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Buying an Android phone is no longer enough — Google wants you to subscribe too
(www.androidauthority.com)
this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
143 points (98.6% liked)
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AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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Personally I don't think the side loading will kill them. It'll happen and nothing will change.
Perhaps the ai bubble burst could damage them enough, but they are way to big of a monopoly to fall. And android alternatives still scare people as unlike PC, you may brick your phone, or be locked out of apps due to play services
I'm hopeful for the Motorola grapheme OS phone breaking some of that hold. It's slated for release next year.
When my current phone ages out, my next phone has HarmonyOS.
I hope you speak Mandarin. App availability outside the PRC seems to be pretty close to zero. Unless you think it's time for round 3 of a webapp-based OS? iPhone OS couldn't do it in 2008 and webOS couldn't do it in 2010, but 5G exists now, so it should at least be better. I'm still not sure about good.
I live in China. My SO has a HarmonyOS phone already. Interestingly it has a setting to display everything in English (among a lot of other languages).
Sounds like that's one more viable option for ~15% of the world's population, then! The rest of us have to wait for something that can run Android (or I guess iOS somehow) apps.
Or, you know, wait until Huawei shakes out the big features and ensures they're bug-free before they start selling outside of the PRC.
You don't think that China is their end-game, do you?
Well they're literally illegal in the US, so I'm pretty SOL regardless, but even if they have designs on the rest of the world, Apple and Google have several million apps' worth of a head start. We'll see if Huawei can do what Samsung and Palm/HP couldn't.
Apple has priced itself way out of most of the world's market. And Google ... well, let's just say that its current trajectory will make leaving its ecosystem viable and desirable for most people within five years.
Yes, but I'd expect an Android fork that still runs APKs to be the next move. I think it'll take quite a while to get every random bank and streaming app on there.
I want this but remember it is still Andriod.
Sucks so msny apps need play services and have no alternative like banking apps witch I have to use on the web browser.