> To my surprise, Google/Android copied over all apps installed through Google Play, and just ignored all F-droid installed apps!

As an Android dev, I suspect it's not actually copying the apps over, but rather looking at what apps you have and redownloading them (and maybe copying over app data/the cache), as there may be some device specific customization in the APK's: https://developer.android.com/guide/app-bundle

> An Android App Bundle is a publishing format that includes all your app’s compiled code and resources, and defers APK generation and signing to Google Play.

> Google Play uses your app bundle to generate and serve optimized APKs for each device configuration, so only the code and resources that are needed for a specific device are downloaded to run your app. You no longer have to build, sign, and manage multiple APKs to optimize support for different devices, and users get smaller, more-optimized downloads.

iOS does something similar when you move phones: it only sends over a list of apps to download from the App Store. Even your TestFlight apps don't make it over.

Yes. I had the same problem with F-Droid. I also used to use the Humble Store app back when they had one, same problem.

A good feature is that the Android OS allows you to whitelist sources of Apps, so once you install a "store" you can grant permission to that store to install apps without completely disabling the OS installer security. That didn't used to be a thing - either the setting was Play Store Only or it wasn't and you could grab APKs from the browser.

Isn't this contradicted by the existence of these popular Chinese app stores?

Huh? AFAICT there's no longer an authorized Android process to replace your phone off of their cloud. You ran an app from one of your phone vendors and they copied whatever they wanted to?

I guess the process was driven by my new phone: Google Pixel 6a. I guess Google's "we'll get you started by copying everything off your old phone" process can do whatever it wants, but it surely didn't explicitly say "we'll only copy Google Play apps" in a way that I noticed.

there is user choice in app stores. that's literally why f-droid exists.

of course google play gets preferred treatment on a pixel phone. that's what happens when you own the platform - you get to prefer your app store. but other stores do exist and you can use them if you want. in what way is that not user choice?

Aside from the backup/restore functionality mentioned by the parent post, there's no way for them to do automatic updates or get similar system privileges like play store does, restricting a lot of functionality that play store can provide.

Afaik the updates are possible since Android 12, it's one of the reasons I'm planning to update soon.