News: Android Market increases the Size Limit of Apps to 4GB from 50 MB

Back in June 2011 at Google I/O, in the Android Market session on Day 2, the Googlers told all of us that the Android Market is going to allow applications upto 4GB. It’s been 8 months since, and today, Tim Bray has posted an update to the Android Developers blog stating that the 4GB size limit is finally in effect.

“The size of your APK file will still be limited to 50MB to ensure secure on-device storage, but you can now attach expansion files to your APK.

• Each app can have two expansion files, each one up to 2GB, in whatever format you choose.
• Android Market will host the files to save you the hassle and cost of file serving.
• Users will see the total size of your app and all of the downloads before they install/purchase.

On most newer devices, when users download your app from Android Market, the expansion files will be downloaded automatically, and the refund period won’t start until the entire download completes. On older devices, your app will download the expansion files the first time it runs, via a downloader library which we’ve provided below.

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.”

As you can read from the above, Google has done an excellent job of explaining how the downloads will work from now on, and imposed a fair refund window for apps of such a big size. One thing I really liked is how they have separated the main APK file from the expansion file of games, which means that when you need to download an update, you only need to download a small portion, not the whole application. iOS users have long complained about updates to big applications, requiring you to download the whole application again. Google has done a great job of solving that problem.

Hit the source link for full details, and if you are a developer, there are details about implementing the new feature.