Sometimes it doesn’t even matter where you get your apps; even on Google Play Store, not all apps are created equal! There are plenty of apps out there poorly developed making them come with plenty of stability and power efficiency issues.
Naturally, such apps hosted on Google’s platform paints the search engine giant in the wrong picture. For all its worth, the company has tried for a very long time to encourage developers to build high-quality apps. Well, the response from the developer’s communities has not been exactly satisfactory to Google’s standards or the end-consumers’ expectations.
It is also safe to say that Apple cracks the whip more often and is stricter on the quality of apps on its App Store than Google is on its Play Store. That means Android users are more likely to install buggy apps from the Play Store than iOS users are from the App Store.
No doubt Google has been somewhat laxer, which has also played to its advantage in some aspects. Play Store has often attracted more budding developers and sparked off more creativity. However, that has come at the risk of more questionable apps existing on the platform. Some apps therein that constantly crash, freeze randomly, drain the device battery like its supposed to be connected to the power wall outlet throughout.
Well, all these problems could be a thing of the past, if the company lives up to what was announced at the last week’s Google I/O. The company reiterated its commitment to improving users’ experience on Android devices and the overall device performance.
Google reaffirmed it wants speed, security, and stability standards at their optimum levels for Android apps. These rules would apply to not just the end-users, but also the developers themselves.
Going forward, developers will be able to see the metrics and scores on the stability, render times, and battery consumption of their apps. To be very specific; Google will be on the lookout for:
*App not responding (ANR) rates
*Slow rendering
*Crash rate
*Frozen frames
*Excessive wakeups (the app waking up the device more than 10 times in an hour)
*Stuck wake locks (the app keeping the device awake for more than an hour)
Based on the above metrics, Google is now looking for apps that rank among the bottom 25%. If your app(s) is among them, get ready to hear from Google. In February this year, the search engine giant made the announcement that an app’s performance will start affecting its “promotability.” That is to say, apps that fail to meet the set standards for stability, performance, and battery drain, will stop being visible in the Play Store.
This development comes at a time when the Play Store is full of millions of apps and mounting criticism over fake apps, low quality app, and malware apps. This new move by Google promises to wash out the fake, buggy, and insecure apps from the Play Store and perhaps restore users’ confidence. As to whether or not this new punishment will be executed and clean up the Play Store remains to be seen.
