14 DAY TRIAL // Android devs rejoice as Google has just announced it has raised the 50MB app size limit to a whopping 4GB.
This seems to be a good gesture for developers who create games and are forced to host all of files in excess of 50MB on their own servers.
Fortunately, this has changed starting today. Although the apk. will still be limited to 50MB, Google is offering devs the option to attach two expansion files to their application, each one up to 2GB.
Most importantly, all files will be hosted by Google in an effort to save devs the trouble and cost that comes with file serving.
According to Google, customers who use newer devices will be able to download the expansion files automatically, “and the refund period won’t start until the expansion files are downloaded.”
However, on older devices, the application will download the expansion files the first time it runs, via a downloader library which is provided by Google.
The search giant states that “while you can use the two expansion files any way you wish, we recommend that one serve as the initial download and be rarely if ever updated; the second can be smaller and serve as a ‘patch carrier,’ getting versioned with each major release.”
To make things even easier for developers, Google has provided a sample code and libraries in the Android SDK Manager.
Keep in mind that these expansion files have a specific naming convention and both are placed in certain places for each application. Google is marking each expansion file with a version code based upon the version of the .apk file that they are associated with.
It is also worth mentioning that each expansion file is stored in shared storage and they can be read by any app. For more details on the new Android Market changes head over to the original thread.