this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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He would still have to build an APK without ads just for you.
That is not how APK builds for paid apps work. I suggest purchasing apps to actually know this stuff. I have purchased enough expensive apps in the past out of my college pocket allowance.
Your subscription is tied to Google. He would have to tear out the check for a subscription since you refuse to use the typical system.
Hence, he'd have to produce a build specifically for you without that code. This isn't rocket science.
Paid app binaries are not the same as free app binaries. Free APK of Sync and paid APK of Sync Pro/Dev were not the same, so there was nothing on dev's end to do. Do not play a losing game to win the argument.
I am aware that the APK is the same. BUT if he sent you the APK without changes, your purchases would not be activated because you refuse to use Google. In order to restore them, he'd have to manually enable them for you. Use your head.
That is not true. The paid app binary can be shared across different Android phones and it will work exactly the same. Sync has no online verification system for license. There are very, very few apps that have the online license verification system you are thinking of, and I can cite those examples as a paid user of these kinds of apps – Neutron Player, DrasticDS, DUAL game.
The reason I can tell you this is because I had Sync Dev from when I had google account, and I took the APK from there, offline, with no Google account signing onto my new phone, and it worked exactly the same. I still have the Sync Dev 18.2 APK I think, but have it no longer installed, since API changes killed it, and I do not bother with ReVanced. This is why I asked the dev for a new APK around when version 20 was stable released, because v18 got old.
The paid app binary and the non paid binary are exactly the same. You do not download a new apk when you purchase content in an app. Sync's "online verification" is through Google Play' libraries. When you purchase, your device received an entitlement to that specific purchase which allows it to re-verify that purchase without hitting Google's services each time the app is opened. Since it was a lifetime subscription, this entitlement never had to be renewed.
As for it working between phones, either the entitlement is bundled with the app (which I'm not positive of), or it's entirely possible the version you had was bugged so that it acted as though you had purchased even though you had not in the event these libraries were not available.
Either way makes no difference. You need the entitlement to activate the features, not an entirely new APK, which means he'd have to produce a build either with that entitlement (not possible) or without the purchase verification code (since you don't have the entitlement).
There is no Google Play authentication, like you describe, for APKs that require one time fee. Sync for reddit (Dev or Pro) had no subscription model. That is precisely why online verification based licensing is different and used by very few apps, since it is harder to implement.
Ljdawson actually seems to have gone the subscription route for Sync for Lemmy, precisely because of what I have described in this discussion, and because of smaller Lemmy userbase being opposite of Reddit's larger userbase compensating for individual lower license fees.