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How Fragmented Is Android?

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Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#11

Post by zanny »

pjmlp wrote: post #9

Khronos likes to talk about Vulkan support on Android. The reality is that thanks for it being an optional API, introduced in version 7, only flagships have proper support. And even then, each OEM provides a different version, with their own set of instructions. Hardly any better than GL ES. Now they are doing it compulsory on Android 9, upgradable via the store, with GL support being supported via ANGLE. Guess what,…

I don't get the negative sentiment here. When Vulkan was brand new Google didn't want to force it in 7.0 or they might have had even more devices still stuck on 6.0 today.

The fact they made it mandatory and independent of vendor in 9 is laudable. Doing so absolutely costs them adoption of the latest releases but they did it anyway.

When you say "first you need a device with Android 9" that is on the vendors to provide. And the scarcity of 9 can in part be contributed to compulsory Vulkan support. Most of Googles first party phones now run it, even though their general attitude of abandoning 4+ year old products is still egregious.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#12

Post by pekalicious »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #10

The article concludes, as far as I can tell, it isn't fragmented, it just has a bunch of recent enough versions on similar enough devices to run most apps. Apps don't care what version of Android you run, they care what API support you have, and apps can detect API support at runtime and adapt. OTOH, the article fails to mention that Apple refuses to let you support devices after EOL, and even some of the oldest Andr…

What makes Samsung phones consumer hostile? Their ridiculous prices? Because I wouldn't call that hostile, rather simply overpriced. And I would agree that they are.

However, I still have every galaxy note I have ever owned, working, and in great condition (Note 2, 5, and now 8). My dad is actually using the 5. All of them got upgraded at least once to a newer Android OS and they are still solid devices.

Granted, other than Note, I've only owned a Startosphere for the hw keyboard, so I can't compare it to others, but even after I realized that the Note 8 was crazy expensive and made me double think what my next phone will be, I worry if the longevity can be matched.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#13

Post by mattlondon »

on_and_off wrote: post #4

I work on an Android app aimed at the North American market. Android O, P and Q are 88% of our Android devices. By far and large, fragmentation is something I _never_ have to think about. Jetpack libraries are here to handle it for us, as an abstraction layer between the OS and third party apps. I would have mentioned that e.g. camera apps are an exception : here hardware fragmentation can be a pain. I was half surpr…

+1 I have a few hobby apps on the app store that gave had a few thousand downloads. Not a huge sample but generally speaking it's N+ that has the vast majority of users. My apps are fairly standard or are games - most API levels since M seem to basically cover everything I need 99% of the time.

I have no interest AT ALL in the manufacturer of the device.

Fragmentation simply doesn't feel like an issue, at least to me.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#14

Post by josteink »

jherdman wrote: post #8

> My POV is ... Apple leads the Mobile OS market share ... by a huge margin. I'm having a really hard time understanding this statement. Does the author mean with respect to how updates are handled? It clearly cannot mean in terms of sheer number of installs, Android is clearly _leagues_ ahead of iOS in that regard.

He’s basically claiming that latest iOS has higher market share than latest Android version (which may be true), and from that concludes that the rest of the android versions in the market somehow don’t count, so iOS is biggest.

Android has its issues, but “math” like this isn’t the answer. This is drivel, really.

Also: See Wintel for fragmentation. Everywhere in nature and tech diversity is good. But somehow not for mobile phone OSes.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#15

Post by rarestblog »

Well, if you remove all iOS versions with https://i.imgur.com/0Ar0ta5.png

My point being: there ARE other iOS versions in use. I have a backup working iPhone 4 turned on right now. It won't upgrade beyond iOS 5 (I think it's iOS 5). But somehow the author ignores all those 0.1% iOS versions, yet shows them for Android (with 4 decimals no less).

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#16

Post by DiabloD3 »

pekalicious wrote: post #12
DiabloD3 wrote: post #10

The article concludes, as far as I can tell, it isn't fragmented, it just has a bunch of recent enough versions on similar enough devices to run most apps. Apps don't care what version of Android you run, they care what API support you have, and apps can detect API support at runtime and adapt. OTOH, the article fails to mention that Apple refuses to let you support devices after EOL, and even some of the oldest Andr…

What makes Samsung phones consumer hostile? Their ridiculous prices? Because I wouldn't call that hostile, rather simply overpriced. And I would agree that they are. However, I still have every galaxy note I have ever owned, working, and in great condition (Note 2, 5, and now 8). My dad is actually using the 5. All of them got upgraded at least once to a newer Android OS and they are still solid devices. Granted, oth…

Samsung phones ship with ROMs that try to remove as much of the native Android experience as possible, and tend to eat battery life for no good reason. Swapping ROMs to AOSP-like experiences vastly improves battery life and performance on many Samsung phones.

Several Galaxy and Note devices also cannot ROM swap at all due to locked bootloaders, which makes that the most consumer hostile thing of all. I'm not sure which models this effects, but it is enough to put Samsung on my forever shitlist.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#17

Post by arendtio »

josteink wrote: post #14
jherdman wrote: post #8

> My POV is ... Apple leads the Mobile OS market share ... by a huge margin. I'm having a really hard time understanding this statement. Does the author mean with respect to how updates are handled? It clearly cannot mean in terms of sheer number of installs, Android is clearly _leagues_ ahead of iOS in that regard.

He’s basically claiming that latest iOS has higher market share than latest Android version (which may be true), and from that concludes that the rest of the android versions in the market somehow don’t count, so iOS is biggest. Android has its issues, but “math” like this isn’t the answer. This is drivel, really. Also: See Wintel for fragmentation. Everywhere in nature and tech diversity is good . But somehow not fo…

> diversity is good

It depends on what the cause is. If I have no option to update to a recent version and causing diversity that way, it is bad. If I can choose to install a custom version, it is good. So in Android's case, the diversity is just a symptom of the underlying fragmentation of responsibility for updates.

However, phone manufacturers might see this a bit differently.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#18

Post by rocky1138 »

> The vast majority of iPhone users update to the latest version quite fast and flawlessly.

Has this person ever been around iPhone owners when a new update comes out? I seem to remember a ton of lamentation at every step of slower speed, worse battery, laggy UI, moved features, removed features, and the like.

Yeah, there's a lot of different Android versions out there. Who cares? Other than security updates, it's pretty much a non-issue. Developers target the version they want to support and publish their app online.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#19

Post by com2kid »

Something that doesn't get talked about as much is the differences between how manufacturers customize their OS. It has been talked about a fair bit on HN (https://dontkillmyapp.com/), but it really is a huge problem.

I can be listening to music on my phone and One+ will just kill Pandora, or Spotify. I have to manually "lock" music apps and workout apps in One+'s task switching UI to keep them from being randomly killed while in use.

Hilariously enough I have one game on my phone that will always run in the background and never be killed, sucking down a lot power. Somehow even when not in the foreground it consumes massive CPU. I don't think it is even malicious, just oddly programmed. I wish my music apps could pull off the same trick though!

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#20

Post by clumsysmurf »

on_and_off wrote: post #4

I work on an Android app aimed at the North American market. Android O, P and Q are 88% of our Android devices. By far and large, fragmentation is something I _never_ have to think about. Jetpack libraries are here to handle it for us, as an abstraction layer between the OS and third party apps. I would have mentioned that e.g. camera apps are an exception : here hardware fragmentation can be a pain. I was half surpr…

> I would have mentioned that e.g. camera apps are an exception : here hardware fragmentation can be a pain. I was half surprised to see that Google is also working on that one with the camera x library.

The irony, is that Android was originally designed to be a Camera OS. So its still fragmented in the thing it set out to do.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2034723/android-founder-we-a...

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