It was the Google I/O Conference yesterday
and as always, there is so much to talk about it in the tech world. So
many new things – apps and services were launched like Allo, Duo, Google
Home, etc. But out of all these, the one thing that caught my attention
was the Android Instant Apps. In simple words, the
feature allows a user to work on an Android app without installing them
on their device and from what it looks like, the feature is going to be a
game changer. The newest Google Feature | Shutterstock
So let’s talk about the new feature as to what it is all about and
how it’s gonna be useful for both, the user and the developers.
What is Android Instant Apps
Android Instant Apps is Android apps running on your phone without
installing themselves. Basically, whenever we open up a website which
needs us to install an app to continue or we get a link in our instant
messaging which redirects us to a page on Play Store to install an app
to view the contents, things become quite tedious. Just because you
wanted to watch live updates of a cricket inning or you wished to buy a
cell phone online, making it mandatory to download an entire app from
Play Store doesn’t make sense.
What Android Instant Apps does is that it rather than downloading and
installing the entire app to get something done, it downloads only the
necessary code which is necessary for the task you are performing and
executes it on the fly. You won’t even feel the difference and it will
run just like a normal Android app. If you think you would want to use
the app in the future, you can tap on the install button to get the
entire app experience on your phone or just close the browser page to
clear the memory.
The Android Instant App download is limited to 4 megabytes and thus,
it makes sure that it’s available instantly and does not take too much
of memory on the device RAM. Google claims that a user won’t even feel
the difference as everything will be as smooth as the app is installed
on the device.
Uses and Availability of Android Instant
One of the most important uses of Google Instant is for the websites
which are mobile only, and ask you to download the app if you are
browsing from the phone. Using Google Instant, they can give you a taste
of the app directly from the web and if you like it, you can go ahead
and install it. These are also helpful in places like a parking lot
where you need to pay for parking using an app but instead of
downloading it, you can go to the pay zone and get things done on the
go.
Google Instant App will not be limited to Android N or Marshmallow,
but will work on any device running on Android 4.1+ (API Level 16) or
higher with Google Play services. Devices which don’t have Google Play
Services, most of them which are from China, will not be able to access
Android Instant App for obvious reasons.
At the moment about a half dozen partners are trying Instant Apps which includes Buzzfeed, B&H Photo Video, and Medium.
Google plans to expand Android Instant App and welcomes more partners
over the next few months and users will be able to experience it later
this ear.
For Developers
As a developer, Google claims that it’s pretty easy to be a part of
Android Instant. As a developer, if the source code of the app is
modularized, it can take less than a day of setup to make it Instant App
ready. Keeping things modular allows Google Play Services to download
only the part which is needed on the fly.
Conclusion
As far as my opinion is concerned, I am glad Google launched
something like this. This can streamline a lot of things when the user
is browsing on the web and he is suddenly asked to install an app to
proceed. I just hope Google does it right and keep things simple for
everyone to catch up to it. If you’re a developer, for more information
and details regarding Android Instant Apps, you can visit g.co/InstantApps.
