Archive for November 22nd, 2009

android market: Some feature ideas

November 22nd, 2009 2 Comments

I’ve been using my HTC Magic from vodafone for approximately 8 month now and as time goes on I’m downloading more and more apps on to my phone.

The android market takes care of updates on all of your downloaded apps so it reminds you of new app versions every now and then. That’s definitely a very good thing, you don’t have to take care about checking for updates or anything, but:
I just counted my downloaded apps and I almost hit the 50 mark. Wow, 47 apps that I downloaded so far and that are still on my phone. Now, when the android market app tells me that there are new updates for some apps, there are always more than 6 apps to update at the same time.  Have you ever thought exactly about the update process?

  1. Open the android market app with the list of updatable apps
  2. click on the first app and (maybe) read the (hopefully) new description of the current changes
  3. click “update” to update your app
  4. click “OK” to the screen that tells you that this app version will replace the old version of this app (no shit Sherlock, it’s an UPDATE!)
  5. click “install” to the screen that shows you the permissions this app needs
  6. now this app will be downloaded an installed

… and that was only the first of at least 6 apps.

My first question is: Where is the “Update all” button?

Since the user has to give some apps the permission to access phone resources, the internet or whatever, we need a mechanism that can control this issue in  a convenient way. Here’s my idea: android tracks the history of the last permissions that the user already granted during the last install or update. As long as the permissions of this app don’t change, the app will update automatically as soon as I hit the “update all” button. Another alternative, or better, another feature beside an “update all” button would be the possibility to check several apps that I would like to update at once with a “update selected” button.

To sum it up:

  • add an “update all” button
  • add an “update selected” button with check-boxes for selecting apps
  • keep track of already granted permissions of the last app install
  • only ask user if permissions of an app have changed

These features should be possible, shouldn’t they?
Help me to enhance the mobile world and tell me about your ideas. Any comments appreciated.

Posted in Android, IT & Development, mob!lers