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Comment by tripdout | Hacker News Reader

Very interesting article that talks about the progression of Google's closed source app alternatives: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...

I always thought that sure, they're deprecating old apps for the closed source Google version, which sucks, but at least AOSP still comes with barebones versions.

But now AOSP, a mobile phone operating system, will come without calling and texting ability? How can Google even do that? These apps, old as they may be, can also still serve as useful reference points for making your own OEM-branded app.

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They're just saying they've stopped maintaining it, I'm pretty sure that puts these apps in the same situation as the Android 2 style music player that's still part of AOSP.

Their plan is to remove them altogether. Still those apps have not been maintained in years, that's the normal course of action for apps in AOSP.

I think the big question is whether they “improve” the APIs these apps require at the same time.

That would break the alternative implementations.

Android APIs are stable and an app will keep working until Google decides to bump the min SDK version in Android itself. The APIs a Google app uses are the same as any other app. Unless the app is privileged ( = can use system APIs ) there's no difference in capabilities.

Yes. That is the problem I am referring to. They can bump the api version, removing the non-privileged APIs the AOSP stuff used, and move the implementation of the new privileged API into a proprietary blob.

This is how location services work. Location has an obvious local-only fallback, but it is broken in practice. I imagine they can break phone calls/sms/rcs equally badly using the same technique.

Actually there are a few APIs you can't use when the app isn't signed by a system key.

All oems or rom makers are able to make whatever apps they want system apps. So even if this is being done, Google dialer isn't getting access to something others cannot.

Oh wow, you're one of the guys from LineageOS right?

There's many of us :)

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