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(Archived) Size Matters


Mitch

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The Android app is a nice step forward, especially for those of us using the Android mobile platform. However, it is bloated and needs to be trimmed down.

The Android app is unreasonably large,especially for us space-challenged G1 users. At 3.50MB, it is the second largest app on my phone, behind only Google Maps/GPS Navigation, which is a significantly more complex app. I cannot fathom why it must be so much larger than apps like the Browser (1.31 MB), USAToday (1.8MB), Places Directory (0.92 MB), and Gtasks (512 KB). Even the bloated Facebook (2.24 MB), Where (2.78 MB) and Weather Channel (1.97 MB) apps are significantly smaller. A similar application that I use, Upvise, which, like Evernote, places user-created online content on your phone, is a slim 552 KB.

I am not a developer or coder, so I may be all wet about this. If so, feel free to let me know. However, compared to other apps that seem to perform similar functions, the Evernote Android app seems to large.

Mitch

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Unfortunately, our app does a lot of different things (camera, geolocation, text editing, rich text browsing, rich synchronization, etc.), while most apps only do a few of these. This increases the footprint quite a bit, but we'll take a look if there are some simple ways to compress our app down.

Thanks

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  • 1 year later...

Those sound like great features but I'm not certain it's worth the bloat. I like what you are doing in general but the size of the Android app is a non-starter. I think I've installed it a couple times and deleted it once I noticed again that it's more than three times the target app size. Now that Android 1.X is less than 3% of the market, it might be nice to revisit the app and drop support for those devices and use more of the 2.X library calls to reduce the amount of code needed in your app.

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Have you guys with memory issues tried using just the mobile version? It can be bookmarked and accessed from your stock browser. If you need the extra features, then you're stuck with a "large-app".

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It reminds me a bit of the quip from the movie Amadeus:

Emperor Joseph II: My dear young man, don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect.

Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?

While I think everyone would agree that a smaller application would be nice, I don't think you'd get much consensus of exactly which features to remove to make it smaller. E.g. I never use the audio recording feature (I mumble too badly, etc.), but I have a hunch if we removed that, a few people would be unhappy.

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  • Level 5*

"Too many notes". A classic line; I've used it before, in fact, the other day. Then of course I had to explain it to our youngest staff member, who wasn't even born when the movie came out. Or for many other of my cultural referents, for that matter.

*sigh*

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Archived

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