You don’t need to use the Google Play Services at all. Developers only use it because it’s convenient, but you’re not forced to use it. A lot of users here on Lemmy for example (myself included) use alt stores like F-Droid, Droid-ify etc without any issues.
Without FCM, push notifications become much harder due to the battery saving optimizations each device manufacturer uses. So not a need per se, but it makes your life MUCH harder
Of course, an OEM may do aggressive app killing where the above may not work (Huawei is notorious for this), but that is an OEM-specific issue that applies to all apps in general, so as a developer it’s up to you whether you want to test against, or even support such OEMs.
You don’t need to use the Google Play Services at all. Developers only use it because it’s convenient, but you’re not forced to use it. A lot of users here on Lemmy for example (myself included) use alt stores like F-Droid, Droid-ify etc without any issues.
Without FCM, push notifications become much harder due to the battery saving optimizations each device manufacturer uses. So not a need per se, but it makes your life MUCH harder
There are alternatives. Pushy is pretty easy to use, and it’s not that hard to allow it to run in the background. See: https://support.pushy.me/hc/en-us/articles/360043423332-How-can-I-send-notifications-to-Android-devices-in-Doze-power-saving-mode-
Of course, an OEM may do aggressive app killing where the above may not work (Huawei is notorious for this), but that is an OEM-specific issue that applies to all apps in general, so as a developer it’s up to you whether you want to test against, or even support such OEMs.