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by chipperyman573 2586 days ago
>Google sent me a mail that "All new apps and app updates are required to provide 64-bit versions of any 32-bit native code they provide". So I won't be able to update existing app to existing users ever again, for non-technical reasons.

Isn't the reason entirely technical? 64-bit apps can use 64-bit only instruction sets, which are newer and usually faster, resulting in a performance improvement. BTW, apple did the same thing years ago on iOS and is planning to kill 32-bit apps on MacOS soon.
2 comments
izacus 2586 days ago
I think Google wants to allow OEMs to build devices that only support arm64-v8a arch - this will make the OS image significantly smaller because now they need to ship several components in duplicate - 32 and 64-bit versions. This is beneficial to total size of OS on the flash.

Apple did this years ago.

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kalleboo 2586 days ago
RAM usage as well as you no longer need to keep both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of OS libraries in memory at the same time.
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jmiskovic 2586 days ago
Android was written for 32 bit. It couldn't run 64-bit before Lollipop. Currently there's about 2% of 64-bit Android devices (https://web.archive.org/web/20170808222202/http://hwstats.un...). I agree with performance argument, especially on battery-powered devices. But in this case there's nothing to be gained because LuaJIT is written for 32-bit CPU. Compiling for 64 bits won't do anything. Besides, hardly anything can squeeze more performance out of CPU than LuaJIT.

I'm complaining different issue, though. I researched the platform requirements before investing time into android development. I shared my work for free because Google doesn't allow developers in my country to charge money for their work. I kept updating the app following the user feedback. I will lose the product because of this. This feels like rug being swept under my feet :(

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kalleboo 2586 days ago
Why are you using an internet archive link from 2 years ago to support a claim about "currently"? It also seems to be misclassifying everything ARM into one bucket (probably because the stats were being collected from 32-bit code...).

It looks to me like for the past 3 years every single mobile ARM CPU released has been 64-bit, and even for 2 years before that roughly half of them, the market share of these must be much larger https://dev1.notebook-check.com/index.php?id=149513&sort=&ty...

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jmiskovic 2586 days ago
This is the best data I could dig up. I would love to see newer statistics of market share, if anyone has a link.
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