Where can you find reliable Android reviews?

January 24, 2013 4:10 AM

Where are there reliable Android reviews for both applications and games? Metacritic does not yet have an aggregator for Android and Play Store ratings are of little use. So what is recommended?

I have a fantastic Nexus 7 as well as an Android phone and want to find what's great out there. What do you recommend?

posted by sien to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

How are Play store ratings little use?
posted by devnull at 4:13 AM on January 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I've used androidtapp.com, and you probably already know this, but Amazon sells Android apps, and there are user reviews on the site just like there are for books, etc. – for better or worse, but better than the Play Store. (I don't review things on the Play Store because google wants me to do it with my G+ account, which – no. So I wonder how many decent reviews they are missing because of that.)
posted by taz at 4:38 AM on January 24, 2013

Best answer: My brother swears by Appbrain.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 5:54 AM on January 24, 2013

Response by poster: @devnull : The Play Store ratings tend to have too many people who ran something on a low powered device that didn't work well and too many I've played this for 5 minutes and will now give it 5.

Overall aggregators like Metacritic seem better than vox pop ratings. IMDB still has the Shawshank Redemption as the top film. Similarly check out Amazon reviews on any book on a controversial subject and see the 5 & 1 split.

Metacritic also has links to longer reviews rather than one line youtube like comments.
posted by sien at 4:26 PM on January 24, 2013