Don't bother with the permissions. Everyone's going to tell you to check them before installing, but it's better to just have your device setup to let Google verify installs and leave it at that.
Most of the apps that ask for SMS, contacts, and phone calls do so because they have options IN-APP to let you recommend the app to friends and family using SMS, e-mail, etc. If they didn't ask for that permission to begin with, it wouldn't be possible to have that feature within the app.
Windows Phone doesn't have this whole permissions thing, and iOS doesn't ask for Contacts, Microphone access, etc until after you download and open the app.
Permissions hurt the developer more than the users it supposedly offends. What really is the issue is that casual people like you and me, have no clue what these permissions are actually used for and just see them as malicious. At the end of the day, sometimes it's the engines and SDKs some of these apps are using that cause these permission to be asked for.
For that reason, I think that they should be undisclosed to the end user. Even Humble Bundle games that are by the top developers have weird permissions.
