AppBrain Market Sync is an app management system that lets users visit AppBrain.com to easily browse apps in the Market and choose which ones they want to install. Once you have picked the apps you tell your phone to sync to the Market and bam – it’s on your phone.
When I first heard of AppBrain Market I was hyped. What a time saver this is going to be. Little did I know the frustrations forth coming to me.
When you go to AppBrain they allow you to login with your Gmail account; it seems pretty cut and dry. It’s only after you get into the meat of the site where the problems start revealing themselves. Almost every app I would choose to install on my phone would uncheck itself after I left the respective pages. Once I could get an actual app to stay in the “install” position that’s when frustrations began.
Pictured below are the constant errors that you get when trying to use this program to sync up to the AppBrain website. Error after error after error; I wanted to break my phone.
Finally when the AppBrain sync would recognize the website, the sync begins. The Market boots up and automatically brings you to the first app on your list. After it installs, the user must press the back option and it will take you to the next one your list. So on and so forth until you get all your apps you wanted downloaded.
In the end I found myself browsing their website and just searching the Market on my phone once I found an app that I really wanted.
Pros:
- Browsing app through website is awesome
- Sync system (when it works)
Needs improvement:
- No batch install option
- Building install list from website had issues
- Sync problems between app and website
Final Verdict: I say pass for now because AppBrain in its current state is quiet disappointing. Once they can perfect the sync and the browser issues I would gladly change my verdict to download. If AppBrain can work out these issue, they have the potential to dominate the Android Market.
Note: This review was submitted by Aaron Blain as part of our app review contest.