Compare similar apps and figure out which one is the most suitable for your needs: Google Play Store works on new app comparator feature
Google Play Store introduces an interesting as well as useful feature: app comparison, an even safer way to choose the app that's right for you. With this latest introduction, Google is sharpening its weapons by offering its customers the chance to always have the right app at the right time.
According to Android Police, the new feature is present in Play Store version 22.4.28. Even if you're in possession of the release in question, it's not necessarily that it's already visible: in fact, only some profiles would be enabled to the comparative view mode. At the moment, only apps dedicated to video content playback and streaming (players, such as VLC) take advantage of the feature comparison, but it is likely that many other categories could benefit from this function. Among the favourites it's easy to think of messaging apps and streaming platforms, as well as browsers or audio file players, each with its own specific peculiarities ordered in such a way as to be grasped all together at a single glance.
Google Play Store: where you can find it
The Google Play Store app comparator feature, as already mentioned, has been reserved for the media players present in the store. The newly introduced section allows you to evaluate apps according to some specific criteria, such as ease of use, offline support, streaming capabilities, visual quality and user-side controls, i.e. the possibility to insert subtitles, gesture support, etc.
To see it already in action, if you obviously fall within the enabled profiles, just go to the page of one of these specific app categories on the Mountain View store. Specifically, the section to watch out for is the one immediately below the one called "Similar Apps", immediately above the space dedicated to other products made by the same developer.
The hope, though, is that among the suggestions offered there isn't some infected app that has passed the Play Store's checks.
Google Play Store: why the comparator is useful for users
It's obvious how the possibility to make a comparison before downloading or buying is an added value for the user who, in the best case, can thus greatly reduce the time spent searching for the most suitable app. If extended to other categories in Google's store, the need to sift through descriptions could be eliminated, as could user ratings, which aren't always useful in determining the quality of an app.
In particular, in the case of paid apps, this also translates into saving money, thus avoiding unnecessary expenses for software that would inevitably end up being removed from the smartphone's memory anyway.