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by quinnirill 5206 days ago
Current mobile browsers, yes, very much so.

But I think Chrome for Android 4 (which I believe will replace stock Android browser eventually), IE10 for Windows 8 phones / tablets, and Firefox on B2G will change this. I've seen B2G already running mobile web games smoothly on Android hardware.

1 comments

True enough, it will get better.

Old mobile browsers will be to html5 games what IE6 was to web devs.

That's unlikely, mobile device lifecycles are way shorter than those of desktop computers. Even native game developers often don't target mobile devices that are outdated.
Many smartphone users are prevented from upgrading their firmware/OS. So even if the device lifecycles are shorter, developers cannot ignore legacy devices. If we look at the current Android stats for top entertainment app users:

Android 2.3.3+ = 50.79 % Android 2.2 = 23.87 % Android 2.1 = 7.22 % Android 4.0.3 = 1.42 %

As a developer, am I really going to only target my html5 or native app for 4.0.3?

p.s. Sorry for the delayed reply. :)