How we choose what to build
A category has to fail in a specific, fixable way. "It is buggy" is not a
brief. "The timer stops counting when Android reclaims the process" is,
because you can test it and you can fix it.
We are two people and we have built two apps, so there is not yet a method
here worth boasting about. When we have kept a proper record of what we read
and what we rejected, it will appear on this site with the counts attached.
Until then we are not going to put a number on it.
Why everything is free
A paywall is not only a price, it is a payment method. Plenty of the people
these apps are for do not have a card that works on the Play Store, and asking
someone to solve that before a timer will count is not a business model. So the
apps are free, and advertising pays for them.
Exactly how we make money
Two sources, and that is all of them. AdMob inside the apps, and
AdSense here once this site carries ads, which it does not
yet. You never pay us. There is no paid
tier waiting behind the free one, no subscription, and nothing is being held
back for a premium version.
We do not sell data. We say this on every page because free ad-supported
Android apps have earned the suspicion, and the only useful response is to be
specific rather than reassuring. What the apps and this site actually collect
is set out in the privacy policy.
Why we publish the working
Anyone can claim they rebuilt something properly. The
teardowns and rebuild notes are meant to be the
evidence: what we found, what we changed, and what we got wrong and reversed.
There are none yet. We would rather show an empty shelf than fill it with
writing that came before the work.
Where we are
Nigeria. We build and test on the connections and the hardware that implies.
That is not a slogan: StudyPomo's background timer is written the way it is
because a TECNO handset running HiOS kills foreground services outright, and
we only know that because one of us has that phone.
Questions we get asked
Are the apps really free, or free for now?
Free, and free permanently. There is no paid tier held back, no trial that expires and no feature waiting behind a purchase. Advertising pays for them, which is the trade, and we would rather say that plainly than describe it as a freemium model.
How do you make money?
Google AdMob inside the apps. This website carries no advertising today, and if that changes it will be Google AdSense and the privacy page will say so before the first ad appears.
Do you sell my data?
No, and we collect almost none of it to sell. There are no accounts, no analytics of our own, and nothing you write in an app leaves your phone. What is collected is collected by Google's advertising SDK, and the four data types it takes are named in full on the privacy page.
Why should I trust a free ad-supported Android app?
On our word alone, you should not. That is why the privacy page names what the ad SDK takes rather than reassuring you in general terms, and why the write-ups say what we got wrong as well as what we fixed. A claim you can check is worth more than a promise.
What happens if you stop maintaining an app?
You would hear it from us first, on this site, with the date and what it means for anyone still using it. Two people can only carry so much, so the honest answer is that the number of apps stays small on purpose.
Tell us what is broken
The apps start as somebody else's complaint, so if something you rely on gets
one specific thing wrong, we want to know.
Send it here, or email
hello@emberfig.com.
