Before downloading that new and popular app for your Android phone, Verizon has created an application to help you rate each of these apps before you download. The review offers more information than the user ratings that appear within the application in the Google Play Store and will include the security of the application, battery consumption, data usage, and user experience. The apps are selected based on their rank within the Google Play Store over a 30-day period. Apps that are preloaded on certain devices when bought from Verizon Wireless will not be rated. Each review will be rated on a 5 point scale from agree to disagree.
The security is rated on each app by being scanned to identify if the application can perform harmful activities or read private information without the users permission. Then, the risk level is evaluated based on the how it will affect you, your device’s performance and the information that is stored on the device itself.
The battery consumption is rated by the amount of battery drain from each application and how it is measured when the app is open and not being used at the time. The review also looks at whether the app is completely turned off when not in use. The battery drain is calculated when the app is not in use by comparing the battery drainage on two separate devices over a certain amount of time. One of the devices has the application running while the other does not. Then, the devices are allowed to fall into sleep mode and then the measurements of the battery drain are taken. The differences in drainage within the two devices will decide which one uses the most battery power when it is running in the background.
Data usage is measured with the amount of data that is being sent and received when the app is open and running while it’s not in use. A real time device data collections measures the performance and a diagnostic monitoring tool logs the data traffic during the testing.
Lastly, the review rates the user experience on the application. When seeing how well the app pleases each user, there are multiple experiences that are looked at; that the app is safe, stable, responsive, intuitive, easy to learn, simple, and polished. The evaluators for the applications use each app for 30 minutes and look for instances where the app might cause confusion or frustration with first time users. They make sure to pay attention to poor experiences that may result in mistakes in the use of the app.