTE compatible (Legacy, Graphine etc) here - its hit or miss. Additionally, most (but not all) overseas phones are on IMEI black lists by default.
Essentially, because the OEM are lock step with Google, you can’t avoid this issue by purchasing a common phone, unlocking your boot loader (assuming you could in the first place) and flashing CFW. Do that and you can’t make phone calls. Don’t do it, and you get caught up with this new app verification slop.
They think they’re winning… but I think “lol. Keep going. I have a flip phone.” As soon as this Samsung dies (adb debloated and all), I’m out entirely.
My Galaxy A20 has been going strong since 2019. If I get anything, I’ll either be something from that era or just go full flip phone.
PS: someone mentioned the commodore flipphone. I like Perri and the C64 revival but let’s be honest here…the Callback 8020 phone is $$$ for pretty bog standard dumb phone parts. The components don’t justify it (barring perhaps the 48MP camera), let alone some of the design decisions.
If you look, I imagine you can find a local equivalent of this instead -
https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/opel-mobile-touchflip-4g-flip-phone-optouchfp
(TTfone or Sunbeam I think?)
With right launcher and larger battery, I find it perfectly cromulent, with very good keyboard. It even runs FUTO voice STT (albeit slowly), my banking apps, Signal, FB messenger, maps, 5MP camera etc. It’s not going to replace flagship anything… but maybe it doesn’t need to. And it’s 1/8th the cost.
There’s a good YouTube channel for anyone considering such devices -
What sort of incompatibilities are present with VoLTE? I’ve used Graphene for about a year and a half without issue but then again I pretty much only use my phone for calls messages and lemmy
Yeah, that’s the fun bit. It’s not that Graphene can’t do calls.
It’s that in Australia, post-3G, “works on 4G” is no longer enough. The phone / firmware / carrier combo has to play nicely with VoLTE, IMS provisioning, and 000 emergency calling. If the carrier doesn’t like that exact combo, you can have perfectly good LTE data and still lose service or get nuked by IMEI/TAC filtering.
Graphene on a supported Pixel is probably the best-case scenario. Sadly, that doesn’t generalise to other phones here. It’s a dice roll.
TL;DR: VoLTE is carrier-blessed black magic. Same bands, same radio hardware on paper…very different outcomes.
Very cromulent system. Much consumer choice.
I hope this leads to the death of Androud and the rise of something more open to replace it. There was a huge market for it when Android came out in competition with Apple’s closed model, but now that Google is closing up Android, let’s hope alternatives get some attention. Unfortunately, alternatives will mean no tap to pay, no RCS, etc., for a long time, since Apple, Google, et al., turned these things as proprietary as possible, but I’d still like a decent alternative to get enough power to eventually change those things.
Problem is things like corporate banking requires an Android or iOS app. Or a GPU with traffic info. There are problems the lack of anti monopoly laws enforcement.
This is a crazy thought, we could elect people willing to enforce anti monopoly laws that are already on the books.
Fantastic idea. As soon as we have that option, that’s what I’ll do. Until then I suppose I’ll watch the two parties full of right wingers ruin everything.
does anyone know why would anyone use any of the mentioned stores instead of the play store? using f-droid has a clear benefit (they are also not on the supported list). but what is the purpose of those mainly manufacturer specific stores?
If you buy a mainland China phone the app store will be local, for example Oppo store, and Play will be only available as a workaround. I think mainland China phones will be unaffected by Google’s sideloading restriction.
yeah, I am also considering buying a huawei phone with HarmonyOS
Money, and monopolistic behavior. Samsung, for instance, constantly pushes the “Samsung Account” on all their devices. Constantly. For the first two weeks after getting a new Samsung device you will be spammed with “finish setting up your phone” notifications that just want you to sign up for their tracking, and conveniently, when you’re logged into a Samsung account, their app store is the default. And you will get notifications from their app store to download or buy whatever app they recommend. I can only assume the other stores mentioned do similar things.
I think they’re asking why a customer would (actively) choose those app stores over the Play store.
The answer is they don’t choose.
Most people just use whatever the default is, and don’t really know a better option is available until it’s presented explicitly.
For samsung as oem they use exclusives of stuff only on their app store, and have forced integration.
So just because I refuse to forfeit my soul to the Satan’s company, I won’t be able to use my phone? Fuck this and fuck Poogle, I’d rather switch to Nokia 3310!
GrapheneOS is the way to go
Sooo if I just use adb to disable that service
com.google.android.verifier
I wont have to put up with google’s bs?
Yes, but forcing all users to do that will kill off 90% of the market for F-Droid.
Installing F-Droid (or anything outside of “official” stores) already gets you a bunch of scary warnings that non-techy users would perceive as “omg malware!!” and withdraw from. I’m confident that the Venn diagrsm between F-Droid users and people who would be willing to use ADB to keep it is a circle. The real problem is that this cuts off anyone without a computer
That kind of behavior calls hard fork. Fuck off google.
and who exactly will benefit from the hard fork? those few who already run a degoogled android and won’t be affected anyway?
Oh I didnt mean anyone else should I was just trying to confirm my thoughts on whether this would work
Trust me fuck Google and this is horrid news for FOSS so I hope there can be some fight back against this dictatorial censorship… Google is evil for trying to create a walled garden like Apple’s out of android
That’s not what I meant. I meant that yes, there are technical ways to get around this garden wall.
But only a very small percentage of users will know of it, or dare open a terminal to issue adb commands to their phone.
So the majority will be locked out of open and free app stores despite the technical possibility to keep using them.
And with fewer users, there will be fewer developers and fewer apps available.
Or just reinstall the OS without google.
We’re about to see a bunch of cell phone repair shops offer this service.
Reinstall the os without google? And then have no push notifications? Kinda need push notifs
Why? I have never owned a phone with google. Works great.
Glad it works for you. I need push notifications
Doesn’t MicroG (foss reimplementation of Play Services) fix that?
If thats one of the fixes available to grapheneOS users then yes Im pretty sure thats how you can get push on GOS
Not super sure you can strip google out of your android install and replace it with MicroG though (id love to be proven wrong though) and my bootloaders locked down (fuck you Semensnug you filthy animals)
You may have some luck with ADB
Maybe at first, until their customers realise that all their apps need those services. And this is assuming the average person even notices the change in the first place and cares about it.
With MicroG you barely feel the difference these days
I meant the change in Google’s policy.
No I was referring to the line about users needing google play services
Yeah, I’m talking about the average user who won’t even be aware that there may be a need, let alone a way, to get rid of those services. They won’t be aware that there was any change in Google’s policy because they don’t “sideload” so they also won’t ask any local shops to remove the services (and replace them with MicroG).
Wym without google? I couldn’t find anything related to what ur talking about
AOSP is lacking google.
It actually requires an extra step to install Google when you install an OS on an android device.
Just go through the process of installing the OS yourself, and skip the “install gapps” step. You’ll have a phone without google, and this app blocking shite will have no impact on you
I hate this timeline
May a thousand bricks breach Google HQ’s windows.
Bricks aren’t enough, HQ needs carpet bombing while the assholes who’s main purpose is to do evil are locked inside.
Hey Google, could you not dictate what I’m allowed to install on my own damn device for my “safety”? I don’t need a third parent, and if I had to pick one it wouldn’t be you.
I’m so tired of everything being made shittier all the time and being able to do nothing about it.
Just a waiting game for Linux to save the day again.
I don’t know, I’m not hopeful.
Stallman played a BIG role in the insurgence of Linux (and FOSS in general), but he famously disregards smartphones as he thinks people should just not use them.
Plus, phones are built different: many have a locked bootloader, and there is no standard like BIOS/UEFI, meaning you must compile a slightly different OS for each model.
What I’m saying is the mobile ecosystem is built in a way that makes it very difficult for a serious AOSP ecosystem to build up, let alone a different kind of Linux
Should be a challenge, “how can I help Linux get there?” If more of the general public tech enthusiasts were interested in developing this out, I have no doubt it could be done in months time. Ref: be the change you want to see in the world.
Best thing we can do is donate to PostmarketOS, and if you can, install it on a compatible phone and make bug reports of what doesn’t work.
The bar for entry for contributing to these projects is too high. Can we instead do work to lower the bar? I don’t want to accept that there’s nothing we can do beside open our wallets. Not that I’m against donating, it’s just that money isn’t my strongest asset.
You could perhaps contribute to their documentation if you can’t contribute code. Or simply help spread awareness (where appropriate) that it is our best long-term alternative.
For sure, but all I can do is report bugs and donate money here and there. I don’t have the skills for such advanced development myself.
Maybe Commodore saw this coming and that explains the crazy pricing of their linux flip phone.
Ehh, if they had foresight, they wouldn’t be putting a hardcoded block for all web browsers on the Commodore phone. Instead, it’s mostly just Peri commercializing his personal ideas of what a phone should be based on his past videos.
$500?
I thought that was reasonable. All electronics are expensive these days.
Considering the hardware in it and that it is a flip phone, I’d definitely call it over priced. I realize that it is going to be a low production run and they want to make some money, but $500 is too much for what it offers IMO. I am quite literally the prime market for such a phone, but the price and the forced browser block are stopping me.
Up until now, I haven’t been overwhelmingly emotional about all the horrible things happening right now.
I don’t know why this news hit me particularly hard. Reading it made me feel like a part of me died. Got glassy eyed. This kind of feels like the final betrayal in a sense. Not the ultimate betrayal, but one super close to my heart.
Hey, it’s gonna be alright
- You still will be able to sideload apps, they just add a nasty 24-hour cooldown
- In the meantime, it’s worth having a migration strategy to a mobile OS that actually respects you - be it Graphene, Lineage, or Linux/Sailfish.
be it Graphene, Lineage, or Linux/Sailfish.
The prob comes when the ONLY mobile OS that work for the things ppl want to do are IOS and Android. We could see a world where MOST web sites are locked behind chain-of-trust reqs. Certainly all the important ones needed for normal life.
We’re not quite there today. But it is the direction.
Then you cancel that service and let them know exactly why you did. Hit them in the only thing they care about - money. One doesn’t matter, but 100k would.
Be the change you want to see.
One doesn’t matter, but 100k would.
Yup I agree about that. Financial pressure might be our best hope. Prob is, the HUGE majority of ppl don’t care about things like this. Or even know about them. It’s too abstract for them.
TBH I’m not sure Google would care about 100k! There are allegedly about 3-4B Android users in the world. 100k would be like 0.0033%. Maybe 100 million, and they would begin to notice. That’s a lot to get on side, tho.
I dispair badly. So many ppl have no clue when it comes to their own tech future. Also what is their alternative? IOS is even worse in this way. The masses aren’t gonna install Graphene or w/e. What alternative may we even suggest to them?
Yep, it’s time to start moving away from these big tech companies and develop utz competitors
Pathetic
