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Uncomfortable Questions About Android Developer Verification

(commonsware.com)
400 points ingve | 2 comments | 27 Aug 25 05:14 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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morpheuskafka ◴[27 Aug 25 07:31 UTC] No.45036523[source]▶
Presumably this won't apply to Chinese OEMs, since even though their devices do ship a disabled by default Google Mobile Services (without the user facing Play Store APK), it obviously would not be suitable to require Google involvement for developing internal apps. The OEMs could set up such a debug licensing service themselves, but each of them would have to do it themselves, and then it would be impossible to debug Google-based apps on the devices.
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1. xyzal ◴[27 Aug 25 07:33 UTC] No.45036542[source]▶
Many Chinese OEMs are not Google certified, so it won't for sure apply to them. Some (Huawei) even had to implement their own app store and replacement for Google services. They are basically de-googled devices, though, sadly, often loaded with spyware from the other camp.
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2. morpheuskafka ◴[02 Sep 25 09:35 UTC] No.45100825[source]▶
But some, like Oppo and Vivo are--they ship with a Google-OKed copy of GMS, and redistribute the Play Store on their own app store as a way to install it (ostensibly for use when traveling outside the mainland, though it can also be used with a VPN). So clearly they are on some level Google certified.

However, they also contain switches to disable background GMS, which makes them almost de-googled. All of them, not just Huawei, have their own app store/updater, and have some sort of push notification to replace Firebase Cloud Messaging (as I understand, Tencent provides a one touch service so devs don't need to hardcode each OEMs notifications). Otherwise, it would be impossible to get apps or notifications without a VPN/proxy.