Android: Notify user of a newer version

Question

I am finding alot of users for some reason are not upgrading my application when new versions come out. Is there a way for my application to query the Marketplace application and then notify the user if a newer version is available ?

Answer 1

Personally I don't think it's quite that black and white. Lets say you've made a mistake somewhere in your app. You fix it and deploy to market. But you see from your crash reports that there are old versions out there and same users keep on using this app. If the same user keeps on using the app, wouldn't they rather use a version that does not crash? At some point they uninstall and log their rating as "zero stars, useless had to uninstall" - even though the problem is already fixed.

I agree that it is not a good idea to create duplicate logic that just notifies users about newer versions being available - but sometimes it makes sense to add a little extra notification telling users that updating is for their own good.

One solution, that I just came across today, addressing this issues, is from crash report service Bugsense. It allows to you send a notification to users that a certain error he/she has encountered has been fixed. I think it's just good service and tells users that development has not stopped.