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How Fragmented Is Android?

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Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#41

Post by atomicUpdate »

samdung wrote: post #3
monocasa wrote: post #2

These articles rarely go over what, if any, practical concerns there are. The Wintel market is even more fragmented, but that's not really an issue in practice because the abstractions are more or less in the right place.

The articles states the vast majority of android phones do not receive any updates but Google is able to collect valuable data from these devices. I beleieve this is a practical concern.

Why is this a concern? They never paid for Android to begin with and still get to use Google services like Maps, Play, GMail, etc.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#43

Post by throw03172019 »

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’ve been doing iOS since 2008 and the “specific fixes” are definitely more common these days! iOS used to be a simple platform with one standard phone size and tablet size but it started to increase in complexity with all the new devices today (I’m looking at you iPhone X). iOS 6 -> iOS 7-8 was such a pain to main backward compatibility because of all the navigation/status bar changes.

I still find iOS to be my preferred platform but the “it just works” feeling is no longer there.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#44

Post by blihp »

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…

It sounds like you're rolling with whatever Google's latest 'solution' to fragmentation is, so of course it's not going to be an issue: Google is dropping old devices for you so they never even appear in your console stats.[1] This is a perfectly valid business decision to take on your end, but it doesn't mean that the problem doesn't still exist... only that you aren't having to deal with it. I've got several still functional 4.x-5.x devices (thanks to stellar upgrade policies) that can't even use the market anymore (so much for compatibility libraries being the solution)[2] I've also done Android development and years ago stopped believing that the real solution they have to offer is anything other than throw your devices away after a few years. Me bitter? Only when I read posts saying fragmentation is a solved problem on Android ;-)

[1] You say that O/P/Q are 88% of your devices but they only represent 38.7% of devices accessing the market (Q doesn't even show up) per https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards. Likely the solution Google has provided ignores a significant chunk of devices out there. When they announce these new initiatives, they tend to support the most widely-used and recent devices while quietly ignoring the rest. A valid strategy, but hardly comprehensive. (yeah, yeah... this time is different)

[2] Technically, they can still access the market, they just can't download anything. Probably either some web API breakage or no longer supported version of something on the device.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#45

Post by chipperyman573 »

jmiskovic wrote: post #21

I'm not a professional app developer. A year ago I invested few months to develop an app I wanted to have. Today it has few thousand users. Fragmentation doesn't bother me. Yes, on some devices the app crashes, on others the sound lag is unbearable. I don't really care, as long as it works fine on most devices. Two things infuriate me, though. Enough to never again spend another minute developing for android. Every t…

>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 same thing years ago on iOS and is planning to kill 32-bit apps on MacOS soon.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#46

Post by yegle »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #38
rarestblog wrote: post #15

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).

The other point is that most Apple store apps become uninstallable on anything older than three iOS versions.

This. I'm happily using JuiceSSH in Android Q beta even though it was last updated in 2017 and was targeting Android L. Android maintained reasonably good backward compatibility just like Windows did.

So many iOS app developers would use new SDK as soon as newer iOS is out, and abandon existing users who chose to use old iOS. Worse, those app developers would choose to drop old version, release a new version that requires you to purchase again.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#47

Post by dmix »

blihp wrote: post #44
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…

It sounds like you're rolling with whatever Google's latest 'solution' to fragmentation is, so of course it's not going to be an issue: Google is dropping old devices for you so they never even appear in your console stats.[1] This is a perfectly valid business decision to take on your end, but it doesn't mean that the problem doesn't still exist... only that you aren't having to deal with it. I've got several still…

> but they only represent 38.7% of devices accessing the market

He said he targets North America. Those stats you referenced are global.

If he was supporting parts of Asia, Latin America, etc then I have a feeling his team would have to be more careful.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#48

Post by rubyn00bie »

com2kid wrote: post #19

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…

I don't think a lot of people understand how apps run in the background on Android. I know having worked on one recently, coming from iOS, I had a lot of assumptions about what it would or wouldn't be doing... and they were all wrong (of course).

Turns out Android, at least however this app is setup, maybe by default, leaves the app fully running. Like zero effort to suspend it automatically. A part of the UI crashed and a hunt to find the bug made me realize this... I fixed the bug, but still haven't really looked into how to really suspend it.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#49

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

> What makes Samsung phones consumer hostile?

The upgrades that make the phone slower and slower and remove pre-existing functionality. The removal of Android native features, with replacements that stop working after some time. The severe locking of the phone.

But then, Samsung is far from the only ones doing this. I've personally stopped buying their phones because it's better to buy cheaper stuff and just switch after the manufacturer starts with the shenanigans.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#50

Post by pjmlp »

zanny wrote: post #11
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 provi…

If Google was anything like Microsoft, they would produce stuff like Android 2019 OEM requirements, and provide the OS directly from them.

Like for example, the "PC 98 System Design Guide":

https://www.amazon.com/PC-98-System-Design-Guide/dp/15723171...

Fact is, just get a new phone is not an answer that consumers likes to hear.

Not every country is like US with everyone on contracts getting free replacements every two years.

Many of us enjoy the freedom of pre-paid replacable SIM cards, and use our phones until they either die or get stolen.

In any case, I only used Vulkan as the most recent example, I can give plenty of other ones, and I develop native Android as hobby.

Other Android developers with more in depth knowledge have plenty of war stories.

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