Comment by londons_explore
4 months ago
The play store is banned in China. So sideloading/alternate app stores are the main way most users install apps there.
Their china-based engineers might not even consider it important to support the play store.
As a non-US citizen, I frequently see how US based engineering teams just don't understand local markets/customs. This is just being on the other side of that.
And yet tons of other apps from China seem to make it to the play store. And it's not like DJI isn't aware of how many devices they sell overseas.
It's almost as if it were intentional.
Android isn’t a huge market segment for high end drones, and when it is, it’s almost always purpose specific/dedicated devices. ‘Juice not worth the squeeze’ and all.
Their dedicated controllers use AOSP under the hood.
But since they control entire device, there's no need for Play Framework, Play Store and whatever is needed for certification just to ship it.
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> And yet tons of other apps from China seem to make it to the play store.
The Play Store versions of some of those apps are likely not the same as the side-loaded version.
It's precisely those differences that make me concerned about what they are doing with the side loaded versions.