Now if they could automate LineageOS installation and getting it to pass Play Integrity to the Strong level, that would actually be useful!

I use https://f-droid.org/packages/mattecarra.accapp/ (with a rooted phone) to keep my charge levels within 5%-85% of the manufacturer battery range.

Most manufacturers made a decision to set the range their devices will charge to based on what is less likely to fail so quickly you’ll get mad at the manufacturer, but they trade off significant battery life for slightly higher design capacity (or perhaps more likely, they see shorter battery life as a feature not a bug, as long as it doesn’t catch fire, since it will mean your phone becomes e-waste faster and you give them more money).

Battery chemistry tells us that avoiding those extremes of high and low charge (shutdown earlier on low charge in the rare event that happens, stop charging at a lower level) drastically increases battery life - it is aligned with my interests, even if not the manufacturers’.

This seems extreme for the long tail of hobbyist apps. Finding 20 testers seems like a huge commitment for an unproven app, and I’m sure it would be a hurdle many apps currently in Google Play would not have gotten across if it existed then.

I wonder if this is a deliberate attempt to shut out hobby apps from their app store for whatever reason, rather than a good faith attempt to improve app quality.

In parallel they are also forcing people to publicly attach their real name to apps (people have long had to tell Google who they are to get in the app store, but not to make it public) - which might be another thing that is no big deal for big companies, but many smaller hobbyist app devs might think twice about doxxing themselves given how hostile people are on the Internet these days and how many crazies there are out there.