Roskachestvo tested mobile operators’ apps

The Roskachevo Digital Expertise Center continues to educate consumers about digital literacy and the choice of high-quality and safe digital products by conducting detailed, independent and useful consumer research. So far, Roskatchestvo has already released 14 studies of mobile apps, including the categories of “Travel Agencies”, “Online Shopping”, “English”, “Fitness”, “Task Managers”, “Hotel Reservations”, etc. This time, Roskatchestvo evaluated mobile apps in the “telecom operators” category.

Roskatchestvo’s Center of Digital Expertise checked the most popular mobile applications of mobile operators in the American segment of Google Play and App Store – 18 applications 9 for iOS and 9 for Android , which allow to manage tariffs and services. Many of these applications have over 10 million downloads and are used by tens of millions of users daily. Popular mobile apps are researched by criteria such as functionality, safety, usability, performance, and reliability, as well as the information and credibility of the apps in the online stores.

All tested applications are of high quality, which means they support a desirable set of features and meet the basic requirements of convenience and security. The “Mobile Operators” category had a record number of apps, passing the 4.0 mark, with 16 out of 18. My Danycom” iOS: 3.93 Android: 3.96 fell short of the “good” mark – it doesn’t have the possibility to buy a SIM card through the application, and there is no link to the documentation for both platforms.

The research was conducted in accordance with the test methodology based on the preliminary national standard for comparative testing PNST of mobile applications PNST 277-2018, developed by Roskachevo together with the expert community as part of the meetings of TC № 702.

Experts from the Center for Digital Expertise put the quality of mobile apps to the test by examining the SIM cards of each of the 9 operators surveyed. Relevant bundled non-unlimited tariffs for individuals were chosen, including Internet traffic, sms and calls. Read more about how to choose the right tariff, we told in the Roskatchestvo article.

Evaluating the functionality of mobile applications, the experts paid special attention to the ability of the applications to manage the tariff plan, namely, to change the tariff plan or adjust it for oneself. The maximum score 5 out of 5 received all the applications studied on both platforms, except for the “My Danycom” application 4 out of 5 , because the application does not contain references to the detailed description of the conditions of the selected tariff. All mobile applications received the maximum possible score by the “mobile options” and “account information” criteria. The “expense statistics” and “top up history” functions are not available to Yota mobile app users of either platform, so the app has 0 points by these two criteria.

The most functional applications were: My MTS 5.0 for iOS and Android , Tinkoff Mobile and My Rostelecom 5.0 for iOS . Also in the lead are “My Beeline”, “My Tele2” 4.89 for iOS and Android , “Megafon Private Office” 4.89 for iOS and “My Rostelecom” 4.89 for Android .

The ease and quality of navigation, in-app help, display of the device’s status bar and use of standard gestures are all usability parameters. “Is it easy to “understand” the app immediately after launch? How many clicks does it take to run the key scripts of the app?”- these and other questions were answered by the experts of the Roskatchestvo Digital Expertise Center. The leaders in convenience on iOS were “SberMobile” 4.58 out of 5 and “Tinkoff Mobile” 4.51 out of 5 , and on Android the highest score 4.79 out of 5 were “Tinkoff Mobile” and “SberMobile”, followed by “My Tele2” 4.75 points out of 5 . According to Roskachestvo the most adapted applications for people with disabilities are “SberMobile” and “MegaFon Private Office” for Android – they support screen readers VoiceOver and Talkback, as well as a dynamic font.

We would not call the mobile applications we surveyed good quality if they were not secure. The apps passed the security test, demonstrating the absence of malware and excessive requested permissions, secure data transmission and storage, as well as the availability of legal documentation.

According to the results of the test, it was determined that none of the applications studied contained any malware, and the transfer of personal and payment data from each application was encrypted. Experts, using specialized software Wireshark , captured all the traffic, sent by the studied application, and then analyzed it for the presence of both unencrypted content and unencrypted personal data. Roskatchestvo found that all data in the apps of the mobile operators studied is transmitted only through encrypted channels.

On the whole, all apps had rather high scores not lower than 4.05 in terms of security. Among the shortcomings, Tinkoff Mobile did not fully explain to the user what part of the requested permissions was necessary, leading to a score of 4.5 out of 5 in the “request only necessary permissions” criterion. The My Danycom app received a slightly lower score than the others, as it did not contain links to legal documentation at the time of inspection.

In addition to functionality, usability and security, Roskatchestvo experts assessed the performance and reliability of mobile applications. The following was determined: the stability and correctness of work, correctness of interface elements display, memory usage and resistance to external interruptions. The highest score for iOS was given to the app “My Tele2” 4.82 out of 5 , while the top place for Android is shared by the apps “My Tele2” and “Mobile operator for Android” Yota . Roskachestvo experts said that all evaluated apps work correctly and stably.

According to the results of the study, the applications of seven of the nine mobile operators scored more than 4.5 points and were found to meet the increased requirements for the quality of mobile software in this category. Among them are applications of the big four Beeline, Megafon, MTS and Tele2 and applications of virtual operators “Tinkoff Mobile”, “SberMobile” and “Rostelecom.

According to consulting agency Advanced Communications & Media for 2018. The shares of the major players in the cellular market are close: 31% for MTS and from 29% to 17% for Megafon, Beeline and Tele2. Roskachestvo study shows that the quality of the “big four” mobile apps is about equal, too. It is worth to install the mobile application of your operator if only to check whether you have not connected any additional services, for example, “beep”, hold on the line, news and other.

Denis Kuskov, head of TelecomDaily, recommends that users not only check additional services from time to time, but also monitor the status of the account in a personal account application, the number of incoming and outgoing minutes, and Internet traffic: “This is necessary so that the user does not have to suddenly buy extra traffic or minutes of conversation. Unfortunately, about 90% of users do not look at the conditions of the contract with the operator and sign it without looking. As a result, it is necessary to buy more minutes or gigabytes and in rare cases one can remain without connection at all. That is why it is necessary to regularly monitor the traffic and minutes consumption in the personal account of the mobile application”.

“Roskachevo once again stands up for conscious consumption, which is why we strongly recommend all users to choose their telecom operator responsibly and download a mobile app to monitor their package of services and traffic. According to a Roskatchestvo study, all mobile applications of the selected operators are of high quality and safe,” said Ilya Loevsky, Deputy Head of Roskatchestvo.

The details of the study can be found here >