Please help by doing this Alternative Smartphone Application Providers Study

[ktalik]

Hi Everyone!

I'm doing an academic survey on Android-related issues. This is an usability study of alternative app providers for Android and research of application rating. A study means that it includes a few activities that you should perform on your Android (or fork) device. Please make sure you have about 20 minutes to do this research. Also your comments or any suggestions will be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

The purposes of this reasearch are scientifical (see the reference paper in the survey front page). I hope app selection isn't that bad. Any suggestions on this are welcome! Feel free to test any of the alternative store app provided in the survey.

Link to the survey

PS. I'm new here, so I apologize if this is a wrong forum section for such topic. Please move this thread to other subforum if there is a better place for it.

 

[Rukbat]

I went to your survey, and the only choice I could make is "none of the above". (Also, we don't suggest getting apps from anywhere but the Play Store or Amazon.)

 

[Laura Knotek]

I am not going to complete your survey, since I don't trust any of those alternative app stores. If an app isn't on Google Play or Amazon Appstore I won't install it.

 

[ktalik]

I went to your survey, and the only choice I could make is "none of the above". (Also, we don't suggest getting apps from anywhere but the Play Store or Amazon.)

Dear Rukbat, this survey target is to compare alternative app stores. In order to extend my research I decided to add two of the external stores (those which are not available on Play Store). And yes, I received a comment a few days ago that Amazon store is missing. I really should've known this store before doing survey! :-\

I am not going to complete your survey, since I don't trust any of those alternative app stores. If an app isn't on Google Play or Amazon Appstore I won't install it.

Hi Laura! As mentioned above, there are 2 external apps, but the rest of them are available on Google Play Store -- so you have a choice!

 

[EdwardSmith36]

All the alternative app stores are not trust worthy, I never prefer using any other app store except Play Store.

 

[ktalik]

All the alternative app stores are not trust worthy, I never prefer using any other app store except Play Store.

Hi Edward. Everyone of us has a right to make his own choice. So, I'm not trying to encourage anybody to do anything, but you mentioned trustworthiness. If you are concerned about your privacy and security, you can think about F-Droid, where all apps (and store itself) are completely free software. That means, their source code is available for any open source activist and code reviews allow us to verify if they are not cheating on us. Also, Aptoide has an open source client but I'm not sure about their apps.

Basically this research should focus on actual users of stores listed in the survey. If you're not one of them or are not interested, just move along. Peace