It looks like this was released either in 8.x[0] or 9.x[1] series. Unclear to me which one. That means that only up to about 1/3 of Android devices[2] have the feature. Version distribution is one of the things that seems to tip stuff like this in favor in iOS[3].

Admittedly, the distribution of Android devices on 8.x+ is higher than I even expected before looking at this.

[0] https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/wifi...

[1] https://developer.android.com/about/versions/pie/android-9.0...

[2] https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards

[3] https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/

Location access started being required for WiFi scans in Android 6.0 Marshmallow (2015).

https://developer.android.com/about/versions/marshmallow/and...

By eye, that covers nearly 75% of current devices.

Thank you. I figured I was probably missing something on that point.

And yet "Phone status and identity" are somehow still one permission like a decade later.

How on earth it occurred to someone in the first place, that determining whether the phone is in use or not and reading the phone #, IMEI, etc. should be the same permission is beyond me.