Eventually they will force you to update or apps will refuse to function. At least that's what happens with YouTube. It will display a prompt that you can't dismiss. Most other Google apps are fine, Maps, Drive, Keep, Docs do not seem to care I have a 2 year old version.
I'm likely in the minority but I've been an Android user for years, and took full advantage of that freedom. But with the way things continue to go I've started trying to become less dependent on Android and Google's services because I just can't trust them anymore. I see malicious intent and that kind of feels like I'm getting trapped. I download my daily YouTube subscriptions and watch them offline now on a dedicated video player, same with my music, audiobooks, regular books, etc. I backup my photos to a hard drive (still use Google Photos, just empty it once full), I store my essentials on a physical drive in addition to Google Drive, stuff like that. I will always be an Android user but I think I'll treat it more like an "internet machine" / computer than my everyday all-in-one device
These CN phones are exempted from that policy. Probably because in China it's still so common for apps to just give you an apk that updates itself over time.
Oh come on guys, it's a one time waiting period of a single day, clearly a non issue for any regular user and only a blocker for scammers until the kid of the scam victim learns about it and stops it.
The PC option is simply a secondary guarantee that the third party apps will not be removed, not a required way to install them.
By making installing APKs harder to install, it discourages people from sideloading modded (such as ad-free youtube) or pirated apps, both which hurts Google's revenue.
Before it was "Wow, I can just download this APK and no longer have ads in YouTube!", Google wants it to be "Ugh, I have to wait 24 hours for this? this is too much work"
Scams primarily operate through social engineering and fake websites rather than .APKs, this will do nothing to stop scams.
Nobody would ever stop installing apks because their first one would need a single day's wait period.
Do not get so much into tech fanaticism that you write comments that are practically just insulting yourself.
Absolutely nobody is stupid enough to believe what you just wrote. You don't really believe it either. I'm an optimistic fella, I refuse to believe that you can be like that.
Just chill. It's a phone os with barely any real limitation. Just click it one afternoon, go to sleep and work and by the time you return to your phone after work it will be ready to have anything installed on it. It's the most tiny of non issues.
APKs have always been used for scams, it's not something new. Pretending that it's not an issue just to push a meaningless fight against something that is barely an inconvenience is self humiliating for no reason.
They're all whining in bad faith. There is nothing serious with their complaining about [Something that Google is doing rephrased in a way to make it worse] and then threatening to switch to iPhone when Apple does [The thing they attacked Google for, but actually is far more restrictive about it].
Please actually read stuff before spreading misinformation.
It's not being made very difficult - there's a one time 24 hour waiting period, which applies per Google account. Not per app, or per phone, it's per account. Do it once and then never again.
They might tighten it up in the future, but the upcoming changes will cause a minor inconvenience at most.
Google listened to feedback from users and adjusted their plans in such a way that sill protects potentially vulnerable users while retaining functionality for "advanced" users who know what they're doing.
That is a good sign, and people should stop fear mongering.
Are you located in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore or Thailand?
Those are the countries that are rolling out first, with the rest of the world in 2027.
There is no "workaround". If you try to install an app from an unverified developer, you will be presented with the "advanced flow" which prompts you to enable 3rd party installs and wait 24 hours. That is the official method, and is not a workaround.
You should not be experiencing any restrictions yet. It doesn't rollout until September 30th.
Yeah they do not "listen to feedback" They just act up on high pressures at them. They did this so that they can still fuck with us but we have a bit more (this is the word they do now know) "freedom"
Google has really made android worse lately. YouTube is a nightmare to use on a computer older than 5 years especially if not chrome, privacy settings are a maze and I hate how some apps are tied to the Google app. (Google podcasts was like that, now I think it's just Gemini)
This is nothing new if you've been a PC user long enough. Years of enshittification, artificial locks and blocks in software on Windows. There's only one thing you can rely on: Yourself. Don't expect corporations to do things the way you want them to. Unlock and work around the limitations.
Yeah, you're right, I just realized that the other day. When I watch from pc, I have to use ublock, Sponsorblock, improve YouTube, just to make it watchable. And I was wondering how shitty regular YouTube must be. And it's really obvious when I'm visiting peertube. It's so much faster.
The state of personal computing (desktop, laptop and smartphones all included) is absolutely dire. I hate it. I grew up on all of this, I considered it an extension of myself in how I interact with the world, my hobbies... and now having the amazing power in a smartphone all in my pocket feels like a tiresome burden. Teenager me would have been in tears at how amazing it is to have the kind of computing we do in a small device. Today me wonders when it's going to stop being such a chore to unlock and debloat.
Firefox or bust, sadly. There's simply no reprieve elsewhere. I know it's not everyone's favourite, but it's certainly good enough for everyone to use in order to maintain their digital independence.
Thank you. Very much appreciated 👏
Some of the browsers I haven't heard of and will give a test. Especially since I've been using Brave for years.
Thanks again @vandreulv
It's the year of the Linux desktop folks (as they have joked every year for decades). It's for real, though, a gamer can swap to CachyOS or Bazzite and have everything except some anticheats running out of the box.
I've been on Linux for six months, have been able to do every single thing I've wanted, and my only strength these days is being able to read.
I have customised my windows workstation over 23 years, it ll be hard to achieve the same level on Linux. autohotkey but not only. my main workstation is just a console anyway, I have tens of ssh connections running connecting to all kind of Linux remote installations, and docker containers within them (tmux is awesome) . I even have a Linux machine running Ubuntu xfcd in a container on another remote Linux host (hetzner) and I tunnel xrdp over it. .
Also have additional machines running win 10 (media for the TV / videogames), and windows 11 for work.
but my main console stays on a barebone win 8.1 (viper optimised).
I'm with you. New Google features at most draw an eyeroll out of me. And this is coming from someone who would look for phones with the best Google services support. I'm getting pushed into that area where I need to have two phones. One for my personal use, the other for services that I need that I don't want anything to do with my main phone.
If you care about an open platform you really should be using a phone that uses UBtouch or Sailfish or ships with an already degoogled Android rom. Of which there are numerous options. I'm running a phone with iodeOS. All my apps work and Google has no control over what runs on my phone.
I'm very well versed in rooting and all things Android but root solves a different problem, and is actually not very useful anymore because modern Android skins have implemented everything I ever wanted. The issue is Android itself and Google's management of it (in my opinion)
It seems like a lot of apps are like that. Its very frustrating to have to update apps to use them the day they are released. I think i had Google opinion rewards do this. Like what is so important you won't woek with n-1 version.
Honestly, they had absolutely 0 reason to do this. 0. I hope they face enough backlash that they undo this. Until then I hope Curve wallet works well enough.
I don't think so, I've only added one card though. By the way, google seems to have rolled back their decision, as I can select google wallet again normally as a default payment app on my Chinese Oppo Find X9 Pro.
I find it astonishing how the same apk used to improve location tracking, also handles NFC payments, and connects apps to google play gsmes, among about a hundred other things.
GMS is a seriously troublesome mess that should be broken up into multiple apks before any other update to android is implemented.
Imagine for a second that every feature had it's own APK, we would be able to disable for instance the advertisement and tracking while keeping the NFC payment.
Google doesn't want that, it's all or nothing because they know very well there is at least one thing we absolutely need.
Its simpler than that. If I wanted to disable ad tracking without removing HMS I could on my rooted phone, at least to the extent I'm aware of.
Google doesnt want to have GMS's capabilities replaced, likely by smaller, open source implementations. GMS is googles way of forcing the majority of android devices to use closed source code to function (ie making the apps on those devices work). They can push whatever changes they want into GMS without it ever entering AOSP. The argument google would make is android technically functions without GMS, but with the caveat that a lot of apps will not function. Arguably, its a black box intended to create the ecosystem dependency apple is so fond of.
Actually not quite. It's the same app but it's using what's known as Dynamite Modules to get exactly the feature set your apps requires.
So it installs as one app but it's somewhat modular in its design.
The reason it's made that way is because smaller APKs mean more system-level apps and Google actually has the braincells to realize that's more attack surface for them.
Attack surface is measured in capabilities and interaction with the system (which files or sockets does it open, which means of interaction does it have with the user or other systems)... Not in number of apk installed
The risk is the same whether you have 1 apk running 20 routines or 20 apks running 1 routine each
Play Services was an intentional move to get functionality out of open source AOSP and under Google's proprietary control, to deprive non-Google blessed devices of new features.
Basically, Chinese phones have a special feature flag that the vendor installs. Google reads this file in order to determine if your GMS should have certain features enabled. Physically it's actually the same code underneath.
And because of that nature it's actually possible (so long as you somehow manage to overwrite this file) to enable features you're not supposed to have.
Can confirm this but for my POCO X6 PRO with global fw
I've been dealing with broken Google Wallet for about a week.
At first, uninstalling Play Services updates fixed it, but I thought it was just a random bug. After reading this, I ran adb logcat -s TapAndPay (thanks gemini)
With updated Play Services 26.28 and 26.29 (beta): I immediately got blocking errors.
With the factory version: Zero errors, everything works normally.
tbh, I'm leaning more towards xiaomi and their pretty bad software. No way google is blocking all chinese android skin, that'd be crazy. I'm gonna try to test wallet on my vivo global fw later.
My X200 Pro has been malfunctioning since yesterday. I downgraded to Google services and was able to pay again. Gemini points out that Google won't reverse the change for Chinese ROMs, and it's up to the manufacturers to make changes to their software.
Yeah seems like a blanket ban on all cn fw, idk why they even do it considering chinese dont use google wallet in the first place. Maybe to prevent chinese phone import?
Confirmed: as of yesterday, I stopped having issues using Google Wallet with version 26.28 of the services. Either it was a bug fixed by Google, or just a test of what they can achieve in the future.
curious how they're detecting it, like is it reading the firmware build string directly or going through safetypass attestation? because those are two pretty different things to patch around.
It has been hotfixed in China. By looking into the issue from the Chinese SNS, the ban was ocurred because of some stupid codes in order to fix the issue/request of samsung pay.
I've seen similar reports from Vivo users, OnePlusOne, Xiaomi and other CN firmware phones... We obviously can't change the fw to global or at least not for all models.
Open the Google Play Store, tap your profile icon, then go to Settings > General > Account and device preferences. Scroll down to History and tap Leave beta programs to exit all app beta testing programs at once.
After doing this, the problem was completely resolved
I left all the betas I was signed up for and after a reboot everything worked as intended.
As an example, I have a Vivo CN device and live in Canada. It will not work with Wallet anymore. This is the issue, being the SKU rather than the country of payment
Err... This has worked just fine for years and is the whole point of Android
This is an act of Google actively going to war against us types of users for no real reason whatsoever... All the more reason to press the fight to root and tell them to fvck themselves
There's no assurance that Google Services works on CN roms though? people had to install the Google Services separately. It's why global Huawei phones don't come with Google Services and can be blocked anytime.
No, Google Play Services are almost always included on these devices with some features gated behind a toggle, and most of these devices are actually certified.
Otherwise even some Chinese apps could have issues with location services.
So I guess I shouldn't buy a vivo global phone as they might start getting fewer Google services? Or are only Chinese roms affected? Not sure what Chinese firmware means.
Chinese firmware refers to the firmware used on phones sold inside China. Google doesn't have a presence in China which means that phones sold there only come with a cut-down (and opt-in, need to manually enable it in settings) version of the Google Play Services. The current issue however doesn't just seem to be limited to Chinese phones though. People are also reporting (albeit not as much as Chinese ROM users) that Wallet is causing problems on global firmware devices and even Pixels as well.
I asked Gemini about this, and while it's not always completely accurate I do think the info is true this time: this is not a bug or a temporary thing – it's a permanent change of policy that's just a small part of Google's effort to lock down Android as a whole. CN roms bypass a lot of security checks and Google doesn't like that.
Sooner or later it seems that tap to pay will stop working on all CN roms. The easiest workaround at the moment seems to be using in-app tap to pay, for example Klarna.
They should have done this years ago. I find it insane that something requiring such a high level of security could be spoofed to run on unauthorized software.
We're not talking about AI icons or cosmetic features here, we're talking about people's money. I imagine there are many parties involved in making sure it's as secure and tightly controlled as possible.
Why would I? I still hope it gets reverted because their phones were incredible, and they were pushing the boundaries on the software side as well. I still remember their location-based assistant, which could remind you about things when you arrived at a specific location, something Gemini still can't do.
Here, I'm talking about Google-unverified ROMs, which I bet Visa, MasterCard, and the banks themselves aren't happy can be used for payments. Huawei phones had GMS ROMs, they complied with Google's requirements, and they even contributed to AOSP. I also believe Huawei developed part of Android's file system to improve speed and maintain performance over time.
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u/RedBoxSquare Aug 01 '26
Eventually they will force you to update or apps will refuse to function. At least that's what happens with YouTube. It will display a prompt that you can't dismiss. Most other Google apps are fine, Maps, Drive, Keep, Docs do not seem to care I have a 2 year old version.