6 ms·

Replaced by Chrome ("that giant hog"). I'm on a slightly older phone, but I actually removed Chrome from it not long ago. I started having problems with updati

Replaced by Chrome ("that giant hog"). I'm on a slightly older phone, but I actually removed Chrome from it not long ago. I started having problems with updating apps due to insufficient space, and while I have a fair amount of crap installed, I also have ~2.5GB of "Phone" storage for apps so I started investigating (this is separate from "sdcard" data storage which is ~8GB). Turns out Chrome, at least on the HTC Amaze 4G with 4.0.3, takes up about 250MB - my largest installed app by about a factor of 4 (next largest was ~80MB). This was not cache or data, this was the app itself. I don't know what all they've moved into there as part of their push to cripple Android except as a host for the "Google Play Ecosystem," but crap like this is not endearing.

gcb0 12y ago
google is learning how to be evil with offline tech. online they just shutdown the old system. offline now they leave holes and announce them when they want you to upgrade. "for security"
hnha 12y ago
I am running out of space because Play Store and Google Framework get bigger and bigger. It fills me with rage how Google actively makes my old phone less capable over time for no benefit to me.
- oftenwrong 12y ago
  I lost the ability to write to my external sdcard when I got the kitkat upgrade. Of course rooting allowed me write access again. This is why the "rooting voids the warrant" policies are bullshit. When an upgrade is forced on a user, and removes critical functionality for no good reason, what is the user to do? I, for one, am never buying a locked down phone again. I'd rather not even have a phone.
- AjithAntony 12y ago
  Yeah. I was using a Nexus One for a long time until I had to prune so many apps due to space that it wasn't worth using. I got a new phone, HTC One S (I needed a t-mobile branded phone for wifi calling) with several gigs of system partition space, and now I have to play that game again. I recognize that there are a bunch of features now that I get to enjoy, but now I have to choose which ones I want to keep. When I switched, 20MB was a big app. Now I have at least 30 apps that are bigger. Chrome in particular seems bogus. The desktop version isn't even this big. Chrome : 211MB Facebook: 116MB Google search: 70MB Google+: 65MB Amazon: 60MB Mantano Reader: 54MB Dropbox: 50MB Google Play services: 50MB Google Text-to-speach engine: 45MB Hangouts: 35MB t-mobile my account: 33MB SwitftKey: 33MB Kindle: 30MB Evernote: 30MB BaconReader: 28MB twitter: 25MB Hulu: 25MB Google Maps: 24MB Google Drive: 24MB <...> I do recognize that these apps balance the data differently. Chrome is 189MB app, and facebook is 80MB data.
  - nkozyra 12y ago
    I have the latest Chrome for Android and it's 65MB for the app. Still large, but nowhere near 190MB.
    - gcb0 12y ago
      did you disable cache somehow? open a bunch of ssl pages and see app data space explode. same happens with firefox
      - nkozyra 12y ago
        I did not disable cache and it shows a large amount of cache data. But the post I responded to claimed 189MB of app data.
      - AjithAntony 12y ago
        The cache doesn't seem relevant but I could test that. Presently my breakdown is 189MB+21MB , App+data, and 13MB Cache. Uninstalled. Reinstalled. (play store reports 30MB download) Before opening the app 65MB+4KB, 0MB cache First launch (no sync sign-in) 65MB + 10MB, 60KB cache Browsed Noisy SSL page (google plus feed): 65MB + 14MB, 13MB cache Signed into sync: no change ( 10min later, no change) Browsed image heavy site (imgur): 65MB + 14MB, 25MB cache Does chrome store the old versions on upgrade? That would perfectly explain why my fresh install is 64MB, and my older isntall was 3x that size.
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
        derefr 12y ago
        It does on the desktop: Omaha, a.k.a. Google Updater, follows a "keep a few recent versions around and just symlink the current one" model to enable atomic upgrades and rollbacks of failed upgrades. If Android Chrome manages its own updates, it's likely using Omaha for them.
    - 12y ago
- lugg 12y ago
  Yea, don't they know 128 mb should have been enough for anyone? /s I don't see why shiny progress should be held up because you can't be arsed keeping up with new generations of tech. If you don't like it, go install a rom and some of the many many many alternate applications which keep sizes small. Mobile phones began, much like desktops began, extremely limited. We are simply seeing the same thing happen, we're now getting up to sizes of around 32 gb, yes, it happened much faster this time, and that may be why many feel the pinch much more - I'm sorry for that - however it is the price to pay for being an early adopter like yourself. Yet thankfully,it has also now reached a level where it is now almost impossible to fill with application data. Storage and processing may continue to increase but I highly doubt you will feel quite the same pain of running low on space with nothing but chrome and facebook installed.
  - fencepost 12y ago
    Installing a ROM is actually why it's unlikely that my next phone will be an HTC. I made the mistake of buying what was basically their flagship phone for a little while, which was promptly dumped for the HTC One. Take a look at the ROM situation for the HTC Ruby platform, aka the Amaze, aka the only phone in its product line. Despite what Wikipedia says, there isn't a huge mass of aftermarket ROMs because the phone itself had such a relatively small distribution and was discontinued.
- megablast 12y ago
  Don't get too raged, this has been happening on almost every computer for the last 20 years. The more you use it, there more there is to store, the more apps you use, the more data is placed everywhere.
  - hnha 12y ago
    That's not what I said. I actually use my phone less as I found the apps and data I "need". Google is forcing software updates (silently even!) that leech away significant amounts of space away from me.
zenocon 12y ago
Having built my own custom Chromium for Android several times on a project, 250MB is out of line for stock Chromium. My builds for my custom browser with Chromium content-shell were ~70-80MB. Chrome, indeed, adds a bit of extra "google chrome", and probably some additional internationalization, but 250MB does not seem square, in my experience.
nuclear_eclipse 12y ago
FWIW, on my Moto X running 4.4.3, Chrome takes only 65MB for the app itself. I would imagine the "bloat" comes from them including compatibility frameworks that allow Android apps to ship supporting features from newer Android releases and SDKs on older Android devices. But I also would have expected those frameworks to be handled by the Google Play Services app, rather than be bundled into every single app on your phone that needs them...
hamburglar 12y ago
I guess I'm going to be forced to switch to Chrome now for safety's sake, but I've been avoiding it because it has some major usability problems that Android Browser doesn't. In particular, not reflowing a web page when you zoom in is infuriating because I invariably end up zooming in order to be able to read an article, then I have to pan side to side for every line of text. Font sizing is bizarre too. Web pages suddenly have font sizes increasing and decreasing seemingly at random, and to the point of illegibility. I just tried loading this page up on Chrome for Android and the header text (new | threads | comments ...) is absolutely microscopic. I'm no browser snob -- I'm perfectly happy to use the stock AOSP browser even though it's got some stuff I don't like about it -- but I really can't understand how anybody uses Chrome for Android at all. I suppose it's probably time to re-try-out some of the 3rd party browsers again.
- scintill76 12y ago
  > Font sizing is bizarre too. Web pages suddenly have font sizes increasing and decreasing seemingly at random, and to the point of illegibility I haven't tried Chrome, but I see this in CyanogenMod's stock browser (probably close to AOSP) and Firefox. In Firefox's case at least, my research pointed to "font boosting" being the cause of increasing/decreasing, but I haven't found a good fix.
  - hamburglar 12y ago
    Amazing! Now that I know the term to search for, I'm certain that this is the misfeature that aggravates me so. My AOSP browser (which is 4.0.3) doesn't have this problem. I like the comment in the webkit bug discussing it: "In terms of status, this is shipping in stable Chrome for Android with acceptable quality." Ugh.
    - scintill76 12y ago
      I thought it was something wrong with my CM build, or maybe because I didn't install gapps (Google's proprietary apps). I'm amazed to find the developers call this acceptable.
  - 12y ago

gcb0 12y ago

google is learning how to be evil with offline tech. online they just shutdown the old system. offline now they leave holes and announce them when they want you to upgrade. "for security"

hnha 12y ago

I am running out of space because Play Store and Google Framework get bigger and bigger. It fills me with rage how Google actively makes my old phone less capable over time for no benefit to me.

oftenwrong 12y ago
I lost the ability to write to my external sdcard when I got the kitkat upgrade. Of course rooting allowed me write access again. This is why the "rooting voids the warrant" policies are bullshit. When an upgrade is forced on a user, and removes critical functionality for no good reason, what is the user to do? I, for one, am never buying a locked down phone again. I'd rather not even have a phone.
AjithAntony 12y ago
Yeah. I was using a Nexus One for a long time until I had to prune so many apps due to space that it wasn't worth using. I got a new phone, HTC One S (I needed a t-mobile branded phone for wifi calling) with several gigs of system partition space, and now I have to play that game again. I recognize that there are a bunch of features now that I get to enjoy, but now I have to choose which ones I want to keep. When I switched, 20MB was a big app. Now I have at least 30 apps that are bigger. Chrome in particular seems bogus. The desktop version isn't even this big. Chrome : 211MB Facebook: 116MB Google search: 70MB Google+: 65MB Amazon: 60MB Mantano Reader: 54MB Dropbox: 50MB Google Play services: 50MB Google Text-to-speach engine: 45MB Hangouts: 35MB t-mobile my account: 33MB SwitftKey: 33MB Kindle: 30MB Evernote: 30MB BaconReader: 28MB twitter: 25MB Hulu: 25MB Google Maps: 24MB Google Drive: 24MB <...> I do recognize that these apps balance the data differently. Chrome is 189MB app, and facebook is 80MB data.
- nkozyra 12y ago
  I have the latest Chrome for Android and it's 65MB for the app. Still large, but nowhere near 190MB.
  - gcb0 12y ago
    did you disable cache somehow? open a bunch of ssl pages and see app data space explode. same happens with firefox
    - nkozyra 12y ago
      I did not disable cache and it shows a large amount of cache data. But the post I responded to claimed 189MB of app data.
    - AjithAntony 12y ago
      The cache doesn't seem relevant but I could test that. Presently my breakdown is 189MB+21MB , App+data, and 13MB Cache. Uninstalled. Reinstalled. (play store reports 30MB download) Before opening the app 65MB+4KB, 0MB cache First launch (no sync sign-in) 65MB + 10MB, 60KB cache Browsed Noisy SSL page (google plus feed): 65MB + 14MB, 13MB cache Signed into sync: no change ( 10min later, no change) Browsed image heavy site (imgur): 65MB + 14MB, 25MB cache Does chrome store the old versions on upgrade? That would perfectly explain why my fresh install is 64MB, and my older isntall was 3x that size.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - derefr 12y ago
        It does on the desktop: Omaha, a.k.a. Google Updater, follows a "keep a few recent versions around and just symlink the current one" model to enable atomic upgrades and rollbacks of failed upgrades. If Android Chrome manages its own updates, it's likely using Omaha for them.
  - 12y ago
lugg 12y ago
Yea, don't they know 128 mb should have been enough for anyone? /s I don't see why shiny progress should be held up because you can't be arsed keeping up with new generations of tech. If you don't like it, go install a rom and some of the many many many alternate applications which keep sizes small. Mobile phones began, much like desktops began, extremely limited. We are simply seeing the same thing happen, we're now getting up to sizes of around 32 gb, yes, it happened much faster this time, and that may be why many feel the pinch much more - I'm sorry for that - however it is the price to pay for being an early adopter like yourself. Yet thankfully,it has also now reached a level where it is now almost impossible to fill with application data. Storage and processing may continue to increase but I highly doubt you will feel quite the same pain of running low on space with nothing but chrome and facebook installed.
- fencepost 12y ago
  Installing a ROM is actually why it's unlikely that my next phone will be an HTC. I made the mistake of buying what was basically their flagship phone for a little while, which was promptly dumped for the HTC One. Take a look at the ROM situation for the HTC Ruby platform, aka the Amaze, aka the only phone in its product line. Despite what Wikipedia says, there isn't a huge mass of aftermarket ROMs because the phone itself had such a relatively small distribution and was discontinued.
megablast 12y ago
Don't get too raged, this has been happening on almost every computer for the last 20 years. The more you use it, there more there is to store, the more apps you use, the more data is placed everywhere.
- hnha 12y ago
  That's not what I said. I actually use my phone less as I found the apps and data I "need". Google is forcing software updates (silently even!) that leech away significant amounts of space away from me.

zenocon 12y ago

Having built my own custom Chromium for Android several times on a project, 250MB is out of line for stock Chromium. My builds for my custom browser with Chromium content-shell were ~70-80MB. Chrome, indeed, adds a bit of extra "google chrome", and probably some additional internationalization, but 250MB does not seem square, in my experience.

nuclear_eclipse 12y ago

FWIW, on my Moto X running 4.4.3, Chrome takes only 65MB for the app itself. I would imagine the "bloat" comes from them including compatibility frameworks that allow Android apps to ship supporting features from newer Android releases and SDKs on older Android devices. But I also would have expected those frameworks to be handled by the Google Play Services app, rather than be bundled into every single app on your phone that needs them...

hamburglar 12y ago

I guess I'm going to be forced to switch to Chrome now for safety's sake, but I've been avoiding it because it has some major usability problems that Android Browser doesn't. In particular, not reflowing a web page when you zoom in is infuriating because I invariably end up zooming in order to be able to read an article, then I have to pan side to side for every line of text. Font sizing is bizarre too. Web pages suddenly have font sizes increasing and decreasing seemingly at random, and to the point of illegibility. I just tried loading this page up on Chrome for Android and the header text (new | threads | comments ...) is absolutely microscopic. I'm no browser snob -- I'm perfectly happy to use the stock AOSP browser even though it's got some stuff I don't like about it -- but I really can't understand how anybody uses Chrome for Android at all. I suppose it's probably time to re-try-out some of the 3rd party browsers again.

scintill76 12y ago
> Font sizing is bizarre too. Web pages suddenly have font sizes increasing and decreasing seemingly at random, and to the point of illegibility I haven't tried Chrome, but I see this in CyanogenMod's stock browser (probably close to AOSP) and Firefox. In Firefox's case at least, my research pointed to "font boosting" being the cause of increasing/decreasing, but I haven't found a good fix.
- hamburglar 12y ago
  Amazing! Now that I know the term to search for, I'm certain that this is the misfeature that aggravates me so. My AOSP browser (which is 4.0.3) doesn't have this problem. I like the comment in the webkit bug discussing it: "In terms of status, this is shipping in stable Chrome for Android with acceptable quality." Ugh.
  - scintill76 12y ago
    I thought it was something wrong with my CM build, or maybe because I didn't install gapps (Google's proprietary apps). I'm amazed to find the developers call this acceptable.
- 12y ago