view detailed permissions Recently, Google grouped its permissions making it nearly impossible to tell what an app was asking for.  Is there anyway to tell what fine grain level permissions are being requested from an app before it's installed? What about after?
I waved Good-Bye to the Google-Play website right after their last relaunch already, as it became pretty inconvenient: slow to load, and lacking important details. Luckily, there are some good alternatives available:

For my "research", I prefer AppBrain, which is an "alternative front-end" to the playstore one could say offering a "retro design" – as if it were the Playstore-a-while-back. Not only do you find all permissions listed separately again, they also place a "red triangle" on the permission tabs if an app requests permission (combinations) possibly raising concerns. Only draw-back I recently noticed is their dropping of the app-developers website link.

If you want to check directly on your device, for one AppBrain also has their own app. But as I haven't checked that lately I don't know how it lists permissions – so I rather recommend you Galen's StripSearch app. This not only shows you permissions, it also lets you filter your search by them:

 
StripSearch (source: Google Play; click images for larger variants)

The app comes with some pre-set filters to use straight away. You can modify them, or even create your own (as the one in the second screenshot). The app works pretty well, I'm using it myself.

As a quasi-companion I might mention my own site, which offers app listings by real-life categories as well as an app search similar to that of Galen's app – with the difference that my site only covers about 10.000 apps (corresponding to about 1% of the amount GPlay has). But my listings also link to reviews and other related information for its apps, so it might be worth a look still :) And if you click on an app's name there, it also reveals all its requested permissions – additionally linking each permission to detailed explanations of its meaning.