Which apk file version does my device require?

Question

So, it looks as if PTLite apk installers are still being uploaded to the Google drive (answer to a 2020 question about offline installation/updates). Two questions, please:

1. The latest Android for PTLite release seems to be a 9.5.16 from February. I'd really like to have a version with similar features to the Linux PTLite that we've been using, 9.5.17-beta, because we're wanting to use tablets along with some laptops. How far off is this version for Android?

2. Our new tablets have the Snapdragon 695 processor, which has "Instruction set ARMv8.2-A." It seems like this corresponds to the arm64-v8a apk file? Just want to be sure so as not to make a muddle of these devices.

Thank you so much for the continuing improvements to Paratext Lite!

Answer 1

2. Since it's a 'new' tablet and has a 64bit processor then almost certainly need the arm64-v8a. (In theory it is possible the device has a 32bit os but very unlikely)

However going forward I'd recommend using the playstore to install Paratext lite. (As producing the apk's is no longer quite as straight forward as before, as with 9.5.17.X we upload Android App Bundle (AAB) to the playstore, and the playstore creates the apk's and sends the minimal apk to the device)

1. The Android 9.5.17.X is in beta. Most of the changes from 9.5.16.X to 9.5.17.X are internal changes to the android app. But because of these major internal changes to the android app, we are having a much longer beta stage than normal.

One can get the beta version, by navigating to this link while signed in with the google account used on your android device:

https://play.google.com/apps/testing/org.paratext.ptlite

We have a lot of android users, so our main concern is that we don't cause any problems for users who upgrade from 9.5.16.X to 9.5.17.X, which is the reason for the extended beta stage. Other than that I consider it stable. (being used on 70+ device for quite some time now.)

The beta version is currently 9.5.17.44, this will soon see a large jump to 9.5.17.7?, (Which although the large version jump only represents a small amount of bug fixes)

Comments

Thanks for the good explanation! We have been benefitting from the beta Linux versions for a while. It's running quite nicely; I might not always remember that it is "beta" when I send feedback!