[marbletiles]

> 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.

[kumarm]

We 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]

Some 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]

For 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]

What 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]

Usually 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.

[fidotron]

And 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.

[alttab]

Very 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.

[Sephiroth87]

Yeah, that part definitely made me chuckle :D