Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by veemjeem 4976 days ago
If you think iOS is hairy supporting 4.3 and up, you probably have no experience supporting Android apps. The fragmentation extends beyond the Android version. The differences between handsets are so big that one pretty much has to ignore the users who own phones that are impossible to test with. You'll get some random complaint from a user running your app on a device from a manufacturer you've never even heard of.

Look at Google's own wallet app -- it only runs on only 6 android devices. If you want to run google wallet on your Nexus S, you'll have to run a 3rd party "hacked" version of Google Wallet.
2 comments
magicalist 4976 days ago
Google wallet is a really poor example of fragmentation that a developer would run into since it has nothing to do with varying hardware and drivers, it's the carriers that are blocking it and (AFAIK) there's no reason that a developer would care whether or not the app itself is there. The hardware is accessible; Verizon and AT&T will use it for their own attempt at a payment system. That whole situation isn't really analogous to any other fragmentation you might encounter.

Android development and testing really isn't all that painful, and most of the new APIs you might miss are backported and available for the more prevalent Gingerbread and now ICS.

link
myko 4976 days ago
I've certainly had issues supporting iOS 4 vs 5/6. Most of the Android issues I run into have to do with WebViews behaving differently on different OEMs devices. Both forms of fragmentation can be a pain in the ass.

Probably games developers have it harder on Android, but for the average app it seems just about the same to me as a developer.

link
shinratdr 4975 days ago
The key difference is if you cut out iOS 4 only users you're eliminating at most 2-3% of your market. If you were to try and do the same thing with Android and require ICS or higher you would be blocking off 50%+ of your market.

There is little expectation of iOS 4 support at this point, because users who purchased an iPhone in the last 4 years don't have to use it. The same is hardly true for Gingerbread. Most of the phones that shipped with that half-baked OS will have it until they're retired into a drawer somewhere.

link