A new choice for developers! OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, and Honor jointly introduce a new standard for privacy permissions.
On August 15th, at the 2025 Mobile Intelligent Terminal Ecosystem Alliance Developers' Salon, five mobile phone manufacturers, OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, Honor, and Lenovo, rarely "appeared together" and jointly released a new privacy permission system. It is reported that this system has achieved the reasonable opening of 19 categories of privacy data, which will greatly enhance the privacy protection ability of the Android ecosystem.
It is worth mentioning that Mr. Chen Zhuo, a senior technical advisor at Google, also made an appearance at the salon. This is also the first time Google has supported Chinese manufacturers. Mr. Chen Zhuo said on-site that Google will continue to promote the privacy governance mechanism of the Android system and guide the Android ecosystem to evolve in a more secure direction.
The joint appearance of the five mobile phone manufacturers and Google also sends a clear signal to developers and users: Android manufacturers are jointly promoting the user privacy experience to a new stage.
Why do the mobile phone manufacturers appear together?
Mobiles almost hold all personal information in the digital life. Therefore, the protection of personal information has become a key task that regulatory authorities have been constantly working on.
Since the implementation of the "Personal Information Protection Law" in 2021, relevant national departments have continuously organized and carried out work related to personal information protection, and achieved positive results in the compliance governance of mobile apps. However, challenges still remain in issues such as apps' over - scope and concealed permission requests. Users may have had similar doubts: a flashlight app actually requests to read photo album information, and beauty - related apps even request access to call records.
The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology's Tai'er Terminal Laboratory pointed out in the "Development Trends and Outlook of APP User Rights Protection" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") that the number of mobile Internet applications is huge and innovative. With the continuous emergence of new technologies, new business forms, and new models, the concealment and complexity of problems are increasing day by day. There is still a long way to go in the work of protecting user rights. Among common illegal scenarios, phenomena such as illegal collection of personal information, forced, frequent, and excessive permission requests, and deceiving, misleading, and forcing users still account for a relatively high proportion.
The phenomenon of non - standard permission usage does occur from time to time: apps frequently read users' location information, obtain the address book in real - time, and over - access photo album photos. Even many apps cannot function properly because permissions are not granted. Since apps need to request permissions frequently, users' acquiescence to permissions has gradually become a "formal consent" for the sake of convenience.
The openness of the Android platform brings a richer experience, but also faces more complex challenges in terms of privacy and security. Different mobile phone manufacturers have different system customizations and permission implementations, making it difficult to form a unified standard. Moreover, there are many third - party applications, a large number of developers, and complex permission requests. The problem of balancing compliance and user experience has become increasingly prominent, and users' privacy and security protection have been greatly tested.
To strengthen the privacy and security defense line of the Android ecosystem, the permission mechanism is undoubtedly the most effective entry point at present. The permission mechanism is the most basic and core security model established at the beginning of the Android system design. It is like a series of gates that control whether an app can access sensitive resources and user data in the system, and at the same time, it puts the only "key" in the hands of users.
The Cyberspace Administration of China issued a document stating that it is necessary to focus on key fields, industries, and scenarios for special governance, and promote the collection and use of data to gradually evolve towards the "minimum necessary" direction. The above - mentioned "Report" also suggests promoting industry enterprises to clarify the implementation path of permission minimization, achieving unified terminal interfaces, app adaptation and execution, and app store review and verification. At the same time, it is necessary to break the formalization of notice - and - consent in the protection of personal information in the mobile Internet and explore the construction of a new app authorization model.
This is also the reason why Google and the five terminal manufacturers chose to join hands: only by continuously improving the user experience and building a more secure and trustworthy Android ecosystem can we achieve more sustainable ecological prosperity. For developers, when manufacturers start to create a unified standard to reduce app adaptation costs, joining hands with manufacturers to provide users with a safer service experience will turn from an unavoidable challenge into a new opportunity for co - prosperity with the ecosystem.
Help users control data more conveniently and precisely
In fact, privacy and security have always been the top priority in the Android ecosystem.
For example, in the Android 6 era, Google began to change the app permission authorization mode from installation - time authorization to runtime authorization. In Android 13, Google further strengthened privacy protection and launched the Photo Picker. This is a native media selection component provided by the Android system, which allows users to select and share only the required photo or video files without granting the app full access to photos and videos, thus better protecting privacy.
Why was the Photo Picker launched? Behind this is a change in the permission authorization logic.
In the traditional Android permission model, if an app needs a certain sensitive permission (such as accessing the photo album, address book, or microphone), it must request the entire permission from the user. Users either allow the app to access relevant data without restrictions, or reject it, which may limit or even disable the app's functions. Moreover, the traditional permission mechanism is too broad in design, and developers may easily encounter problems such as high - frequency data collection or over - access.
A new Android privacy permission system has emerged as the times require. According to representatives of OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, Honor, and Lenovo, the new system emphasizes the parallel development of data and access, taking into account both privacy protection and convenient experience. One important solution is the use of system controls.
System controls refer to secure data access interfaces provided by the system. They enable apps to implement core functions without reading all user data through permissions, thus protecting user privacy. When an app needs to access user data, a secure "control" controlled by the operating system will pop up directly, such as the Photo Picker mentioned above. Users only need to operate within this control.
Through secure controls such as the Picker, the new privacy permission system provides secure access to five categories of highly sensitive privacy data, including contacts, photo albums, files, calendars, and clipboards. Apps can only read the specific data that users explicitly select. In other words, it returns the control of data access from apps to users.
At the same time, apps no longer need to pop up permission requests frequently, reducing the disturbance to users and avoiding blind authorization due to "permission fatigue". Developers can still implement the core functions of apps without obtaining all permissions, such as sending photos and sharing contacts. From the perspective of system controls, it reduces frequent authorization, improves user experience and authorization accuracy in specific scenarios, and is more conducive to apps' reasonable data acquisition.
In addition, the new permission system has also established a unified permission review platform to evaluate the rationality of requests for 19 categories of permissions and open them in different levels, avoiding non - standard and abusive permission usage scenarios and strengthening the protection of user data security from a mechanism perspective.
The unified permission system has also greatly improved developers' adaptation efficiency. In the past, each Android manufacturer had its own set of permission management and privacy protection mechanisms. Developers had to conduct separate development and testing for each manufacturer's system when adapting to different mobile phone brands, which was extremely time - consuming and labor - intensive. For many developers, when it comes to implementing the requirement of minimizing personal privacy protection permissions, in the past, they had to figure out on their own how to protect user privacy while improving the service experience and integrity of their apps with the minimum cost.
The release of this new permission system provides a solution from the industry - wide and terminal - side perspective, which is why it has been recognized by Google and the industry. The five manufacturers have unified the APIs for apps to access system controls and the permission review platform. Developers only need to integrate once to make their apps compatible with OPPO ColorOS, vivo OriginOS, Xiaomi Hyper OS, Honor MagicOS, and myui across all platforms.
The Android ecosystem turns a new page
The release of the new Android privacy permission system is inseparable from the key player behind it: the Mobile Intelligent Terminal Ecosystem Alliance (also known as the "Golden Label Alliance").
The Golden Label Alliance (ITGSA) was established in 2021. It is an innovative industry organization guided by national industrial policies and driven by market demand. OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, Honor, and Lenovo all serve as the alliance's governing units. Manufacturers such as Lenovo, Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent are also members of the alliance. The core purpose of the alliance is to serve developers well and build a high - quality ecosystem for intelligent terminal software services.
The launch of the new privacy permission system is the latest achievement of the Golden Label Alliance's joint efforts.
Due to the open - source and open nature, each manufacturer can deeply customize Google's native Android system. Although this has brought about a variety of benefits, it has also led to differences in permission management, background operation, notification push, etc. among mobile phones of different brands.
As important players in the Chinese and even global mobile phone markets, the joint action of the five manufacturers this time means that they will no longer fight alone. Instead, through unified standards and in - depth cooperation, they will bring a leap - forward improvement to the user experience of the Android ecosystem.
For the industry, another significance of the new privacy permission system is that it provides clear privacy protection guidelines for developers and apps. Users will have a clearer understanding of the authorization and usage scope of data in different apps and tend to download apps that follow the standards, as this represents that they are more secure and trustworthy. This process will guide the app market to have more standardized reviews and promote the industry to reach a consensus on the importance of privacy protection.
The new privacy permission system will also drive developers to focus on core value innovation. When users can more easily control data permission sharing, the core competitiveness of apps will return more to the functional experience itself. At the same time, high - quality developers can quickly access through the unified standard interface without spending too much energy on multi - platform adaptation. They can focus more on providing better services and experiences for users, driving the industry into a more positive cycle of innovation.
In addition to the privacy permission system, OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, Honor, and Lenovo are also actively promoting other special projects in the Golden Label Alliance. For example, the unified message push service will ensure the security and controllability of data transmission from the system's underlying layer.
Google's participation means that the global Android ecosystem is transforming towards "manufacturer + system" collaboration. Google used to be the sole authority and standard - setter in the Android ecosystem. However, in the new privacy permission system, its role is more like an important partner, recognizing and supporting the new standards proposed by Chinese manufacturers and using them as an important reference for improving the privacy governance mechanism of the native Android system.
The implementation of the new privacy permission system provides a feasible model for the development of the Android ecosystem. In an open ecosystem, Chinese manufacturers are determined and capable of achieving a balance among openness, security, and prosperity.