My android devices have all come with basic file system browsers, but even better, I can choose from a plethora of full featured apps for full file system access. This is one of the issues that has kept me away from iphone, though.
Meanwhile iOS also has sandboxing but at least you can still meaningfully use normal goddamn filesystem APIs and there's now a system file manager.
I cannot backup my worlds without either using a third-party tool, or paying Microsoft $4 for the privilege of uploading my world to their server (Realm), changing my storage location to External and then downloading it back. Ridiculous.
FLOSS file-managers were decent already in the 90s.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
No ads. Sure, it tries to group things by categories and searching at the very top, but its still easy to see "Storage devices" which lets me navigate the actual folder structure. My Pixels have come with USB-C male to USB-A female adapters which allow me to plug in things like flash drives, memory card readers, cameras, external hard drives, even other Android devices and access the files through the Files app.
On iPhones and stock Android phones, apps "know" when you deny permissions, and can even know when you use the mock GPS feature.
Why, as a user, is that story (even without losing the camera) would any of that sound better than just having the app store require that apps follow some approval guidelines about what they are allowed to do with privileges and what they are allowed to do when denied privileges?
Unfortunately, you can't really have sideloading and an app review process. If sideloading is trivial/normalized for users then it'll be trivial/normalized for bad actors wanting to exploit those users.
To get permits to certain wilderness areas that require GPS permissions to even apply.
To get on restaurant waitlists before arriving. (Some restaurants insist on your phone-reported GPS location being within a certain radius to get on the list. Welcome to Silicon Valley in 2023)
Lots of reasons.
Why would I use an app that requires unnecessary permissions?
And direct access via the Files app.
The one thing missing is that admittedly there is no way to add your own music to the music library on the phone itself.
I pretty much never use it on my Mac, all the apps I use show the filesystem in a sidebar and have a fuzzy search feature. Even Apple apps (like Xcode) have that so clearly they're aware of how bad the file picker is.