It would be great to have some basic, no nonsense Android applications, with least possible permissions possible and no internet connectivity. Some examples: SMS app, tasks, calculator, authenticator (2FA), weather, audio recorder, image/photo viewer, barcode/qr code scanner, calendar, file manager, music player, etc. Small app sizes, no Kotlin or support libraries. With very limited feature set, to keep maintenance efforts low.
I just noticed your requirement for no Kotlin and libraries. I'm still posting this because they are otherwise pretty simple and solid apps.
Some examples available on F-Droid I've been using for a long time:
- Fossify Gallery
- Fossify Calendar
- Fossify File Manager
- Binary Eye supports reading/creating QR/bar codes and other formats
- Aegis Authenticator
- Fossify Audio Recorder
- Material Files supports SMB, FTP, WebDAV
Fossify is the continuation of Simple Mobile Tools, which sold out out [1]. They also have Phone, SMS, Clock, Audio Recorder apps, and more but I prefer the default GrapheneOS apps.
One issue I’ve read that devs of good, no-nonsense, telemetry-free offline-only/first apps face on the Play Store is that they get review-bombed and reported by their less scrupulous counterparts to drive more users to their ad-filled, IAP-heavy, or borderline malicious apps.
This could be fixed pretty easily if Google took fraudulent reviews more seriously and their handling of reports were less automated and opaque, but they haven’t shown much interest in either.
I just noticed that apks built with Kotlin are a bit bigger than ones written in Java. Could be my own lack of knowledge, so I would be interested to read up on how to optimize Kotlin apks in size.
