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Thread: News - Android Market maximum app size raised to 4GB

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    News - Android Market maximum app size raised to 4GB

    APK files remain at 50MB, however.
    Read more.

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    Re: News - Android Market maximum app size raised to 4GB

    Whilst the 'APK' application files themselves will remain limited to 50MB, developers can now bundle two additional 2GB expansion files with their applications, typically to be downloaded automatically from the market.
    Automatically is not a good idea in my book - would much prefer that there was some way to insist that these kind of megadownloads only happen over WiFi. Or at least some message to the user like "I'm just about to download a large expansion file. Would you prefer I wait until you're on WiFi? Y/N"

    I've only got a 1GB data limit, so don't fancy forking over £300+ for the other 3GB of "out of plan" data if I tried to get a mega-sized app.

    Not that I think that anyone's going to do something Office 2010 sized just yet awhile...

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    Re: News - Android Market maximum app size raised to 4GB

    Quote Originally Posted by crossy View Post
    Automatically is not a good idea in my book - would much prefer that there was some way to insist that these kind of megadownloads only happen over WiFi. Or at least some message to the user like "I'm just about to download a large expansion file. Would you prefer I wait until you're on WiFi? Y/N"

    I've only got a 1GB data limit, so don't fancy forking over £300+ for the other 3GB of "out of plan" data if I tried to get a mega-sized app.

    Not that I think that anyone's going to do something Office 2010 sized just yet awhile...
    Just as long as they don't do what the Amazon App Store does and try to force you to use WiFi. I prefer my downloads to have completed before I have to go to work the next day, thank you.

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    Re: News - Android Market maximum app size raised to 4GB

    Shame that I can only use about 100MB of my onboard memory for apps then. Stupid HTC Desire. In real terms that means I can fit Flash, Skype, Maps and a handful of other applications before it cries that there's no room left.

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    Re: News - Android Market maximum app size raised to 4GB

    Quote Originally Posted by Whiternoise View Post
    Shame that I can only use about 100MB of my onboard memory for apps then. Stupid HTC Desire. In real terms that means I can fit Flash, Skype, Maps and a handful of other applications before it cries that there's no room left.
    App2SD?

    (Although I realise the that lack of memory on the Desire annoys HTC owners about as much as the lack of multitouch annoys us SE X10 owners).

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    Re: News - Android Market maximum app size raised to 4GB

    Quote Originally Posted by Whiternoise View Post
    Shame that I can only use about 100MB of my onboard memory for apps then. Stupid HTC Desire. In real terms that means I can fit Flash, Skype, Maps and a handful of other applications before it cries that there's no room left.
    i found having an oxygen Hboot and apps2sd was able to fully download all i wanted

    evo3d now though...

    what app could possibly want 4gb though... ea games are huge and most are rubbish!

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    Re: News - Android Market maximum app size raised to 4GB

    Quote Originally Posted by jackvdbuk View Post
    what app could possibly want 4gb though... ea games are huge and most are rubbish!
    Apart from office suites or perhaps a version of Adobe Creative Suite for tablets, (although even there I've got major doubts that they'll get to that kind of size), the only thing I can think that would approach that is if this "tablet gaming" really starts to take off for serious games (Angry Birds clones don't count). So I'm thinking that a tablet version of Deus Ex, Assassin's Creed or Fable 2 (for example) might start to approach the post 1GB size.

    However, here's another objection - those kind of titles definitely won't be Android exclusives, so whatever get's delivered will have to be fitted into the constraints of the iPad2/3 (who, I assume, have smaller limits on downloads - although I'm quite content to be told I'm wrong). Note - I've assumed that phones won't really suit the mega-apps, (due to screen size), so they're more or less reserved for tablets. Although where thinks like the Galaxy Note fit in is a point of debate.

    EDIT: and finally here's another argument against these kinds of large (potential?) apps - I would have thought that having an app that occupies between 10-25% of the total storage on your fancy tablet (or phone) is a big turn-off for most people - given that most devices seem to have storage in the range 16-32GB.
    Last edited by crossy; 07-03-2012 at 03:35 PM. Reason: Had second thoughts.

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    Re: News - Android Market maximum app size raised to 4GB

    I was thinking more about MS Flight simulator which holds 3d maps and textures of many countries. Even though its just images, this thing takes up space.
    On a second thought, they could download it online as the plane go kind of like in Google earth.

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    Re: News - Android Market maximum app size raised to 4GB

    Personally I doubt many (if any) developers will create apps that need an additional 4GB of data.

    It seems to me Google figured that if they are going to re-engineer the way apps are stored in the marketplace and delivered to users, they may as well do it so they didn't need to keep changing things moving forward.

    I have no idea if Google have done this, but if I had put this system together, I would have included the ability for devs to have two sets of additional data that the install mechanism could choose between. So you could have, for example, a 300MB data file and a 500MB one. Ony one is downloaded depending on your device or version of Android etc.

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