I liked my iPhone 3G, I really did. But when my wireless company finally came out with a decent Android phone, I jumped over immediately. You see, while I liked my iPhone, I hated several things about it.

I hated the iTunes requirement. I hated the restrictions preventing me from really customizing the look and feel of the phone. I hated its inability to really multitask. I hated the dropped calls and poor call quality. I hated those things, but I loved the apps. I actually would fire up the App Store and just browse around to see what was there on a daily basis. Most apps I wanted came in at about $.99, so I snagged several up every week. The App Store not only provided an easy way to find what I was looking for, but it would also help me find cool things that I had no clue that I wanted. That’s the genius of a good storefront. Make it fun to shop and you’ll sell more.

Now, I knew the Android Market was newish. And I knew that I may not be able to replace all of my iPhone apps immediately. My complaints aren’t so much with the apps…those will come with time. They are more with the Market itself. Here are my main gripes:

Foreign Languages

Android knows what language I speak. I told it my locale. Why would it ever show apps in their Market that are completely described in a foreign language? Now I’m a noted idiot, and there are probably ways to change this setting somewhere, but I can’t find them. And why would it show these by default? Check out this  game I just found below…

This is my favorite Asian-language mobile dragon game made by Tiger Woods this year!

Now this has everything a great game needs – a nice, long, clear title and description, a badass dragon icon, no comments and the author is Tiger Woods apparently. There is nothing fishy with this app at all….which leads me to the next gripe.

Garbage Apps

Now, I understand that Google isn’t in charge of making the apps. It’s not their fault that people slap ads on garbage and try to make an easy buck. And I also understand that an open and free marketplace has its advantages over a regulated marketplace like the Apple App Store. But the unmonitored Android market is full of so much trash, that it’s hurts the quality of the store. There are hundreds of apps by such reputable devs as CuteBabyElephant who cranks out “sexy babe” apps at an astounding rate. Who downloads these? Don’t those users realize there is a browser on their phone? I would bet that if you search hard enough, you may just be able to find a picture of a few “babes” somewhere on the internet.

And devs like free4android who seem to inundate the store with broken games that have ads covering the main screen in an unscrupulous attempt to get admob revenue. The only thing redeeming about their games are the awesome descriptions like:

“Grab your gun, at that moment, buckle down your trigger, and kill zambia.” -description of the smash hit, Eliminator Screaming

Don’t hurt the nice people of Zambia at that moment!

Pricing and Payments

Why leave it to the developers to convert their pricing to my locale’s currency? I see some devs do this, but often I’m staring at an app wondering how much ¥99 is in USD. Why can’t this be automatically converted by Google Finance on the fly and then displayed with the app description?

Game Categories

In the current Market, there 5 freaking game categories: All Games, Arcade & Action, Brain & Puzzle, Cards & Casino and Casual.

Where’s Sports? Where’s RPGs? Why have such a generic category as Arcade & Action that contains emulators right next to a sports games?

Proper categories would make searching easier and the hunt for a great game that much more fun.

Searching

I would have never guessed that Google could miss on searching, but they have in the Android Market. I did a search for “live wallpaper” and this is what I got:

Well, those are live wallpapers, I suppose...

Really? Someone was clever enough to name their app dev name as “Live Wallpaper” and each of their apps the same and they get first place in the search results? The search results should take into consideration the ratings, number of downloads, quality of developer based on other apps, etc. Google has mastered the art of returning relevant and quality search results and not just returning the first thing that matches the text you typed in. How did they drop the ball here?

Conclusion

The Android Market is still young and it will get better. I believe that the iPhone store helps draw users to new apps and with better categorization and searching, hunting is easier and more rewarding. Once the Android Market provides a real solid shopping experience, we can expect to the market grown. There are great apps out there, but developers have a much reduced chance of success without a store that helps promote and grow the top products, while weeding out the garbage.

It should be noted that with such an open platform, alternate marketplaces have popped up that give us more options. This is something that we don’t have natively on the iPhone without jailbreaking it and it’s an exciting opportunity for competition to push the markets further.

Android is such a promising platform. I can’t wait until we have the official marketplace that can support it and help it grow.