Android App Submission

[William Spence]

I have just successfully pushed my first three apps through the Apple App Store submission process.  I have now moved over to the Google Play stores to submit my app on Android and have a question.

My app has accounts that have to be logged into.  For the App Store, I created a bogus account so that Apple reviewers could log in and then test the app.  Their submission process required that I sent them login credentials and any notes that were needed to test the application successfully.

When I moved over to the Google Play store, I have not found a similar feature.  Is there a place where I need to submit login credentials, or write any personal description notes for the review process?  If not, how are they going to be able to test my app??

Thanks for any insight!

[Douglas McCarroll]

It's been a while since I've submitted an Android version of an app, but when I did I got the impression that the "testing" that Google does is negligible compared to Apple's. I suspect that their process involves no human hands, fingers or eyes in most cases.

[Flipline]

Yeah, like Douglas said there's really not an actual review process for Google Play.  They claim that people will review the apps, but usually when I publish a version to production it goes live to the store within 30 seconds or so, so I doubt anyone is actually reviewing anything that often.

[Colin Holgate]

I'm skeptical about what the other two said, but I don't doubt that Google don't go to as much trouble. Apps do seem to take longer to publish than the good old days of let anything through!

I would just dare to go for it, as the others suggest, and if you run into trouble there is a support page worth trying:

Play Console Help

As an aside, Amazon is tougher than Google, but not quite as bad as Apple. Samsung are incredibly tough. I once had an app take three weeks to get their approval (after multiple re-submits). You could actually use Samsung as your QA department.

[William Spence]

Thanks for the replies fellas.  I kind of got the impression that things were either a little more lax or a little more automated at Google Play, but I just wanted to make sure, and if I run into a problem, I hope that they contact me.

Colin, I'm sorry for this rookie app store question, but it was my impression that I only had to worry about the App Store for Apple, and the Google Play store for Android.  Are their other Android stores I need to submit to?  I don't know why you had to submit your app to Amazon and Samsung???

[Colin Holgate]

There are dozens of stores. I had to do builds for one set of stores where someone else handled the submission to the different 20 odd other stores.

But to answer your question, you would automatically think about submitting to Apple and Google, but all of the Fire devices are hooked up to the Amazon 'Appstore' (notice the lack of a space character, so you don't think about Apple). Downloads from there are comparable to the Google Play Store.

The Samsung store is shown to all the Samsung phone buyers, but it's enough hassle to submit, and doesn't add a lot to the downloads, that I wouldn't bother.

Off topic a bit by now, but here is an AIR app that I made that was exclusive to the Amazon store:

Amazon.com: Fireman Sam Hero Adventures: Appstore for Android

There is a video in the list of thumbnails on the left, that gives a good sense of what the activities are in the game.

[Douglas McCarroll]

Also worth noting, IIRC the Play Store isn't available in mainland China. If you want people to be able to access your app there you have to put it on app stores that can be accessed in China.

I'm not sure if there are similar situations in other countries - China exercises an unusually high degree of control over its citizen's access to various forms of content, but I'm also sure that there are other countries who would like to exercise some control.

[William Spence]

Thanks again for the tips everyone, very enlightening.

Colin, one last question. Though they have access to the Amazon Appstore, do fire devices also have access to the Google Play Store?

[Colin Holgate]

There are guides like this one that show how to side-load the Google Play store app:

How to Install the Google Play Store on the Amazon Fire Tablet or Fire HD 8

I think that the majority of users won't do that, and so they won't have access to the Google store.

[William Spence]

After looking at the tablet market share in America, I think I am going to have to release in at least the Google Play and Amazon Appstore to cover the largest amount of Android users on tablet. Mine is a professional app, not a game, so I won't be giving up too many users by giving up the small market tablets as professionals are less likely to buy them. I hope this is a wise decision.

[Flipline]

I'd say that's a good decision, those are the big two stores, they're the only two we've ever released on for Android as well.  You can generally just use your Google Play apk build when submitting to Amazon, unless you're using Google-specific features in which case you might need some adjustments (Amazon has their own AIR ANE for in-app purchases for example).  Review process is pretty smooth for Amazon and generally takes 24 hours for us.  For Google Play we typically do an alpha release first because we're testing in-app purchases, but when we promote that to production it's instantly released.  Maybe someone at Google reviews the app between alpha and production releases, but there's no actual process for reviews, you don't have to submit it for approval first or anything.

[William Spence]

Thanks for the information Flipline.  Very helpful information for my first mobile AIR release.  Excited!

[rewb0rn]

Good luck! If you feel like it please share a link to your game later.