Google finally announced the long awaited “advance stream”. It will roll out to all Android phones later this year to enable sideloading from unconfirmed developers last week. It solved many of our concerns about installing third-party APKs, but that’s not to say it delivers every answer under the sun. Thankfully, a new FAQ video goes a long way to filling in some of the gaps, including confirming that you won’t need to repeat this process when you get a new phone.
The Android Developers account On Twitter, Matthew Forsyte, Google’s “Chief Product Explainer” and the perfect person to help shed some light on this transition, shared an FAQ. There are plenty of interesting talking points here, but the biggest reveal is what happens when you switch to a new phone. According to Forsythe, once you enable this advanced streaming on your current Android device, it will be possible to transfer it to your new device during setup.
Now that leaves us with some follow-up questions. What if you factory reset your current device? Does it detect the steps you took earlier to enable sideloading, either at the hardware level or at the account level? Likewise, what if you flash new ROMs on your phone? Is sideloading still active after flashing a fresh ROM and can it be transferred despite not having two devices sitting next to each other? Unfortunately, the answer to both of these questions will have to wait for a potential second FAQ video in the future.
There’s a lot of other interesting information in this video, including:
- ADB installations are not affected by the 24-hour waiting period, and therefore there is no ADB command to exceed the specified 24-hour waiting period.. Forsythe defines the latter point as an ADB-specific question, but presumably it also means you can’t connect your phone to your computer to push an ADB command to bypass this part of the process. For the first 24 hours, you’re stuck sideloading with ADB.
- Apps cannot detect if advanced streaming is enabledbecause this is an OS level change.
- You must keep advanced streaming enabled to update unverified apps. This includes anyone who chooses a limited 7-day bypass window. After those seven days are up, you’ll need to restart the process to update those apps. Forsythe says that this option is really there for testing apps, not for installing apps that you intend to keep on your device.
- You don’t need to keep developer mode enabled to continue installing unverified APKs. This is huge because it means one of the biggest concerns with this process – some banking apps don’t work when developer mode is enabled in the settings – is moot. If all you need for developer mode is to go through this particular process, you can restore your phone to normal after the waiting period is over.
- Verification does not violate the developer’s NDAs. This is specifically for developers, not end users, but it’s still good to know. Google says this process does not involve app review.
With the phone upgrade and banking app questions answered – to my personal satisfaction and hopefully to the wider Android audience – this change continues to seem like a minor one-time inconvenience for those of us who rely on sideloading on a regular basis. Fingers crossed the few remaining questions about ROM flashing and factory reset.
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