One codebase, two builds, targetSdk 35 and 36, a screen resized to tablet size, then a command to rotate. 35 stays locked with black bars, 36 flips and fills the window, and back on a phone-sized display the restriction returns.
On Android 16 every app can declare functions like an MCP server. I sent a message from outside my own app with zero screen touches, and dug out the internal|privileged permission gate.
The same screen: a 77 KB screenshot the model has to guess at, versus 4,184 bytes of text that states the structure. I ran both on an emulator, and hit the parts it still cannot do.
In October, Google gave Google Play a new entrance: an app you generate by talking to AI needs no developer account, no $25, and no review — just scan a QR code. The catch is that only you can install it.
The day my account got banned, my first reaction was the same as yours: register another one.
Someone asked me again last week what to do about a rejected Play developer account. Going through his materials: ID photographed, card linked, the $25 charged successfully. The problem was the address — his card’s billing address was the office, the address on his ID was his hometown.
Chinese tutorials on Play developer accounts mostly stopped updating two years ago: $25, a credit card, an address, wait a day. That is no longer enough.
You have an agent write some Kotlin. It says it’s done. Now what?
By the time a cross-platform project reaches release, there is usually more than one distribution path. One through Google Play, one straight from your own site, and sometimes a test build for the QA folks. Android’s developer verification reprices the entry cost of each path, and the three bills are not calculated the same way at all.
If you have friends in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore or Thailand, after September 30 they may run into something new: tap install in some app store, get a prompt saying the developer isn’t verified, and it won’t install. At the same moment, the China-market Android phone in your hand installs anything with no change at all.
Flutter 1.7.8 stable is out, fixing a batch of bugs.