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Introducing Incremental OTA Support

· 2 min read
OTA
OTA
HexDroid

We are excited to announce that HexDroid now supports incremental Over-the-Air (OTA) updates.

This feature allows for the delivery of smaller, more efficient update packages that contain only the changes between two specific versions. This significantly reduces download sizes, saves bandwidth, and improves the update experience for end-users.

Full update packages can be large, consuming significant bandwidth and leading to slower downloads for end-users.

Incremental updates solve this problem by delivering only the specific changes between the current version on a device and the new version.

This results in a smaller update package.

For you, this means lower delivery costs and happier users.

For your users, it means faster downloads and a seamless update process that gets them on the latest version with minimal disruption.

How to Use Incremental Updates​

Integrating incremental updates into your workflow is straightforward. When you upload a release payload, you can now specify that it is an incremental update and define its source version.

Generating an Incremental OTA for AOSP​

For AOSP builds, you can generate an incremental OTA package using the ota_from_target_files script. For example:

ota_from_target_files -i previous_target_files.zip new_target_files.zip incremental_ota_update.zip

Uploading via the HexDroid CLI​

Once you have your incremental package, you can upload it to a specific release using the HexDroid CLI.

The --incrementalPayload flag is used to specify the source version code from which this update applies. For example:

hexdroid-cli ota upload-payload \
   --distributed=<distributed> \
   --apiKey=<apiKey> \
   --file=<file> \
   --target=<target> \
   --type=<payloadType> \
   --versionCode=<versionCode> \
+  --incrementalPayload=<from_version_code>

When a device running the from_version_code checks for an update, HexDroid will automatically serve this incremental package.

All other devices will receive the full OTA package you've uploaded for that release.

Get Started​

For more detailed information on managing release payloads, check out our documentation.

🚀 Learn More: OTA Management Documentation