Play by Download lets you play a 400MB game in 10 seconds instead of minutes. Waiting for an app to download and install can be frustrating, especially if it’s a large gaming app with high-resolution graphics. For Android 12, however, Google is ready to take that frustration away with a new feature that gets you playing in seconds instead of minutes.
It’s called “Play While You Download” and uses a smart background download system to allow a game to play before it’s completely downloaded. The example given by Google is a 400MB game that can be played in just 10 seconds “instead of several minutes”. As you play, the download will continue and complete without interrupting your game session.
As reported by Ars Technica, this feature will be exclusive to Android 12, as it is based on a new incremental FS file system that will be introduced with the new version of the operating system. Google describes Incremental FS as a “special Linux virtual file system that allows a program to run while its binaries and resource files are still slowly downloaded over the network, USB, etc. It focuses on the incremental delivery of a small number (less than 100) of large files (more than 10 MB).
An existing feature for faster app access is available on Android called Instant Play, but it requires developers to split their apps in a specific way and is limited in that the app has to be split into 10MB chunks. Playing while downloading is better because not only does it handle large amounts of data, but it also happens automatically and without any extra work from the developers. The only change the developers needed to make was going to happen anyway: switching from the old Android App Bundle (APK) file format to Google’s new Android App Bundle (AAB) format.
For consumers, the key takeaway is that games will be much faster to play on any device running Android 12. Only newly released titles can be included at first, but eventually all.
