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Comment by arien | Hacker News Reader

I have never used Instagram. Could anyone please explain/justify the 13Mb size of the App?

I'm just wondering, because the biggest App I have on my phone is Google Maps, which takes around 12Mb. The next one takes 6Mb at most. I know games heavy on graphics might take more, but a how does a photo App take so much?

Just curious.

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Is there any particular reason you're focused on the size of the app as a meaningful metric? I don't mean that to come across as condescending; I'm legitimately curious. Except for the 20mb 3G download limit I honestly can't think of a time where app size has played a factor in me deciding to install or keep an iOS app.

Size can be a meaningful metric. Would you prefer to download a 1Mb BMP or a 12Kb JPG? Why are all the JS minify tools so popular? Just some examples.

I'm actually surprised that no one else is curious about why some apps take 1Mb and others 10Mb and so on, or their contents in general. Sometimes it's because they have a ton of images, a little 3D engine or whatever. The replies about filters in this specific case make sense.

You seem to be using size as a proxy for speed: how long until I can use this tool? A slow website (e.g. one that loads 1MB BMPs or un-minified JS) makes you wait every time you access it; a large app download only makes you wait the first time you initially download it.

If I'm going to be using an app on a daily basis for an extended period of time, the speed concerns I care about are how long it takes the app to start up once launched, and how long it takes me to accomplish tasks. Over the lifetime of using an app, I'd argue that an extra two or three minutes in the app's initial download is little more than a rounding error.

Those were just examples. And I'm not at all concerned about the download time, having wi-fi and all. My concern is the space that takes on my phone (and why).

But if we're talking about speed specifically, do you think a 10Mb app would be or load faster than a 1Mb one? This makes me wonder by the way... Does a non-optimized image (part of an app UI, not a photo) take longer to display in a mobile?

For one thing, some less expensive Android phones have very limited internal storage. I have a very decent one who's achilles heel is the internal storage. The internal storage has been completely full pretty much since I got it, and any new app either has to be installable to the SD card (and most are, thankfully - except for anything Google makes for some reason) or be critical enough to displace an existing app.

same here. And btw.. The instagram app can't be moved to the SD card on my phone at least. too bad.

Huh, didn't realize that. Thanks!

Don't know about the Android app, but in the iPhone app the executable is 3.5MB, and the rest of the 13MB app is mostly made up of PVR files (Edit: "PowerVR Texture Files", it seems) and various images.

I've never thought about 13MB as a "big" app size, though. iPhoto is 100MB, for instance.

The two other similar photo apps I tried before instagram was available take ~8Mb each. Maybe it takes a lot of data to specify the filters?

They might also rely heavily on a non-java codebase, in which case they can't just use the built in libraries that most android apps can rely on.

Both Chrome and Firefox's mobile versions use a lot of space too. (Firefox is down to 20MB, but chrome is 50.)

And wow, apparently Google+ takes 30MB! Not sure what that app does that makes it larger than firefox...

The filters are just simple image transforms. Generally they're just specified as GL shaders, which means that even in the largest case, you're talking about a kilobyte or two. Considering that they're compressed (as all APKs are), you can divide that by half, if not more.

Google+ is a good example of something that is plain wrong in my opinion.

I uninstalled it months ago, so I can't tell if it has great improvements. But from what I recall, it can be easily compared to... the Facebook app, for example. What is the purpose of those 20-ish Mb of difference between the two?

You would think Google would be making great and efficient apps with their own platform.

I imagine that the Google+ app is so big because it contains all the resources (images, translated text, layouts, etc.) for both the tablet and cellphone versions. Also, it needs to include extra libraries to support some of the newer ICS features on older phones/OS versions.

Think it's the filters. Some are purely an algorithm, but I assume other filters work by merging the photo with a template image. Maybe this has to be stored in high res in the app.

I would assume that is mostly the filters. A few weeks ago someone posted the filters on github, and there were some really complex opengl filters in there.

If you're not satisfied with App2SD, root your phone, partition the SD (512-1024 MB should be enough) and use Link2SD to transfer all files to that SD partition automatically, including cache.

But I agree this is an annoying problem on low-end phones, and it used to be in 2010 as well for HTC phones. Google really needs to force manufacturers to leave at least 1 GB of internal storage for apps, even for the lowest end of phones. I understand that would add to the cost, and would slow down Android's domination in the feature phone market, but there needs to be at least some standardization for the benefit of both developers and users alike.

For what it's worth, it's already standardized at 350MB: http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust... (section 7.6.1)

So it went from 150-200 MB to 350 MB? That's still too low I believe. People shouldn't worry about their storage days into using their device. A lot of regular folks won't even know how to use App2SD. It's silly that at this point users still have to ask developers why their app is so big at 10 MB and why it isn't just 5 MB, or whatever. This really constrains developers, and it's not fair to them.

This seems a bit silly to complain about 13Mb unless you are using a phone from the dark ages. Most phones now days have 16Gb+ of storage, the past two I bought had 32Gb and 64Gb respectively. If you do have a limit for space for some reason then why not just download it and give it a try, if it's slow and horrible just uninstall.

Where is the complaint?

I'm using a Desire. Well known for being an awesome HTC phone with just one flaw: very little internal space. So, this sort of limitation has made me very aware of the space any app takes. I have a Galaxy Tab 10.1 with infinite space (compared to the Desire, anyway), where I put all the heavy apps. But I still check the app size before downloading, out of habit.

Also, as a developer myself I can't help but wonder what is inside an app and what makes one super lean and others so heavy. The same way I wonder why apps usually ask for a zillion permissions they don't need.

The limited space is one major flaw of the phone and it almost makes it unusable. That is why I suggest a custom ROM. I use one called Supernova and it is great, it is basically the stock ROM with the internal memory moved on the SD card. With it I have almost 2GB of internal memory and almost 100 applications. The instructions are not super user friendly but it is worth it!

Another alternative is to install Darktremor Apps2SD[1] on top of another ROM such as CM7. This will let you partition some of your SD card as extra "internal" space.

[1]: https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=158809660835039

Next to the filters, it's probably also all the graphics for custom UI designs. Combine the two, and it's big.

Can 13MB really be considered "big" on multi-gigabyte phones? I'm all for efficiency, but I can't see this as being an overbearing file size.

Not huge, but my brother has a HTC Wildfire S (early last years budget model) and struggles with constantly juggling apps. Not all apps on Android can be moved to SD.

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