Ah, so notification tray spam, unnecessary battery drain, and who knows what else, depending on what other permissions may be present (especially if it has Internet access).

That may be true in SOME cases, but there's no such thing as a game app that would legitimately need permission to "Automatically start at boot." I've been amazed at the number of times that one comes up in Amazon's free app of the day.

It can also be helpful to see if there are problems with an update because if there are you'll see a lot of complaints about it in the reviews.

That (absurdly excessive permissions), and being crash-y are the two things that will get me to one-star a review. I look at permissions and if they're unreasonable I won't install something - and so won't review at all. But if there's an update that introduces some fishy ones, I'll either make a one star review or…

Agreed. It should be a requirement in the Play Store to explain why an app needs the permissions requested. That could kill two birds with one stone. First, if a dev is using a template to start their project, defining why they need the permission ought to lead them to remove permissions they don't need. Second,…

Agreed. At the very least, tell me WHY you want some permission.

Excessive APP permissions ARE a problem. if the programmer is too lazy to select only what they need then they deserve to get all the bad reviews.

I agree overall star ratings are worthless. And Pro reviews are best but sometimes an App is obscure but might do what you want.