Mobile App Devs: Why are Android and iOS app updates so vastly different in size?

JForce · January 7, 2021

I've asked this on a bunch of forums, but no one has been able to give me a decent answer beyond "Yay/Boo Apple/Google".

When updating the same app on an Android and iOS device, the download size of the updates are different by orders of magnitude. I've had MS Outlook updates for iOS over 1GB, and the same update on Android is less than 100mb. This is consistent across every app I've got on both devices, and I'm just curious.

Does an app update on iOS essentially download the entire app and reinstall it? Whereas on Android only the specific "files" that have changed are downloaded? There's obviously pros/cons to both approaches or they'd both be doing the same thing - does Apple do it this way for security reasons?

Any insight would be appreciated.

January 7, 2021

One speculation could be the changes that were made.

Since they're both built with different compilers for different operating systems, perhaps the code needed to be written differently & different code & changes had to be made. There are also different standards it seems. I just got an android after having an iPhone.

The iPhone eBay app looks vastly different to the Android eBay app though they both have very similar functionality.

wanderingfool2 · January 7, 2021

6 hours ago, JForce said:

When updating the same app on an Android and iOS device, the download size of the updates are different by orders of magnitude. I've had MS Outlook updates for iOS over 1GB, and the same update on Android is less than 100mb. This is consistent across every app I've got on both devices, and I'm just curious.

They likely actually have 2 developments for it (Android and IOS).

That means even though they updated it at the same time, they are effectively 2 different Applications. So it is likely that either more changes were done in IOS, or that the way it was packed caused it. If they happen to develop using a SDK that supports both Android and IOS, then it could also just be the way that it gets compiled.

*edit* Also just want to point out. The code itself isn't usually too large....I mean the resources are usually what I find takes up most of the space.