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Does anyone have suggestions on how to find quality Android apps? I've saturated the primary sources of the Play store, AppBrain, and to an extent, Subreddits a

Does anyone have suggestions on how to find quality Android apps? I've saturated the primary sources of the Play store, AppBrain, and to an extent, Subreddits about Android. There are only so many times a person can open up the Play store and See Beautiful Widgets HD and Cut the Rope before the person gets disappointed. This isn't meant to be snarky, I'm genuinely curious what the best ways are to discover Android apps.

jrockway 14y ago
I find most apps by searching.
FreeKill 14y ago
Yeah, I really wish there was a way to cycle through new apps or recommended apps in a much more frequent fashion. Maybe with some kind of recommendation system from other people? I love it whenever the have the cheap $0.10 or $0.25 sales, not just because the apps are cheap, but also because they present a dozen or so apps a lot of which I've never seen before...
css771 14y ago
I use Android Police's excellent suggestions that come out once every 2 weeks or so. They always have an interesting app or two. Besides that, suggestions on /r/android.
- Brentley_11 14y ago
  I second the Android Police suggestion. They really do a great job highlighting good android apps. For anyone curious, here is a recent app roundup they did. http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/10/04/51-best-and-2-wtf-new-android-apps-and-live-wallpapers-from-the-last-2-weeks-91512-10412/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/10/04/51-best-and-2-wtf-ne...
buro9 14y ago
No idea, but whilst I am here... I have fallen in love with this timer app: http://www.opoloo.com/timer http://www.opoloo.com/timer It's transformed my cooking as now I no longer burn my pizzas. I half kid. It is beautiful, and I would love to find other incredibly functional, well-thought out, complete and gorgeous apps. As to the comment above about it being quality over quantity... no, it's both, quality and quantity. The long tail should be served, but I want the quality to exist at the tallest part of that histogram.
- scott_karana 14y ago
  While I agree that's a beautiful app, I fail to see how it would prevent you from burning pizzas, where regular timers would fail. While I'm replying, I may as well point out Ovo[1], the free rival. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ilumbo.ovo&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ilumbo.ovo...
  - buro9 14y ago
    I tended not to use the more ugly timers... and yes, I truly did burn my pizzas.
    - elvislives 14y ago
      Ovo is much more pleasant to use than Opoloo's Timer, yo!
rossjudson 14y ago
You don't find good e-books on Amazon by browsing. Pretty much everything you find is crap. "Anyone can be an author" is great until everyone is. Then it sucks. Apps are exactly the same; almost everything is crap. Perhaps one in a thousand apps is worth a buyer's time, just to read the description. So you need a gatekeeper. But not just one -- you need a number of them. In the physical book world these are publishers. There are many good and bad effects to publishers, but one of the good effects is that they screen out huge amounts of crap before it's ever inflicted on the public. I don't buy e-books by using the Kindle store. I go through physical book listing only, presuming that if it's made it past a publisher, it might be worth my time to look at. After I find something interesting, I'll flip over to the digital version if that's what I'm interested in. To solve the app store problem there needs to be more than one store. There needs to be a lot of stores. These can be _within_ Google's or Apple's store. Professional publishers can partner with selected application vendors, roughly "endorsing" apps. Publishers can join together to form groups, and groups can create storefronts. As a buyer I can then pick and choose from storefronts/publishing groups that organize and choose books that are appropriate for me. App sellers will have to give up some of their (non-existent, because nobody knows the app is there) revenue to the publishers in exchange for the service. As long as the buyer and can shift and select from between publishing groups, and the base provider (like Google) makes it _tough_ to become a publisher or group, it stands a chance.
- rossjudson 14y ago
  One more thing -- as long as reviewers keep mentioning 1,000,000 apps available as a _good_ thing, it's hard to make the situation better. Imagine logging on to Steam, and finding a million games, 99.9% of which are crap. And then buried somewhere, in all of that crap, are a few underfunded gems, whose authors are desperately trying to make it work. And then they get cloned.
mongol 14y ago
I usually start with an idea of what I am looking for. When I find something interesting, I look what other users that installed this app also installed. That way I sometimes find something.
hristov 14y ago
I do not know about quality, but you can use appannie.com to find popular and/or money making apps.
bookwormAT 14y ago
"Does anyone have suggestions on how to find quality Android apps?" I'm using http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_search_engine http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_search_engine . Appstore discovery is currently very much the directory that altavista and yahoo used to be, but good old Google works just fine.
emmelaich 14y ago
One method I used was to scour code.google.com and github for android projects. Many free apps were more useful than similar non-free apps. Some authors had both free and non-free apps. Also it gave a small hint of trustability. I like to G+ recommends by people in my circles. I have not found any very good method though.

jrockway 14y ago

I find most apps by searching.

FreeKill 14y ago

Yeah, I really wish there was a way to cycle through new apps or recommended apps in a much more frequent fashion. Maybe with some kind of recommendation system from other people? I love it whenever the have the cheap $0.10 or $0.25 sales, not just because the apps are cheap, but also because they present a dozen or so apps a lot of which I've never seen before...

css771 14y ago

I use Android Police's excellent suggestions that come out once every 2 weeks or so. They always have an interesting app or two. Besides that, suggestions on /r/android.

Brentley_11 14y ago
I second the Android Police suggestion. They really do a great job highlighting good android apps. For anyone curious, here is a recent app roundup they did. http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/10/04/51-best-and-2-wtf-new-android-apps-and-live-wallpapers-from-the-last-2-weeks-91512-10412/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/10/04/51-best-and-2-wtf-ne...

buro9 14y ago

No idea, but whilst I am here... I have fallen in love with this timer app: http://www.opoloo.com/timer http://www.opoloo.com/timer It's transformed my cooking as now I no longer burn my pizzas. I half kid. It is beautiful, and I would love to find other incredibly functional, well-thought out, complete and gorgeous apps. As to the comment above about it being quality over quantity... no, it's both, quality and quantity. The long tail should be served, but I want the quality to exist at the tallest part of that histogram.

scott_karana 14y ago
While I agree that's a beautiful app, I fail to see how it would prevent you from burning pizzas, where regular timers would fail. While I'm replying, I may as well point out Ovo[1], the free rival. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ilumbo.ovo&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ilumbo.ovo...
- buro9 14y ago
  I tended not to use the more ugly timers... and yes, I truly did burn my pizzas.
  - elvislives 14y ago
    Ovo is much more pleasant to use than Opoloo's Timer, yo!

rossjudson 14y ago

You don't find good e-books on Amazon by browsing. Pretty much everything you find is crap. "Anyone can be an author" is great until everyone is. Then it sucks. Apps are exactly the same; almost everything is crap. Perhaps one in a thousand apps is worth a buyer's time, just to read the description. So you need a gatekeeper. But not just one -- you need a number of them. In the physical book world these are publishers. There are many good and bad effects to publishers, but one of the good effects is that they screen out huge amounts of crap before it's ever inflicted on the public. I don't buy e-books by using the Kindle store. I go through physical book listing only, presuming that if it's made it past a publisher, it might be worth my time to look at. After I find something interesting, I'll flip over to the digital version if that's what I'm interested in. To solve the app store problem there needs to be more than one store. There needs to be a lot of stores. These can be _within_ Google's or Apple's store. Professional publishers can partner with selected application vendors, roughly "endorsing" apps. Publishers can join together to form groups, and groups can create storefronts. As a buyer I can then pick and choose from storefronts/publishing groups that organize and choose books that are appropriate for me. App sellers will have to give up some of their (non-existent, because nobody knows the app is there) revenue to the publishers in exchange for the service. As long as the buyer and can shift and select from between publishing groups, and the base provider (like Google) makes it _tough_ to become a publisher or group, it stands a chance.

rossjudson 14y ago
One more thing -- as long as reviewers keep mentioning 1,000,000 apps available as a _good_ thing, it's hard to make the situation better. Imagine logging on to Steam, and finding a million games, 99.9% of which are crap. And then buried somewhere, in all of that crap, are a few underfunded gems, whose authors are desperately trying to make it work. And then they get cloned.

mongol 14y ago

I usually start with an idea of what I am looking for. When I find something interesting, I look what other users that installed this app also installed. That way I sometimes find something.

hristov 14y ago

I do not know about quality, but you can use appannie.com to find popular and/or money making apps.

bookwormAT 14y ago

"Does anyone have suggestions on how to find quality Android apps?" I'm using http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_search_engine http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_search_engine . Appstore discovery is currently very much the directory that altavista and yahoo used to be, but good old Google works just fine.

emmelaich 14y ago

One method I used was to scour code.google.com and github for android projects. Many free apps were more useful than similar non-free apps. Some authors had both free and non-free apps. Also it gave a small hint of trustability. I like to G+ recommends by people in my circles. I have not found any very good method though.