QOTD: How Would You Change The Android Market?
It’s not a stretch to say there are flaws in the Android Market. There are probably a thousand things that could be done differently. Personally, I would like to see a desktop version that’s linked to your Google Account to automatically load apps on your mobile. I would also like to see more specific categories, with the influx of home themes and e-books, the market is getting hard to navigate. Additional filtering options, such as price, ratings, etc would also be nice. Another addition I would like that I’ve seen mentioned several times is a direct link within free apps to donate to the developer. This eliminates having a separate app just for donations, or having to search for a link to send a donation.
So, question of the day is: How would you change the Android Market?
-Most popular today/this week/this month/forever
-Ability to search through the market online from my computer
-More filtering options like you mentioned
-Sorting options (especially with searches)
-Widgets Category at the same level as Applications/Games
-desktop version would be nice too…..kinda similar to iTunes….but not iTunes
I get totally rocked off with paying £0.99 to a dev for a piece of software that he has worked hard to produce, pay for it using my Visa card and my bank charging me £1.00 for a foreign transaction, I am on an English phone, with an English contract sat on an English toilet buying stuff, how the hell can that be foreign? That really sucks!!
broaden the search results. it seems i’ve got to be dead-on when searching for an app…however, i’m usually sittin’ there sayin’,”now, what did he call it?” so when a friend mentions an app in random convo, you can get to it with one word
Ability to sort via star ratings. instead of just paid/free show 5 start, 4 start, 3 start apps by a filter.
would also like the ability to have an app on the computer to sync all my apps to and from like the iphone does.
Include screenshots of apps similar to the itunes app store.
I’d chuck out 90% of the apps on there and introduce a vetting system to keep the quality high. I thought vetting was one of the things I hated about iphone but having seen how much pointless dross there is on the android market and how mediocre even the better stuff is compared to iphone apps, I’m now not so sure. The quality of any platform depends almost entirely on the software available for it and right now, Android is being let down very badly indeed.
Filtering the market by rating would be nice. I’d love it if they could add more characters to the description so that I know what the hell the does. I was also thinking about a favorites function where you’re not ready to download the app yet but you’re keeping any eye on it’s development. More or less like watching an ebay item.
Provide more detailed description of the app. I think currently its limited to only 300 odd characters. Also provide the ability to view screenshots of the app (This is really critical, since there is no way of knowing how bad/cool the app looks).
What I would like is for it not to be sooo dark. That’s my biggest problem with Android. Everything is black black black. It’s so boring and dead. The calendar looks much better after 1.5 with the white and blue hues. They need to make the Market feel more “alive”.