[option_greek]

It refers to different Android versions on phones which results in developers being forced to test their applications against a lot of versions. Usually like in the case of iOS this would not have been a problem but Android updates are notoriously slow due to various reasons which means that most of the Android users are still stuck on gingerbread while jelly bean is already out. This means developers can't reliably take advantage of features added in newer versions of OS. Of course all this even before we consider the screen sizes.

[cageface]

The way Android layouts work and the backporting Google has done relieves a lot of this pain and you can now support only 2.3 and up and still get the majority of users.

If you want to get the kind of pixel-perfect layouts people have come to expect on the iPhone then yes that's a hassle. But I suspect the trend is away from that kind of design towards more flexible, information-centric designs just as it's been on the web.

[ryanhuff]

20% of Android devices in the field are 2.2 or earlier. Its hard to tell a company that they should cut out 20% of their Android users in order to take advantage of the latest APIs.

[cageface]

Is it? My clients have all been fine with it. Going back to 2.2 isn't that hard but the people on those devices aren't likely to be very valuable customers.

[vacri]

Isn't it similar for pre-iphone 3 users, who also frequently get left out in the cold?

[yuriyg]

Isn't this a classic issue in software developement, where you have to require or assume some minimum OS version? Remember all those labels: "Windows 95 or higher required."

And especially with web developement, where you'd have to test your site on a various number of combinations of OS, browser, and resolution.