Is your server sending 🍌 when you were expecting 🍎and 🍊? Here's a tale of unconfined enums in kotlin https://link.medium.com/v9MoWVdk8pb

my preferred approach is more like

value class Fruit(val name: String) {
    @StringRes val stringRes: Int
        get() = when (this) {
            Apple -> R.string.fruit_apple
            else -> 0
        }

    companion object {
        val Apple = Fruit("Apple")
    }
}

but YMMV

How would the use-site look? There wouldn't be any exhaustion checks at compile time right?

no exhaustion checks because the type is non exhaustive, but most use sites look similar to enums by defining the known values as companion object members

the interface approach lets you have some exhaustive type checks, and its nice that you can still safely enumerate over possible values when there's a whole hierarchy of em.

@Composable
fun FruitView(fruit: Fruit) {
  when (fruit) {
    is Pome -> when (fruit) {
      Apple -> AppleView(fruit)
      Pears -> PearView(fruit)
      Quince -> QuinceView(fruit)
    }
    
    is Citrus -> when(fruit){
      Oranges -> OrangeView(fruit)
      Lime -> LimeView(fruit)
      Lemon -> LemonView(fruit)
    }

    else -> OtherFruitView(fruit.name)
  }
}

p.s mind the nested whens here