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This ‘battery repair’ Android app has been downloaded over 1 million times… and it’s a total fraud

Published Jan 20th, 2015 2:25PM EST
Google Play Android App Scam

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It looks like there’s another completely fraudulent Android app that Google needs to remove from Google Play. The ever watchful Android Police has flagged an app on Google Play that’s been downloaded more than 1 million times and that does absolutely nothing.

RELATED: Hugely popular Android security app revealed as a complete scam

The app is called Battery Life Repair and Android Police writes that it “claims to repair your battery and basically looks like a hard drive defrag program.” It’s pretty obvious that this app can’t magically improve your phone’s battery, although that hasn’t stopped it from getting an average rating of 4.5 stars among over 180,000 ratings.

The app is free to install but it offers a “pro” version for $3 that will give you access to even more supposed features. Hopefully, drawing attention to this particular app will force Google to take a long, hard look at pulling it but in the meantime you shouldn’t give the developer $3 of your hard-earned money for what looks like a semi-elaborate placebo effect.

More broadly, blogs like Android Police have been banging the drum on a pretty consistent basis to get Google to do a better job of weeding out deceptive and fraudulent apps from Google Play, as right now the company relies on users to flag specific apps as fraudulent before removing them.

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.