I totally agree. I put an app on Google Play Store recently with a yearly subscription based payment for use. Even though it has a 10 day free trial I have people downloading it, leaving one star reviews without even trying the app and leaving reviews with the likes of 'Should be free'.
Very disheartening..
And meanwhile, I keep using Android because I enjoy and prefer several things about the platform versus iOS and sometimes have to deal with an app being unavailable. It really is the one thing that I dislike about the platform. The freemium model (when done properly) is something I vastly prefer as well.
I look at it like the old shareware titles. I get a free demo that's either time limited or where I need to pay to unlock the full version. That way I can test the software or play the game or whatever, then if it's something that meets my needs, I can pay $1-10, secure in the knowledge that I won't be disappointed or surprised after buying something that turns out to be unwanted.
I'd say that the vast majority of apps and games I've purchased worked that way. Free download, mess with the app or play the first 5 levels of the game and then when I run into the limit where I need to pay, it's not a big deal because I know what I'm getting. The plague that is pay-to-win or other microtransactions in games is awful but that's probably not too relevant to this thread and is just as big a problem on iOS.
When I see the comments on the Play store or the App store, full of people complaining that the dev has the gall to ask for $1 or $2 for some useful or entertaining bit of code, it is very disappointing. That's the sort of money people pay for a Coke or to have someone drive a pizza 10 minutes to your house. I feel like if I get more than a day or two's use out of a mobile app, it's easily worth at least a buck or two and I'd vastly prefer to pay once than to deal with popup ads or recurring subscriptions and microtransactions.
