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Back in the day it wasn’t the norm though. We plugged our phones into our computers to manage media, jailbreak them, install apps downloaded from forums, etc.

Hell, people used to use iTunes to manage the apps on their iPhone and organize their Home Screen.

No, you could always install APK's manually, and there were early package managers, you didn't need a computer at all or to jailbreak an android.

Then with the windows mobile world, you could install manually, or use activesync which really sucked. Same with Palm. I don't recall Blackberry.

> No, you could always install APK's manually, and there were early package managers

In fact on the iPhone Cydia existed before the app store ever did. Apple had decided that web apps were the way to go.

I did not check but I think that the term may be older than Android, iirc on Symbian phones installing custom Java applets required a computer to place the package on the phone.

That's how I've always done it. Why would anyone do it any other way? Genuine question.

Some devices don't have browsers, some are locked-down and only support one app store, or sideloading via adb, sometimes the UX is better (SideQuest for the Meta Quest).

The large majority of Android devices have a browser by default.