Aptoide App Store is based on the Android operating system and is actually a distributed marketplace for mobile apps. Compared to the Google Play Store, Aptoide is unique in the fact that every user can create and manage its own store.
Aptoide is the 3rd biggest app ecosystem in the world, beating out big names like the Amazon app store.
In Aptoide everyone can create a repository (“store”) separated from the others. Aptoide App is a store manually created and managed by the Aptoide crew itself. Every app here is checked for malware and matches the signature from Google Play, so there are no pirated apps hosted. The checked apps have the “Trusted” stamp which means they are genuine and are not a threat to the end-user.
The rest of the stores are created by users so many of the apps here are not yet checked. The “trusted” stamp is often missing and many times we are met by the “untrusted” stamp which means the users flagged the app for threats. This is because people try to find free versions of the popular paid apps in Google Play, so they become easy targets for hackers baiting them with pirated apps that turn out to be serving malware.
This large free android marketplace has a global search for apps, as well as for stores. Although you might not be able to download specific applications from the Play Store, you’ll be able to do it from Aptoide. These applications might not be found in the standard sources; however, it is possible to find them using the “search more” button. One does not require registering for Aptoide app and all the free apps as well as updates will install almost immediately. Furthermore, there is also a useful Rollback function which will enable you to go back to the older versions of your preferred applications.
You will also find stores for apps with adult content in the Aptoide App Stores. However, you can control its visibility from the settings. Regrettably, the absence of parental controls definitely does not make it a good choice for gadgets which can be easily accessed by children.
In case you require an app store for a particular phone which does not support Play or in case you wish to download apps without going through Google, Aptoide is definitely a fantastic solution. There are over 700,000 apps from 199,000+ stores. However, since it is difficult to differentiate good apps from trash, the quality of the apps here might leave much to be desired.
Pros
- Lots of applications
- Rollback function
- Personalized stores
Cons
- Lack of parental control
- Less quality guarantee as compared to Google Play
