Question About Updates

TPF Alexis
TPF Alexis Posts: 3,826 Chairperson of the Boards
Mostly just curious. Every time there's an update, the Play Store tells me I need to free up more space. Fair enough, my phone's storage isn't that big*. The odd thing to me is that it always tells me I need to free up something like twice what the download actually ends up being. For example, this most recent time, it told me I needed another 68 megs or so, but then the download only ended up being like 33ish. Is it compressed by that much, or does the install process need memory temporarily or what?
*My workaround is to temporarily shove the game onto an SD card. Somehow it always manages to find room to move it back afterward.

Comments

  • abmoraz
    abmoraz Posts: 712 Critical Contributor
    The download is all the necessary files compressed into one compact file.  Once your phone gets it, it unpacks it.  So the required storage is the total size of the files + the size of the compressed download.  This is because the compressed file has to exist while the phone unzips it.  Once it is done, depending on your phone's OS, *usually* the phone deletes the downloaded compressed file and frees up that space.