Edit: For what it’s worth, you can give Google feedback to stop this nonsense. Scroll down to Get Ready section and click on Share your feedback. You can use the following text as an example.
Android’s strength has always been in being both secure and open. Restricting sideloading goes against this principle and does little to protect users. The existing toggle and clear warnings are already enough to inform users of the risks.
Meanwhile, the Play Store itself continues to be the main source of Android malware. In 2023 alone, malicious apps on Google Play were downloaded over 600 million times. More recently, 77 infected apps with 19 million installs and 200+ other malicious apps with nearly 8 million installs slipped past Play Protect. These numbers make it clear where the real problem lies.
If Google truly wants to protect users, the focus should be on strengthening Play Store defenses. Android’s openness is not the threat; malware inside the official store is. Please prioritize fixing that instead of undermining one of Android’s core values.
I’m considering leaving Apple for Android for a very long time now. On my shortlist I have the Fairphone Gen 6 and the OnePlus 13. Other options are not possible. I don’t want Google or Samsung hardware, or any other manufacturers that make it difficult to unlock your bootloader.
One of the reasons is the freedom to install any app I want on my device, because it’s my device. But with the news about Google forcing developers to share their personal credentials it makes it difficult for me to go to Android. Basically Google is trying to kill sideloading. Should I even move to Android now or is Android with the limitation just like iOS?
If you buy a device right now, you get an immediate benefit, that lasts at least for the lifetime of the device. There is no change yet, and you’ll always be able to just not update to newer versions of Android that restrict sideloading. In case of Fairphone, that device is likely to last a long time.
There is no real risk in buying a phone right now. Only once infrastructure changes that drops previous wireless network technology (i.e. 5g), and the new wireless communication technology is not supported by your phone’s hardware anymore, is when you’ll run into problems. Or when apps require a newer version of Android, but likely you’ll be able to spoof that by rooting your phone and installing certain software.
I don’t think that is how it works. For example I don’t think you can get google security update for older android without updating the whole system. there were monthly google security update that are going to become less frequent.
Also I think the part that stops the apk installation (those not signed with signature in google database) are checked by google play services and that is installed in background which is the result of project treble and mainline that google implemented for modular updates without rom update. so you probably can’t stop google from doing this policy even if you stay on older ROMs.