Google has made a welcome change to its Play Store app delivery system
Now, this change will help to speed up updates and reduce data consumption by making them smaller. An updated algorithm will reduce the size of updates by as much as 50 percent by downloading only the required changes to APK files and merging them with existing files – presenting a far more efficient system than previously implemented.
“For approximately 98 percent of app updates from the Play Store, only changes (deltas) to APK files are downloaded and merged with the existing files, reducing the size of updates.” Google’s impressive new algorithm has also been expanded to APK Expansion Files – often used for large files in things like games – for the first time. This addition can reduce the download size of initial installs by 12 percent, and updates by 65 percent on average.
The number of app updates being pushed out by Android developers has been on a steady rise according to Google, and so it’s great outsource users can grab the latest versions faster than before and use less data in doing so. To assist users further, Google will now even report the size of the delta update before download.
Google’s latest Play Store update is rolling out now, but as usual it may take a while before it hits your devices.
Have you noticed the algorithm improvement yet? Let us know in the comments.
