How to package a large number photos with an Android app?

Question

By "a large number" I mean 548 at an average 300k. I would really like to avoid making users install the app and then download the image data on first run. The app won't be adding or removing photos, they are just part of the app's content data, displayed in list views and galleries and the like.

So far I've discovered that putting them all in res/drawable not only makes for a large .apk but also prevents the app from installing on either the emulator or my phone.

The target API is 8 (Fro-yo).

Answer 1

Google just added an option that may be helpful. Read this. For newer devices it'll download expansion files when you install. For older devices it'll be a download on first run. It's probably your best compromise.

Answer 2

Now you can use more then 50 Mb for your apk file. Here you can read that this feature was recently introduced and this is the tutorial how to use this.