8 ms·
> Larry Page: “We had a closet full of over 100 phones [that we were developing software for], and we were building our software pretty much one device at a tim
by bonaldi 13y ago
> Larry Page: “We had a closet full of over 100 phones [that we were developing software for], and we were building our software pretty much one device at a time,” he said in his 2012 report to shareholders. In various remarks over the years he has described the experience as both “awful” and “incredibly painful.”
... and now nearly every Android dev shop I know has closets full of way more than 100 phones, with feature white and blacklists all around.
- alttab 13y agoVery true. The difference is in the profit. Google arguably will put up with it considering they are selling more phones. Once goolge starts shipping good hardware, other carriers will follow them for compatibility.
- kumarm 13y agoWe are an Android Dev Shop with decent success (US Based). We don't carry more than 4 models of android Devices. Would you care to mention names of couple of dev shops that has 100 Android models?
- girvo 13y agoSome big game shops do, IIRC. That was a while back too, when there was 1.6 devices still being used. In my experience, 4 phone devices is about right for Android (and 2-3 iPhones for full testing).
- NickPollard 13y agoFor game shops, the reason they might have more is for GPU compatibility - where actual OpenGLES features can very between devices and you do have to worry about different code paths.
- rsfinn 13y agoWhat do you do when someone reports a bug on a device you don't have, and you can't reproduce it on one of the devices you do have? Genuinely curious (I'm a software developer but not on Android).
- kumarm 13y agoUsually its not device specific issues but Manufacturer specific issues. Same issues you encounter on Galaxy S4, you would notice on Galaxy S3, Note etc. Having a handset from each of major manufacturer is good enough for 99% of devs.
- Sephiroth87 13y agoYeah, that part definitely made me chuckle :D
- fidotron 13y agoAnd if you're doing that you're doing it wrong. This whole myth of you needing vast amounts of devices to do Android testing is mysteriously propagated by those that stand to benefit from it, such as game QA companies or departments. In reality you can do massive scale deployment with a relative handful of devices, assuming you understand what you're actually doing and not just writing stuff that's specific to whatever device you're testing on.