Google Is Closing Android. 37 Orgs Are Fighting Back. - Techlore

[u/ControlCAD]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MZfGq5F1NU

[u/that_baddest_dude]

This is about sideloading apps. You won't be able to develop an android app at all, sideloaded or not, without registering with Google and submitting to their ToS and such.

[u/that_baddest_dude → u/[deleted]]

It sounds to me like sideloading would be blocked unless you install using ADB? how do you even do that? USB to the PC and some other shenanigans?

Right now I can just have an APK file and tell it to install. You're telling me nothing's going to change about that?

[u/_Dreamer_Deceiver_ → u/[deleted]]

When the step is to get your laptop out, find a usb c cable, download and install adb, turn on developer options, connect up your phone to your laptop, start the adb server, send the APK to the phone.....suddenly "a single step" if a lot of faff and is a barrier, that's why they're doing it.

Then they'll say "but hardly anyone installs apps outside of the play store anymore...so let's just stop allowing installs via adb"

[u/that_baddest_dude → u/[deleted]]

I would consider this an amount of user friction close enough to "blocking" that you're just splitting hairs.

[u/that_baddest_dude → u/[deleted]]

Why are you carrying water for Google on this issue?

Sure I can learn to do whatever, it's just objectively more of a pain in the ass than the current method, which is a bad thing. It's clearly a step towards locking down the platform, which is a bad thing.

Do you like bad things?

[u/Kawi_rider_zx6r → u/[deleted]]

For more than 17 years, huh? So you're saying sideliading apk files is a relatively new thing? Sure, pal.

Funny, i used to install .cab files on my old ass Windows Mobile phones, directly from the device, as i should be able to.

[u/Sea_Jeweler_3231 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah sure, I gotta turn on dev options and then use whole lotta adb juggling just to get a foss calculator to install and update.

[u/Auntypasto → u/[deleted]]

 Just about everyone (except you) understood that the argument was about installing apps directly from the device. Now you're telling us that we should accept more hurdles to install unverified apps.

[u/Auntypasto → u/[deleted]]

Yet Samsung has it even more locked down than that and nobody's complaining about Samsung.

 Nobody's complaining about Samsung because they're not the subject of the post. Hmm… sounds like fingerpointing. Again, you expect people to accept a worse experience because Samsung's is worse?

[u/_Dreamer_Deceiver_ → u/[deleted]]

For 90% of people that's is defacto blocked.

[u/Tomthebard → u/[deleted]]

I do miss having MicroSD cards

[u/Kawi_rider_zx6r → u/Tomthebard]

Funny how that dude harping on what Samsung does and doesn't do, Samsung does not include a micro sd slot in their flagship Galaxy Ultra devices, yet they include them in their lower end Galaxy A devices. You'd think the more expensive phone would have more hardware features like a card reader, not the cheaper one.

[u/CatsAreGods → u/[deleted]]

I heard Samsung is going to block ADB next.

[u/smjsmok → u/CatsAreGods]

A claim like this shouldn't be posted without a source.

[u/CatsAreGods → u/smjsmok]

https://9to5google.com/2026/02/27/samsung-galaxy-update-android-recovery-menu-removed/

Now that I reread it and it's not the middle of the night, it looks like it's only being nuked for the recovery menu. Sorry!