[grecy]

I just bought my first smartphone running Andriod, and it's essentially useless as a smartphone unless I sign into the Google store with an email address. I can't download a single App.

So far, I have resisted, just using it to tether.

[Nutomic]

Yalp Store lets you download from Google Play without an account:

https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=com.github.yerio...

[Monotoko]

Does it still download from Google or somewhere else? This might be really useful for me here in China if it uses another source.

[unicornporn]

> Does it still download from Google

Yes it does

[Markoff]

not sure if they download directly or could act as proxy for you

if you are in China coolapk.com should be pretty safe and they have English UI app or you can just use some apk downloader as apkpure if yalp would not work

[Pxtl]

There are good 3rd-party app stores you can use instead if you're committing to that. F-droid for OSS, Amazon for other stuff, Humble bundle for cheap games.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Try F-Droid! Not only does it need no account, but it's got a decent amount of software specifically designed to let you get around meeting Google (ex. syncing against *DAV).

[Markoff]

variety of software on fdroid is very small, fdroid is ok for few apps but anyway very soon you will find out you need either yalp store or other apk downloader

[Animats]

You can install F-Droid, which lets you download open source apps.

At startup, there's an option to register with Google, which you can skip. It will keep popping up until you disable the "Google one-time startup" app. Also, without a Google account, voice input and voice dialing won't work; Google deliberately broke that about two years ago. There are alternatives, such as Samsung S-Voice, but it's hard to find a good one that isn't just a front end to Google's system.

[userbinator]

My brief experience with smartphones a few years ago is that you could just download the .apk elsewhere and copy it to the phone to install, like the good old days... or have Google thoroughly locked down that route too now?

(It does take longer and more effort, but IMHO you should really be doing more research on each piece of software you decide to use, than just reading a description in an app store.)

[khedoros1]

You can still do that pretty easily, but most software doesn't release as separate apks outside of an app store (and particularly the Google store).

There are websites that provide apks, but I'm not sure of the legality there, and I'm not positive that they're unmodified versions of the software.

[toast0]

There's not any useful UI on android, but apks are signed (at least the jar is) by the developer, so you could check if it had been modified if you get the signing certificate from a Google Play install and see if that's the same certificate that signed the apk you download from who knows where.

You still have a potential issue if there's native code: Google Play makes it possible to build separate apks to support the different flavors of native code, so you need to grab the right apk for your phone, if the developers don't provide a web download with all the native code in one package.

[baobrain]

There's always been an option (in recent years at least) in security that allows installation from other sources.

[bobajeff]

Actually I have a old phone right now that I've factory reset and have no Google account set up on.

I've still managed to install a few APKs I've downloaded via Chrome (for Android). One time I had to download one with my laptop because I kept getting an incomplete file otherwise but I think that was server issue.

[askvictor]

Plenty of people (in my experience, mostly older people) use smartphones without even knowing what an app is. Between the inbuilt browser, camera, email, IM and phone functions, a massive amount of functionality is covered off for a heap of people.

[grecy]

It came with a ton of pre-insalled apps, all of which say "This app is now too old, and you must download a new one".

Also downloading apps uses a massive amount of cellular data which is not cheap. WiFi not an option in West Africa.

[vit05]

http://www.apkmirror.com/

[Dolores12]

had the same issue, apkpure to the rescue

[Markoff]

Yalp store