but it's also true that it's very common to see reviews where users complain about excessive, unnecessary permissions That may be true, but it's not showing a

but it's also true that it's very common to see reviews where users complain about excessive, unnecessary permissions That may be true, but it's not showing a big effect. Pick two apps randomly from the store and you'll probably be asked to grant all sorts of unrelated permissions both times... developers explain in app descriptions why they're requesting certain permissions Yes, that's another aspect worth fixing. The developer should be able to annotate each critical call with an explanation. Although I like the idea in the sibling comment even better; just raise a popup when the permission is actually used (for the first time). There will be some corner-cases but in 9/10 cases that should make it pretty obvious for the user.