Why? Because I want the timer to stop automatically during a phone call. To do this I need to request READ_PHONE_STATE (which bafflingly tells the user the permission is to "make and manage phone calls"). Unfortunately, there's no way to alter the permission request to tell the user (at least in Android) why you want the permission. They really need to make the permissions more granular and provide some way for devs to communicate what the permission is for.
This is why, on the occasion of necessary permissions not being set, a lot of apps nowadays have a popup which tells the user something like "you need to grant permission for X because it actually lets this app do legitimate thing Y" like you just told us, with a button to click over to do the permissions grab and trigger the OS popup.
I've done this on a simple timer app I developed.
Why? Because I want the timer to stop automatically during a phone call. To do this I need to request READ_PHONE_STATE (which bafflingly tells the user the permission is to "make and manage phone calls"). Unfortunately, there's no way to alter the permission request to tell the user (at least in Android) why you want the permission. They really need to make the permissions more granular and provide some way for devs to communicate what the permission is for.
This is why, on the occasion of necessary permissions not being set, a lot of apps nowadays have a popup which tells the user something like "you need to grant permission for X because it actually lets this app do legitimate thing Y" like you just told us, with a button to click over to do the permissions grab and trigger the OS popup.
Smooth workarounds are out there!
Pre-permissions pop up:
Pre-permissions checklist: