On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 11:52 AM, Disconnect <[email protected]> wrote:

> More to the point, "am i on the home screen" or "what is my battery level"
> (both reasonable interpretations of "PHONE_STATE") doesn't translate, to
> most users, into "send my phone number to a third party who's privacy policy
> may not even exist". (
> http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/c97c3eb5dcef0519is
>  an earlier push about this.)
>

Absolutely.  Improving the permissions the user sees, the granularity
available to apps, etc would all be great improvements.

Adding check boxes to let the users turn on and off the existing things is
in my opinion *not* an improvement.  In fact it is likely a long-term loss
as it helps developers require more permissions and punts in solving the
real problems of permission granularity and display.

(And don't bring location into this -- as I have said elsewhere, there are
some thing where it makes a lot of sense for the user to have control, and
location is one of them.  Like enabling IMEs and device admins.  I would be
happy to see a contribution that adds a UI for the user to control location
access on a per-app basis.  It would also be great to extend manage apps to
be able to view apps by things they are doing, such as ordered by last
location access, keeping device awake, etc.  This is far different than just
putting check boxes next to every possible permission.)

-- 
Dianne Hackborn
Android framework engineer
[email protected]

Note: please don't send private questions to me, as I don't have time to
provide private support, and so won't reply to such e-mails.  All such
questions should be posted on public forums, where I and others can see and
answer them.

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