I’m just curious what other people are doing. I see the need for 2 apps in each language. 1 with the audio embedded in order to side load, put on Bible Box, etc. And 1 version with audio linked to an internet site to keep the app small enough in order to publish on Google play. There could even be a version with no audio, but the audio is the key feature for us.
Anyone doing this? I am wondering what the best procedure is - do you name the apps uniquely? Change the Icons to differentiate? Or just make different versions of the same app with unique release number?
We have chosen to just use the version with the audio linked to the Internet site. When you set up the audio this way, you can define the name of the audio folder. Then, if that audio folder happens to already exist (and be populated), it doesn’t have to download the audio from the Internet. So on a BibleBox we actually include (separate from the app) a .zip file of the audio folder which can be unpacked and put on the phone to avoid having to download the audio from the Internet. Yes, that process is more cumbersome than just downloading an app (a big one!) with all of the audio included. But there are problems with having a big app (750Mb for the NT in our case) beyond just not being able to put it on Google Play. If I download a 750Mb .apk file on my phone, then install it, I have been told that Android creates a temporary copy of the .apk file while it’s doing the installation. That means that at the tail end of the installation, your phone actually needs to have 750Mb x 3 = 2.25Gb free memory available just to install the app. And then if the user forgets to delete the .apk file he installed from (maybe he thinks he needs it to use the app, or to share with others), then the app will continue to use 750Mb x 2 = 1.5Gb space on the phone even after installation. A lot of our customers don’t have that kind of space available. So we find that just providing the audio folder separately is a good option. Then, they can even selectively chose which audio files they want (e.g. only the Gospels) if they don’t have a lot of space. Just some food for thought…
Thanks Jeff.
I have been able to get a full audio NT app down to about 125 MB using the 3gp compression built into SAB. So I have found that distributing this size is not worrisome as you mentioned with a 750MB App.
However, I get your point about trying to create just one app and keeping the audio in a separate folder. This is probably the way to go for us because as we keep adding languages, I finding that management is getting a bit tricky, and having to manage 2 versions of every language will just double it! Most of our users are offline - so Google Play is a neat feature, but won’t be used to obtain the app as much as people sharing via the Bluetooth feature built into the app. How does that work with audio in separate folders?
Do you (any of you reading!) have logs or other app management tools to help keep the workflow of production and cataloging of published apps organized well? We only have a small amount of apps so far, but have the potential to create dozens in the upcoming year so I’m a bit worried about keeping things under control with two (and maybe more in the future) of us working in parallel. Especially with many languages producing new material each year so we will have to be able to easily update the apps with the new material.
Sharing the app with Bluetooth, etc. just shares the app - the part that was installed with the .apk. It won’t share any audio that is in a separate folder. You would have to share that separately, which of course adds to the complexity, and makes it more appealing to distribute the audio with the app if you’ve got it down to 125MB. Hard to know what’s best…