Mobile App Optimization – Tips to reduce your Android APK Size

Over the years, mobile devices have now become the focal point in IT business. From small to large organizations, mobile apps have brought a remarkable growth in the business operations and customer services. A good mobile app development company can definitely help your business to rise to the top. However, with thousands of apps available in the market, your mobile app needs not to be just great but be successful as well.

The most important characteristic of a successful mobile application is its small size. According to ABI (Allied Business Intelligence), the average size of an iOS and android application is 38 MB and 15 MB respectively, leaving the game category as an exception. If the mobile application is too large, it maybe expensive for the users to download it, which could turn users off before they even experience your application.

Also, the user’s device may have an extremely small amount of disk space which cuts you off from a large portion of potential customers. Now, Google Play requires that the APK document of the application should not exceed 100 MB. For almost every application, this is a lot of space for the application’s code and resources. However, some applications require more space for accurate designs, media documents, or other vast resources. You can take help of an Android app development company to overcome such challenges.

Earlier, when the application surpassed 100MB, you needed to download and host the extra assets yourself when the user accesses the application. It was observed that hosting and serving the additional documents was expensive, and the client experience was not as much perfect. To make this procedure less demanding for you and more wonderful for clients, Google Play enables you to attach two huge expansion files that supplement your APK.

Each document’s size limit is 2GB and it can be in any format you pick (ZIP, PDF, MP4, etc.), however it is prescribed to utilize a compressed file to save transfer speed during the download.

Reasonably, every expansion file plays a different part:

• The main expansion file is the essential expansion file for extra assets required by your application.
• The patch file is an optional file and is intended for minor updates to the main expansion file.

Google Play has the extension files for your application and serves them to the gadget at no cost to you. The expansion files are saved to the gadget’s shared storage area where your application can get access to them. To guarantee legitimate conduct, you should not erase, move, or rename the expansion files. On most gadgets, Google Play downloads the extension file(s) simultaneously with the APK, so your application has all that it needs when the client opens it at first.

Still in some cases, your application must download the documents from Google Play when your application begins. Additionally, before uploading your application for the first time, remember that the client probably obtained your application from Google Play or it won’t give the URLs to your expansion files if the application was introduced by different means. One of the considerable advantages to utilize expansion files on Google Play is that you are able to refresh your application without re-downloading all the resources.

Since Google Play enables you to give two expansion files with each APK, you can utilize the second file as a patch that gives updates and new resources. Doing as such keeps away the need to re-download the primary expansion record which could be substantial and costly for clients. The patch file is in fact the same as the main expansion document and neither the Android framework nor Google Play perform real patching between your primary and patch expansion files.

Advantages of using APK Expansion Files:

• The most important benefit of using APK Expansion Files is it allows the user to access a mobile application exceeding 100 MB without the need to download and host the extra resources that was a necessity earlier.

• It does not compromise with the speed and performance of the mobile application. It navigates as smoothly as a small sized application would.
• We do not need to compromise with the high quality graphics and effects that is the core part of the mobile games.
• The design and the responsiveness of the application works completely fine using the APK Expansion Files.
• It reduces the cost of downloading and hosting extra resources required for applications over 100 MB.

We, at TBI worked with APK Expansion Files and made it possible for our clients to upload their huge sized applications on Google Play without compromising with the quality and functionality of the applications. They worked whole heartedly on this project and came out with amazing results. Our developers made sure that the final size of the application does not exceeds so that it becomes difficult for the user to download it.

Small size of the mobile application also allows the user to download the application through mobile network without the WI-fi connection.  APK Expansion Files also allows to update the application without updating the main expansion file. The expansion file retains the version received by the APK to to which the file was originally associated. Apart from these, our Android app development company incorporate many other functionalities to your project. If you are looking forward to use this concept in your mobile application, feel free to visit our website.