What You Know About APK Downloads Might Be Wrong
Most of us Android smartphone users keep installing and trying different applications and games from the Google Play store regularly. These applications are installed automatically and just appear on our smartphones when we click the install button. On the other hand, there is another way to install applications and games, and even live wallpaper on your smartphone without using an application store like Google Play. That is where APK or Android application Package files come into play.
Anyone who has used an Android mobile phone and likes to install many applications and games will likely already know or read about APK files. The APK file extension is a special file format that works much like a standard EXE or executable file does on a Windows computer. It is an executable program file that installs an application on your Android mobile phone.
These files are certainly easy to use but you first need to setup your smart phone to install applications from independent party sources. There's an alternative for that within your phone's settings, usually found within the security or applications settings sections. Once you check that, you only need to copy an APK file to your memory card, and Full Write-up you're good to go.
In contrast, the tricky part is finding a reliable source of such files. You can not just download files with the APK file extension from any website. Quite a couple of web pages that don't run proper antivirus checks and verify the application files uploaded there. Several of these can easily be viruses or other malware designed to give somebody else access to your phone's features like the camera, microphone, your picture gallery and contacts lists, breaching your privacy. As long when you download APK files from reliable sources though, you shouldn't possess any problems.
In most cases, you will find discontinued applications or live wallpapers like Flappy Bird online in the type of APK files that other individuals who use the app have uploaded to web pages. They are an extremely good source of custom applications as well that users made for their very own use. Those simple, small, and mostly ad free applications are great to add some new features to your mobile phone for example a flashlight or perhaps an RSS reader. In contrast, one should be very careful about what file we download and from where because not everybody will make good quality applications and some can even mess up the telephone if run upon an incompatible device.
