Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android
androidauthority.com
androidauthority.com
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.
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 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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Audio, and it's not even close. On iPadOS you get full-fledged DAWs like Cubasis and Logic.
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 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
TouchDRO for milling
Kodi media player
Amazon Fire Stick, car infotainment, music workstations, sewing machine GUI, geology soil tester, etc
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.
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.
Safari works fine. 99% of users legitimately do not give a fuck.
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.
You know what they say about assuming.
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.
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
> 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.
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.
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'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.
It is, for the large sub-$800 segment of the smartphone market.
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.
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.
If Google is narrowing their moat on this, there are a lot fewer reasons for me, personally, to stay on the platform.
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.
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...
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
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.
and it definitely was, to mitigate the risk of losing sight of the web users behaviour
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Both phone users have no idea how to sideload, everything was installed from the Play store.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
The actual data could be hosted p2p across all the users devices, and any missing data retrieved one-time-only from real youtube servers.
So, Android may actually benefit from a lack of differentiation: like iOS, for a third of the price seems like a good value proposition.
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
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.
> And Google's strategy is to continue removing differentiating features from Android
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....
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.
Here is how a job works: worker works, company gives money. Workers do whatever the fuck they want with the money they earn.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Google might also get paid to enable surveillance.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Maybe by now there is some Android emulation for iOS that can do it?
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.
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.
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).
Faux luxury.
Totally works in the US too on teens, moms, and lower middle class people.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
Losing the ability to easily sideload apps is what we're talking about.
How do iPhones have worse security than Android???
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.
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.
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...
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!
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.
That said, Android options are dwindling which is not a good thing. Remember LG? They are gone.
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.
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.
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.
Also software installation in Android has been high friction for a while. Installing an APK on my phone is at least 10 clicks.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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!
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".
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.
Just like 99% of software running on computers in the world today? How is it different from "installing software"?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(So, I'd probably put in the effort.)
No experience, but if they lock out Android I probably will.
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".
It's OK now that Epic can have a one-click download for Fortnite to shove all the friction back into the sideloading experience.
Edit: to clarify, I don't hate subscription, I hate that I cannot search for free apps in the store.
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.
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.
As much as I want open source, I really don't think it's there yet for most people.
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 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.
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.
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...
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.
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...
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.
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?"
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.
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.
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?
Why should the rest of us be punished?
Designing a product so that almost all of it’s intended users can operate it safely seems like the right decision.
> 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.
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.)
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.
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 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.
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 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
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.
1) a .apk that was not developer-verified
2) without informing Google of this
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
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?
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.
Call it "installing" or "jumping the garden wall".
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.
Aaaaand, Action! Cue EU hate messages.
Or maybe the risks of monopolies and monocultures in computing.
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.
Google is getting more ridiculous by the day.
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.
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.
3. Like the amazing malicious crapware from PlayStore that they allow. They don't reject that.
4. Grandma installs crap mainly from PlayStore
Still not a big fan of it... though admittedly mostly just install stuff via brew/cask more than direct downloads as a result.
You are on macOS. Not others. You are following Apple. We don't.
...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.