Google has made a bold decision and decided to increase it’s Android Market app size from 50MB to a massive 4GB!
Android users should be more than pleased with this update as it now means they will see published app sizes in the market place. Android previously had a way of shocking their users with requests to download large chunks of data once the initial APK file has been installed.
Whilst users will welcome this development it does come with some headaches for Android developers. The actual APK file will remain at 50MB, but what Google are allowing, is for app developers to include an additional 2GB in the form of ‘expansion files’, allowing a considerable amount of more data to be stored.
Google have been quick to point out that “newer devices” will be the only handsets capable of using the new feature. The older devices will remain operating the existing way of downloading the additional data once the user boots up the app for the first time.
Is this a step in the right direction for Android? Let us know what you think.