Occam's Razor would tend to agree with you that it's just an innocent coding
error this particular author (and no others that I know of) has made.
Certainly it's reproduceable on a new phone that this app won't come up
if the Google Play Store is disabled, force stopped, & the phone rebooted.
That means the app is definitely interacting with the Google Play Store app
(in a way that most other apps as far as we know do NOT interact that way).
Based on your previous advice a few months ago when this topic came up
https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/logcat
From Windows I connected via adb to the phone over wifi and then typed
C:\> adb pair
192.168.1.3:35461 692572
Successfully paired to
192.168.1.3:35461 [guid=adb-MODEL-SERIAL]
C:\> adb logcat ActivityManager:I MyApp:D *:S
I was surprised that worked because "MyApp" shouldn't exist.
The app is actually "Network Cell Info Lite" "com.wilysis.cellinfolite".
Nonetheless, this output occurs whenever I tap on the app & it crashes.
11-02 11:25:00.346 1432 1476 I ActivityManager: Start proc 17023:com.wilysis.cellinfolite/u0a332 for pre-top-activity {com.wilysis.cellinfolite/com.wilysis.cellinfo.Arxikh}
11-02 11:25:00.376 1432 1700 I ActivityManager: DSS OFF for com.wilysis.cellinfolite
11-02 11:25:00.383 1432 1468 I ActivityManager: Changes in 10332 19 to 2, 0 to 15
11-02 11:25:00.594 1432 1476 I ActivityManager: Start proc 17113:com.google.android.webview:sandboxed_process0:org.chromium.content.app.SandboxedProcessService0:0/u0i7 for {com.wilysis.cellinfolite/org.chromium.content.app.SandboxedProcessService0:0}
11-02 11:25:00.594 1432 1476 I ActivityManager: check webview name : com.google.android.webview:sandboxed_process0:org.chromium.content.app.SandboxedProcessService0:0check hostingname webview : {com.wilysis.cellinfolite/org.chromium.content.app.SandboxedProcessService0:0}
11-02 11:25:00.617 1432 1652 I ActivityManager: DSS OFF for com.wilysis.cellinfolite
11-02 11:25:00.621 1432 1652 I ActivityManager: Changes in 99007 20 to 3, 0 to 15
11-02 11:25:00.651 1432 1700 W ActivityManager: Unable to start service Intent { act=com.android.vending.licensing.ILicensingService pkg=com.android.vending } U=0: not found
11-02 11:25:00.704 1432 3317 I ActivityManager: Process com.wilysis.cellinfolite (pid 17023) has died: fg TOP (171,1468)
11-02 11:25:00.706 1432 3317 I ActivityManager: Killing 17113:com.google.android.webview:sandboxed_process0:org.chromium.content.app.SandboxedProcessService0:0/u0a332i7 (adj 0): isolated not needed
11-02 11:25:00.706 1432 3317 I ActivityManager: Changes in 99007 3 to 19, 15 to 0
I don't know which lines matter but these seems to be important.
(1) Unable to start service ILicensingService
(2) pkg=com.android.vending
(3) Process com.wilysis.cellinfolite has died
(4) Killing com.google.android.webview:sandboxed_process
Notice the official name of the "Google Play Store" app is
"com.android.vending" so there is no doubt the correlation.
I suspect there is a "licensing service" inside of the
Google Play Store app (aka "com.android.vending") which is called
"com.android.vending.licensing.ILicensingService") that the app
"com.wilysis.cellinfolite" is depending upon that no other
app in my new Android 12 phone is dependent upon.
I suspect it's spyware but I don't know that for a fact.
All I know for sure is the app requires Google Play Store
to be running in order to come up on an Android 12 phone.