No - not yet....
I'm restricting my reply to answering the question rather than yet more discussion about the pros & cons of ratings, filters and sorting.
For now there is no way to filter/sort "Android Apps" except by the following parameters:
- Search query: What you type in the search box
- Price:
- Rating:
That's the simple answer - for now!
If you want to know why I answered "No - not yet" instead of "No" - really? - you really want more details? Well, I don't recommend it, but for inquiring minds, read on....
However, it's obvious that if there is enough user support AND if it seems to the devs that it won't have a negative effect on user experience on the site, Google have made it easy to move to a more detailed filtering/sorting environment. Here's what they've introduced so far...
I'll use a simple example: the word "chat" in the search box and "Android Apps" selected as the "Results" choice (instead of "All results"). That last choice is because they've already introduced different filter/sort parameters for different result types (Music, Books etc). You can open the link below rather than make those selections and then play with it yourself.
If you do this search and make choices for "prices" and "ratings" rather than "All", you'll get something like this in the browser address bar:
https://play.google.com/store/search?q=chat&c=apps&price=0&rating=0&hl=en
Note that the parameters can be in any order. Strip the parameters out and you see three which aren't relevant to this:
- q : Search query =chat which is what I typed in the search box.
- hl : language =en which is my browser preferred language
- c : Result category =apps meaning I selected "Android Apps"
The other parameters are more useful here. Try changing them in the address bar and the page will refresh with the different selections:
- price : price filter =0
- 0 = All prices
- 1 = Free
- 2 = Paid
- Any other positive (without "+") or negative integer is the same as 0
- rating : rating filter =0
- 0 = All ratings
- 1 = Ratings 4 stars or more
- Any other positive (without "+") or negative integer is the same as 0
So it's obvious to any html coder that all they have to do to satisfy your need is to add more options in the Price or Ratings dropdown and use parameters like the price ones instead of "on" or "off" like the ratings parameter. And they could add other dropdowns like "Ad supported" (or not) or "New" (with choices of how long the app has been out) or "Recently Updated" (with choice of age) or "Recently Downloaded" (allowing us to filter out apps which haven't seen the light of day for a while) etc. For the existing ones, they could change it with something like these examples:
- Prices: 0= All, 1= Free, 2=
- Ratings: 0= All, 1= 5 stars 2= 4+ stars, 3= 2+ stars etc and introduce specifics like 6= 4 stars (exactly 4 stars), 7= 3 stars... and ending with your own favorite: 9= 1 star and the one no-one mentioned which applies to all newly released apps: 10= "0 stars yet" :D
My point? The devs CAN. It doesn't need much work on the code. It doesn't produce a particularly noticeable extra load on the server or page serving time. And I am sure they will IF enough users like you ask them to enough times. Where can we do that? Interesting question! Sorry - can't find it. I'll come back and post if I do!
There is a little more information about ratings etc in the various Android developer help and advice pages, but it doesn't really touch on this specifically.
Is there an alternative? Yes. Other Android App sites! Here's a link I selected at random from a search 16 Android App Store Alternatives for those who hate Google Play. Just an example. I'm not advocating it - I haven't read it all yet because I've been having far too much fun trying to find a workaround to answer the question with a "Yes" until Google Devs get their act together! Unfortunately, I failed, but thanks for asking because it was worth trying :)
And if you really, really wanted to know all this, thanks for reading down to the bottom. You've earned a Lollipop because you already ate your KitKat! ;)
