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Comment by lazerwalker | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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!

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?

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