Alternate app stores for Android

[SteveRiley]

Google is purging ad blockers from the Play Store.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/03...he-play-store/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/0...g-android-apps

Who knows what's next. At least we have a selection of alternate app markets now.

* F-Driod specializes in free and open source applications. Sideload their application to download and install items from the repository. My favorite ad blocker, AdAway, is now in F-Droid.

* SlideMe is a community marketplace that's attracting an increasing number of developers who become frustrated with Google's restrictive policies. Sideload their application to browse the SlideMe collection.

[woodsmoke]

thanked for the info.

woodsmok

[vinnywright]

sweet , thanks for the info

VINNY

[oshunluvr]

Installed..

[vinnywright]

supper sweet ,,,,, just installed a QR/barcode scanner to that old HTC-G1 running Ginsense ,,,,,,scaned the QR code at the bottom of the F-Droid page and it auto DL'ed the F-droid repo app ,,, one click install and it looks cool ,,,,,,in fact it shows an update to my terminal emulator that I got from the google play store

VINNY

[vinnywright]

LOL ,,,,, sory but had to add ........ I coped the URL of this page , opened Klipper , clicked show bar code , scanned it , and it opened this page in the browser on the G1,,,,,,,how cool.

VINNY

[dmeyer]

This is great for those of us who can sideload apps but unfortunately there are a huge number of people who can't. Might I also recommend the Amazon app store. It gives away 1 free paid app a day, has a decent selection of apps and has quite a nice interface.

[vinnywright]

This is great for those of us who can sideload apps but unfortunately there are a huge number of people who can't.

and why not ??

VINNY

[dmeyer]

and why not ??

VINNY

Carriers can lock everything up so that getting root is difficult. Then, its also possible to disable installing non-market apps entirely even with the menu option. Fortunately most carriers do not do this but some indeed do. Verizon limits sideloading a lot!

[SteveRiley]

The XDA Developers forums have plenty of information for rooting just about every phone in existence. Have you checked there?

[dmeyer]

The XDA Developers forums have plenty of information for rooting just about every phone in existence. Have you checked there?

Oh no. I'm all sorted. I have an international S2 running CM10.1. I have no problem at all, never have and probably never will. For us its easy, but some of these things can seem daunting for average users. I was just sort of playing devil's advocate.

[SteveRiley]

That's true. Different phones have varying degrees of difficulty getting into. But eventually they all fail. Yay for software bugs!

[Feathers McGraw]

Thanks!

Have been using F-droid for a while and like it, but it lacks ratings.

Had a quick look at Slide me, it seems it may be what I was after all along!

Feathers

[Feathers McGraw]

It's strange, but both F-droid and SlideMe seem to have quite old versions of apps in the repository.

For example, K9 mail is at version 4.8 on Google Play, 4.409 on F-droid, and 4.200 on SlideMe.

I guess it requires quite a lot of effort to recompile new versions, but I'd expect K9 to be quite a widely used app and therefore up to date...

[claydoh]

https://github.com/k9mail/k-9/wiki/ReleaseNotes

A bit complicated, as 4.8 is specifically for android 4.4, 4.409 is the current stable version, and there are other, newer test builds in their Google code page.


I think that it might just be too much work for many developers to keep things up to date on these other app stores, considering the smaller audiences they bring.

Sent from my dlx using Tapatalk