

Google Raised Android Market App Size Limit From 50MB to a Whooping 4GB - websagir
http://www.techieapps.com/google-raised-android-market-app-size-limit-from-50mb-to-a-whooping-4gb/
The availability of highly resourceful and rocking apps at our disposal, has actually revolutionized the world of technology.
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juliano_q
That is awesome. The experience of download a high quality game on Android
Market and then have to download the data (usually quite big) from the game
company server (that can be slow/unavailable/unstable) is frustrating. Be able
to download it from Google itself and the possibility to pause/resume is
great.

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orjan
Official announcement: [http://android-developers.blogspot.in/2012/03/android-
apps-b...](http://android-developers.blogspot.in/2012/03/android-apps-
break-50mb-barrier.html)

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icefox
That is a bit sad. In most every case applications can easily shrink in size.
On my ipad the other day I noticed I had several games (little more than flash
junk, not massive 3d assets) that were 300+MB in size with one at 600MB. When
your silly game is using almost 1/10 of the space on my device something is
wrong. Compare this to Google books which is 3MB! Props to that group for
doing it right. Large downloads can mean download errors, users can cancel the
download, users that forget about the app and never run it... And even 50MB
assumes that they have a reasonable connection, imaging most of the world that
doesn't have 3G trying to download several GB. Maybe their shouldn't be a
limit, but apps should be some sort of incentive system (rewarded for small
downloads and penalized otherwise?)

Edit: with 4GB I could release apps that include my backups...

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tomkarlo
Apples and oranges. Apps like e-readers are mostly code and have only a few
images assets for icons, logos, etc. A game has a large code base, but it also
can have tons and tons of image assets for textures, as well as video and
audio assets. While obviously you don't have to have all of that for a great
game, I don't think you can say that just because such an app is large it
could easily be smaller without impacting the quality of the final experience.
Look at Battlefield 3 on the consoles, where they had to use two DVDs because
the texture files wouldn't fit.

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icefox
I would understand if Battlefield3 used up a lot of space, but when apps
similar to the complexity of bejeweled are using hundreds of MB clearly the
developer is just being lazy. Most apps/games on my ipad seem to be around
20MB so when there are a few that are 20 times larger they quickly get
deleted.

As for Google books, they clearly took the time and effort to make their
download small. Even "hello world" flashlight type apps on my ipad are bigger
in size. And saying their app doesn't do much as the reason is also silly
(ibooks in comparison is 50MB). I single them out as they definitely did take
the extra little bit of time to make their package small.

Go into itunes and view your apps by size. You might be surprised what is
small and what is big.

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ntkachov
This changes nothing. App developers that needed more than 50mb would just
download assets after they downloaded the app. So a small app download (1-2
megs) and then another 500mb of assets. Usually only games did this.

This really doesn't make much of a difference outside of the fact that the
download now comes from Google's servers which are much faster than the game
companies servers.

Also, this is probably to accommodate the crazy 3d games that nvidia is
pushing.

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parktheredcar
Awesome, I can fit four of these on my galaxy nexus.

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Andrex
Hard to have sympathy when there's a version with double that capacity
available and you passed on it.

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juliano_q
Actually there isn´t. The 32 gb model never was released and was recently
canceled. [http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/15/32gb-gsm-galaxy-nexus-
can...](http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/15/32gb-gsm-galaxy-nexus-canceled-
google-hopes-you-really-like-str/)

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robinduckett
*Whopping

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jasondrowley
Exactly.

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ChrisNorstrom
PREDICTION: Google is prepairing for Online Learning Videos being added to the
app store.

The only thing that comes to mind is that they're prepairing for an onslaught
of media like Movies (which is the only thing that would take up that much
space).

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bookwormAT
many 3D games already take that much space.

The new limit means that instead of installing large resource files that need
to be hosted on your own infrastructure and downloaded through your own code,
you can now have Google host these files for you.

This also improves the user experience, because there is no second tier
install process and the users sees the correct space requirements on the
market page.

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tonfa
Also I've seen many people complain that because of this two-step install, you
can't use the 15 minutes window to decide you don't like the app.

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gravitronic
Is it only a 15 minute window where people can call and ask for a refund? I've
been wondering that. I see ~10-30% of my android app's purchases then
cancelled.

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orjan
Yes, 15 minutes:
[http://support.google.com/androidmarket/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://support.google.com/androidmarket/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=134336&topic=1046718&ctx=topic)

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barce
This really sucks if you have an old phone on a crappy connection.

