The future of this elegant and proven system was put in jeopardy last month, when Google unilaterally decreed that Android developers everywhere in the world are going to be required to register centrally with Google. In addition to demanding payment of a registration fee and agreement to their (non-negotiable and ever-changing) terms and conditions, Google will also require the uploading of personally identifying documents[^regid], including government ID, by the authors of the software, as well as enumerating all the unique “application identifiers” for every app that is to be distributed by the registered developer.
If it were to be put into effect, the developer registration decree will end the F-Droid project and other free/open-source app distribution sources as we know them today, and the world will be deprived of the safety and security of the catalog of thousands of apps that can be trusted and verified by any and all. F-Droid’s myriad users5 will be left adrift, with no means to install — or even update their existing installed — applications.
There’s a difference between you cannot root on a lot of phones and you cannot root on a lot of Samsung phones. Saying you cannot root Samsung phones isn’t all that different from saying you can’t root iPhones is it?
Can can say “a lot” and “most” because Samsung has over half of all android phones in the US and is also globally the most used android phone.
So yeah. A LOT of android phones can’t be rooted.
By 2025 Q2 Samsung smartphones have 19.7% global market share, how cute.
Oh don’t worry it is not even close to being the biggest problem people in the US are having lol
19% of cell phone market share. That isn’t android market share. Your number is including iOS and the sliver of other operating systems.