My App is free AND without ads and you can play it like that for a while before you
have to decide if you like it so much that you purchase a paid upgrade. Heck, you can
even chose your price when doing so. I don't like the ad-based freemium model as well,
but somehow I would still like to earn a tiny amount from players who really enjoy my game.
The problem is that the majority of users are used to seeing annoying ads everywhere, so a lot of people has simply given up. A lot of people has labeled all Android apps "crap with ads" because a lot of devs only focus on making money. And that hurts the rest of us.
I too wanted a little bit of cash for our game, but didn't want to annoy players either. So Pirate Diamonds is designed like this: Start the app -> The game starts -> After game over, an add is shown.But it doesn't matter that guys like us are considerate like that when most other devs aren't.
Things were better for devs back when everyone ran JavaME enabled phones. Nowadays it's just a mess.
Stick to retrogames on retroplatforms.