But, that wasn't your only choice for a device. Android runs on basically anything and you have plenty of options for devices that let you do what you want with it.

Basically, the bootloader being locked is a manufacturer problem and not an android problem. Buy a different phone, smartphones have fully matured at this point. Grab a pixel 7 or 7 pro for a couple of hundred bucks and make that device your biotch.

Makes sense.

I don't know if this was just a joke or you really mean it that way.

I would partially agree that there are a lot of similarities between Mao and Trump, but current situation in USA is nowhere near current situation in china.

I think the issue is they’ll have to do much more work to get to those stores if they become remotely popular as a vector for bypassing censorship.

The minute people are using f-droid at scale to bypass controls and censorship, f-droid is going to get firewalled if it isn’t already.

China isn’t on the open internet. It’s a game of whack-a-mole for them, but they’re pretty good at it and throw a lot of bodies at this.

The average user won’t be jumping through the hoops required to make this work.

From what I read technically "Android" is used as the most popular smartphone OS in China. But that's only because android is the foundation of costume Chinese OS that comes without any google services (nice) but is also highly restricted against side loading. Of course like always ways should exist to workaround those restrictions.

But to be honest getting information about all the restrictions people in china need to suffer from getting harder l with every day since they get encapsulated more and more.

The number of stores are irrelevant, not sure how you keep missing this. And I’m not sure why you think just because you have more stores, it will somehow circumvent the new law.

If you add 3 more App Stores, the outcome will be most apps will be sold in all of them, I mean why wouldn’t you want your product in as many stores as possible? Again, not sure why you think more stores means anything or can be used to circumvent Chinese laws.

And China won’t forget about F Droid. If they want devs registered, then it’s going to hit their nation, not a specific company. They will all be brought under the new rule. One store, hundred stores, google, Apple, whomever.

Exactly. The store is irrelevant, registration is what China is after.

Also, you’re wrong about developers bypassing registration. That kind of shit isn’t possible in China.

I have a chinese friend and when I asked them to look for signal, whatsapp, or telegram, the apple app store had them all but they didn't work after they installed it. They just got a loading screen or couldn't sign up.

Android custom ROM scene was big back when I was rooting and playing with ROMs, as people found how to root their obscure phones by translating chinese forum posts. You don't have to access apk sites, there are other ways to share apks. Last I heard fdroid was accessible from China as far back as 2014 until recently.

Here's a quote from fdroid themselves.

In the Chinese app store market five to ten commonly used app stores, and yet even the largest has less than a majority market share. Most Chinese people have more than one app store on their phone, so there is no monolith there, whereas “outside of China, Apple and Google control more than 95 percent of the app store market share”.

https://f-droid.org/en/2022/11/23/why-curation-and-decentralization-is-better-than-millions-of-apps.html

Do some research before you perpetuate misinformation that confirms your bias.

But fuck the CCP for authoritarianism.