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How Fragmented Is Android?

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Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#141

Post by ehsankia »

saagarjha wrote: post #132
ehsankia wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, if you want a fair comparison, compare fragmentation between iPhone's and Pixel phones. Yes, I realize that as a developer, fragmentation can be more of a pain on Android, but comparing it directly to iOS is comparing Apples to oranges.

Very few people buy Pixel phones.

That's beside the point, as we are talking about fragmentation percentages. The point is, Apple has full control over their hardware, so obviously they will have less fragmentation. To have a fair comparison, we should compare to Pixel where Google has full control over.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#142

Post by simonh »

ryandrake wrote: post #97
radley wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not unique to Android. I still use an old iPad 3 (stuck on iOS 9) for movies & audiobooks in bed. I can still use Netflix, Plex, & Audible because I downloaded them a long time ago. But I recently switched to 1Password and I can't install it on that iPad.

I don’t think iPad 3 is even “old”. I have an original iPad 1, and the situation is even worse: I’m frozen in time on iOS 5, and the device has been losing app availability for years. Without jail breaking, it can basically only do what was installed with it from the factory. The hardware itself outlasts most companies’ software support by 2-4X. I see a bleak future of millions of perfectly usable devices that are on…

Can you still access the App Store? A few years ago in 2017 I found my old iPhone 3GS in a drawer. I fired it up and it still connected to the App Store, and I was able to download some apps I'd bought back in the day. Even some apps that hadn't been updated or available for newer devices for years, including Lemonade Stand, an old favourite. It was great seeing my kinds play that on my old Phone.

I got my daughter a newer device later that year, so don't know if it still works. I've lost track of it again.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#143

Post by kalleboo »

izacus wrote: post #67
chipperyman573 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Google sent me a mail that "All new apps and app updates are required to provide 64-bit versions of any 32-bit native code they provide". So I won't be able to update existing app to existing users ever again, for non-technical reasons. Isn't the reason entirely technical? 64-bit apps can use 64-bit only instruction sets, which are newer and usually faster, resulting in a performance improvement. BTW, apple did the…

I think Google wants to allow OEMs to build devices that only support arm64-v8a arch - this will make the OS image significantly smaller because now they need to ship several components in duplicate - 32 and 64-bit versions. This is beneficial to total size of OS on the flash. Apple did this years ago.

RAM usage as well as you no longer need to keep both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of OS libraries in memory at the same time.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#144

Post by Beldin »

Const-me wrote: post #120
ryandrake wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think iPad 3 is even “old”. I have an original iPad 1, and the situation is even worse: I’m frozen in time on iOS 5, and the device has been losing app availability for years. Without jail breaking, it can basically only do what was installed with it from the factory. The hardware itself outlasts most companies’ software support by 2-4X. I see a bleak future of millions of perfectly usable devices that are on…

> where I can still run recent versions of Linux on devices 10-20 years old. 10 sure, but not 20. 20 years ago the devices had 32 bit CPUs, the support for them is being phased out. The last 32-bit Ubuntu LTS is 16.04.6, from 2016.

Ubuntu 16.04 is still receiving updates - unlike typical Android phones from the same era.

While you might not get the latest kernel with it, as far as I can tell, there is nothing in its package manager that doesn't run on hardware from 2016. Unkike typical Android devices from the same era.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#145

Post by Const-me »

codedokode wrote: post #140
Const-me wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where I can still run recent versions of Linux on devices 10-20 years old. 10 sure, but not 20. 20 years ago the devices had 32 bit CPUs, the support for them is being phased out. The last 32-bit Ubuntu LTS is 16.04.6, from 2016.

Doesn't Debian support 32-bit systems? Also, using 64-bit has little value if you have less than 8 Gb of RAM.

> Doesn't Debian support 32-bit systems?

Yes. But I think it’ll only a matter of time before they stop, too.

> using 64-bit has little value if you have less than 8 Gb of RAM.

Address space brings much value. No need to worry about address space fragmentation, also you can safely use memory mapping, even for large files.

Extra registers also very nice performance-wise, both general purpose r8-r15 and vector xmm8-xmm15.

Finally, when you code AMD64 you can rely on having at least SSE1 and SSE2 SIMD, their support is a requirement.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#146

Post by kalleboo »

jmiskovic wrote: post #79
chipperyman573 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Google sent me a mail that "All new apps and app updates are required to provide 64-bit versions of any 32-bit native code they provide". So I won't be able to update existing app to existing users ever again, for non-technical reasons. Isn't the reason entirely technical? 64-bit apps can use 64-bit only instruction sets, which are newer and usually faster, resulting in a performance improvement. BTW, apple did the…

Android was written for 32 bit. It couldn't run 64-bit before Lollipop. Currently there's about 2% of 64-bit Android devices ( https://web.archive.org/web/20170808222202/http://hwstats.un... ). I agree with performance argument, especially on battery-powered devices. But in this case there's nothing to be gained because LuaJIT is written for 32-bit CPU. Compiling for 64 bits won't do anything. Besides, hardly anythin…

Why are you using an internet archive link from 2 years ago to support a claim about "currently"? It also seems to be misclassifying everything ARM into one bucket (probably because the stats were being collected from 32-bit code...).

It looks to me like for the past 3 years every single mobile ARM CPU released has been 64-bit, and even for 2 years before that roughly half of them, the market share of these must be much larger https://dev1.notebook-check.com/index.php?id=149513&sort=&ty...

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#147

Post by Const-me »

Beldin wrote: post #144
Const-me wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where I can still run recent versions of Linux on devices 10-20 years old. 10 sure, but not 20. 20 years ago the devices had 32 bit CPUs, the support for them is being phased out. The last 32-bit Ubuntu LTS is 16.04.6, from 2016.

Ubuntu 16.04 is still receiving updates - unlike typical Android phones from the same era. While you might not get the latest kernel with it, as far as I can tell, there is nothing in its package manager that doesn't run on hardware from 2016. Unkike typical Android devices from the same era.

> as I can tell, there is nothing in its package manager that doesn't run on hardware from 2016.

Right, but 20 years ago was 1999. I won’t be surprised to find out many packages won’t work: that CPU doesn’t have SSE2, the RAM limit is 512 MB, and typical systems usually had 64 or 128 MB.

The official page says recommended minimum requirements for Ubuntu 16.04 are 2 GHz dual core processor with 2GB RAM. 20 years old PCs don’t fit.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#148

Post by kalleboo »

pjmlp wrote: post #75
izacus wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how would you "fix" the issue? E.g. how would you add Vulcan on devices that do not have GPUs capable of Vulkan requirements and no proper drivers?

Have made it compulsory on Android 7, and like Microsoft has done multiple times, specify what the hardware requirements for any device should be. And since Android 1, have made OS updates a requirement of the Android licence contract for Google services.

And if they did that, instead you would have just bought a phone that was stuck on Android 6

> made OS updates a requirement of the Android licence contract

Now you're being contradictory. You want to force manufacturers to always update to the new Android versions. But you ALSO want to make Android 7 require specific hardware features. How could these requirements work together?

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#149

Post by eecc »

ryandrake wrote: post #97
radley wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not unique to Android. I still use an old iPad 3 (stuck on iOS 9) for movies & audiobooks in bed. I can still use Netflix, Plex, & Audible because I downloaded them a long time ago. But I recently switched to 1Password and I can't install it on that iPad.

I don’t think iPad 3 is even “old”. I have an original iPad 1, and the situation is even worse: I’m frozen in time on iOS 5, and the device has been losing app availability for years. Without jail breaking, it can basically only do what was installed with it from the factory. The hardware itself outlasts most companies’ software support by 2-4X. I see a bleak future of millions of perfectly usable devices that are on…

That’s what happened with desktop PCs when design progress (or deliberate gradualism some would say) obsoleted machines over the course of several months.

Same happened with mobile devices, where designers and manufacturers were looking for the ideal recipe of a mobile phone.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#150

Post by pjmlp »

kalleboo wrote: post #148
pjmlp wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have made it compulsory on Android 7, and like Microsoft has done multiple times, specify what the hardware requirements for any device should be. And since Android 1, have made OS updates a requirement of the Android licence contract for Google services.

And if they did that, instead you would have just bought a phone that was stuck on Android 6 > made OS updates a requirement of the Android licence contract Now you're being contradictory. You want to force manufacturers to always update to the new Android versions. But you ALSO want to make Android 7 require specific hardware features. How could these requirements work together?

The same way they have worked forever on the PC world.

OS updates always work with fallbacks, and minimum hardware specifications get revised every few years.

Google can ask Microsoft how to do it.

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