Lite apps should be available everywhere and to everyone

“Lite” apps have been around for years, but they started with Android Go – an initiative to make cheaper, low-end phones for people in low-income countries. Part of the initiative was to develop lightweight apps that work well on phones with little RAM and CPU power. It could have been a definite benefit for anyone who has an Android phone. Unfortunately, the developers have chosen to be evasive.

Nowadays, many Lite apps are only available in selected countries or regions. More only works on mid-range or low-end devices. There’s not much rhyme or reason for it, especially when the option to let everyone use an app is as simple as ticking a few boxes on the Google Play developer dashboard. It’s not the hottest or most controversial hot take, but Lite apps are good and should be available to everyone.

There are even situations where people in developed countries with high-end phones can use a simpler, less resource-intensive version of an app. You may live in a rural area with poor reception or you may be in the middle of a natural disaster. Some people even travel to an area with poor reception. The point is, people in emerging markets aren’t the only ones who can benefit. Let’s talk about why.

If I were to ask you what you think are the most resource intensive apps on Android, chances are you would mention an app on this list. If you don’t want to click, you can probably guess the culprits: Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat. You know them, the most popular mobile apps with the most downloads.

These apps have topped similar lists for years. As technology has become more powerful, every major company has taken full advantage by making their app(s) do more things, use more resources, and consume more of your data. These apps are even using more permissions than ever before, increasing the amount of data collected.

It’s usually not a big deal. Because more resources and overhead mean more performance. The problem is that the net gains you make from buying new hardware are often wiped out as developers keep adding extra stuff to consume those extra resources.

The end result is frustrating. We have more resources at our disposal even in low-end devices today than we did in any phone ten years ago, but low-end phones still feel sluggish when they really shouldn’t.

It’s one thing to just throw out statements like I just did, but there’s data to back it up.

Facebook is an excellent example of this. The full app preloads your feed in the background so it’s fast and responsive whenever you open it. Of course, this means that it consumes a lot of data and CPU cycles in the background. The install size is over 150 MB, and with pre-installed posts and other data-stealing features, it can reach 1 GB or more without much trouble.

Facebook Lite, on the other hand, has an install size of less than 5MB, doesn’t preload your feed, and doesn’t autoplay videos unless you’re connected to Wi-Fi by default. In fact, it uses about 25% fewer permissions than the full Facebook app. Yes, you lose some other features and your feed scrolling is a little slower, but at least you’ll know when Facebook Lite is using your data.

Facebook Lite simply runs less often and uses less data when you’re not in the app. The trade-off is better battery life, less background usage, and fewer background tasks running. These benefits would be nice to have on all phones, not just low-end ones.

What are the main differences? Facebook vs Facebook Lite

Most Lite apps are similar to full size Facebook. Developers, in most cases, aim for the wow factor rather than usability. After all, they try to get you on their app and keep you there for as long as possible, even if it means ruining your battery life in the process.

To stick with our Facebook example, most people need a whole tutorial on how to change the basic settings in the regular Facebook app. For example, let’s see how to disable autoplay of videos in your newsfeed. You then click on your profile picture Settings & Privacywhich brings up a list that you click on settings again. Then click your profile picture again and click Search media and contacts to finally arrive. That’s five levels of menus to change a setting.

On Facebook Lite? Then click on your profile picture settings. The autoplay video option is on quite a long list, but it’s still there after only two interactions, which means 60% less effort for the user. Optimizing for low usage often means developing more optimized apps that benefit everyone.

The point is that the difference between a lite app and a full app is not small. Complexity, disk space, and resource consumption are all objectively and measurably higher by a fairly significant margin for full apps than for lite apps.

Wirth’s law states that software becomes more sophisticated faster than hardware becomes more powerful. I think this law applies even though I’m almost 30 years old. Facebook is a top contender for the biggest resource hog of any mainstream Android app, after all, and has been on Android for its entire existence, despite massive leaps in hardware.

The lesser-known Zawinski’s law applies a little better. The short version is that apps that people spend a lot of time on have an increasing pressure to expand until they can do everything. Let’s continue using Facebook as an example. At first it was just a social network where you posted words, photos and videos.

After a while, Facebook became a forum with its groups feature, a messaging platform with Facebook Messenger, a video platform like YouTube, a short film platform like TikTok, a live streaming platform like Twitch, a marketplace like Craigslist , and the list goes on and on.

Another example is Google Chrome. It started as a browser, then grew into a web app platform and the process continued until it became a full operating system – Chrome OS. There are many other examples. The point is that as apps expand beyond their original scope, their resource usage also increases, even if end-user needs don’t change.

There are a variety of terms for when developers do such things. “Feature creep” is when software developers just keep adding extra stuff, even if it makes the app slow and bloated. “Sneaky elegance” means developers care more about how an app looks than how it works. Everything revolves around the same basic idea. These apps are huge and don’t need to be.

Lite apps counteract this pressure by bringing the core benefits of a software back into focus. Facebook Lite strips away many of the extras and offers a cleaner, less bloated, less resource-intensive app that does what most people hop onto Facebook for anyway. Not everyone needs a Twitch and Craigslist competitor and we should have the ability to choose what our experience is.

There are also Progressive Web Apps that use your browser to run “apps” instead of installing them. We think it’s a promising technology, but it still uses your browser, which can be just as resource intensive as a full app. The only thing you really save is disk space.

Well I don’t think many people will disagree with me that the choice is a good one. Many people like the standard Facebook experience and use all of the app’s features. However, the ability to fall down on a more fundamental experience does no harm to anyone.

I know I searched Facebook for this whole article. However, despite all the Facebook bugs, I can download and use Facebook Lite and Messenger Lite on my Galaxy S22 Ultra in the United States. In fact, Facebook is one of the few companies making their Lite apps widely available, which I both appreciate and use.

Unfortunately, it’s easy to see why most companies keep their Lite options exclusive to certain phones or parts of the world. Not only do they want you to use their all-rounder apps to keep you engaged with their platform for as long as possible, but they can serve you more ads and make more money. Lite apps make less money, but users shouldn’t have to devote significant resources to running a social media app, no matter where they live or what phone they own.

This is bad for a company’s bottom line. These lite apps aim to captivate the next billion smartphone users, and over time these new users are expected to migrate to the full experience. Still, it would be nice to have a choice.