Multiple APK support arrives on the Android Market

While it’s great that consumers get to choose from so many different manufacturers and phone models when it comes to selecting an Android phone, this huge variation in phones means that developers have trouble making sure that their apps work on all the devices that are available on the market today. When putting their apps up on the Android Market, developers have to upload a version of the app that works on the most devices and hope for the best.

That is until now. Google has announced that the updated the Android Market with a new functionality to let developers upload more than one APK (an executable file) as part of a single app. This means that developers can now upload different APKs that have been optimized for different devices/screen resolutions etc, so that when users download an app, they’ll be given the optimal APK for their devices (the market knows which phone you have).

While this means more work for the developers if they have to come up with multiple versions of the same app, it will also help prevent their apps from getting one-star reviews saying things like, “This doesn’t work on my Droid X! Fail!!” This feature will also allow apps to be distributed as smartphone-optimized or tablet-only APKs without users having to deal with downloading the wrong version for their devices.

George Wong
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Android, Apps, Google, Smartphones