Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android • Hacker News Board

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#591

Post by malcolmgreaves » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 8:05 PM UTC

onli wrote: post #56

AlotOfReading wrote: post #12

Google's long term strategy with Android is baffling to me. Apple has had better mobile hardware for years. Apple has higher consumer trust. Apple has better app selection (for most people). Apple has been increasingly implementing the core features that differentiate Android devices, like USB-C and RCS. Every Android user lost to the increasing iOS market share is another customer Google has to pay exorbitant fees t…

I don't see any iOS advantage with the apps anymore. That was maybe true in the very beginning, during the gold rush time of the app store. But not since then. In which category are there better iOS apps? Browsers? No, strictly worse. Youtube app? No, worse. Texting? Worse or equal (Whatsapp). Podcast client? I assume worse, since there is no Antenna Pod. Social media apps? The iOS variants of those apps are afaik in…

There is not a single android app that is ever better than its iOS counterpart. At the very top margin, the android app is equivalent to its iOS counterpart. But there’s really only Gmail, photos, and Google Maps, and the big tech co apps that this small exception covers. Android apps don’t have to be worse from a technical standpoint, but in reality they are always worse than the equivalent iOS app.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#592

Post by rockemsockem » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 8:05 PM UTC

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #548

AlotOfReading wrote: post #12

Google's long term strategy with Android is baffling to me. Apple has had better mobile hardware for years. Apple has higher consumer trust. Apple has better app selection (for most people). Apple has been increasingly implementing the core features that differentiate Android devices, like USB-C and RCS. Every Android user lost to the increasing iOS market share is another customer Google has to pay exorbitant fees t…

"Google's long term strategy with Android is baffling to me. " How does one know there is a long-term strategy History has shown that so-called "tech" companies often act in a reactionary manner^1 1. Often, the act is of one of copying what someone else has done. Other times it might be response to regulation One could argue Android itself was a reaction to iOS This is one example of the reactionary copying phenomeno…

Android was in development well before iOS was released, really the only big change was the touchscreen, which is obviously revolutionary, but that's a long-way from "Android is a reaction to iOS".

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#593

Post by rockemsockem » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 8:07 PM UTC

einsteinx2 wrote: post #558

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Google's long term strategy with Android is baffling to me. " How does one know there is a long-term strategy History has shown that so-called "tech" companies often act in a reactionary manner^1 1. Often, the act is of one of copying what someone else has done. Other times it might be response to regulation One could argue Android itself was a reaction to iOS This is one example of the reactionary copying phenomeno…

> One could argue Android itself was a reaction to iOS It quite literally was a reaction to iOS considering it was originally a copy of the BlackBerry OS (the older one in their keyboard phones) until the iPhone came out and they pivoted to copying iOS instead. EDIT: to get ahead of any negative replies about them copying iOS, I’m fully aware that they work quite differently under the hood and Android has had various…

IDK what you could possibly mean by saying it was "a copy of the BlackBerry" and further I don't see how that validates the claim that "Android itself was a reaction to iOS".

The actual truth seems to be that "Android's introduction of touchscreens was a reaction to iOS", which is WAY different than saying that the entire operating system was spun up just to compete with iOS.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#594

Post by bigstrat2003 » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 8:08 PM UTC

fHr wrote: post #437

AlotOfReading wrote: post #12

Google's long term strategy with Android is baffling to me. Apple has had better mobile hardware for years. Apple has higher consumer trust. Apple has better app selection (for most people). Apple has been increasingly implementing the core features that differentiate Android devices, like USB-C and RCS. Every Android user lost to the increasing iOS market share is another customer Google has to pay exorbitant fees t…

>Apple has had better mobile hardware for years. Classic Apple glazer take. This is why I still made another 100% with Apple stock over past 5 years because stupid people got gaslight into buying their overpriced stuff that is marginally better if at all.

Yeah, at no point has Apple ever had meaningfully better hardware than the competition. They have always been a more expensive version of the same hardware you can get from their competitors, just this one has an apple logo. But a lot of people, even smart people, are fooled by the marketing.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#595

Post by nozzlegear » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 8:09 PM UTC

guerrilla wrote: post #53

nozzlegear wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you have a choice to move from android, if you didnt want to have an apple device? Not wanting and not having a choice are two different things. > Do you want to use a different search engine other than google? Is there another email provider than gmail (for the non-technical person - i know you can run your own) My wife uses ddg and outlook, she's non-technical. I convinced her to use ddg but she's always used…

> My wife uses ddg and outlook, she's non-technical My mom too. The difference though is that they have us. Most people don't.

Well yeah, but my wife used Outlook/Hotmail without my convincing. She'd been using it since before we even met 16+ years ago.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#596

Post by rockemsockem » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 8:11 PM UTC

shiandow wrote: post #542

lokar wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what is missing here is the growing trend of scammers convincing people they are their bank (or whatever) and walking them through enabling side-loading and then installing malware (sometimes to address some urgent security issues with their account). This is meant to counter an actual issues that is affecting many many users.

I have no trust in a solution that mostly benefits the proposer. By all means let people curate and use safe lists of software, but let's not pretend that making the life harder for the few registries containing solely open source and vetted software is in any way about making people safer.

This solution clearly mostly benefits the ignorant phone users of the world who are susceptible to scams. There is a minuscule number of people sideloading Android apps on their phones compared to the greater population.

Like I strongly believe that sideloading should be possible on phones, I don't even do it myself anymore but it can be very helpful and is part of what makes the Android platform fundamentally more open than iOS. I was VERY opposed to their original idea of closing off sideloading altogether, but having to mark it in your settings manually seems like a very good compromise.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#597

Post by atomicnumber3 » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 8:15 PM UTC

gunalx wrote: post #563

password1 wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a saying in mobile development that in most companies the Android version of the app is a second class citizen. It usually brings substantially less money and so less money are invested in it. As a result the Android team is often understaffed and the app is almost always behind in feature development, less polished and with overall worse UX and more bugs compared to the iOS app. Also iOS still has a communit…

The indie dev market is a flip flop, I have seen many great apps only available on android as well.

This is more because the barrier to entry is so much lower.

Android: have laptop that can do virtualization (...so basically ever laptop that can also do this:) and have enough ram to do run Android studio. Then you theoretically also need an Android device but even that's just because I assume you want to use the app you're making. That's it.

iOS: $100/yr entry fee, plus you need Apple hardware, plus a "server" mode Apple hardware (Mac mini?) if you want to alt store and I assume your main device is a laptop.

Just the money thing and the hardware thing is a huge stumbling block. I know it's rounding error for any even semi serious business but also let's be real, a ton of very important software is basically run on the budget of "the software devs main job and/or EU welfare state benefits".

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#598

Post by rockemsockem » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 8:15 PM UTC

BatteryMountain wrote: post #59

If the make sideloading high-friction, either via account-bound or apk upload or permissions from MNO/ISP, I will leave android. I have a bunch of my own apps that only I use, not released to the public, if I cannot use them, I have zero reason to stay on android. I think one of the reasons they want to lockdown the system is to prevent guys like me from locking THEM out of my home/ecosystems, as and example, I build…

Seems like you'll still be able to use your own apps just fine under this scheme.

It also seems pretty obvious that the ignorant phone-users of the world who get scammed are the reason for this change. The revenue lost from people like you is really not worth any amount of engineering effort.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#599

Post by pjmlp » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 8:18 PM UTC

Klonoar wrote: post #580

grishka wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my country, for example, buying phones from carriers as part of your plan just isn't a thing . As in, you couldn't do it even if you wanted to. Same for postpaid plans and contracts. As a result, quite a lot of people use the "I can't believe they could make and sell an entire phone at this price" Xiaomi and similar phones.

Name the country if you want this to be a useful data point.

You could have checked their profile.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#600

Post by nozzlegear » Sun, Jan 25, 2026, 8:23 PM UTC

eloisant wrote: post #325

arthens wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not wanting and not having a choice are two different things. As a general statement, sure. But if we are talking about mobile phones this is a very privileged and unrealistic point of view. According to chatgpt, 70-80% of mobile phone sold worldwide every year cost less than the cheaper iPhone. Some people could probably stretch their budget and get the cheapest iPhone, but otherwise it seems safe to conclude that…

I see poor looking people with iPhones all the time. People do stretch their budget when they really feel the need for it (and the poorest you are the more you'll want to prove you're not poor by buying a status symbol), also the second hand market is an easy way to get a cheap iPhone. Sure, it won't be the latest model...

In the US it's very common to get your phone financed via your carrier, too. It's so common that most people probably don't even think of it as financing, it's just an extra monthly charge they pay on their bill which lets them upgrade to the latest iPhone or Android model every two years.