I keep running into this issue about once a month. I build and deploy my app to my Android device, and at the end of deployment I get the ambiguous error:
INSTALL_FAILED_UPDATE_INCOMPATIBLE
This thread in the Xamarin forums gives a variety of different solutions, but I wanted to document it for myself and others in a nice clear list of things to try, in the order of easy-to-do first:
- Uninstall whatever version of your app is on the device and try to deploy again.
- Install the app store version of your app, uninstall it, and try to deploy again.
- In the system Settings/Device/Applications/App Manager on the All tab, find the
com.<appname>.<anypackage>
Select it, uninstall it, and then try to deploy again.
This third one is sure-fire way, so you might start with that and skip the trial and error.