Rooted Users: You Spoke, Carrier Coverage Listened

(tl;dr – Carrier Coverage getting root support this week)

How would you characterize rooted android users? Geeky, technically savvy early adopters who enjoy tinkering, customizing and innovating? Absolutely, but after the launch of Carrier Coverage yesterday, I might bump a few other adjetives to the top of the list: vocal, influential, and demanding.

And I don’t mean demanding in a bad way. I mean demanding in a “we expect a lot from you” kind of way, like parents criticizing their kid for a B+ math grade because they know their child is capable of A+ grades. The Carrier Coverage team worked LONG and HARD on producing a great version 1.0 product (Android Market Download Link), but without support for rooted users, things went haywire.

The market flooded with 1-star ratings criticizing the lack of root support. Commenters suggested we hate root users and treat them like cheaters. In reality, it’s just VERY hard to accurately identify the correct info when many ROMs awkwardly change fields such as carrier, device, brand, and build name. To insure accuracy, we thought it would be best to disclude rooted user – at least initially – in our reports.

We were wrong.

A couple of the adjetives I left off the list are probably the most important of all: passionate and supportive. Rooted users are the EXACT type of Android users who are MOST likely to want to help and contribute to our vision. We know this and the LAST thing we want to do is alienate this group or make them think we don’t care. That’s why, as of last night, we began working on an update to the app and website that will allow inclusion of rooted data with a yes/no toggle button. Special thanks to all the people who suggested providing this option: it neither compromises data integrity or alienates root users, and might even provide a couple interesting data mining opportunities along the way.

We currently consider rooted user support to be our #1 priority and hope you appreciate that we’re listening to user feedback. We truly want to create a product and service that you love. We’re also hoping that those who left 1-star ratings and negative comments on Android Market will reconsider… we’d be heartbroken to see the long-term potential of Carrier Coverage killed because of a miscalculation in our launch strategy.

That’s right… I admit that we made a mistake. Now we’re correcting it. We hope you’ll continue to leave feedback on the Carrier Coverage Forums. We will continue listening, responding, and acting on your feedback so if you’ve got something to say, please let us know in the appropriate section of the forum. We hope to see you there!

Carrier Coverage Users are ADVANCED

I just wanted to share these graphics which comes directly from the Android Market Developer Console.

Over 30% of Carrier Coverage users are running Android 4.X ICS while other similar apps have less than 1% of users on the most recent version of Android. Over 25% of all users are rocking the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. We’ve obviously got a smart, savvy, on-the-cutting-edge user base and we’ll continue catering to you. We hope you’ll continue offering your support and feedback.

We’ve also fixed a few bugs in an update now on the market as version 1.0.4:

Now head on over to the market, download Carrier Coverage,and hook us up with some encouraging feedback!

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