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by JustSomeNobody 3371 days ago
Features mostly. I mean, you seem to absolutely need the Gmail app. While I, too, have a Gmail account, I like the simplicity of the native mail app in iOS. I don't need any additional features. I get mail, I read mail, I can write mail.
3 comments
tripzilch 3371 days ago
you can't fill 140MB with "features mostly".

it's gotta be something like mostly media (uncompressed bitmaps), metadata, (debug symbols maybe?), libraries / platform / compatibility layers (95% of which is never used for any particular install).

I have seen what it looks like when you actually try to cram "features mostly" into a few tens of megabytes and the GMail app is not that.

source: the demoscene

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kalleboo 3371 days ago
I just downloaded the IPA. It literally looks like it has a 134 MB blob of code (out of a 215 MB universal .app).

Google must have some insane cross-platform code library or something in there.

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alimbada 3371 days ago
> I get mail, I read mail, I can write mail.

That's exactly what the Gmail app does too. What other features does it offer that the Mail app doesn't? If none, then why does it need to be so huge?

I picked on Gmail because it's the most recent culprit that I have noticed creeping (sometimes jumping) up in app size but it isn't the only one guilty of this. Like I said in my original comment, the Reddit app is 13MB and does a bit more than the Gmail app. I can read/write posts and comments and view images; similar features to Gmail, but I can also watch gifs and videos. Can someone explain why there is an order of magnitude of discrepancy between the two apps sizes?

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ceeK 3371 days ago
They're probably using several bloated SDK's within their app for core Google services, view elements etc etc. If they're using dynamic linking, they have to include these in the binary even if they only use a small percentage of the libraries.

That's potentially one explanation.

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bwat49 3371 days ago
I've never used the ios mail app, but in general gmail has a weird imap implementation that behaves wonky with a lot of mail clients so with gmail using the webmail or a gmail specific app is usually preferable.
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