Comment by cnst | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cnst | Hacker News Reader

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The F-Droid app store app is usually already the first app I ever install on any Android device:

https://f-droid.org/

The second app is often the Aurora Store app store app, from within the F-Droid app, which then lets you install Google Play apps without having to have a Google Account:

https://f-droid.org/packages/com.aurora.store/

With these two apps installed first, on any Android device, whether locked or not, without any need for any computer or any other device, without having to type-in any Google Account details, you can then do pretty much whatever you require on the device, including installing bank apps, Amazon, Amazon Music, Audible, Prime Video, etc.

Sadly, iOS has no alternatives like this. Apple proudly reports terminating 128,961,839 customer accounts in 2024 (yes, Apple has terminated 129 million customer accounts in just one year), and they do NOT allow using an iOS device without an Apple customer account:

https://www.apple.com/legal/more-resources/docs/2024-App-Sto...

How do you even get to the point of installing F-Droid without first setting up Android, which, in my experience, requires a valid Google login.

When I set up my Android device, there wasn't an option to set it up without a Google Account.

That's not normal, that will probably be the vendor skin you use enforcing that. Maybe samsung, as they tend to try and be apple at home.

I have a Samsung phone and I was never forced to use a Google account.

There's always a "later" or equivalent button in all of these setups, sometimes it does have a few prompts.

I personally have iPhone, Google Pixel, OnePlus, Motorola and Samsung devices, without any accounts on them. The iPhones are very limited without an account, obviously, but I never feel that way on Android.

All that I did to set them up, is click on the screen a few times, no extra tools or anything. Then just go into the browser, and follow the instructions for F-Droid installation; which can be done entirely on the phone, without a computer or any other phone, or any username/password.

For my Motorola, the "later" or equivalent did not appear if you connected to WiFi during setup. You have to have no network connection, first, to not have a Google Account.

Whenever I buy a new Android device I take the opportunity to pretend I'm a grandma getting her first piece of technology and create a brand new Google account, since it's one of the only signup pathways that doesn't require some kind of identity verification.

That's a nice trick to get a fresh Google Account without any verifications!

But why would you need so many Google accounts? I think at one point it may simply become cumbersome to keep track of all the accounts, so, using an account-less Aurora Store seems like a very easy pathway to take.

I honestly never feel disadvantaged in any way by not having a Google Account on my Android. Aurora Store works, Google Maps works, banking and streaming works, everything just works.

When something important requires a Google account, now you have a burner account you can use. If you somehow have so many you can't keep track of them then great, you can use one account for one thing. If you only have two or three, at least you can make correlating them harder - the perfect's the enemy of the good. (I expect that if you log into more than one on the same Google phone, Google internally marks them as related. Still, other apps don't have access to that fact.)

I usually expressly don't login into any account because I simply don't want to remember which device I've logged which accounts in. It's just easier that way.

On my main device, I'd use a regular Google Account. But if I'm getting a test device, or a device I simply play around with, it doesn't have to have a Google Account, and yet it can still have all the apps I'd ever want.

Unlike with iOS, where you're severely limited in trying out a device without having an Apple Account. Yet somehow it's Apple that's deemed to respect people's privacy, go figure.

> Top 10 guidelines or DPLA provisions cited for removal > 1. Guideline 4.0 — Design: 42,2527

Does that line item mean that Apple is rejecting the largest body of apps for not meeting the design guidelines? Man... if I had a penny for every app still on the App Store that blatantly disregards the human interface guidelines...

Honestly, thank you for this. I'm going to do this on an Amazon Fire Tablet I have lying around.

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