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by icebraining 4076 days ago
Sure you can. Android itself just doesn't do it for you, but the F-Droid installer could very well verify the APK before installing it.
2 comments

Verifying signing keys is one thing, but even better, f-droid.org can verify that the APK builds 100% from source, and that the APK f-droid.org builds matches the developer's official released APK: https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/Deterministic,_Reproducible_Bu...
No doubt. But it's pretty funny that Google refuses to add a few lines of code to do it via the OS installer.
What would the OS check the signature against, though? The certs that come with the OS are for validating sites, not apps, so passing a check wouldn't tell you much. It seems that Android would have to add a whole new cert store (and mechanism for adding certs), not just a couple of lines.
That's not true at all. CA and leaf Certs have extensions and policies and can be used for any particular purposes. All the cert verification has to do is check for the code signing extension / policy.