[avz]

I would be very happy if instead of preventing me from installing apps which require a given permission, Android would let me install them at my own risk in a sandbox which provides the app with dummy data and interactions (whether from a sensor, contacts db, camera etc).

It would be even better if the framework explicitly supported running apps without the necessary permissions and simply threw some sort of PermissionException. This would cripple some functionality while preserving the rest.

Developers could of course write the apps to not work under such reduced conditions, but Google Play could reject such apps.

[matkam]

Android had a hidden feature in certain iterations of Android 4, called "App Ops," that would let you do this but it never made it to prime time. Though Cyanogenmod does leverage it for their "Privacy Guard" feature.

[brk]

This sounds like a great way for paranoid but uninformed users to break lots of apps, and then blame the developer/phone/carrier (in any random order).

We sometimes forget that really with smartphones the manufacturers are trying to produce something for the masses. This would also seem to include reducing the amount of security consciousness the user needs to have in order to have an "acceptable" experience with the device.

[eslaught]

And yet, the iPhone basically does this for a number of permissions (location, push notifications, contacts access, etc.), and for the most part it seems to work for even uneducated users of iOS.

For most permissions, you might not want this, but for some of the more sensitive and personal-information rich sources, this is a really highly desirable feature.