Google Play welcomes 100MB APKs

As tablets and smartphones are getting faster and shipping with more storage, people are doing more and more with them.

Today, Google has announced a little bit of a change for the minimum size of APK’s that can be found within the Play Store. The extra space will likely make it easier for developers to create games and apps as Android devices become increasingly more powerful and feature higher resolution displays.

Android APK files can now be as large as 100MB, an increase from the previous limit of 50MB.

Finally, if you have apps that have are larger than 100MB, you can still host the rest through expansion files.

While connectivity is fairly ubiquitous for many Android owners, there are still times when Wi-Fi or mobile broadband coverage isn’t available or there some time of connection outage. Developers should still consider other limitations that could affect their users, including slow or intermittent mobile data connectivity, mobile data caps, limitations on hardware performance, and long install times. Now, rather than downloading an app followed by additional updates once the installation is complete, larger apps can now be downloaded and installed in one fell swoop. Longer wait times increase the risk they’ll give up.

Google is quite behind on the maximum file size limit in its store.

“Even though you can make your app bigger, it doesn’t always mean you should”, Glick wrote.