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Comment by fencepost | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

I have the latest Chrome for Android and it's 65MB for the app. Still large, but nowhere near 190MB.

Likewise on my Moto G running 4.4.4.

65Mb app

22Mb data

= 87Mb total

Cache is recorded separately, currently at 205Mb. I wonder if it is a question of how the figures are being displayed in different versions of Android.

did you disable cache somehow?

open a bunch of ssl pages and see app data space explode. same happens with firefox

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.

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.

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.

I'm reinstalling right now to test, it shows as a ~28MB download. I feel pretty confident it's not cached data in my case, as I don't use the Chrome browser on my phone (I prefer Dolphin with gestures & LastPass integration), and on a tablet I only use it for logging into wifi hotspots.

.... And after the reinstall it shows up as 65MB of app.

Dolphin is affected too.

Checking.... Dolphin is a little weird on its own with the separate browser and "Dolphin Jetpack" (basically its own custom-built webkit engine).

Looking before removing Dolphin, Dolphin is showing 13.82MB of App plus 42MB of Data (which I believe could mostly be moved to phone storage). Also 2.3MB of cache. Jetpack is showing 18.67MB of App, 4k of Data.

After reinstalling both and a first run of Dolphin (and restoring a slightly out of date backup for bookmarks, etc.), Dolphin is using 13.80MB of App and 4.66MB of Data, while Jetpack is using 18.67MB of App.

I'm not seeing the same thing happening with Dolphin as with Chrome.

used nexus one until couples months ago. even with all ext sd card hacks, i couldn't install firefox on a clean install.

app space is the only reason i generated more garbage in the world even though my current device only lacked the software to use the memory i had available.

For what its worth, the chrome Mac OS X version of google chrome is 331.9 MB on disk. Doesn't seem bogus to me.

The OSX "show info" dialog block shows the file size in disk blocks, as opposed to the actual bytes of file content. There might be a misunderstanding between people because the "real" file size is different than the "actually occupied" disk size. This is of course aggravated by lots of small files.

Just to be sure:

    $ du -h -d 0 /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app               
    317M	/Applications/Google Chrome.app

    $ tar -c -f - /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app | wc -c      
    tar: Removing leading '/' from member names
    331683840

    $ find /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app -type f -print0 | xargs -0 cat | wc -c
    331010107

On win8, the total Chrome dir is 450MB, but that includes two versions, and a backup of the installer of the latest. Excluding those and the flash plugin, the running Chrome's (37.0.2062.120) contents are 115MB.

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.

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.

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.

Yea, don't they know 128 mb should have been enough for anyone?

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

Recent (CM11?) versions of the Cyanogenmod browser are actually based on Chromium.

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"

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