Good job japan, corporations should not be allowed to lock you out of using competition on a device you own.
Tell them to ask the same from Nintendo or Sony, lol
Apple: ‘Mobile platform? Nah this is just a game console’ winks at Nintendo and Sony
I would pay a lot of money to see Nintendo’s conniption over having to allow home brew and non-approved software on their game consoles. I would love to release emulators for older Nintendo consoles for the Switch so that they don’t get to keep charging people again to play old games on newer consoles.
Japan has so many unique store that operated in their country with region-locked apps/games.
As far as I remember, even DMM and DLsite already has their own game store on Android.
This is truly a win for Japanese customer and company.
The funny thing is that this is probably lobbying from NTT Docomo, who lost their own app store monopoly for feature phones the moment smartphones arrived.
That’s nice. Let the in fighting begains.
I just hope they’ll let non-profit app stores join. I just want an open source package manager tbh.
As a Canadian I thank you Japan
If this means that I might be able to use NFC payments because alternatives to Google Pay will exist, I am very happy. Hopefully this will also make possible to F-droid to provide auto updates.
Until earlier this year, I could make NFC payments with the app of my credit card company. AFAIK contactless payments on Android were never locked to Google Pay/Wallet. But I have no idea why there’s no competition in this space. I’d expect e.g. PayPal to have something, but if they do I never heard of it - and I did look once, briefly.
Because to implement this you need to negotiate with individual credit card issuers. Basically how this works is that your phone is being issued a virtual card with the keys locked inside the phone’s HSM. Then it can be used to make NFC payments just like any physical card. So you need 1. contracts with many card providers, 2. card issuance processes with these providers 3. huge amounts of compliance bureaucracy. At the end of the day it isn’t really worth it unless you are a huge company and expect to have tons of users or see it as an essential feature of your phone OS.
You mean the thing any credit card issuer does anyway?
Most credit card issuers don’t issue credit cards to random apps by solo developers.
Paypal has a nfc feature
For generic contactless payments at shops? Or some closed system that only works with other PayPal users?
For the most generic grocery shopping you can imagine
Alright, good to know.
It seems many banks/providers used to had this functionality and just stopped maintaining in favor of Google/Apple Pay.
Hopefully they decide to do it again.
Why would they do that when Google and Apple already do all the work for them?
Huh…my F-Droid already does auto updates 🤔
Yes I realized that, the one that doesn’t is Aurora I think
Unattended? Unrooted? What Android version?
I still have to confirm each install, wich is a bit tedious, and was looking around for a new phone.
Yes, yes and 14.
It is related to android version IIRC.
Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.
I’m confused why would you need a phone to pay via NFC. All you need is your card.
- I can usually pull out my phone faster than taking a card out of my wallet.
- Phone-based cards typically have significantly higher limits than physical cards. (I can tap hundreds of dollars with my phone, only about $100 on my card.)
- The phone needs to be unlocked which is safer than the card which just needs to be tapped with no other authentication.
- One less thing to carry around.
I use phone every day at office so I don’t need to get the wallet out of my jacket when going to the canteen to buy lunch. It’s literally the reason I started using my phone to pay. Too many times I forgot my card…
I’m confused why you would assume that there isn’t any context where someone might need to store their cards on their phone instead of carrying a wallet. Have you considering asking why instead of assuming everyone is like you? Is amazing when you get to know other perspectives.
Last I checked making a statement stating that you’re confused about something counts, semantically, as a question. No question mark needed.
But, fine, if you don’t want to tell me you don’t have to. I’m able to contain my curiosity. Certainly can’t put my ID, driver’s license, cash, and a hair tie into my phone. Nor, for that matter, put my phone into an ATM.
I can store my government issued ID, a driver’s licence, store limited cash behind my phone cover. And do cardless withdrawal from ATM if I need more. I have not needed a hair tie but if I did I’d wrap it on my wrist. Have not carried a wallet in years.
Everyone’s circumstances are different.
As of last month, I can now, in fact, store my driver’s license on my phone. Can’t wait to use it for nights out with friends, no risk of losing my purse and the app even hides your address unless you specifically allow it, so no skeevy bartenders can read my address when they “card” me :)
Much higher floor limit, and no need to enter your PIN every X transactions.
Some countries have limits to nfc payments with a card. Finland has 50e but with a phone no limits (unless the bank limits).
Google allows that though or do they mean access of Google Play via 3rd party apps?
Not that I am saying it might not be necessary to include Google from the start, sets a good precedence and prevents a future where they might go the Apple route.
Just hope both Google and Apple won’t restrict opening up to Japanese market only. But who am I kidding, they will.
If they didn’t open up to anyone else when EU implemented it back in March/April, they won’t do it now.
Doesn’t Google already let you do this?? My Android phone doesn’t even have Google Play Services, I just only use 3rd party stores. If I want an app from Google Play I get it through Aurora.
Ah wait, I should’ve read the article lol:
The law allows local authorities to name “designated providers” of a certain scale – currently only achieved by Apple and Google – and require those providers to do three things:
- Allow third-party app stores on their devices;
- Allow application developers to use third-party billing services;
- Enable users to change default settings with simple procedures, and offer choice screens for tools like browsers;
And it forbids them doing three more:
- Engage in any form of preferential treatment of their services over those of competitors in the display of search results without justifiable reason;
- Use acquired data about competing applications for their own applications;
- Prevent application developers from using features controlled by the OS with the same level of performance as the one used by Designated Providers.
So Google already allows 3rd party app stores and lots of settings (although these are always hit and miss, even in the custom ROM scene - I can’t get pocket detection right now and my phone keeps doing things in my pocket), but the 3rd party billing and choice screens applies to them.
unrelated to the OP but a suggestion for your problem:
Waveup has a setting to lock the screen after X seconds with the proximity sensor covered, it’s not very sophisticated and thus it can be a bit over-eager, but if the phone being interacted with by your leg while in the pocket is driving you up the wall then this should fix that.
Ty, but I think I’m just gonna switch from my dodgy Chinese Xiaomi phone to the refurbished Pixel 7 Pro I have. I mean, I’ve had it for like e months now, one of these days I will. Although, I really will miss my IR blaster, even though I hardly ever use it it’s nice to be able to change the TV in the pub lol
Edit: lmfao I just changed the TV 10m away, had Tour de France on, but now it’s basketball.
How do you acces your bank account without an app that requieres Google Play Services running? All bank accounts in Europe require a smart phone app for 2FA even when you log-in on a browser. I can install bank apps via Aurora, but almost all of them won’t run without Google’s Software.
Run Magisk in Zygisk mode with the deny list hiding itself from banking apps.
However I would advise not using the banking app if you can help it, they’re not clean. Hell, even accessing online banking via a website seems to require connections to google.com and gstatic.com to perform hidden captcha (you don’t have to do the picture thing but it still does the server side tracking).
There’s no way anyone in Europe can use a bank account without a banking app. As I said, even if you log-in on a browser on a laptop, authentication still requires you grab your phone and use the banking app to authorize the log-in from that laptop once in a while, or any transaction.
Unfortunately, the solution you propose is technically too advanced for most people, including me. Is using GrapheneOS with its sandbox feature good enough of a protection?
I’m in Europe, and I don’t use banking apps. For the most part anyway, one of my credit cards pissed me off by switching to app only, then eventually I relented with one bank because I wanted a 2nd account that required the app.
Banks either verify by SMS (lol) or provide a passkey fob.
GrapheneOS should provide some measure of protection. You can also perhaps disable some tracking features using something like Warden (requires root) - although this hasn’t been updated in years and probably misses stuff now.
It’s like reading interdimensional news from a world that is still sane. I’m glad Japan exists
No, Japan just listened to the previous app market monopoly that was NTT Docomo and other providers who wanted their money pot back.
i can assure you japan isn’t that much saner than the rest of us, like really the one big thing they have going for them is pretty good urban planning and public transport.
Where most nations have people working their asses off because they need money to buy food, japan made the innovation of having people work themselves to death mostly out of social obligation instead! Much more exciting.
The picture says “No Smartphones Allowed.” Doesn’t seem entirely right…
Reminds me of that meme of Asian people with random English words tattoo’d on them.
You have to share it now…
Here you go https://www.angmohdan.com/english-name-tattoo/
Those images look so convincing! /s
😂
Not directly related to mobile devices, but I found it really weird that lots of Japanese games on steam have a Japanese only version, that can’t be sold outside of Japan. I’m really not sure if the benefit of that partitioning, but it probably comes from some of the issues they’re facing in the mobile market
part of the reason for that iirc is japan has different laws and management when it comes to it.
in context of steam, its usually because japanese managment to launch games on steam is a different person for global organizations, and is usually incompetent. sometimes, the reason is a tually laws about voice/music licensing rights specific to japan
🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
Japan’s parliament has passed a law that will require Apple and Google to allow access to third-party app stores and payment providers on devices running their mobile operating systems.
The Act on Promotion of Competition for Specified Smartphone Software passed Japan’s upper house yesterday and will be enforced once Cabinet rubber-stamps it at some point in the next eighteen months.
The last item on the list is a shot across Apple’s bows, as the iGiant has been reticent to allow third-party developers to use the NFC chip in iPhones for payments.
Requiring the same level of access is a big deal – especially as non-compliance could result in fines that represent “20 percent of relevant turnover.”
As it implements the law, the JFTC will seek comment from relevant ministries and agencies on matters including security, privacy, and protecting kids.
Apple has sometimes argued that security is a major concern if third party app stores are allowed to access iThings – but has complied with requirements to open its devices to competition under the DMA.
Saved 56% of original text.
