U-verse App Permissions Required?

The app asks for the permissions that the developer thinks he needs.  He may be asking for photos/video/music permissions for the storage of On Demand content, although it should be able to use its own local storage without that permission.  I do not understand why it needs access to the phone, either. 

If you don't want to give it permissions; don't.  If it doesn't work, then it won't. 

Thank you.

Right, no need for control of my Verizon phone.  But if I don't give permission, I can't use a service I pay for.  Oh well, I'll see if there is a way to get around this.  Seems like a fault in the app, or ATT wants info they have no right to have.  Which wouldn't surprise me.

Thanks again.

I'm guessing it needs permission for the phone so it knows to stop playing during a phone call.

If it doesn't stop playing, then the person using the phone may not be able to hear what's being said over the phone.

That might be it, but it's more likely that it is because that Android severely restricts access to the Device ID.  One of the permissions that lets you access the device's hardware IDs is described to the user as "Make Phone Calls", so it is likely that AT&T is trying to uniquely identify your device via (physical) MAC address or some other serial number-like information.

Thank you for this information.  Are you saying these permissions are needed to view Uverse TV on my phone?

If so, what I find odd is I've been able to view Uverse TV on my current Samsung phone and my previous android phones, but I was restricted from certain channels.  I was advised by ATT to update the app.  OK, not a problem, however now I cannot access Uverse on my phone at all unless I give these permissions.  They were able to identify my phones up until now, so why do they need this information?  Thanks again!

Either (a) they decided to add / change the feature to uniquely identify the phone in the latest release, (b) they updated the Android version number the app targets and the requirement to have the permission is now enforced in a way it was not before, or (c) it may be that they asked for the permission before, and allowed you to decline it and only showed shows where the content creator didn't require them to uniquely identify the viewing device.  But then users complained that they didn't understand why some shows could be watched and others couldn't, the CSRs couldn't understand how to respond, and they just decided it was simpler to always require the permission at startup/installation.

Take your pick.  They could all be true to some degree.  Or they could all be wrong.  All are based on a thimbleful of knowledge about how these things work, AT&T's prior behavior, and some outright speculation.

Thanks again for your quick and understandable response.  So I guess there is nothing "villainous" in the permissions.  LOL   It would have been nice to get an answer from an ATT rep, since their customer service could not provide one.   Thank you for your time and knowledge!

That's a completely different problem that deserves its own thread.  If I could, I'd break your comment out to a new thread, but I can't do that.