Desire, Legend and X10 suffering app issues

Not able to access copy-protected apps

Desire, Legend and X10 suffering app issues

22 April 2010 17:54 GMT / By Duncan Geere

We're hearing word from owners of the HTC Desire, HTC Legend and Sony Ericsson X10, as well as a few other devices, that the Android market is behaving strangely - some applications aren't available. Specifically, any application that's had copy-protection activated.

The reason that the phones are bereft of these particular apps is that for an Android handset to be able to access protected content it needs to be authorized by Google. Google achieves this by getting a unique "fingerprint" from the ROM that identifies it to Google's App Market servers.

HTC claims that it's submitted fingerprints of all applicable ROMs to Google, and that it's waiting for the search giant to update its database. Meanwhile, there's several threads across the Web, including several in Google's support forums, from angry users upset that they can't access their favourite applications.

There's a workaround which involves downloading .apk files from the Web, but that's hardly a user-friendly solution. In fact, we expect there's a whole pile of users who don't even know that they're missing certain apps. Google just needs to process the ROM fingerprints that device manufacturers have sent it. How about you drop work on 2.2 for a day, Google, and make some users happy?

Full tags

Phones, Mobile phones, Android, HTC Desire, HTC Legend, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, Android Market, Android apps