Samsung’s various smartwatches are some of the best options for Android users, but they come with the caveat that you have to install multiple apps to work on non-Samsung devices. That includes individual Samsung Pay installation on your phone, but now Samsung is breaking Google’s terms of service by trying to download the Samsung Pay APK from the portable app.
This action was first reported by Max Weinbach on Twitter. When trying to set up Samsung Pay on a Galaxy Watch from a non-Samsung smartphone, in his case a OnePlus 8 Pro, Weinbach shows that the Samsung Wearable app retrieves an APK for Samsung Pay and asks the user to download it. He says the APK is being mined from a server.
Update 7/13: Since this story was originally published, Samsung has fixed this behavior. The Wearable app no longer downloads an APK for sideloading, but instead directs users to get the Google Play Store plugin as it should. As far as we know, Google never withdrew the Samsung app for breaking the terms of service.
Do you remember when we talked about this? It turns out that Samsung Pay is now served as a Play Store app on non-Samsung devices. It won’t download the APK in the background and then it will ask you to install it more pic.twitter.com/MJuWltifwC
– linuxct (@linuxct) July 11, 2020
Previously, the Samsung Wearable app instructed users to set up Samsung Pay by pushing them to the Google Play Store to get the required plug-in app. Now that Samsung is distributing the plugin as an APK, it is clearly breaking Google’s guidelines. Google explains in the Google Play Developer Distribution Agreement (section 4.5):
You may not use Google Play to distribute or make available any Product that has a purpose that facilitates the distribution of software applications and games for use on Android devices outside of Google Play.
Google generally removes apps from the Play Store that violate this specific rule, but the Samsung Wearable app is still active at this time. Technically, that should change soon. We will update this article if / when Google deletes the app and / or when Samsung changes behavior.
The Galaxy Wearable app is downloadable from the Play Store and Galaxy Store, so I thought maybe it was a change intended for the Galaxy Store and it was just made by mistake in the Play Store version. Max, however, told me that this is not the case. When installed from Galaxy Store, the Wearable app uses that store’s API to install the app without user interaction.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch Active2 Plugin app does not have Samsung Pay Plugin as part of the apk and does not sign the app. Instead, download an AWS fully built and signed apk, and then ask the user to install it.
This action breaks the TOS of Google Play. pic.twitter.com/VOmnUrMtlT
– Max Weinbach (@MaxWinebach) June 9, 2020
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