What are Android application update issues and best practices ?

Question

I've published an Android applications on the Android market and now have an update to do.

I want to know if any of you have already done that, and what experience can you share about it :

• How to manage version conflicts ?
• What to do with databases ?
• Can you make appear a message with "what's new" if it's an update, but nothing it's a new installation ?
• Should you backup old data before updating, and how ?
• Did you run into any trouble and how did you solve it ?
• Can update be partial (like, just a patch) ?

Any advice is welcome.

Answer 1

I'll comment only on what I've experienced: Android market will not let you have package version conflicts. It examines the package and if the new version is less than or equal to the old version it will refuse the upload (it did with me).

All updates appear as a patch to the user, although I believe they aredownloading a whole new package and not just the changed bytecode.