Google trims the size of app updates with new data-saving technique

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With millions of apps in the Play Store and enough space on our phones to comfortably store hundreds of them, updating can be a tedious, data-chomping process. Earlier this year, Google announced it was using a new Delta algorithm that reduced the size of updates by as much as half when compared to the old way of downloading APKs. Now it’s taking it a bit further in a continued push to save you time, space, and money.

The new approach, called file-by-file patching, creates updates that are as much as 90 percent smaller than the full app. On average, the process trims download size by 65 percent, saving users some 6 petabytes of cumulative data each day, according to Google’s estimates. As Andrew Hayden, software engineer on Google Play, explains in a post on the Android Developers Blog:

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