Android 1.6 Donut To Bring New Android Market Features

by Chris Moor
tagged Donut Update, Eclair Update

Google’s Eric Chu has announced several upgrades to the Android Market that will feature in Android 1.6. In a post of the official Android Developers blog, Chu reveals that new changes to the Android Market will allow developers to add screenshots, promotional icons, and improved app descriptions to better show off their apps and games.

We have also added four new sub-categories for applications: sports, health, themes, and comics. Developers can now choose these sub-categories for both new and existing applications via the publisher website. Finally, we have added seller support for developers in Italy. Italian developers can go to the publisher website to upload applications and target any of the countries where paid applications are currently available to users.

Earlier in the week we brought you leaked screenshots of the new Android Market interface taken from the upcoming Motorola Sholes Android phone running Eclair.

Android Developers are encourage to head on over to the Android Market publisher website for more information.

[via android.developers.blogspot.com]

» See more articles by Chris Moor

Categorized as Android News

Comments

http://gamerWG.org tylerstyle

Better question yet? When will Donut finally come out?
http://www.es-designs.net/esmobile Eric

Oddly enough, it appears you can only upload 2 screenshots. Not 2 per app,… just 2. Total.

WTFGOOGLE?

(hoping and assuming that this is just a glitch at the moment)
http://twitter.com/iammodo modo

looks more like cydia or the app store now good0o. do miss using the app store.
http://www.androidappreviewsource.com Android App Review Source

I like it. I think it’s a step in the right direction. Much more cleaner than what the Market currently looks like. The Top Free, Top Paid and Just In tabs are a huge improvement.
Georges

While I like the new look and the screenshots, this doesn’t go in the direction I wish.
What I most frequently want to do is browse for apps, with no specific type/theme in mind. I just want to discover “cool” stuff, things I never heard about, not more categories. I never use them, as I don’t have time to browse more categories.
What I need are filters. Here are the things I want to be able to NOT see:

- apps only provided in languages I don’t know. This is becoming more and more of a problem on Market, with more and more apps in Chinese/Asian languages, or in European languages I don’t know. I want to be able to see only apps in English/French/German. Also think about people who can’t read English: it has to be trivial for them to never see English only apps… Brutal, but that’s the experience I’d expect. There are tons of ebooks too.

- apps with irrelevant local contents. I don’t want to see all these maps of places that are irrelevant to my current location. I don’t want the metro map of London to ever appear, or at least, I should be able to filter out everything further than 100 miles away from my current location. Conversely, the day I take the plane and land in NY, I want the NY metro maps to appear right away with all NY specific content apps. Other example: TV guides. Do I care about German/Swedish/UK TV guides? These all exist on Android market in 2 versions (lite & full)… As I live in the US, I couldn’t care less. And vice-versa. Local content is only ever relevant to a minority of people, as only a minority of users live in or around that location/country.

- apps from “bad” authors. There are way too many publishers that make 10s or 100s of apps that are all crappy, in the same spirit. Like the “Celebrity XXX sound/pics pack” apps, and the like, that change ringtones and/or wallpapers and the like according to a theme. They build 10s of these. Other example: I heard Apple banned an Indian app developer who authored over 800 apps, all of dubious interest. Rather than have this guy be banned (which is always unpopular), we could better let users decide for themselves and maybe let the developers know how often they’ve been filtered out permanently.

- low ratings: I often don’t even bother with an app with less than 3 stars.

Please improve market: this is where the value of the platform is built, yet, the app itself is not too good…

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