I can't comment on the competence (or otherwise) of the Galaxy Store review process, but charging up-front for a mobile app is nearly always a mistake. You'll nearly always do better with a "free" app and one or more in-app purchases to unlock the full functionality, even if the "free" version is a very limited demo.
I know that some people are instinctively repulsed by such a model, but there are good reasons why users prefer it. There is real value in being able to install an app, see that it actually runs on your device, explore the interface and perhaps try some of the features before actually paying anything. Most app stores do have refund policies that amount to a free trial, but there's a big psychological difference between trying an app for free and paying for an app that you can get a full refund on (subject to terms and conditions).
I wish paid apps had a 24-hour return window or something like that. It feels like it would be a win-win for everyone, as users would feel more comfortable taking a chance on paid apps.
I vaguely remember the Google Play Store (before it had that name) having something like this, never understood why they got rid of it. They must have concluded it made the store less profitable, but I wonder what data they were looking at, or if they interpreted it correctly.
Play store still has this and the return window is 15 minutes. A refund button will appear on the application page in play store if you uninstall the app within the 15 minute period after purchasing.
Apple on the other hand unfortunately has nothing like that. If you want refund, You have to go through the hassle of creating a ticket and they may refuse to refund for whatever reason.
Agreed. I think they started it because people would grab a paid app for a one-time need and then return it after using. I saw this happen a couple times with an app that identified plants from a picture, another that scanned and removed apps that show full-screen ads, and a couple others, so the use case makes sense.
But still I think it's a mistake because 15 mins is not enough time to know if the app is going to work. Sometimes it takes that long just to get the damn thing installed! Especially if on a mobile connection or the app is big. I once got screwed because I bought an app that didn't work on my device, but I couldn't find out within 15 minutes because my storage was too full and the Play
store refused to install it until I cleared out more room. It took a while to go through all my stuff and back them up to the cloud, so by the time I actually got the app installed and found out it didn't work, it had been 20 minutes or so. Now I'm very hesitant.
Strong points. In addition to being better for the real paying customers, it also has anti-abuse protection baked in. Seems like a no-brainer to me to go with a 24 hour return period
IIRC a long time ago, game devs would complain to google about people abusing refund policy by buying their games, complete the whole playthrough in a day, then requesting refund. This was before in-app purchase become the norm though, so you can buy full games upfront instead of unlocking it bit by bit via in-app purchases.
I think the workaround in the Apple community is to make the app free, and then have an in-app purchase for the full version. This often has a free trial.
As an example, I recently tried a sleep tracking app. It is a subscription service but has a 1 week free trial. I tried it for a few nights, hated the mechanics of making it work, so I canceled the free trial and uninstalled the app. $0 spent on a paid app, completely supported by Apple.
It should be something available by default, but the workarounds seem pretty widespread. The advantage of this approach is that many developers offer "pay per month" or "pay a lot once" for their paid apps. The user can choose which one they like better.
It's true. Steam has a no-questions-asked refund that works up to 2 hours of playtime, and it seems to work great. Download a game, doesn't run, or the game is bad ? Just refund. Not sure if it would work for apps though, as games are by nature something that are meant to be played for hours in front of your screen. I don't know what would be the metric used to refund and app or not.
I actually don't like this one, because it means you effectively can't make a game with an expected playtime of less than two hours.
Yes, most video games are designed to be significantly longer, but as long as the expected runtime is communicated to the consumer, there's nothing inherently wrong with designing shorter experiences.
Applications and games are very different, however. An application should be useful to you across a long-ish time window.
I still like it, I've used it several times for games that either ran horribly, or after 30 minutes just weren't any fun. Makes it so buying a game isn't a risk at all.
I've played 2 hour games, and if it was a good time I'm not going to return it. I don't think most people want to cheat indie devs, they're a very sympathetic group
Yup, two hours of actual playtime sounds like a pretty fair window to me. Sure, some people are making YT vids where they complete an entire game and return it within 2 hours, but that's not enough to actually matter. For a utility-like phone app something like 30 minutes might be more reasonable, but the same principle applies.
In Brazil we have a right to return online orders in the 7 days of the purchase. I assume this is covered (I'm not sure). Steam does return the game if you have less than 3 hours in it.
I so do too. Because apple does NOT have this, I'm wary when purchasing stuff on the app store. I was burned a while back buying a game that was a blatant lie, it was an idler and literally didn't have the gameplay elements it said it did, but I could not return it. I love the steam style return policy. Wish everyone adopted that.
Did you try to return it? “doesn’t work as expected”
Is one of the ‘template’ return reasons for the App Store. I haven’t requested a refund for apps many times, but when I have they’ve always been granted.
I can second this, when I was in the Apple ecosystem I bought and returned many apps without issue. They might have a problem with it if you leave it too long but if you request within 48 hours of purchase you should be fine.
This is a big part of the success of Prime. They exceeded expectations on the returns process for long enough that people got used to it and came to expect it. Waiting for the inevitable rug pull...
I don't think it's inevitable. If it hasn't happened by now, it likely won't happen. An entire industry has sprung up around Prime returns. E.g., HOTBINS.
Well, it's not a rug pull, but the slide towards uncurated garbage makes prime less useful than it once was. When I find myself shopping at Walmart to get the value of their curation, I have to wonder about how Amazon has changed.
I would be willing to go with this IFF the cost to activate the app were disclosed up front. But in my experience, it never is. (On Google's store you'll typically see some fine print saying "in-app purchases from $0.50 to $20.00", which tells me very little.)
The intention seems to be to get me hooked before I can invoke any judgment calls. I've had similar experiences with car salesman.
The bottom line is that I'm not willing to begin the experience/transaction without a clear idea of what the final outcome might be.
The reason I dislike this is because it will always be a free app. I say that in the sense that they will include tracking and advertising and even if you "pay to remove" you have no real guarantee.
It's better to have a paid app that does not have the code/permissions required to even engage in advertising and tracking in this way. Preferably the paid app doesn't even have IAP at all.
Looking through the Google Play store, nearly every "Top Free" app clearly states that data is collected and data is shared with third parties. Nearly every "Top Paid" app clearly states that no data is collected and no data is shared with third parties.
Just because it doesn't have tracking now (or at least claims so) doesn't mean they won't add it a few months later. Paying for something is no guarantee for privacy, unfortunately.
Yes exactly. I rarely even look at free apps anymore, unless I don't see anything paid that looks good. I've also had trouble getting "purchase restored" on apps that I paid through IAP so I don't trust it anymore. I would much, much rather just pay up front.
App stores could offer free trials for paid-up-front apps, or generous refund windows.
As far as I know the major ones don't offer this, Apple for sure doesn't. I think the store runners would much rather see developers use subscription pricing that gives them a recurring cut as well.
I think free-to-play games have ruined this model for everyone. Now people see "in-app purchase" and immediately associate it with "paying for every interaction" instead of "one-time payment to purchase full functionality "
I think it is vastly disingenuous to suggest that the ads and spyware in most free apps are somehow “good for the user”.
These are simply economic realities that are forced on app developers, because the market place for paid sustainable apps has been mostly destroyed by free alternatives.
These days good apps are almost without exception either a) subsidised by a major corporate (eg. Insta) or b) paid (eg. Procreate). Free apps are mostly exploitative spam, hunting for whales to sustain the developers.
App stores are an example of corporate stupidity. If you really want a successful phone product, good apps will do it for you. But since the benefit is indirect, corporations are unable to make the correct decision - they go for the easy money.
It used to be that customers had enough leverage to provide incentives to corporations to make better decisions. But in their wisdom, corporations have decided that they are better off without customer feedback.
We have gotten to this point by allowing corporations to dominate our political process, changing us from an above average democracy into a corpocracy. It is not good for us, and in the long run not good for them.
Not only is it a lagging indicator, it can also be skewed in hundreds of different ways, and can indicate many things other than value (e.g., degree of lock-in/monopoly, etc.).
At least the developers are able to easily get in touch with this Ron guy - seems he is being genuinely helpful. That alone makes it a better experience than other stores.
Ron appears to be the PR/support person, not a developer. But yes, compared to companies like Google, Facebook, Apple... it's nice to actually get human responses
Galaxy Store is a garbage adware. Always runs in background. And if you accidentally open it it will start downloading "recommended apps" without your permission.
I've never experienced this recommended app installation that you're talking about.
Otherwise, I completely agree. Samsung should just use Google Play or the System update process to manage system app updates, etc.
I can see their concern with relying completely on gPlay, as there may be instances where the permissions needed for a system app go beyond the allowances of gPlay, but there are other ways to avoid those issues, and the Galaxy Store is trash.
What monopoly? The Samsung Store is the alternative to the official Google Play store. Any Samsung android phone that has the Samsung Store also has the Play Store, no?
> Yes, on the most recent Android, there is no monopoly.
> On anything else, it's there.
Alternative app stores for Android have existed for a long time. Samsung Galaxy Store, Amazon, Huawei AppGallery, F-Droid, Aptoide, etc. They are also available for older versions of Android.
It has been working for over a decade. All you have to do is install the third-party app store's APK, and give that app permission to install or update apps.
With Android 12, anyone can make an app store. Previously you had to let the user approve a bunch of prompts for every install or update, but the new API allows silent background updates just like on manufacturer apps.
Of course you need explicit permission from the user to install apps (that just makes common sense) but I've been using F-Droid Basic which works like a treat.
Only Amazon has tried to launch an alternative app store so far, and I'm it sure if they use the new API that makes automatic updates possible. However, there's nothing standing in anyone's way to bring competition to this market.
If you can come up with a better store, you can take one of the many open source app stores out there and add a sales feature to turn it into a business venture and take on Google and Samsung. I'm not sure how this will go down on iOS when they will eventually allow installing external apps, but I imagine the situation may be quite similar.
The EU would lose its shit if they tried that. Google has actually been on a path that makes it easier to create competing app stores, no doubt pressured by EU legislation.
The EU hasn't lost its shit about Android slowly moving from open source to proprietary Google SDKs yet. We won't be safe until they force a Ma Bell-style split, freeing Chrome and Android from Google's tentacles.
The EU hasn't made any laws mandating that all software must be open source, so I don't see why they would care about Google closing the source on new Android components. For all the EU cares, Android 14 (or at least its non-GPL parts) may as well be closed source under license, which was the norm before Android came along in the first place.
The EU has made anti-gatekeeper laws, targeting Apple, Google, and other gatekeepers.
What is the issue here? App store-level enforcement that apps be reasonably priced? How is that bad? This sounds like a net win for consumers. It's already frustrating enough dealing with developers charging through the roof for garbage products.
I get that it's frustrating waiting for an app to be approved... But there's nothing really technical, novel, or useful to others in this post except that, perhaps you should price at $9.99 instead of $10 in the Samsung store for reasons that are not terribly apparent.
I think this is just the developer is trying to resolve his frustration by "yelling for the manager" to make a PR incident.
I find it a useful piece of information for people who'd want to venture into making paid apps that the galaxy store can be like that
But honestly just flag and move on
> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.
Apps must not have unreasonably high prices. The price $10 is too high.
Yet a Nigerian scammer continues offering an app for $300, even after an employee reports it.
Well, there's the I Am Rich app[0], which essentially did nothing and cost US$999.99.
The crux was, however, that the developer was totally upfront about what you got for the price and apparently there still were douchebags around forking over the cash to buy "status".
Apple yanked the app due to the publicity. Which I thought was wrong. It didn't violate any App store rules and it was honest and up front in the description of the app.
I suspect they might actually have yanked it due to the high rate of refund requests and chargebacks. Not the developer's fault, but not something Apple want to have to deal with.
I usually go with stupid before malevolent, but is this a possible way to launder money? Just have a really hard time believing people are that stupid.
How would you launder money with this approach? The amount of downloads/purchases is verifiable as the whole flow of money from buyer to seller. If I sell it 10 times (10 downloads and 10 wire transactions that cover them) how do I put the unaccounted money into the system?
Prices just have to be consistent so as long as most scams stay in that price range? But would love to see that rejection: “This scam is underachieving and will be blocked until the price exceeds $300.”
Sure, but it doesn't seem like they are rejecting the app because of its functionality or quality, but the price point. Software that serves a niche isn't going to get the mass downloads required to fund the development a low price point per sale requires. There is a use case for apps costing more than $10. The Samsung store allows for in-app subscriptions, at 2 bucks a month the app is going to cost the user more than $10 over the span of a year, heck even over the course of 6 months.
But yeah, if Samsung doesn't like it, I say screw 'em and just put it on the Play Store instead.
I know that some people are instinctively repulsed by such a model, but there are good reasons why users prefer it. There is real value in being able to install an app, see that it actually runs on your device, explore the interface and perhaps try some of the features before actually paying anything. Most app stores do have refund policies that amount to a free trial, but there's a big psychological difference between trying an app for free and paying for an app that you can get a full refund on (subject to terms and conditions).