While smartphones go Pro, Plus or XL, some of the world’s most popular Android apps appear to be following the exact opposite trend, trimming down their features, bells and whistles to occupy less space and work as smoothly as possible on older gear and/or slower data connections.

Hot on the heels of Facebook’s 10MB Messenger Lite release, Shazam goes from its standard 27MB or so size to a “highly optimized” sub-1 megabyte music recognition package.

The aptly titled Shazam Lite is already available (for free, naturally) in Google’s Play Store in India, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and Nigeria for folks that understand English, as well as Spanish speakers in Venezuela.

“Part of the company’s commitment to deliver its products to all smartphone users around the world – regardless of device limitations or network coverage”, the watered-down service, focused entirely on song identification, should theoretically work like a charm on gadgets running an Android version as old as 2010’s 2.3 Gingerbread.

It can even “Shazam music” (that’s apparently a verb now) while operating offline, saving your most recent results, and of course, “magically” naming one of over 11 million audio tracks in its database within seconds, after a simple tap.

Source: Business Wire