For the past 15 years, F-Droid has provided a safe and secure haven for Android users around the world to find and install free and open source apps. When co...
I’m still holding some hope that maybe Samsung’s flavor of the OS won’t have the restriction of requiring Google keys. Specially considering that Samsung has its own “Galaxy Store” with app submissions controlled by them, not Google.
Though it’s possible they might simply extend the signatures accepted to include also the ones signed by them ^^U …still it would give them a competitive edge to remove the restriction so they might be incentivized to do it.
Would be nice, but I imagine that Samsung would both need to actually be impacted in an meaningful way with their store, and find some way to prevent Play Services (which they have to meet requirements to be able to load on their devices) from just nope-ing non-registered apps. Both of which I seriously doubt would happen.
They have already been working pretty close with Google on things that removed their actual Tizen OS from stuff like their watches in favor of merging their code into Android Wear OS. Would also guess that they might just work something out to either force apps on their store to be signed by Samsung and cleared by Google. Or that they just require apps on their store to only be listed after registering with Google. Not like Samsung really cares about supporting side-loading if the apps aren’t in their (or Google’s) store.
Sadly I think only a OEM like Samsung would have the massive levels of hardware sales and money for making a real fight against Google. F-Droid and other alt-stores or projects lack both and are easy to ignore. If Samsung were to be actually concerned about this, then I think we would have already seen them filing lawsuits and pushing posts/news articles condemning Google’s plans like F-Droid keeps doing (aside from lawsuits due to money).
If they want a lot of play store banking apps + other things that opt into play protect to work they’ll need to add the signature verification requirement.
Will the banks in Korea, EU and many other areas where Samsung phones are very common keep that restriction if it meant alienating that many users? I doubt it. That’s why I think the support of a big player on this would be a killing move.
Also I’m not 100% convinced that it’s impossible to have some verification without it depending on this one change.
I’m even willing to use the web apps or webpages for banking, if the browsers can make the handshakes. I’ll forfeit using the bank first party apps, if their websites are full featured.
And the bootloader is now locked down across Samsung’s ecosystem, as of this year. Sucks.
If you move to using an unsecured “chinaphone” as an alternative to the big three handset vendors, then it’s unlikely they are target devices for the myriad of uncertified ROM’s.
I think we are going to need software solutions that can run on major Androdis distributions across the variety of hardware.
I think we’re going to need something like UTM or Docker (virtualization or containerization) for running our unsigned Android apps and services, and I don’t know how feasible it will be.
Samsung s22 and s25, checking in. Graphene won’t be viable for the vast, overwhelming majority of Android users today or in the coming seasons.
I hope people figure out some kind of virtualization/docker-containerization solution to the coming Goo-lag.
I’m still holding some hope that maybe Samsung’s flavor of the OS won’t have the restriction of requiring Google keys. Specially considering that Samsung has its own “Galaxy Store” with app submissions controlled by them, not Google.
Though it’s possible they might simply extend the signatures accepted to include also the ones signed by them ^^U …still it would give them a competitive edge to remove the restriction so they might be incentivized to do it.
Would be nice, but I imagine that Samsung would both need to actually be impacted in an meaningful way with their store, and find some way to prevent Play Services (which they have to meet requirements to be able to load on their devices) from just nope-ing non-registered apps. Both of which I seriously doubt would happen.
They have already been working pretty close with Google on things that removed their actual Tizen OS from stuff like their watches in favor of merging their code into Android Wear OS. Would also guess that they might just work something out to either force apps on their store to be signed by Samsung and cleared by Google. Or that they just require apps on their store to only be listed after registering with Google. Not like Samsung really cares about supporting side-loading if the apps aren’t in their (or Google’s) store.
Sadly I think only a OEM like Samsung would have the massive levels of hardware sales and money for making a real fight against Google. F-Droid and other alt-stores or projects lack both and are easy to ignore. If Samsung were to be actually concerned about this, then I think we would have already seen them filing lawsuits and pushing posts/news articles condemning Google’s plans like F-Droid keeps doing (aside from lawsuits due to money).
You are probably right… it’s just one hope I had, I’m not expecting it to happen, but I’ll be hopeful until the end.
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
If they want a lot of play store banking apps + other things that opt into play protect to work they’ll need to add the signature verification requirement.
Will the banks in Korea, EU and many other areas where Samsung phones are very common keep that restriction if it meant alienating that many users? I doubt it. That’s why I think the support of a big player on this would be a killing move.
Also I’m not 100% convinced that it’s impossible to have some verification without it depending on this one change.
That’s a really good point, basically throw their weight around a bit eh?
I’m even willing to use the web apps or webpages for banking, if the browsers can make the handshakes. I’ll forfeit using the bank first party apps, if their websites are full featured.
100%, my bank thankfully doesn’t tick that box, but if it did I wouldn’t think twice about dropping the app. Freedom is more important.
There are many other “uncertified” ROMs.
And the bootloader is now locked down across Samsung’s ecosystem, as of this year. Sucks.
If you move to using an unsecured “chinaphone” as an alternative to the big three handset vendors, then it’s unlikely they are target devices for the myriad of uncertified ROM’s.
I think we are going to need software solutions that can run on major Androdis distributions across the variety of hardware.
I think we’re going to need something like UTM or Docker (virtualization or containerization) for running our unsigned Android apps and services, and I don’t know how feasible it will be.