7 ms·

Looks like fighting the symptoms, not taking care of the root causes. There's probably so much bloat in frameworks, (illegal) telemetry and whatnot under the h

Looks like fighting the symptoms, not taking care of the root causes. There's probably so much bloat in frameworks, (illegal) telemetry and whatnot under the hood of those apps that should be tackled. For example: Why is the the Amazon app 229 MB heavy? 195 MB is the app itself, then there's ~61 MB of "data" and only ~26,5 MB of cache. It's a website, nothing more. How can it take 200+ MB of space? It's sick. edit: How does Android even calculate those numbers? They don't add up at all... edit2: see this recent post for reference: "I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30442529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30442529

AndrewDucker 5y ago
Google can't force people to not use frameworks. So they work on the bits they can control. I do agree that Amazon's app does seem to basically be their website, so I don't understand why it needs to be so big. (And the numbers on my phone add up)
- jessriedel 5y ago
  Google can make it easier to identify which apps are taking up space and slowing the system down, so that users will uninstall and developers will respond. I had an Android up until July and the interface for understanding and removing app memory usage was still poor.
  - hombre_fatal 5y ago
    Yeah, it would be nice if this was exposed to us. With just three apps open on my iPhone, sometimes I'll go back to one and it has to relaunch. Did it crash, use too much memory, or was it squeezed out by high memory consumption of the other two apps? Even desktop OS don't go far enough. Would be nice if Windows and macOS came with a top 5 {mem,cpu} consumers drop-down in the global menu bar without having to install a tool or open task manager. We complain about bloated apps but without providing insights to the user, there's no pressure for apps to optimize. If it seems like too much of a power-user feature, how about your run-tracking app silently closing on a long run because you were also listening to Spotify in the foreground? That's not a good experience. With no insights, all you have to act on is superstition. Do I need to find a run-tracker that doesn't crash or should I try a different music player? No data so who knows. We still insulate users from this data for some reason even on mobile devices that LRU-close apps when memory is tight. Let the people know, dammit.
    - londons_explore 5y ago
      It's the OS's fault for silently killing apps that are 'in use'. An app can already say 'I'm still doing a user visible action' (like logging a run, or playing music). Whenever one of those apps has to be killed to free up memory, a messagebox should be displayed saying "Spotify has quit due to low memory. Spotify was using 647MB and RunGPS was using 1454MB out of 3000MB system memory".
      - mschuster91 5y ago
        The problem is that device manufacturers employ additional killers and "efficiency managers" because too many app vendors use one of the various workarounds to collect data or whatever the fuck they are doing otherwise. Google won't do much against it because the worst of the data hoarders are the f2p games that make money for themselves by selling the user data they can get their hands on and make also a lot of money for Google via all the IAP commissions.
        jessriedel 5y ago
        Google could still choose to provide a clean and powerful interface on their flagship phones (Pixel) and the Android One certified phones. The existence of the latter program is evidence that Google does (or at least did) recognize the value in protecting the user experience from bad manufacturer incentives for consumers who are willing to pay a small premium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_One
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  I'd guess a built-in web browser like Electron apps? But that wouldn't make much sense since I'm sure android has a WebView built in which should use mostly built-in browser libraries / tech.
- MildlySerious 5y ago
  > Google can't force people to not use frameworks. So they work on the bits they can control. Couldn't they just penalize app size in play store rankings the same way they penalize slow sites in search results? Obviously for games and some types of applications you can't get around it, but I imagine Google has the resources to work around needlessly punishing those.
  - cedilla 5y ago
    They could, but it might be a pain to identify what's actually bloat.
    - kelseyfrog 5y ago
      That sounds like a very fun project. There is of course the technical work in identifying unused code and resources, a data science framing where statistical questions regarding bloat could be assessed, a process framing component where tooling and dev-platform interactions could be incentivized toward reducing bloat, and and economics framing where structural changes in Play store could change dev strategies toward bloat. Someone in charge of leading such a project has a lot of options available for analyzing and solving the problem, none of them mutually exclusive.
  - spicybright 5y ago
    I don't think inherently large apps like games would be a problem on paper. Your game is competing against similarly sized games, not, say, a todo list app.
    - bdben 5y ago
      And if someone else can publish an equally enjoyable game with a smaller size, then there's no reason not to reward them for it.
      - Larrikin 5y ago
        How does game app size factor into the enjoyment in any way? Android phones aren't like iPhones and most have sd card slots which are dirt cheap nowadays.
perryizgr8 5y ago
> Why is the the Amazon app 229 MB heavy? I checked mine. 201 MB app, 115 MB "data", 202 MB cache, 518 MB total Yes, the Amazon app, which literally feels like a webview wrapper around the mobile website, is taking up half a gigabyte of space on my phone.
- martin_a 5y ago
  And it even seems to provide less information than the website. Yesterday I was looking really hard on who exactly would be the seller for an item. Did not find that information on the app, while it's easily findable in the web version. Or do I have some quirky version of the app due to some A/B testing?
jessriedel 5y ago
I get why smaller companies use generic janky frameworks to throw up an app quickly and keep maintenance costs down. But why doesn't Amazon have the most streamlined and elegant app on the planet? They have the resources, expertise, and scale for it to make sense to invest heavily.
- grafs50 5y ago
  Amazon isn't going to care about the size of the app if consumers don't care. And the majority don't probably even realize.
  - jessriedel 5y ago
    But if 10% or even just 1% of users do care, it's absolutely worth it for Amazon. That's the point.
    - zdragnar 5y ago
      Will that 1% stop buying from Amazon, or will they just use the website instead? Gut instinct (and personal experience) says they're not really losing anything here.
      - PaulHoule 5y ago
        If I had a choice between an app and a web site the web site almost always wins. ("app" rhymes with "crap")
      - jessriedel 5y ago
        Yes, I think people absolutely will buy less from Amazon if the mobile experience is just a bit slower or more annoying. We know from both other companies and Amazon's behavior that reducing friction has substantial impact on amount purchased.
    - IgorPartola 5y ago
      Will you actually not buy things from Amazon due to their app size? If the answer is that you’ll continue spending money with them, you don’t care.
danuker 5y ago
Another way to treat the symptom is to uninstall the app and use the website.
TrianguloY 5y ago
> edit: How does Android even calculate those numbers? They don't add up at all... No idea, but I would also like to know. My apps are so small that once they reported a negative size. (Found the picture! https://imgur.com/a/KDI9Y4M https://imgur.com/a/KDI9Y4M)
- TonyTrapp 5y ago
  You should install a few more copies of that app to free up space on the device!
  - BizarroLand 5y ago
    DownloadMoreStorage.com
- sfe22 5y ago
  How do you get these tiny android app sizes. Even the most basic android app from Android studio is like 500kB
  - TrianguloY 5y ago
    Or even 1MB for the hello world app, I know. But that's because of the AppCompat (and relative) libraries. If you program using the built in api only (this means the functions available to the target sdk, nothing newer) then your app size will be basically all assets, as code is very compact by itself. But of course, coding is by far more complex, you are like doing native programming (although easier than c). My apps are small tools, so I can. Oh, and don't use Kotlin. It's a wonderful language and far better than java, but horribly optimized.
    - sfe22 5y ago
      Will try this for sure
CJefferson 5y ago
I have no idea what your suggestion is here? Do you want Google to just ban apps which are "too large"? They can't ban everything that's 229MB, that's reasonable for many types of games.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  What would happen is all of the content would load on first install.
- martin_a 5y ago
  This is user-hostile behaviour and they don't like it, otherwise they wouldn't make the move forward to implement this feature. I'd love to see them get in their walled garden and clean up the ecosystem. They are doing reviews obviously, so they can/should tackle the bloat, too. Look here for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30442529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30442529 ("I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app (telkins.dev)")
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  I can't even imagine the anger on the HN post. "Google kicked my app off Play because it was too big. WTF?"
- criddell 5y ago
  Google knows how many installs you have. I think once an app crosses some threshold, the app requirements should be stricter. If you have 100 million installs, then you better be able to justify the resource requirements of your app. 100 MB of bloat might not seem like much individually, but multiply that by 100 million and it adds up.
Mr_Modulo 5y ago
The size of apps has gotten so bad Google is now forced to develop 2 versions of their core apps and 2 versions of their OS, one for devices with expendable resources (regular Android) and one for devices with limited resources (Android Go edition). I have removed most of Google's apps from my phone because of their extreme size. Looking on my phone it looks like the award for most bloated goes to Google Play Services at 500MB. Wow!
- martin_a 5y ago
  Also "Google Play Services" is doing everything and nothing, it seems. I know it's a wrapper for various functions, but man... 500 MB...
jshchnz 5y ago
Here's Emerge Tools' size analysis of United's Android app: https://www.emergetools.com/app/example/united-android https://www.emergetools.com/app/example/united-android As you can see from the breakdown: 34% of the app is native libraries, another 34% is dex, 23% is resources, and another 8% is assets. Unfortunately they're still not using AABs, have about 4 MB of download size savings from just image optimization, have 1.1 MB of Emoji gif files , and are not optimizing their Native libraries for the specific architecture (using AABs would solve this)

AndrewDucker 5y ago

Google can't force people to not use frameworks. So they work on the bits they can control. I do agree that Amazon's app does seem to basically be their website, so I don't understand why it needs to be so big. (And the numbers on my phone add up)

jessriedel 5y ago
Google can make it easier to identify which apps are taking up space and slowing the system down, so that users will uninstall and developers will respond. I had an Android up until July and the interface for understanding and removing app memory usage was still poor.
- hombre_fatal 5y ago
  Yeah, it would be nice if this was exposed to us. With just three apps open on my iPhone, sometimes I'll go back to one and it has to relaunch. Did it crash, use too much memory, or was it squeezed out by high memory consumption of the other two apps? Even desktop OS don't go far enough. Would be nice if Windows and macOS came with a top 5 {mem,cpu} consumers drop-down in the global menu bar without having to install a tool or open task manager. We complain about bloated apps but without providing insights to the user, there's no pressure for apps to optimize. If it seems like too much of a power-user feature, how about your run-tracking app silently closing on a long run because you were also listening to Spotify in the foreground? That's not a good experience. With no insights, all you have to act on is superstition. Do I need to find a run-tracker that doesn't crash or should I try a different music player? No data so who knows. We still insulate users from this data for some reason even on mobile devices that LRU-close apps when memory is tight. Let the people know, dammit.
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    It's the OS's fault for silently killing apps that are 'in use'. An app can already say 'I'm still doing a user visible action' (like logging a run, or playing music). Whenever one of those apps has to be killed to free up memory, a messagebox should be displayed saying "Spotify has quit due to low memory. Spotify was using 647MB and RunGPS was using 1454MB out of 3000MB system memory".
    - mschuster91 5y ago
      The problem is that device manufacturers employ additional killers and "efficiency managers" because too many app vendors use one of the various workarounds to collect data or whatever the fuck they are doing otherwise. Google won't do much against it because the worst of the data hoarders are the f2p games that make money for themselves by selling the user data they can get their hands on and make also a lot of money for Google via all the IAP commissions.
      - jessriedel 5y ago
        Google could still choose to provide a clean and powerful interface on their flagship phones (Pixel) and the Android One certified phones. The existence of the latter program is evidence that Google does (or at least did) recognize the value in protecting the user experience from bad manufacturer incentives for consumers who are willing to pay a small premium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_One
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
I'd guess a built-in web browser like Electron apps? But that wouldn't make much sense since I'm sure android has a WebView built in which should use mostly built-in browser libraries / tech.
MildlySerious 5y ago
> Google can't force people to not use frameworks. So they work on the bits they can control. Couldn't they just penalize app size in play store rankings the same way they penalize slow sites in search results? Obviously for games and some types of applications you can't get around it, but I imagine Google has the resources to work around needlessly punishing those.
- cedilla 5y ago
  They could, but it might be a pain to identify what's actually bloat.
  - kelseyfrog 5y ago
    That sounds like a very fun project. There is of course the technical work in identifying unused code and resources, a data science framing where statistical questions regarding bloat could be assessed, a process framing component where tooling and dev-platform interactions could be incentivized toward reducing bloat, and and economics framing where structural changes in Play store could change dev strategies toward bloat. Someone in charge of leading such a project has a lot of options available for analyzing and solving the problem, none of them mutually exclusive.
- spicybright 5y ago
  I don't think inherently large apps like games would be a problem on paper. Your game is competing against similarly sized games, not, say, a todo list app.
  - bdben 5y ago
    And if someone else can publish an equally enjoyable game with a smaller size, then there's no reason not to reward them for it.
    - Larrikin 5y ago
      How does game app size factor into the enjoyment in any way? Android phones aren't like iPhones and most have sd card slots which are dirt cheap nowadays.

perryizgr8 5y ago

> Why is the the Amazon app 229 MB heavy? I checked mine. 201 MB app, 115 MB "data", 202 MB cache, 518 MB total Yes, the Amazon app, which literally feels like a webview wrapper around the mobile website, is taking up half a gigabyte of space on my phone.

martin_a 5y ago
And it even seems to provide less information than the website. Yesterday I was looking really hard on who exactly would be the seller for an item. Did not find that information on the app, while it's easily findable in the web version. Or do I have some quirky version of the app due to some A/B testing?

jessriedel 5y ago

I get why smaller companies use generic janky frameworks to throw up an app quickly and keep maintenance costs down. But why doesn't Amazon have the most streamlined and elegant app on the planet? They have the resources, expertise, and scale for it to make sense to invest heavily.

grafs50 5y ago
Amazon isn't going to care about the size of the app if consumers don't care. And the majority don't probably even realize.
- jessriedel 5y ago
  But if 10% or even just 1% of users do care, it's absolutely worth it for Amazon. That's the point.
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    Will that 1% stop buying from Amazon, or will they just use the website instead? Gut instinct (and personal experience) says they're not really losing anything here.
    - PaulHoule 5y ago
      If I had a choice between an app and a web site the web site almost always wins. ("app" rhymes with "crap")
    - jessriedel 5y ago
      Yes, I think people absolutely will buy less from Amazon if the mobile experience is just a bit slower or more annoying. We know from both other companies and Amazon's behavior that reducing friction has substantial impact on amount purchased.
  - IgorPartola 5y ago
    Will you actually not buy things from Amazon due to their app size? If the answer is that you’ll continue spending money with them, you don’t care.

danuker 5y ago

Another way to treat the symptom is to uninstall the app and use the website.

TrianguloY 5y ago

> edit: How does Android even calculate those numbers? They don't add up at all... No idea, but I would also like to know. My apps are so small that once they reported a negative size. (Found the picture! https://imgur.com/a/KDI9Y4M https://imgur.com/a/KDI9Y4M)

TonyTrapp 5y ago
You should install a few more copies of that app to free up space on the device!
- BizarroLand 5y ago
  DownloadMoreStorage.com
sfe22 5y ago
How do you get these tiny android app sizes. Even the most basic android app from Android studio is like 500kB
- TrianguloY 5y ago
  Or even 1MB for the hello world app, I know. But that's because of the AppCompat (and relative) libraries. If you program using the built in api only (this means the functions available to the target sdk, nothing newer) then your app size will be basically all assets, as code is very compact by itself. But of course, coding is by far more complex, you are like doing native programming (although easier than c). My apps are small tools, so I can. Oh, and don't use Kotlin. It's a wonderful language and far better than java, but horribly optimized.
  - sfe22 5y ago
    Will try this for sure

CJefferson 5y ago

I have no idea what your suggestion is here? Do you want Google to just ban apps which are "too large"? They can't ban everything that's 229MB, that's reasonable for many types of games.

ipaddr 5y ago
What would happen is all of the content would load on first install.
martin_a 5y ago
This is user-hostile behaviour and they don't like it, otherwise they wouldn't make the move forward to implement this feature. I'd love to see them get in their walled garden and clean up the ecosystem. They are doing reviews obviously, so they can/should tackle the bloat, too. Look here for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30442529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30442529 ("I shaved 187MB off United Airlines' 439MB iOS app (telkins.dev)")
UncleMeat 5y ago
I can't even imagine the anger on the HN post. "Google kicked my app off Play because it was too big. WTF?"
criddell 5y ago
Google knows how many installs you have. I think once an app crosses some threshold, the app requirements should be stricter. If you have 100 million installs, then you better be able to justify the resource requirements of your app. 100 MB of bloat might not seem like much individually, but multiply that by 100 million and it adds up.

Mr_Modulo 5y ago

The size of apps has gotten so bad Google is now forced to develop 2 versions of their core apps and 2 versions of their OS, one for devices with expendable resources (regular Android) and one for devices with limited resources (Android Go edition). I have removed most of Google's apps from my phone because of their extreme size. Looking on my phone it looks like the award for most bloated goes to Google Play Services at 500MB. Wow!

martin_a 5y ago
Also "Google Play Services" is doing everything and nothing, it seems. I know it's a wrapper for various functions, but man... 500 MB...

jshchnz 5y ago

Here's Emerge Tools' size analysis of United's Android app: https://www.emergetools.com/app/example/united-android https://www.emergetools.com/app/example/united-android As you can see from the breakdown: 34% of the app is native libraries, another 34% is dex, 23% is resources, and another 8% is assets. Unfortunately they're still not using AABs, have about 4 MB of download size savings from just image optimization, have 1.1 MB of Emoji gif files , and are not optimizing their Native libraries for the specific architecture (using AABs would solve this)