Google enables smart app updates in Play Store

One of most useful announcements for Android users at this year's Google I/O was the smart app updates and now it is a reality. Google has just flipped the switch and enabled the feature in Play Store.

What are smart app updates? Until earlier today, when an app was updated in the Play Store, the entire updated version was downloaded to the Android device. This process was particularly a pain with big sized apps and games, when not only the data bandwidth but also the battery of Android device was wasted unnecessarily. But, from now on, Google will smartly figure out which chunks of the app have been changed in an update and only those chunks will be updated in your Android device.

So, when you download the latest update to Instagram app (or any other app) on your device today, look at the download bar and you will see that rather than downloading the entire 13.25MB Instagram Android app, Google will just push the updated part - which is around 2-3MB.

Smart app updates seem to be live for all Play Store versions, thus making it a server-side change rather than client-side.

Google seems to be making quite a few changes on Play Store front these days, two upcoming features gift card and wish list support were discovered yesterday and likely to go live in the coming days.