Not all Android apps are created equal. The Settings app on an Android device, for example, can change numerous things that no “normal” app can, regardless of how many permissions that app requests. Apps with special privileges like Settings are often called “system apps.” But what makes an app a “system app”? In answering that question for ourselves, we noticed that AOSP’s resources on the subject are disparate and assume a great deal of Android internals knowledge. We wrote th...
