Android App Updates Get Smarter, Smaller

Most Android apps download changes to the current APK files and merge new files with the old ones.

Users who own high-end Android smartphones with massive memory cards and usually connect to Wi-Fi networks might not see much of a difference with these Google Play Store updates.

Avoiding downloads of false apps presented as Pokemon Go updates, sent on the personal e-mail address, as well as updates to the process of decoding the device operation system are just a few of the pieces of advice the Bitdefender specialists have for Pokemon Go users, a game that has become viral worldwide and recently available on the Romanian market. This way, they wouldn’t take that much out of data plans. Users must install apps only from official stores, such as App Store or Google Play, and check after installation what data they allow the app to access.

In an Android Developers blog post, Google announced that it has added a new algorithm to the Google Play Store that will reduce the size of the updates for Android apps, as well as show users the actual size of these updates.

This alone saves users quite a bit of time and data, but this new algorithm which Google is calling “bsdiff” will further reduce patch sizes by up to 50% or more compared to before, meaning that not every app’s patch will be reduced by the same amount, but it’s still an improvement all the same and one that we’re sure users will be able to appreciate anyway. The new algorithm produces more efficient deltas of native libraries by taking advantage of the specific ways in which compiled native code changes between versions. Moreover, information about data used and download size is displayed in a clearer way. You can now see actual download sizes, not the APK file size, in the Play Store. The changes have already started rolling out.