[samdb]

I'm on my first Android phone, never installed any mods, and it seemed quite simple to me. Possibly even more simple than using Play.

[rlly]

The flow can be more simple, as you suggest, but what you lose is the assurance from Google that this app is from the publisher it's marked as being from and all of the surrounding mechanisms like push updates that it makes no sense to reimplement on a per app basis.