First Android Instant Apps going live

Fariha Khan
January 24, 2017
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The first Android Instant Apps which were announced at I/O 2016 as a new model for software that doesn’t need require a full download, are live as part of limited testing now. BuzzFeed, Periscope, Wish as well as Viki are the initial partners, with Google starting to open up the experience for other third-party developers as well.

We’ve been working with a small number of developers to refine the user and developer experiences. Today, a few of these Instant Apps will be available to Android users for the first time in a limited test, including apps from BuzzFeed, Wish, Periscope, and Viki. By collecting user feedback and iterating on the product, we’ll be able to expand the experience to more apps and more users.

Google’s objective with Instant Apps is to enable “users discover and run apps with minimal friction.”

The experience during our hands-on at I/O was very impressive even on a Nexus 5 running 4.4 KitKat. Better shopping interaction, with an in-app experience having support for modern features such as Android Pay outplaying the mobile web with ease are some of the advantages that you can make the most of.

Noting great interest in Android Instant Apps from tons of developers, a full release is still planned for later in 2017 instead of the end of last year that was first quoted at I/O.

But developers can take steps to modularize their Android Instant apps now to make the most of the functionality. The complete SDK will be available in near future and developers will be able to use the similar Android Studio project and Android APIs.