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What about the Android fragmentation problem? In the words of MG Siegler today: "The problem is that all of these different devices require testing for each an

What about the Android fragmentation problem? In the words of MG Siegler today: "The problem is that all of these different devices require testing for each and every app. They all create a different Android experiences — some in subtle ways, some in big ways. Some run certain Android apps, others don’t. Some apps work fine on one device then are buggy as hell on another one. Sometimes this gets fixed, sometimes it doesn’t. It depends on the popularity of that device and the resources the development team has." [source] http://parislemon.com/post/29497373610/im-not-sure-fred-wilson-truly-understands-the-android http://parislemon.com/post/29497373610/im-not-sure-fred-wils...

king_jester 14y ago
Fragmentation is really variable depending on the kind of app being made. In terms of UI design, fragmentation is not much of an issue as there are a lot of techniques and libraries, official and unofficial, to allow UI patterns across 90%+ of devices. The real issue for fragmentation comes from manufacturers and carriers changing the OS for their purposes in a way that breaks some API functionality in some or all cases. Apps that have to do tricky things with streaming data, multimedia playback, and hardware sensor interaction have this the worst, but just how bad it will be really depends on what you are doing. It should be noted that most devs will never have a major fragmentation problem and that the platform is improving with each major release to make these problems less apparent.
j_s 14y ago
In case anyone is unaware, anything MG Siegler writes about Android should be taken with a grain of salt. Particularly prescient nearly two years ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1675574 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1675574 (and parent discussion) > It's really unfortunate that a writer like him gets a voice in an influential > blog like Techcrunch. I hope he just post things like these on his personal blog. Edit: Android fragmentation affects different types of apps to different degrees; games have the toughest time from what I understand.
eikaterine 14y ago
If your whole goal is to use Android as the platform to build your MVP, you can probably live with limiting your app to, say, only ICS and up to begin with. This cuts down drastically on the fragmentation issues. Even though Gingerbread is still dominant, 1K "guinea pigs" is not an unreasonable goal on ICS.

king_jester 14y ago

Fragmentation is really variable depending on the kind of app being made. In terms of UI design, fragmentation is not much of an issue as there are a lot of techniques and libraries, official and unofficial, to allow UI patterns across 90%+ of devices. The real issue for fragmentation comes from manufacturers and carriers changing the OS for their purposes in a way that breaks some API functionality in some or all cases. Apps that have to do tricky things with streaming data, multimedia playback, and hardware sensor interaction have this the worst, but just how bad it will be really depends on what you are doing. It should be noted that most devs will never have a major fragmentation problem and that the platform is improving with each major release to make these problems less apparent.

j_s 14y ago

In case anyone is unaware, anything MG Siegler writes about Android should be taken with a grain of salt. Particularly prescient nearly two years ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1675574 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1675574 (and parent discussion) > It's really unfortunate that a writer like him gets a voice in an influential > blog like Techcrunch. I hope he just post things like these on his personal blog. Edit: Android fragmentation affects different types of apps to different degrees; games have the toughest time from what I understand.

eikaterine 14y ago

If your whole goal is to use Android as the platform to build your MVP, you can probably live with limiting your app to, say, only ICS and up to begin with. This cuts down drastically on the fragmentation issues. Even though Gingerbread is still dominant, 1K "guinea pigs" is not an unreasonable goal on ICS.