This Is What Developing For Android Looks Like • Hacker News Board

Re: This Is What Developing For Android Looks Like

#21

Post by candiru » Sat, May 12, 2012, 12:02 AM UTC

yellowbkpk wrote: post #6

cryptoz wrote: post #2

> You know how all Android developers complain about fragmentation? Yeah, this is what fragmentation looks like. This is some of the most insulting garbage out there. I'm an Android developer. I don't complain about fragmentation. Ever. Don't you dare lump me into a group of people you hear complaining loudly. I'm not one of them! I know it can be hard to get apps to work across all phones. The variety of available h…

I completely agree. I was on a project to develop an extremely complex Android app and we survived just fine by testing on one tablet and one phone per developer (roughly 6 or 7 different devices total). The developer tools do an excellent job helping test for and deal with errors on the different in the Android ecosystem.

I agree too.

On more data point here: we just ported our fairly complex app (a file manager) from Honeycomb back to Froyo. If we had access to that many devices, of course we would have tested it on all of them, but our experience has been that using a few devices and some emulator configurations you can do surprisingly well enough. Not a single complaint so far, although admittedly our user base only approaches about 20k.

I think these articles exaggerate the effect of the fragmentation. It exists, it costs us developers some time and money, but not even close to being a "nightmare".

Re: This Is What Developing For Android Looks Like

#22

Post by wtracy » Sat, May 12, 2012, 12:03 AM UTC

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #14

gregable wrote: post #13

I'm not an android developer, but I am curious. Why is it that testing on dozens/hundreds of platforms is considered essential for cell phones, but not for PCs? Is android just that much worse at abstracting hardware than traditional OS'es?

I'm not sure either, but I think screen size/resolution/aspect ratio and different hardware "tools" (ie cameras with different resolutions, does it have one led or 2 for flash, etc) have potential to be problems. I'd like to hear more on this issue though.

Because all PCs have the same screen size, resolution, and aspect ratio? Please.

Re: This Is What Developing For Android Looks Like

#23

Post by clarky07 » Sat, May 12, 2012, 12:03 AM UTC

cryptoz wrote: post #2

> You know how all Android developers complain about fragmentation? Yeah, this is what fragmentation looks like. This is some of the most insulting garbage out there. I'm an Android developer. I don't complain about fragmentation. Ever. Don't you dare lump me into a group of people you hear complaining loudly. I'm not one of them! I know it can be hard to get apps to work across all phones. The variety of available h…

> but those problems are not something to complain about, and frankly, they're not any kind of showstopper.

Only if you want to try to make great apps instead of just good apps. As someone who has made both (i.e. really polish vs. just get it out there), if you want to make something really good it needs to be pixel perfect. Unfortunately that is something that is infinitely harder to do on Android than iOS. It is also why in general iOS apps look better than their Android counterparts.

Re: This Is What Developing For Android Looks Like

#24

Post by wtracy » Sat, May 12, 2012, 12:06 AM UTC

rokhayakebe wrote: post #4

Opportunity for a web-based emulator including all devices.

Or, say, a "cloud" solution that lets you remotely test on a variety of devices? Oh, look!

http://www.perfectomobile.com/portal/cms/android.html http://testdroid.com/product/testdroid-cloud

The solutions are already out there! Quit whining and get back to developing cool apps. :-)

Re: This Is What Developing For Android Looks Like

#25

Post by stesch » Sat, May 12, 2012, 12:07 AM UTC

yellowbkpk wrote: post #5

rokhayakebe wrote: post #4

Opportunity for a web-based emulator including all devices.

Why a web-based emulator? Just use the one that's included with the Android SDK. You can simulate any combination of memory, screen size, screen resolution, and various hardware characteristics. Sure it can be slow, but it's getting better and is actually emulating the system you're developing for.

Is the emulator in the SDK usable now? Last time I tried Android programming it was slow as hell. Unusable even for a simple Phonegap app.

Re: This Is What Developing For Android Looks Like

#26

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 12, 2012, 12:10 AM UTC

yellowbkpk wrote: post #16

taligent wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've never actually built an Android app have you ? The emulator is NOTHING like the real devices.

Yes I have. Admittedly we usually used real devices for testing but the emulator does just fine debugging most "fragmentation" issues (screen size and resolution and Android API differences).

[deleted]

Re: This Is What Developing For Android Looks Like

#27

Post by DominikR » Sat, May 12, 2012, 12:11 AM UTC

taligent wrote: post #9

cryptoz wrote: post #2

> You know how all Android developers complain about fragmentation? Yeah, this is what fragmentation looks like. This is some of the most insulting garbage out there. I'm an Android developer. I don't complain about fragmentation. Ever. Don't you dare lump me into a group of people you hear complaining loudly. I'm not one of them! I know it can be hard to get apps to work across all phones. The variety of available h…

Just so you know. You are absolutely in the minority of Android developers. Most want their apps to work on ALL phones.

This approach doesn't work on any existing mobile or desktop platform (web apps included). You always target a specific audience, that meets certain minimum hardware/OS requirements. (for example a modern GPU/RAM/OS for 3D games)

Re: This Is What Developing For Android Looks Like

#28

Post by jonasmaturana » Sat, May 12, 2012, 12:11 AM UTC

gregable wrote: post #13

I'm not an android developer, but I am curious. Why is it that testing on dozens/hundreds of platforms is considered essential for cell phones, but not for PCs? Is android just that much worse at abstracting hardware than traditional OS'es?

I think that one reason is that the handset manufacturer thinker more with Android than they do with a traditional OS. One example is the vendor specific themes.

Another reason for the higher focus on QA is "user ratings". Before companies didn't have to worry much about not supporting all users. With mobile a small percentage of users can give you a bad rating. The bosses are terrified about bad public ratings! :)

Re: This Is What Developing For Android Looks Like

#29

Post by nl » Sat, May 12, 2012, 12:11 AM UTC

gregable wrote: post #13

I'm not an android developer, but I am curious. Why is it that testing on dozens/hundreds of platforms is considered essential for cell phones, but not for PCs? Is android just that much worse at abstracting hardware than traditional OS'es?

Because it is early days for Android still (don't forget Android is less than 5 years old), and manufactures are still doing wacky things, and people are still uncovering bugs and edge cases.

In the early days of MS-DOS compatibility was a big problem too. Magazines used to use MS Flight Simultor to test how compatible PCs were - plenty failed that.

Re: This Is What Developing For Android Looks Like

#30

Post by estel » Sat, May 12, 2012, 12:16 AM UTC

jonasmaturana wrote: post #18

cryptoz wrote: post #2

> You know how all Android developers complain about fragmentation? Yeah, this is what fragmentation looks like. This is some of the most insulting garbage out there. I'm an Android developer. I don't complain about fragmentation. Ever. Don't you dare lump me into a group of people you hear complaining loudly. I'm not one of them! I know it can be hard to get apps to work across all phones. The variety of available h…

When they say "all Android developers" you can be pretty sure they mean "most Android developers". Working on several high profile apps here in Denmark I have felt the pain of not having enough real devices to test on. A bank just wont accept that you don't support one of the most common phone on the market because it has some problems with the camera. Another project ran into the BigInteger.modPow is not thread safe…

Isn't "not supporting one of the most common phones" a different order of magnitude from what they're discussing here?

Hell yes that app should be supporting the Galaxy S2s and HTC Desires of this world, but the majority of those 400+ devices will probably be used by < 0.0001% of your users, particularly if the app is targeting a Western audience.