ProtonLink App Ratings SOAR in just 20 Days… How?

Late last month, my editor Daniel Fernandez suggested I look at Proton’s GKUI infotainment system. Apparently he’d been receiving complaints about how much data the system consumed.

By default Proton gives X70 customers 1GB a month (I believe through Celcom) and that’s supposed to serve them for all their navigation and music streaming needs. Might have been enough in 2009 or in Europe, but Malaysians love their data.

Anyway, I did half my research before going on holiday. That initial research led me to surprisingly poor ratings of the Proton Link app on both Google Play and the Apple itunes store. Now back in KL and looking to complete my work quota, I decided to jump back into the research. Guess what I found.

The ratings had changed DRASTICALLY.

Take a look at the ratings for the Apple iOS version of the app on the 21st of March 2019 (kicking myself for not screen grabbing the average rating last month):

And these were the ratings for the Android version of the app on the same day (same hour in fact):

No compare it to the current ratings about 20 days later. The iOS version looks like this:

And the Android version looks like this:

Is it inconceivable that users naturally gave the app a lot more 5 star reviews in the last 2-3 weeks? No. But it’s highly improbable considering:

• The number of ratings on the Play Store went from 49 to 418 in such a short amount of time
• Almost all those ratings are 5 stars

*We reached out to Proton for comment. According to their sales numbers, there are about 3 times more X70 users on the road today then there were in January. These factors MIGHT explain the huge jump in ratings.

**I also want to mention that the Android version on the Play Store underwent at least 2 updates in the last 20 days. One on the 29th of March and another on the 1st of April.

***The iOS version saw a similarly huge shift in ratings and reviews WITHOUT any updates

Review examples

Now, to be fair, there were 4-5 star reviews on both versions of the app last month. Here are some screen shots from my initial research:

But most of them were complaints about the app’s buggy performance.

Conclusions

To be fair, it is just the app and not the car. Even the Tesla app was ‘broken’ and unsatisfactory for a long time. And yes there’s nothing illegal about suddenly having a stream of 5 star reviews (even if they come from people who don’t use the app or drive X70s). Either Proton has improved extremely drastically in the last couple of weeks or we’ve caught them with their pants down.

But these are just my observations and opinions. Tell me what you think.