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How Fragmented Is Android?

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Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#61

Post by pjmlp »

Andrex wrote: post #55
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?

My wallet is annoyed.

And as I replied to another comment, that is only one example among many.

I could write about Java 12 support, audio API, the constant changes in background processes, the multiple reboots on the UI framework, how NDK is handled and plenty others.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#62

Post by on_and_off »

Avamander wrote: post #28
mattlondon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+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…

Fragmentation becomes an issue when you're either building services that run in the background or interact with hardware (BT, WiFi, WiFi-direct, Camera, GNSS, Gyro/Accel). I feel fragmentation hard with my app.

For the background WorkManager has done wonders.

For hardware, I believe that 100%. I am talking about "regular" android apps that don't need deep access to the hardware. By deep I mean something harder than recording something (e.g. taking/picking a picture is delegated to the default system app, not the one you build) or displaying the current position with a mapping sdk.

Bluetooth in particular I can believe. It is amazingly complex and adding the OEMs customizations on top must be a total pain.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#63

Post by radley »

blihp wrote: post #56
dmix wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

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.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#64

Post by ajnin »

I've been tracking the data from Google's Android dashboards over time : https://www.bidouille.org/misc/androidcharts

From these observations, it seems that Android's fragmentation is getting worse, and that newer versions of Android have more and more trouble establishing themselves as the dominant version. In fact, JellyBean was the last version to reach more than 50%.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#65

Post by izacus »

ajnin wrote: post #64

I've been tracking the data from Google's Android dashboards over time : https://www.bidouille.org/misc/androidcharts From these observations, it seems that Android's fragmentation is getting worse, and that newer versions of Android have more and more trouble establishing themselves as the dominant version. In fact, JellyBean was the last version to reach more than 50%.

It is hard to understate how MISLEADING these dashboards are. They are so, so, so wrong. I've professionally worked on several apps/libraries which reached millions of Android users and not one of them (not one!) had a distribution that's even close to what those dashboards show.

Any kind of app that's not exclusively targeting emerging markets on 512MB phones will have significantly higher percentage of newer Androids. If you're targeting US, EU, China, Japan, Korea and S. America you'll probably have Androids before 6.x in marginal Any kind of app that's being released together with its iOS version will probably have double to triple percentage of new Android versions and pretty much non-existant usage stats on Androids before 5.0.

Those dashboards reflect pretty much no app published on Play store - not even apps like Facebook.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#66

Post by izacus »

pjmlp wrote: post #61
Andrex wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

My wallet is annoyed. And as I replied to another comment, that is only one example among many. I could write about Java 12 support, audio API, the constant changes in background processes, the multiple reboots on the UI framework, how NDK is handled and plenty others.

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?

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#67

Post by izacus »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #45
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…

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.

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#68

Post by izacus »

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…

> The second thing is recent requirement to provide 64-bit version of each app. My app depends on framework written in C++ with additional libraries in C. I can't and won't spend time to get the build for 64-bit version working. 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.

So the "non-technical" reason here is that you don't want to provide a build for users with 64-bit devices?

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#69

Post by [deleted] »

ac29 wrote: post #54
gshdg wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: How Fragmented Is Android?

#70

Post by twodave »

We support API versions 19-26 on our Android side, and it's a pretty major pain. The permissions model is different, background services work completely different, and then there is the tendency for things to just stop being supported (looking at you, GCM). Compared with the Apple ecosystem it's incredibly jolting. I mean, I get it. Android started from the opposite end of the spectrum from Apple, and now they're sort of meeting in the middle. But it's been a much smoother ride working with iOS over the last couple of years than it has been working with Android.
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