Android Improves User Experience and Saves Retailer a Half Million Dollars

Regional phone carrier Cincinnati Bell was having some problems with their sales of Androind phones. As smartphones become less of a luxury and more of a necessity in the modern world, many are buying their first smartphones from companies like Cincinnati Bell which offer inexpensive prepaid phones.

However, these phones often don't have the hardware or software to run the Android operating system to its full potential. The result is a non-uniform series of phones that can only use varying degrees of the operating system. They are often slow and crash easily.

As a result, the phone retailer was starting to lose money as people brought in phones for repairs or simply returned them out of frustration. This is something that Android needs to avoid as a lot of these people are using these sluggish phones to tip their toe in the smartphone market to test it out, only to be turned off from the experience completely.

To solve the problem, a Baltimore-based Android UX specialist called Apkudo released a case study that outlined its verification process to determine which phones a retailer should sell in order to provide a good Android experience for the user.

Forbes reports that, although the study didn't mention any device by name, it gives the specifications of an Android phone that has "a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, a 960 x 540 screen and Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich) that passed the Apkudo Approved vetting process for favorable user experience."

Cincinnati Bell began to push this phone on customers and found that, as the study predicted, it was returned significantly less, saving them money on new phones and repairs. Users seemed to have a good Android experience with it. As a result of the vetting process, Cincinnati Bell has saved an estimated half million dollars.

Since that time the company has decided to let Apkudo vet all of their devices to ensure maximum user approval. The goal is to give Android users the same uniform experience that, for example, Apple users receive when they pick up one of their popular smartphone or tablet devices.