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Device fragmentation on Android is nothing like fragmentation used to be. At least on Android you can write one app and then tweak it to work on different devi

Device fragmentation on Android is nothing like fragmentation used to be. At least on Android you can write one app and then tweak it to work on different devices, previously you had to write apps as different as Android/iOS/Windows for each device - and often individual manufacturers even had multiple platforms to write for. And don't even get me started on distribution. You used to have to negotiate with carriers in each country to get them to carry your application. Now I publish on Google Play and my app is available to 750 million people four hours later. And if you build a good app, and figure out the app SEO, you will get hundreds or thousands of downloads a day. So I think we owe Google some congratulations.

recoiledsnake 14y ago
>At least on Android you can write one app and then tweak it to work on different devices, previously you had to write apps as different as Android/iOS/Windows for each device - and often individual manufacturers even had multiple platforms to write for. >So I think we owe Google some congratulations. Before Android, you could write a Windows Mobile app and have it run pretty much on every Windows Mobile device and the same with Blackberry and iPhones. The biggest problem with Android is that the OEMs and carriers abuse the open nature to make their own custom skins which are not compatible with updates. Google did not take a hard line on this like, say, Windows Phone did
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  It wouldn't have been adopted if they had taken a hard line on that issue.
  - DigitalJack 14y ago
    That's like saying people buy Dells for all the crapware they come with.
    - burntsushi 14y ago
      No it isn't. The GP isn't saying people buy the phones for the crapware, the GP is saying that the carriers wouldn't have adopted it if they couldn't put their bloat on it.
  - cooldeal 14y ago
    So you mean Google picked popularity over consistency and sold out to the OEMs and carriers for the sake of marketshare? Android is the pretty much the only OS where this is such a big problem, unlike Windows, OS X, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Windows Phone, iOS and probably even Linux.
    - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
      I don't know where you get your information from, but Blackberry has broken compatibility in the last 3 OS releases, and Windows Phone 8 doesn't even run the same kernel as the previous version (breaks compatibility). I'm not sure if you ever touched Java ME back in the day... but yeah. You're just wrong on this one.
      - cooldeal 14y ago
        >Windows Phone 8 doesn't even run the same kernel as the previous version (breaks compatibility) Windows Phone 7 apps run fine on WP8. Anyway breaking compatibility is a tad different from fragmentation. If your app runs on a WP7 phone, you can be reasonably certain it runs on all other WP7 phones. With Android, you can easily run into device specific bugs even though the version is the same and thus you're forced to test on the real hardware devices. http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/11/this-is-what-developing-for-android-looks-like/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/11/this-is-what-developing-for...
        electic 14y ago
        Agreed. I bet most of the people ripping other OSes don't even develop for Android. It's a nightmare.
  - dpcx 14y ago
    So iOS was adopted why...?
    - freehunter 14y ago
      Because Apple had a heck of a lot more clout than Google did at the time.
      - ryanhuff 14y ago
        While Apple was in a very strong position, the carriers had a strong interest in another player to counter Apple's market power. In the case of fragmentation, I think Google was just more willing to negotiate away things like this in the interest of getting a strong presence on the devices.
    - resu_nimda 14y ago
      Because the iPhone was an obvious money printing machine, so the carriers were willing to accept the inability to put their garbage on it.
      - thedragon4453 14y ago
        No, not really actually. They went to several carriers and Cingular was the only one that would deal with what apple wanted, and that was reluctant. Google could have pushed harder, but they miscalculated.
- king_jester 14y ago
  Did windows mobile ever really have a wide variance in hardware types, e.g. phone size devices vs. tablet sized devices? It was my understanding that windows mobile targeted certain screen resolutions (that or those resolutions were the only ones manufacturers were producing) and that was pretty much it.
- guyzero 14y ago
  "Before Android, you could write a Windows Mobile app and have it run pretty much on every Windows Mobile device" - yeah, all one million of them.
  - guyzero 14y ago
    Also, to be more serious, Pocket PC once ran on top of two processor families, so if you think fragmentation with a VM is bad, it's a lot worse when you have to build two binaries and try to explain to users which one they need to install.
    - yuhong 14y ago
      Three. Luckily only one (ARM) survived by the 2002 release.
- jonknee 14y ago
  > Before Android, you could write a Windows Mobile app and have it run pretty much on every Windows Mobile device and the same with Blackberry and iPhones. Considering that Android pre-dates the iPhone (and thus iOS), the statement isn't accurate. This article cites 2004 and the iPhone didn't debut until the middle of 2007. It was indeed a nightmare, not only in the development process but in distribution. Good luck getting your app widely distributed across platforms/countries/carriers. I remember being at CES around this time and the Google guys did a keynote where they made it a mission to get rid of all the different charging standards in use at the time (every phone was different, remember having to find a charger that worked for your phone?). It was a whole different game back then.
  - jkn 14y ago
    Note that 2007 is the iPhone's public debut. The project was started in 2004 [1]. Android the product was also announced in 2007, after the iPhone, although the project indeed started before the iPhone, in 2003 [2]. [1] http://readwrite.com/2012/08/07/4-real-secrets-weve-learned-so-far-about-apple http://readwrite.com/2012/08/07/4-real-secrets-weve-learned-... [2] http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-08-16/google-buys-android-for-its-mobile-arsenal http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-08-16/google-buys-a...
    - jonknee 14y ago
      That doesn't matter, the post is talking about what was happening in 2004 and it was indeed a mess.
- brian_cloutier 14y ago
  Your information is outdated. The Holo theme is required to be present on all devices that wish to carry the play store. If you write an app targeting 4.0 or higher that uses the default theme, it will look the same across all phones.
  - hackmiester 14y ago
    However, you will lose the 2.3 users, who still hold a ton of market share.
    - tadfisher 14y ago
      There's a library for that [1] :) [1] https://github.com/ChristopheVersieux/HoloEverywhere https://github.com/ChristopheVersieux/HoloEverywhere
    - brian_cloutier 14y ago
      > However, you will lose the 2.3 users, who still hold a ton of market share. Like with all massive ecosystems, change in the android world takes time. Google is addressing the problem and solutions, like instituting a required theme, are rolling out. Give it a year, maybe a year and a half, and the need to support 2.3 will be much less pressing.
- thechut 14y ago
  This is clearly the comment of someone who has not used Android recently, and only occasionally reads articles about what is going on in the space. Enjoy your koolaid...
- lnanek2 14y ago
  There weren't a lot of Windows Mobile devices. What usually happened back then was an app would get written once, then outsourcing companies would be hired to port it to the 50 popular feature phones or whatever that made the majority of the market.

recoiledsnake 14y ago

>At least on Android you can write one app and then tweak it to work on different devices, previously you had to write apps as different as Android/iOS/Windows for each device - and often individual manufacturers even had multiple platforms to write for. >So I think we owe Google some congratulations. Before Android, you could write a Windows Mobile app and have it run pretty much on every Windows Mobile device and the same with Blackberry and iPhones. The biggest problem with Android is that the OEMs and carriers abuse the open nature to make their own custom skins which are not compatible with updates. Google did not take a hard line on this like, say, Windows Phone did

MatthewPhillips 14y ago
It wouldn't have been adopted if they had taken a hard line on that issue.
- DigitalJack 14y ago
  That's like saying people buy Dells for all the crapware they come with.
  - burntsushi 14y ago
    No it isn't. The GP isn't saying people buy the phones for the crapware, the GP is saying that the carriers wouldn't have adopted it if they couldn't put their bloat on it.
- cooldeal 14y ago
  So you mean Google picked popularity over consistency and sold out to the OEMs and carriers for the sake of marketshare? Android is the pretty much the only OS where this is such a big problem, unlike Windows, OS X, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Windows Phone, iOS and probably even Linux.
  - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
    I don't know where you get your information from, but Blackberry has broken compatibility in the last 3 OS releases, and Windows Phone 8 doesn't even run the same kernel as the previous version (breaks compatibility). I'm not sure if you ever touched Java ME back in the day... but yeah. You're just wrong on this one.
    - cooldeal 14y ago
      >Windows Phone 8 doesn't even run the same kernel as the previous version (breaks compatibility) Windows Phone 7 apps run fine on WP8. Anyway breaking compatibility is a tad different from fragmentation. If your app runs on a WP7 phone, you can be reasonably certain it runs on all other WP7 phones. With Android, you can easily run into device specific bugs even though the version is the same and thus you're forced to test on the real hardware devices. http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/11/this-is-what-developing-for-android-looks-like/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/11/this-is-what-developing-for...
      - electic 14y ago
        Agreed. I bet most of the people ripping other OSes don't even develop for Android. It's a nightmare.
- dpcx 14y ago
  So iOS was adopted why...?
  - freehunter 14y ago
    Because Apple had a heck of a lot more clout than Google did at the time.
    - ryanhuff 14y ago
      While Apple was in a very strong position, the carriers had a strong interest in another player to counter Apple's market power. In the case of fragmentation, I think Google was just more willing to negotiate away things like this in the interest of getting a strong presence on the devices.
  - resu_nimda 14y ago
    Because the iPhone was an obvious money printing machine, so the carriers were willing to accept the inability to put their garbage on it.
    - thedragon4453 14y ago
      No, not really actually. They went to several carriers and Cingular was the only one that would deal with what apple wanted, and that was reluctant. Google could have pushed harder, but they miscalculated.
king_jester 14y ago
Did windows mobile ever really have a wide variance in hardware types, e.g. phone size devices vs. tablet sized devices? It was my understanding that windows mobile targeted certain screen resolutions (that or those resolutions were the only ones manufacturers were producing) and that was pretty much it.
guyzero 14y ago
"Before Android, you could write a Windows Mobile app and have it run pretty much on every Windows Mobile device" - yeah, all one million of them.
- guyzero 14y ago
  Also, to be more serious, Pocket PC once ran on top of two processor families, so if you think fragmentation with a VM is bad, it's a lot worse when you have to build two binaries and try to explain to users which one they need to install.
  - yuhong 14y ago
    Three. Luckily only one (ARM) survived by the 2002 release.
jonknee 14y ago
> Before Android, you could write a Windows Mobile app and have it run pretty much on every Windows Mobile device and the same with Blackberry and iPhones. Considering that Android pre-dates the iPhone (and thus iOS), the statement isn't accurate. This article cites 2004 and the iPhone didn't debut until the middle of 2007. It was indeed a nightmare, not only in the development process but in distribution. Good luck getting your app widely distributed across platforms/countries/carriers. I remember being at CES around this time and the Google guys did a keynote where they made it a mission to get rid of all the different charging standards in use at the time (every phone was different, remember having to find a charger that worked for your phone?). It was a whole different game back then.
- jkn 14y ago
  Note that 2007 is the iPhone's public debut. The project was started in 2004 [1]. Android the product was also announced in 2007, after the iPhone, although the project indeed started before the iPhone, in 2003 [2]. [1] http://readwrite.com/2012/08/07/4-real-secrets-weve-learned-so-far-about-apple http://readwrite.com/2012/08/07/4-real-secrets-weve-learned-... [2] http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-08-16/google-buys-android-for-its-mobile-arsenal http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-08-16/google-buys-a...
  - jonknee 14y ago
    That doesn't matter, the post is talking about what was happening in 2004 and it was indeed a mess.
brian_cloutier 14y ago
Your information is outdated. The Holo theme is required to be present on all devices that wish to carry the play store. If you write an app targeting 4.0 or higher that uses the default theme, it will look the same across all phones.
- hackmiester 14y ago
  However, you will lose the 2.3 users, who still hold a ton of market share.
  - tadfisher 14y ago
    There's a library for that [1] :) [1] https://github.com/ChristopheVersieux/HoloEverywhere https://github.com/ChristopheVersieux/HoloEverywhere
  - brian_cloutier 14y ago
    > However, you will lose the 2.3 users, who still hold a ton of market share. Like with all massive ecosystems, change in the android world takes time. Google is addressing the problem and solutions, like instituting a required theme, are rolling out. Give it a year, maybe a year and a half, and the need to support 2.3 will be much less pressing.
thechut 14y ago
This is clearly the comment of someone who has not used Android recently, and only occasionally reads articles about what is going on in the space. Enjoy your koolaid...
lnanek2 14y ago
There weren't a lot of Windows Mobile devices. What usually happened back then was an app would get written once, then outsourcing companies would be hired to port it to the 50 popular feature phones or whatever that made the majority of the market.