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How Fragmented Is Android?

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Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#51

Post by chipperyman573 »

matwood wrote: post #36
Gudin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conclusion is unexpected and stupid. Android doesn't brag it has 75% share. Actual data is that 85% of smartphones run Android and that's market share. Fact that they are not updated to the latest version doesn't change the market share.

"Addressable" market share maybe? A developer can target iOS current version and current version-1, and cover the large majority of iOS devices. How far back does an Android developer have to target? Maybe it doesn't matter since the Android marketshare is so much larger that targeting current - 1 stills gets more devices than iOS.

>Maybe it doesn't matter since the Android marketshare is so much larger that targeting current - 1 stills gets more devices than iOS.

That's an interesting way of thinking about it, getting 20% of 100 is more than getting 80% of 10. I think the problem you'd run into is that some users with androids would be upset they can't install your app when their friend that has an android can install it just fine.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#52

Post by ac29 »

clumsysmurf wrote: post #20
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...

That's taken way out of context - according to your linked article, Android was pitched as a Camera OS in 2004, but almost immediately changed gears to an "open-source handset solution" a few months later that year. This was still years before iPhone was announced.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#53

Post by somedudetbh »

From the article: "So the Android ecosystem is split between at least 1,728 combinations of OS - Brand - Device Model"

It's actually _much worse_ than this. Here's a review of the "Samsung Galaxy S10+": https://www.anandtech.com/show/14072/the-samsung-galaxy-s10p...

This "device model" is actually two devices with completely different SoCs. There is no meaningful sense in which these two phones are one device. Sometimes the manufacturers document this, sometimes they just start selling a phone that identifies itself by the same name as an existing phone but with a GPU that has completely different performance characteristics.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#54

Post by ac29 »

gshdg wrote: post #39
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).

What percentage of the iPhone market can you reach by supporting only versions with >2% penetration? What percentage of the Android market?

According to the linked article, dropping Android versions with <2% penetration you'd reach about 98% of the market.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#55

Post by Andrex »

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 understand the frustration in Google not solving this sooner, but from your comment it seems like they have solved it (with Android 9) and you still seem annoyed?

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#56

Post by blihp »

dmix wrote: post #47
blihp wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Point taken that the U.S./Canada stats likely skew to more recent versions. However, I'm in the U.S. and several of my devices couldn't possibly even download his company's app. Granted, I'm an outlier and tend to use my devices until they die. (they are actually still pretty useful around-the-house devices and can browse the web, watch videos, play some older games etc. Maybe I'll fire up a couple of them and open the Play app just to nudge the stats by a few millionths of a percent. ;-)

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#57

Post by Wowfunhappy »

stesch wrote: post #29
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).

By the way: iPhone 4 supports iOS 7.1.2, released 4 years after the iPhone 4.

I'm not sure why the GP said his iPhone 4 won't upgrade past iOS 5, but it's worth noting: while an iPhone 4 can be upgraded to iOS 7, actually doing so is a bad idea unless you want your phone to run slow as molasses. You'll be much better off on iOS 6 or 5.

(I suppose there may be a security argument for upgrading as far as possible, but it's not like iOS 7 is up-to-date either. If you're concerned about security, you shouldn't be using an iPhone 4.)

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#58

Post by on_and_off »

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…

>It sounds like you're rolling with whatever Google's latest 'solution' to fragmentation

> You say that O/P/Q are 88% of your devices but they only represent 38.7% of devices accessing the market

NO !!

That's the issue with these articles. They just read the android dashboard and pretend that:

- it applies everywhere

- many different devices = difficulty for the devs or users

The dashboard reports the global figures. These figures are heavily skewed by third world countries where old versions of Android are still shipping.

"The market" ... this is absolutely meaningless. If you work for let's say Lyft, the market is wherever lyft can operate, that's not the whole world, so whatever the Android version dashboard tells is meaningless for you or your users.

For our market 88% of the users are O or superior. 6 months ago we stopped supporting devices older than lollipop for this particular app (IIRC it was because they don't support TLS 1.3 and it was giving us some security concerns). For the app I worked on before, we had legacy apks : apks that are still distributed on the play store but that we don't maintain. Basically when we decided to stop "supporting" an old Android version. And by old; I mean Android Eclair; this was a pretty popular app with tons of users on various devices. So we take our current app that still support that old API level. We make sure that it is as stable as we can get it (since we always launch new features, we always have new corner cases, we make sure these are handled). And when it is ok; we set this apk as a legacy one on the play store : if you have one of these old Android versions, you are going to be able to continue using or even installing that older apk. Technically we can update it if we want to, but unless there is suddenly a wave of crashes or complaints we just leave it be.

Even for that app, the figures were roughly the same (and that's while being available in 150 countries, that was for a pretty popular app). For these legacy apks, we often had something like 10k installs, while the main app is in the dozens of millions (but since that app had a paid subscription, make the service work even for old device was a must do).

And yeah, even for that job where we had an app available on API 7+ (Android 2.3 eclair IIRC), the figures were still pretty similar and fragmentation was something I read about in stupid articles, not a part of my daily job. I am not working for Google, if I had to solve fragmentation issues everyday, I would be the first to complain about it. I am here to build an app, not maintain random OEMs hacks.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#59

Post by dmitrygr »

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…

Your one plus has a terrible camera in low light. That is why people pay for pixel. Don't know why they do for Samsung or apple though.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#60

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

I know this post is about Android versions but I recently launched a new service and have been watching user agents and I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see no matter the Android version, it’s almost always running Chrome 73/Firefox 66. I have a user running Android 5.5.1, another on some version of 4! Yet they’re on modern browsers. This isn’t true for anyone on an old iOS. Those users are stuck with old browsers, which is quite sad for the user and developer.
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