Android apps with Google services requirements - Sailfish General

What about those android apps which are using the cr*p google services (aka play services)?
Is the installation easy? Seemless? Does the services need a signature ?
Do you need to patch the apks with this requirement?
All this questions are because in BlackBerry, normal android apps work fine but these using the google services are a pain in the ass.
The worst is that many android developers include this depence when the apps doesn't need it...
Sent from my Classic using XDA-Developers mobile app

On Jolla Phone and Jolla C you can install Google Play Store and all necessary services, should you rely on it. It works in most cases seamlessly. The only limitation Alien Dalvik (the Android Layer) imposes on you is the lack of device settings integration. So should an app require to be set a platformwide default like for example Divide PIM asks to be your homescreen, it won't work as Jolla shows the android apps along the sailfish apps and does not have an android specific homescreen
If you need any help, I will link you to a few easy tutorials and howto's

Very useful information.
BTW, has Google any way to stop or create future troubles in those OS such as cyanogen or Sailfish using the Google services? I don't trust much in google, every day they are more close to the Ms behaviour in the old times,
Sent from my Classic using XDA-Developers mobile app

Related

[Q][DISCUSSION]What apps do you want to see?

This for discussion on what apps you want to see on Firefox OS. I really want to see Google native apps like Gmail, Google maps, chrome, etc. What is your application wishlist?
~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~
Phone: Samsung Galaxy s2 T989 Hercules
Rom: Jedi Jelly 4
Kernel: Insecure Kernel
Radio: LB7 Blaze
~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~
I am going to try and make an app, if anyone wants help this beautiful talented celebrity in making it just message me!
~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~
For me it would have to have the core apps properly sorted and fully functional. As an additional minimum a decent calendar and address book that can sync with my carddav and caldav servers, a good email client, a good voip client for starters.
backtrack5
AW: [Q][DISCUSSION]What apps do you want to see?
WhatsApp
Tapatalked with my JellyBean powered HTC Desire
Gapps, social networks, RSS, xda app. , cloud services. Etc.
Sent from my Nexus 10 using xda app-developers app
I'd like to see it with an rdp or vnc client.
Plus ensure that the kernel can support Ethernet adapters and USB devices for keyboard and mouse.
Then this low end phone suddenly can become a thin client machine when docked at the desk.
Handy for work purposes.
Perhaps also add VPN capability through a further app.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2
TheGameABN said:
backtrack5
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Since when backtrack is a app
Phone Slow? go ------>HERE<------
_____________________________________
"Google took 4 years to reach android 4.0.4 and apple to reach android 1.6" ​
Ports or equivalents of:
Ad Free Android
Titanium Backup
Clockwork Mod Recovery
Root Explorer
Orbot/Orweb
WiFi Analyzer
GPS Test
Better Battery Stats
Pdroid
Keepass
Gentle Alarm
Duckduckgo
Google Maps/Navigation
SMS My Car and Me
Yelp
Vocre
K-9 Mail
Evernote
DejaOffice
Safari to Go
Skifta
Shazam/Soundhound
Oovoo/Skype/Tango
YouTube
Netflix
Xfinity Player
Pulse
Tapatalk
Patience Revisited
Scrabble
HotDeath
Sent from my Rezound using Tapatalk 2
thanks to you guys's suggestion. And i will try my best to make an good app for you guys. Let us make this Firefox OS be more better.
ArianaGrande said:
This for discussion on what apps you want to see on Firefox OS. I really want to see Google native apps like Gmail, Google maps, chrome, etc. What is your application wishlist?
~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~
Phone: Samsung Galaxy s2 T989 Hercules
Rom: Jedi Jelly 4
Kernel: Insecure Kernel
Radio: LB7 Blaze
~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~
I am going to try and make an app, if anyone wants help this beautiful talented celebrity in making it just message me!
~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~°~
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I also agree, but I don't think Chrome will be there, I mean we are talking about Firefox OS not Chrome OS.
Sent from my Amazon Kindle Fire using xda app-developers app
I'd start porting command line tools like busybox or megous megatools.
If I want todo so, how do I compile them against gonk ?
vprasad1 said:
Ports or equivalents of:
Ad Free Android
Titanium Backup
Clockwork Mod Recovery
Root Explorer
Orbot/Orweb
WiFi Analyzer
GPS Test
Better Battery Stats
Pdroid
Keepass
Gentle Alarm
Duckduckgo
Google Maps/Navigation
SMS My Car and Me
Yelp
Vocre
K-9 Mail
Evernote
DejaOffice
Safari to Go
Skifta
Shazam/Soundhound
Oovoo/Skype/Tango
YouTube
Netflix
Xfinity Player
Pulse
Tapatalk
Patience Revisited
Scrabble
HotDeath
Sent from my Rezound using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
WOW that is one big list you have there my friend. But it seems to me you want your firefox to be an android phone.....
Don't get me wrong most of the apps you mentioned are "top of the class" apps in an android phone.
But I believe this os isn't android....yes if some of the above apps devs want to port their apps to firefox that's fine by me, it would be great though to see new devs working in this os even if that spell out building apps that in a sense do or have the same functionality like their android counter parts.
But rest assured you would see a lot of junk apps just like android has, and by junk I mean add supported apps, and a lot of wanna be coders that make unusefull apps with adds just to make easy bucks!
For me the list is simple:
1. A decent multi email client (if only Mozzila haden't kill thunderbird project it would had been cool to see a thunderbird app in firefox os).
2. A decent native file manager (not like the native one that samsung phones have)
3. A VLC port.
4. A songbird port.
5. An Open/Libre Office port
You see where I am getting with this!?
All the rest are cosmetic addons sort of speak with apps that have no intelligent functionality.
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Device: SGSIII LTE GT-I9305 4G
Rom: LiquidSmooth 2.3 (AOSP)
Recovery: Philz_Touch Recovery 5.03.0
Kernel: 3.0.64-CM-gc421809 [email protected] #1
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
JRBX550 said:
I also agree, but I don't think Chrome will be there, I mean we are talking about Firefox OS not Chrome OS.
Sent from my Amazon Kindle Fire using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, if they were to make the same thing from the iOS app, after all, the FFOS browser is just an interface, so a FFOS Chrome would be able to sync and all that stuff easily.
----------
I'm making a file manager, it's on github too. I'm still looking out for the best solutions for it right now, because the APIs are still too limited, so the best I could get was actually getting all files and parsing the folders from their names. Empty directories, for instance, will be invisible, hence the file manager would only be helpful to open downloaded files and maybe some basic interaction.
feherneoh said:
For file manager, a 'rooted' FFOS would be better. I mean one with a php compatible server running on it, so we could execute terminal commands using AJAX
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Meh, just need a JS interface to access native content, no need for another interpreted language like PHP.
There are two apps that I'll be looking to install on my future Firefox OS device which will make the device fully functional for my needs:
OneBusAway - http://onebusaway.org/
Car2Go - http://car2go.com/
As far as app ideas goes, I'd like to see:
1.) A simple app that tells me if I should bring a rain-coat today based on when I'm out working and when I'm home, either as a stand-alone app or integrated with a weather app.
2.) Javascript playground! What wouldn't be more fun than writing Javascript on a Javascript-driven device? (A tad bit of sarcasm in there, but it'd still be fun (well, it depends on the person)!)
And for already existing apps on other platforms, I want:
1.) Duolingo - Free language education app (I believe that it's already written in HTML5+CSS+JS and is just wrapping it).
2.) Google Keep - Google's non-stock note app for Android.
3.) Google Calendar - I can't exactly replace it, at this stage of long-term usage...
As much as I love the Firefox OS project, I'm still a Google fanboy and I still use most of their services (fully knowing and accepting that Google logs everything I do).
Ringtone Maker and GO Battery Saver & Widget would be nice to see.
whatsapp, gtalk, gmail, titanium backup, cwm, teminal emulator
XMPP client
Tapatalk To Browse Forums on FireFox OS

[Q] Remove everything Google

Hey Guys,
So i've have a Samsung Galaxy S4 (I9500) as a secondary device (Primary is iPhone 5 :highfive
I used to love Android but off lately I am starting to hate every device its on like Note 3 (demo for 1 hour) Or HTC One or Note 2 or this S4.
Now I like Google & Android like everyone else, but have started to hate their approach, Google used to stand for "Freedom" of what users want to do but now they are forcing stuff on you and don't give you easier way to get out of it.
e.g. Google Play Movies / TV, Google Play Books < I don't give a crap for these service, I have found no way to remove them yet, even via Rooting I still am unable to remove them. they don't show up in NoBloat Free software.
Then there is Google Location Service, Why does location service / any other service for that matter need to run continuously when the phone is running, this is why I started to like iOS better than android (grant it has its issues) there is no optimization of the usage of resource these background task are taking & there is no way to just stop them from using up system resource unless you disable them. including other services like Dropbox Camera Upload, I don't think its that hard to build a trigger into an app that starts and stops the service when Camera application is launched.
Take a look at the screenshot below, the total amount of RAM used should be only 147MB according to the list of running apps & 123MB in Cached Processes but it is for some reason using 707MB.
Then there is the dependencies of apps, e.g. Google Hangout requiring Google Play services, Google Hangout in itself is a 16 MB app why would they build a dependency to another application and require its presence when the Play Services is only to Update Google Apps & other Apps from Play store?
Then the built-in Google Search, a freaking 30MB application & all that does is use the web search. Really Google?
So comming back to my real question here. I've looked in the sections but there aren't any ROM's that are designed to be used without any of the Google crap.. Is there any way i can run my S4 without these, I don't even want the Play store.
You can flash a deodexed google rom, and then remove the bloatware via a root file explorer of your choice, by deleting the apk files in system/app
Sent from my GT-I9103 using Tapatalk
Deadfreak said:
You can flash a deodexed google rom, and then remove the bloatware via a root file explorer of your choice, by deleting the apk files in system/app
Sent from my GT-I9103 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok thanks i will install arrow rom and remove the apps I dont need.. and see if the phone is stable.

Omnirom preinstalled apps?

Upon first launch these apps are installed
Apollo
Browser
Calculator
Calendar
Camera
Clock
Dev Tools
Documents
Downloads
DSP manager
Email
Gallery
Messaging
Movie Studio
OmniSwitch
People
Phone
Search
Settings
SIM Toolkit
Torch
Voice Dialer
I'd like to know which of these are actually supported.
I believe many of them have been abandoned by upstream, like Email, Calendar, Gallery, Messaging, etc.
Search should be removed, seeing as it hasn't been updated since like 1.5. Same with Movie Studio.
I disabled Apollo, Browser and Email within minutes, as there are better apps for their purposes.
VLC instead of Apollo, Firefox instead of browser and K-9 Mail instaed of email.
For some reason, Apollo, a third party app by Cyanogenmod gets included but not any other third party apps.
If third party apps are going to be included, there should be some kind of system as to what is included.
Is omnirom going to come with everything included or just what you need to get started?
bump
There are some open-source apps I'd like to include, but there are some issues (regarding package signatures) that make it difficult to properly include stuff that is also available on the Play Store.
Apollo's inclusion is mostly from inertia, I think that really needs a nuke and repave. Once it was submitted to CM it kind of just sat there. (I'm wondering if it was the victim of shady manuevering by the CM leadership like Focal was...)
Most of the other apps are included as part of AOSP - fixing these apps is something pulser is working on organizing in conjunction with some other projects.
In general, if an app doesn't automatically start a background service and is part of AOSP, we don't put significant effort into removing it since free space in /system achieves nothing for the user.
Frankly most of these apps are useless as Google has alternate in market eg.
Calendar
Browser
Voice dialer
Apollo
Camera
Dash clock widget
I generally freeze them after installing. Might use a script to flash and remove these after install
Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Free mobile app
shri_chanakya said:
Frankly most of these apps are useless as Google has alternate in market eg.
Calendar
Browser
Voice dialer
Apollo
Camera
Dash clock widget
I generally freeze them after installing. Might use a script to flash and remove these after install
Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But a solid rom *must* include apps to cover that basic functionality, regardless of what else is availabe in the market. Preferrably it should include excellent apps to cover the basics like that. No calendar? No camera? No browser? Those are *must-have* apps to be included with any rom). Unless there's a replacement baked in, it would be a major slight to cut them out. It'd be better to leave what essential apps in as placeholders until superior replacements can be developed/incorporated, instead of just shipping with gaping holes in the ROM and telling users, 'You don't like a barren, crippled build? Ha! Go fish!'
That kind of thing reminds me of so many Linux distros who spend tons of time on slick graphics, but don't even include basic functionality (*cough-elemental-hack*), leaving users to fend with a half-assed barely functional experience. That is just an atrocious way to go about things, IMO.
shri_chanakya said:
Frankly most of these apps are useless as Google has alternate in market eg.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To add to what Culot said a post above: an AOSP ROM should include apps to cover that basic functionality, and provide a fully functional and useful experience, not only regardless of what else is available in the Play Store, but mostly because an AOSP ROM should be usable without even having Google Play Services.

Are not-standalone (companion) Wear OS apps still allowed for submission on the Play Store, or are they always rejected?

Hello.
Our Wear OS application, which is not a standalone application (it is a companion app of our smartphone app, it cannot be used without the smartphone app) keeps getting rejected by Google Play Policy team for the following reason : "Your application requires phone interaction for the watch version to function." even if we have clearly explained in our Play Store description that it is not a standalone application and cannot work when the smartphone app is not available.
Our application was previously accepted and published on the Play Store but we suspect a Google policy change even if we haven't found it clearly anywhere (we have only found recommendations which encourage standalone apps).
=> Are not-standalone Wear OS apps still allowed for Play Store submission or must our Wear OS app include at least a standalone feature ?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Best regards
I am not sure, but I know there are some apps that are embedded in the phone app to deploy to a WearOS watch (like the Hyundai Blue Link App and the Genesis Intelligent Connect App). If your phone is paired with a WearOS watch, it loads the app onto the phone. Maybe you can try something like that.
Funny thing is the apps right now do not load the app to the Watch4. I think it is because the Watch4 is on WearOS4. I had a different watch at one time that was plain Jane WearOS and the app loaded just fine. I am looking for Hyundai/Genesis to correct this issue. I hope.
I also got a wear os companion app update reject on 6.Jul. My last update was successful on 30.May.2022. Did not see any policy regarding to the companion app issue. It is just weird and I have also appealed to get more info. Did you appeal the reject?

SM-G975F on Canadian Networks and Best ROM

Hi everyone. I am getting an SM-G975F with the Exynos chipset. I was planning on flashing LineageOS on it but now I have stumbled upon MicroG for LineageOS and been doing a little reading up on it. Now I am not clear what the best choice would be from a privacy perspective.
My intention with LineageOS was to *not* install GApps and see how much I can make do with the default apps (i.e. the stock mail app, etc.). If that is my intention, then am I better off with LineageOS? or MicroG?
I don't really care about Google Apps. The only thing I can see myself struggling without is without some kind of semi-decent mapping application like Google Maps. Is there a decent alternative? Do I need MicroG for that? If I do cave and find I need Google Maps, then would I be better off with MicroG or LineageOS?
Also, is there a way to get Office apps (Word, Excel, etc.) on LineageOS? Or is that undesirable from a privacy perspective?
Lastly, is there a way to enable LTE bands 29, 30, and 46 on the SM-G975F model? These are enabled on the SM-G975W (Canadian) model, and I will be using the phone in Canada on Bell Mobility.
If these questions have been asked/answered elsewhere, can you please just drop a link?
Thanks,
The Fish
Your post does not qualify for Development. Please read the stickies before posting!
Moved to Questions and Answers.
Hi XDA’ers
I thought I would provide an update on my experience thus far with LineageOS 19.1 on my Exynos SM-G975F and answer some of my own questions which I asked above. Maybe some of this is obvious stuff or maybe not. Maybe it will be helpful for others in the future.
The operating system​I installed LineageOS from the official lineageos.org website. I did not install GApps so I am operating without the Google Play Services.
While Android itself is open source, the “Google Play Services” are not. They are a proprietary library from Google that are included with most (all?) Android devices and provide a number of services, APIs, etc. to apps running on Android. It's not part of the operating system per se, but lots of apps require it. So, I am operating with LineageOS only without the Google Play Services.
As a side note, there is an open-source re-implementation of Google Play Services called microG. MicroG cannot be installed as an app but needs to be installed as part of the OS. There are basically two flavors of LineageOS that include microG. They are “LineageOS for microG” and /e/OS. Both of these include microG. Pure LineageOS on its own however includes neither Google Play Services (unless you install GApps bundle) nor microG.
I was surprised how small the download file was for LineageOS. It weighs in at just 777 MB. I am used to Samsung firmware that weighs in at about 6 GB. So, this seemed really small to me.
Upon first boot up I was impressed with how clean the operating system was. Not only is there no bloatware but there is basically almost nothing at all. There is a dialer app, an SMS app, a camera app, a calculator, and a mini browser. There is also a local-only address book (no link to cloud services) and a local calendar app. The browser is fairly limited but gets the job done. Notably there isn’t a mail app (although I understand that there used to be one on previous versions of LineageOS). So, I set about seeing what I could do.
Apps​I installed the F-Droid app store but there are not any mainstream apps in there. Some of the apps in there might be good (I still need to explore it more) but I needed a solid email app. My company is on Office 365 so Outlook would be my first choice.
I stumbled upon APKPure and APKMirror. Both are very ad-filled spammy looking website that seems to be a web-based front end to the Google Play Store. Using these sites website, you can download official APKs for mainstream apps like Outlook, Word, Excel, etc. Be very careful where you click. Lots of the ads on the site include "Download Now" type buttons that you can click on thinking you are downloading an APK but instead are clicking on a spammy ad. So, navigate carefully on these sites.
I was able to install Word, Excel, OneDrive and Outlook. This was huge because I needed a decent mail app. Being able to install OneDrive meant I could now sync my camera with OneDrive. All the Microsoft apps worked flawlessly on LineageOS even without Google Play Services. The one thing I noticed however is that Outlook does not give me notifications when I get a new email. I have to go into Outlook and swipe down to refresh. I believe this is due to the lack of Google Play Services. Maybe using microG would eliminate this problem (not sure). I can live with this for now but would obviously like a way to resolve it.
Installing Outlook synced the local Calendar and Contacts apps with my Outlook contacts and calendar so that worked great.
Bible Apps​Both the Olive Tree Bible Reader app and the ESV Bible app installed no problem from APKPure. Both of these are offline Bible apps (they download the whole Bible and can be used offline). I like Olive Tree because I have several translations (including the SBLGNT) and Olive Tree lets me switch between them. The ESV app is great because they have recordings and so you can hear Kristyn Getty or David Cochran Heath read the Bible to you in natural non-synthetic voices.
Signal​I installed Signal directly from their website (they offer the APK directly on their website). Signal detects that it is being installed on a device without Google Play Services and so registers itself as a service and consequently I do get notifications for new Signal messages (unlike Outlook). I wonder if there is some way to make Outlook run the same way. I tried installing Microsoft Teams which we use at work but don't get any notifications when people send me messages. So that makes Teams pretty useless.
Browser​The build-in default browser renders HTML/CSS just fine but is very limited in terms of features. When you install a progressive web app as an app on the home screen it works but launches in the full browser with the address bar visible which breaks the app-like experiance which is really the whole point of a PWA. So I set about trying to fix this. To my surprise I was able to install Microsoft Edge without ANY issues whatsoever. It works great and web apps pin to the home screen the way they should (and open as apps). So I made Edge my default browser.
Keyboards​The default keyboard in LineageOS does not have stickers or GIFs. That is as it should be I think for a default built-in keyboard. But it does not support swipe typing either. This surprised me. It seemed like a huge step backwards to have to tap out every letter with my thumbs. Do people still type like that on their phones?!?! Oh, the humanity!
There is a microphone icon at the top of the keyboard for speech-to-text transcription. I used this all the time before on my Samsung S8+. But tapping it did nothing. Apparently I am missing a speech-to-text engine. This surprised be because Outlook has dictation built-in using Microsoft's engines and works well. But it only works in Outlook and not universally throughout the phone as it would if it was built-in on the keyboard.
I installed the Microsoft SwiftKey keyboard and that gave me stickers, GIFs and... swipe typing! Woo Hoo! But I was really hoping it would give me speech-to-text since I dictate almost all of my text messages. I figured it would use Microsoft's engine like Outlook does since it was a Microsoft app. But tapping the microphone on the SwiftKey keyboard promptly tells me that I need to download "Google Voice Search".
Microsoft Authenticator​I installed the Microsoft Authenticator app for 2FA and it installed just fine. But it was impossible to add any accounts by scanning the QR codes. I think this is due to notifications not working properly, probably also due to the lack of Google Play Services or microG.
Outstanding Issues​So, the outstanding issues I have right now are:
Microsoft Authenticator is non-usable. This is a huge issue for me
No speech-to-text transcription from keyboard
No notifications in Microsoft Teams
No notifications in Microsoft Outlook (this I can live with).
What I Like​What I like about LineageOS is the clean, minimalistic design of the operating system. I am not pushed into any particular "ecosystem" be it Google, Samsung, Microsoft or Apple. I can decide which ecosystem I want to participate in and to which extent. For example, I could download Outlook without downloading Edge and I don't need to backup my photos to OneDrive unless I want to. You can do this, to some extent, with OEM versions of Android, but it requires ignoring and disabling things. Come to think of it, that is really what an operating system should be - a platform for running apps, not an on-ramp into an ecosystem.
What irritates me is that not all apps work as they should. It seems like Google Play Services is an important part of the mix and many apps fail to function properly without it. Signal seems like one exception. It detects that you are not using Google Play Services and adapts the functioning the app accordingly.
Just a minor update. I tried several diffrent TTS engines (Pico TTS, Flite TTS, RHVoice) and none of these gave me text typing.
I ended up installing Speech Services by Google and it worked. I was surprised that it worked considering I do not have GApps (and thus no Google Play Services) and no microG on my phone.
So, I guess I can live with a little Google on my phone, but I would have preferred to find an open-source alternative or, barring that, a Microsoft alternative.

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