APK stands for Android Package (sometimes Android Package Kit or Android Application Package). It's the file format that Android uses to distribute and install apps. As a result, APKs contain all the elements that an app needs to install correctly on your device.
Generally, archive files (like ZIP) are used to combine multiple files into one, in order to make them more portable or compress them to save space. When an archive is used to distribute software, it's then called a software package.
As it turns out,
android APK
are a variant of the JAR (Java Archive) file format, since a lot of Android is built in Java. All APKs are ZIP files at their core, but they must contain additional information to properly function as an APK.
So all APKs are ZIPs, but not all ZIPs are APKs. If you're curious, you can crack open an APK file and see what's inside. Just use one of the best file extraction tools, like 7-Zip, to open it like you would any old ZIP file.
|