Difference between managed and unmanaged in-app product android?

Question

I went through the developer forum to know the difference between managed an unmanaged in-app products. they are saying that "Items that are unmanaged do not have their transaction information stored on Android Market, which means you cannot query Android Market to retrieve transaction information for items whose purchase type is listed as unmanaged. You are responsible for managing the transaction information of unmanaged items." What does it mean? When i test the in-app product for both managed and unmanaged im getting proper response from server, in my merchant account also the order is getting displyed for both managed and un-managed app. please help me to know the difference between these two.

Answer 1

UnManaged could be something like "Buy 50 points"

The 50 points would then be added to your account and you would store this on your accounts server, therefore the Android Market no longer needs to know that you purchased this product i.e. it will not remember your purchase and you can purchase it multiple times.

Managed could be "Buy this song"

In this scenario you do not have a server to record that they bought the song and so every time they reinstall you can query the market to see they bought the song and it will not let you download it more than once.

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Managed is aimed at one time downloads then you 'own that object'.

UnManaged is for multiple downloads of the same thing to 'top something up'.

Least thats my understanding.

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Version 3 has the concept of 'consumables' and it works inline with the above. All products are managed but you can 'consume' a product.

i.e. "Buy 50 points" will give the user fifty managed points, the user will not be allowed to purchase that item again until you consume that product.

Therefore you can make unmanaged products by consuming instantly, or managed products by consuming when the user has "used" that product (i.e. never call consume for buying a song).

Answer 2

As of Version 3 of the Android Billing API, both consumable and non-consumable goods can be managed. From what I've gathered if you want to use the version 3 billing API, all your IAPs must be "managed".

Here's a link to the documentation: http://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/api.html#consumetypes