this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2025

35 points (97.3% liked)

Ask Lemmy

35318 readers

5312 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

6) No US Politics.

Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Bluetreefrog@lemmy.world

TheSaneWriter@lemm.ee

Asudox@lemmy.world

lemmy_bot@lemmy.world

beefbaby182@lemmy.world

ModeratorCan@lemmy.world

neidu3@sh.itjust.works

asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev

candyman337@lemmy.world

candyman337@sh.itjust.works

is it possible that some downstream Android "distro" will allow sideloading? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 day ago by kionite231@lemmy.ca to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hello,

what i mean by that is that if it's possible that some companies like Xiaomi, Realme etc will continue allowing sideloading the apps? I mean they have already modified the Android source code, how hard it could be to just allow sideloading, isn't it just something like allow_sideloading=true.

my guess is that Google services will refused to work on phones that allows sideloading, that could prevent other companies from allowing sideloading.

what are your thoughts?

top 11 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] gigachad@piefed.social 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I guess that's exactly it, Play Services. Google outsourced more and more basic features into Play Services over the years. For example without Google Play Services you do not have

access to the Play Store
assisted GNSS via the cell network
Push Notifications
Maps engine
Basic integrity / SafetyNet

...and other things. A device without Play Services / microG is basically useless for the majority of users.

So I guess Custom ROMs are not necessarily affected by this change by Google, but all devices running Android + Play Services will (99.99% of all devices). And it is questionable if it's worth to develop for a very very small crowd of people, especially as custom ROMs are being in danger for years now. This move by google is by far not the first one against the open source community.

[–] semperverus@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Pixel phone with grapheneOS has been an interesting ride. Not having push sucks but I still get notifications for SMS, signal, xmpp, and Matrix. Only one I miss is Discord.

Maps gets replaced with Organic Maps or its fork CoMaps.

I access my bank through my browser.

[–] RodgeGrabTheCat@sh.itjust.works 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Any degoogled OS will continue to allow sideloading. The source of any installed app will be checked on device which will require google software. No google software = no restrictions.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

GrapheneOS can be installed without Google Services, and sandboxed if you want them. I guess it depends on if Google bakes a lock into their android binary blobs tyqt downstream OS makers have to use.. Unless they start developing their own. A Linux Phone is going to be the sensible move going forward.

[–] a_good_hunter@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Only works on Google phones....

[–] null@piefed.nullspace.lol 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

For now

[–] MaggiWuerze@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago

I really hope its Sony. Maybe it will even be available for my 1VI...

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

They supply source code you can build for other phones and tweak parts to get it working, but yeah that is out of reach for most people.

[–] 30p87@feddit.org 11 points 1 day ago

Those chinese companies already don't have the certs/rights for google verified/"protected" Android, they only use AOSP. Which means no App Dev verification anyway.

[–] yessikg@fedia.io 7 points 1 day ago

The only thing that might work is a Linux distro that becomes the new base for an Android-like ecosystem, maybe PostmarketOS or Ubuntu Touch?

[–] pir8t0x@ani.social 0 points 1 day ago

I definitely don't think so