One of the features that the mobile operating systems have is that it will allow the update of applications in a way transparent to the end user, ie, the updates to the last version are performed automatically.
But Google wants to innovate the process and will reduce by 65% the size of the updates for Android.
it Was through the official website that Google informed that it will reduce by about 65% (on average) the size of the updates of the apps. To do this, the company will use the technique File-by-File Patching that ensures an effective reduction of the updates.
But how does it work?
When there are updates of an app, the Google Play sends to our device a patch with the information about the differences of the installed version and the new version. In this way, instead of sending the entire application (that is, all of the APK), Google Play only sends what is different which means updates are small and quick.
The Android apps are packaged in APKs, which, in reality, are nothing more than ZIP files with some special conventions. Most of the ZIP files (and APKs) to use the technology of compression, Deflate compression, which is a good compression technology but is already a little out of date.
according to Google, using the open source technology File-by-File patching is possible to reduce, in general, 6 petabytes of information daily on the updates of the applications of the users. As the name suggests, the File-by-File patching parses the file in the file thus improving the process of patching. Learn more here.
To better understand the efficiency of this new technology, Google has released a comparative table between the technology that is used (bsdiff) and the new File-by-File patching.
As we can see, taking into account for example the app the Netflix, using the technology bsdiff, the update had a size of 7.7 MB. As the new technology, the same update will have a size of 1.2 MB, a reduction, in MBs, of 92%.
This is undoubtedly a good news for Android users, that thus have a system of updates of apps and the system itself more efficient. The updates are actually faster and the data consumption will also be smaller.
Source: Android Developers Blog
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