For me so far the worst thing Google did was disabling API for call recording. That makes new phones pretty much useless for me. I always record calls, so that I can go back to them if I forget something or that nobody can claim they said something when they didn't (most recently insurance salesperson told me I will have option X if I take their insurance and they once I bought it, there was no such option. Once I pulled the "I have recorded your salesman lying to me", I got a prompt refund and apologies).
I got around this limitation by using LineageOS. Unfortunately, I'm forced to compile my own builds with call recording enabled for the US because there's no way to tell which state you're in through MNC-MCC numbers and states like California and Pennsylvania have lame two-party consent laws for recording calls[1][2]. My state is single party consent. Just super lame that all my featurephones from the mid-2000's could record without modification.
Ok but then why don't they disable the camera and a microphone when you record videos? You can hide the phone in a way that the person you talk to won't see you are recording it. I don't accept this explanation.
Yes, laws overlap. The ones I'm talking about are generally about "intercepting communications" i.e., "recording conversations". In general, the US requires one-party consent, but there are 15 states that require two-party consent.
So you can put your phone on recording e.g. in a restaurant "intercepting communications", but when someone calls you it's a no-no. Regardless, in my country recording is perfectly legal and yet Google has disabled it. If this is the law, then don't you think they should either follow it or not? I am not sure how you can only partially follow the law.
They are doing the lazy thing and configuring it for "lowest common denominator". Yes, it's irritating. The effort to integrate GPS and allow/not-allow would be low.
Maybe it's complicated for telephone conversations where you're not breaking a law locally, but are breaking a law remotely?
I'd rather think that insurance companies and similar who rely on sales over the phone lobbied Google to disable it. The law thing for me is too poorly done to be a valid excuse.
This is more a limitation of smartphone hardware than of Android. In most phones, calls are entirely handled by the baseband processor, and the ARM chip never sees any of the audio data.
Android doesn't expose it because the hardware doesn't expose it to the OS in the first place.
I am not sure if that is true. I am running Samsung S9 with an early Android version and call recording works just fine. The Samsung released an update that disables call recording altogether (and does not allow you to turn off updates, so I've been postponing the OS update for almost two years now every day or so).
DISCLAIMER: It's been some time since I used to read release notes for every new api level
Well... IIRC there was never an official call recording API, and in fact on some phones it was physically impossible to snoop on the telephony audio.
Most recording apps used to either work only on some qualcomm single chip phones where baseband exposed audio path to application processor, or enabled microphone recording in hopes of catching the audio from speakers (and not all phones allowed simultaneous mic use like that).
