this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
974 points (98.6% liked)

Android

33749 readers
2 users here now

DROID DOES

Welcome to the Android community on Lemmy. Here you can participate in amazing discussions and events relating to all things Android.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules


1. All posts must be relevant to Android devices/operating system.


2. Posts cannot be illegal or NSFW material.


3. No spam, self promotion, or upvote farming. Sources engaging in these behavior will be added to the Blacklist.


4. Non-whitelisted bots will be banned.


5. Engage respectfully: Harassment, flamebaiting, bad faith engagement, or agenda posting will result in your posts being removed. Excessive violations will result in temporary or permanent ban, depending on severity.


6. Memes are not allowed to be posts, but are allowed in the comments.


7. Posts from clickbait sources are heavily discouraged. Please de-clickbait titles if it needs to be submitted.


8. Submission statements of any length composed of your own thoughts inside the post text field are mandatory for any microblog posts, and are optional but recommended for article/image/video posts.


Community Resources:


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

If you haven't seen this yet, Google is planning to require mandatory developer identity verification for all Android apps, including apps distributed outside the Play Store, taking effect September 2026. This affects every independent and open source Android developer directly.

This is not just about the Play Store. After September 2026, on any certified Android device, applications from unverified developers will be blocked by default. The only proposed bypass, the "advanced flow", exists only as a blog post and has not appeared in any beta, dev preview, or canary release. No one outside Google has seen it.

The community has been fighting back at keepandroidopen.org:

  • Read the full breakdown of what this means
  • Sign the open letter (organisations only)
  • Contact your national regulators — contacts listed by country on the site
  • Add the countdown banner to your project

September 2026 is closer than it looks. The time to push back is now.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Bazell@lemmy.zip 158 points 1 week ago (3 children)

This is what happens when you don't have strong competitors. We need to promote more independent OS platforms for smartphones like Linux distros.

[–] leftascenter@jlai.lu 55 points 1 week ago (3 children)

AKA: Don't waste time and energy fighting google, spend it helping GNU phones.

[–] kbobabob@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Which GNU project are you buying from/supporting?

[–] maplesaga@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Motorola is releasing with Graphene OS soon.

[–] berg@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Both are important.

Legal cases create precedents which can be used to fight similar cases in the future.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago

In bizarre legislation systems like the US and the UK if I understand it correctly. I hope the EU will find some non BS thing to do stopping this crap.

And that graphene os will come to good cheap phones 😬

[–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 1 points 1 week ago

I expect the opposite but hope I'm wrong.

[–] Demdaru@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Every single time competitor appeared, they were ignored. Blackberry, Symbian, Windows 8/Mobile.

Microsoft even tried throwing money at app developers to bridge the biggest gap aka apps, but most companies didn't even want their money, perceiving porting as too troublesome.

[–] CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world 35 points 1 week ago

What? BlackBerry was ignored? BlackBerry existed before Android and iOS. It was Android and iOS that killed BlackBerry.

[–] Zagorath@quokk.au 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's actually a shame, because Windows Phone was actually good. It featured a much more user/task-centric UI, letting users think about what they want to do, rather than which app they need to use to do it. Of course, this was bad for apps' ability to gain and reinforce brand recognition. So of course they didn't want to support it.

[–] Mynameisallen@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 week ago

Honestly this, I thought the windows phone was really good. That said I'll never forgive Microsoft for buying nokia and effectively killing Meego (yes I know sailfish is a thing but it's pretty stunted growth wise)

I was a windows phone user and the last Windows version is to blame for killing their phones. They released a half baked platform that literally required SOAP for all network traffic. No raw TCP or UDP access just SOAP... a horrible standard based on XML with like 10x the overhead. 6.1 was probably the best but even that was plagued by compatibility issues.