... TL;DR: An important security protocol that is available on native Android 4.4.4 is not available under Alien Dalvik. This means that services that depend on using Android apps may not work on Alien Dalvik + SFOS, even though they do work on mainstream Android installations of the corresponding version. Android apps that work now on SFOS may stop working without warning if the services that they depend on drop support for older security protocols. ... ... * The Android Wire app tries to use GCM (Google Cloud Messaging) to retrieve shared media such as pictures, video and previews of web pages. This fails if Google Play Services are not available. * The Wire app then falls back on a WebSocket protocol to try to retrieve the media * The service provided by Wire requires a handshake using TLS v1.2 for the WebSocket protocol to work * Under Android 4.4.4, TLS v1.2 is provided by Google Play Services, so the handshake fails on any Android 4.4 platform where Google Play Services is not available, including Alien Dalvik. * Wire are not prepared to support TLS of a lower version than 1.2 on their service: that would be an unacceptable weakening of their security.