Android Compatibility and Fragmentation

tbray writes "Here are the details on the Android Compatibility Program — which combines the source, a formal compatibility spec, an open-source test suite, and access to the Android Market as reward for good behavior (program page). People like to rant about the subject of fragmentation, so here's TFM that they should be R'ing first."

Re:Screen res

[Anonymous Coward]

Motorola Droid is FWVGA, at 854x480

hrmf...

[hitmark]

this should have been made perfectly clear from google's side from day one. Yet everyone kept talking about android marketplace as if it was a part of the android source until the first android based devices without marketplace showed up, and none could figure out why.

i only ran into it after ranting about google's mismanagement of marketplace access on some forum, and got a link handed to me.

another issue is that 1.6 required that a compatible device could function as a phone. So any device thats been in development since 1.6 was first released, wont have marketplace unless its a phone or stalls its release until they can get 2.1 or newer working and approved by google. And even then the max resolution of the screen is 800x600, and i think the screen size is in the 5-7" range.

basically, google is lagging badly behind where third parties want to go with android. And its not helping that marketplace is only really usable in select nations so far (and when a sim is inserted into the device).

Re:This doesn't solve fragmentation

[ergo98]

The problem is (from an app developer standpoint) is that there are too many variables in the android world to code an app once to run successfully across the ecosystem.

Yet strangely many people are successfully doing this.

You have to design a version for on-screen keyboards (because it'll use part of the screen real estate) separately from a version that uses a hardware keyboard. They don't need to be separate apps, but you need to design (visually at least) for both scenarios, or you end up locking out a good portion of the people who use android devices.

Completely wrong. Where are you getting this from?

Sure, there are 100,000+ android devices out there

Over 100,000 Android devices activated per day.

so in order to sell your app on all 100,000 of those phones you've got to tweak your app for each device

No you don't. You have no idea what you're talking about. And you're at Score:4 right now, which is shameful.

One way to call the Camera API

Ugh. You shouldn't have posted because almost everything you have said is just completely wrong.

The Android developer platform is extraordinarily universal. There's a density independent pixel format (which is how an app looks almost the same on a 320x480 screen as it looks on a 480x800 screen), support for varying screen ratios, a single way to inter-operate with the camera and send emails and read the GPS signal and get orientation signals, or even do advance OpenGL graphics.

One app to rule them all.

There are of course differences and occasionally "quirks". If you make a rich graphics game it's going to run terribly on a G1. Flash is only available on some devices. And of course if you have to target a newer API, presumably because it has a feature that you can't live without, you limit your app to that version and above (just as if I use Transactional Filesystem calls my Windows app would be Vista or newer).

Why fragmentation is FUD:

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You will find the answer to this mystery in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" [catb.org] by Eric S. Raymond [1992].

Basically, Microsoft and Apple are code cathedrals. Using the Cathedral system they can organize the labor of a great many people. In a Cathedral you can do anything that is permitted to be done in that Cathedral - which can be almost anything that brings the controlling powers profit really. But if you want to do something they don't want you to do, then you can't and there's nothing you can do about it but leave the cathedral or accept that you can't do that thing.

Android and the Linuxes are the Bazaar. It's noisy and chaotic. It can be harder to find things. Some of the things you find in a Bazaar are quite crude. But in the Bazaar you can do anything you want any way you want. The Bazaar is run by everybody in it, for each to his own benefit. Almost anything that can be found in the Cathedral can also be purchased in the Bazaar by a man with ready cash. Almost anything.

One thing that can be bought in the Cathedral but not in the Bazaar is the preventing of things you don't want others to do. If somebody wants to prevent the use of VP8 or Flash in the Cathedral, or the development of hardware platforms that don't run Windows, well, anything can be proscribed if the price is right. The Cathedral is run by the head priest, and not specifically for your benefit but primarily for the benefit of the Cathedral - because it's this self serving nature that makes Cathedrals persistent and powerful.

One is not necessarily better than the other. Each has merits, each has uses.