6mo ago

This Play Store change could stop you from review-bombing some of Google's apps (APK teardown)

www.androidauthority.com

Google Play Store is testing a new minimal design for app listings for core system apps that could prevent review bombing. Check it out!

13 comments

Maybe they should put actual descriptions and explanations for those system apps rather than generic placeholders so people would understand what's actually running on their bloated phones.
Why? Are they doing badly? They're doing badly, aren't they?
- People review all the system apps as 1 star because they don't know where they came from, what they do, or why they're installed
  (First 2 out of 3 reviews the playstore shows me first for Android System WebView, which admittedly is a bad example because it has a 4.2 rating)
  
  I mean, System WebView for me is a 1 star. Old-ish phone (S20 FE) and the latest update of it before going out of support, keeps crashing while using some apps that uses it so I'm always there uninstalling the update and it autoupdate for some reason
  Note: Not my main phone, I use it for development
  
  That's fair but I'm not sure why those types of system maintenance apps are reviewable. I was more talking about the changes to their suite of productivity apps (mail, calendar, chrome etc) that basically can't be deleted.
  
  I think that's an education problem more than a review problem.
  To the average user, those are unknown apps. I'd be upset to if my phone was auto downloading crap, especially the ones like AR that sound extra useless.
  Having play store deliver updates is a great idea. Lumping them together with everything else is apparently not. There could be a separate "system updates" section to separate them.
Honestly not against it. Reviews are useless for these system core apps. But the descriptions should include some useful info on what this specific app does instead of just being two lines rewording the app's title.
Who cares
- I understand why you said this but the statement in itself is very out of touch
- Like 95% of Android users (excluding regions that doesn't ship with Google Play Services such as China)
  
  And even in those regions, at least some of the devices let you install the play store from the OEM's store, so I'm sure most users do that if they can.

13 comments