Develop Reference

Android animation lag

I have a fairly simple app that requires a total of about 10 animations for various objects on the screen. The animations are fairly simple - rotate, scale etc, all described in the anim/*.xml resources.
A thing that has been puzzling me is the fact that these animations are smooth on all my test devices EXCEPT for large screen/high density screens. For example, the animations are showing terrible lag on the Galaxy Note and the Galaxy S5. I am finding it very difficult to pinpoint the cause of this issue.
On the other hand, the animations are just fine on the Samsung Galaxy 10' tablet.
Any ideas?

Framerate issue on galaxy nexus

I'm working on my first android game. It involves drawing lines, bitmaps, rectangles, and text to a canvas. On my phone (HTC G2), I get 58-60fps constantly. I had 3 Galaxy Nexus users try the app. One reported 55-60fps and the other two only saw about 30fps.
My question is: What could cause such a huge difference in framerate, especially when the Nexus is a fast phone? Toggling "Force GPU Rendering" did nothing. Also, I don't think the high resolution is to blame because the app runs at a smooth 60fps on my tablet.

testing - Android devices with lowest specs

I want to test on Android devices with the lowest specs but I don't know which device that is
A device with less than 160dpi screen, less than 256mb RAM, less than 3.5 inch screen.
and using Android 2.2+
I have seen the lists on wikipedia but they don't mention how much RAM. and there is no good way to specifically filter 2.2+
At first glance it seems as if the low-end devices have been weeded out by 2.2 but this is probably a fallacy given the number of android devices.
This is further compounded by the fact that "knockoff" devices have 512mb ram these days, but the obscure budget carriers may still have some strange devices out there I've never heard of
please list low powered devices running 2.2+ or greater. I've used the emulator but this doesn't give me real world results too often.

i usually use the following device for low end device compatibility tests:
sony ericsson xperia x10 mini ( 240x320; very small screen )
samsung galaxy 3 ( small screen 240x400 )
the x10 mini's latest android update is 2.1; the galaxy 3 has a 2.2 update, so maybe the latter would be a good low end testing device for you.

What hardware devices do you test your Android apps on?

The emulator that comes with ADK for use under Eclipse is fine for testing basic Android application functionality, but:
it's not very performant
it doesn't reflect real-world hardware and software configurations
it doesn't support varying input devices such as d-pads, touch screens, trackballs or even Bluetooth/USB controllers.
Android Developer posts some very helpful rolling graphs of Platform versions, Screen sizes and densities, and OpenGL ES versions as extracted from Android Market:
http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html
http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/screens.html
http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/opengl.html
Those really help to narrow the scope of some of the choices, but I find myself really wanting to know what the proportions of input methods various devices support are... is touch represented by 90% of the market, or only 5%? What proportion of those support multi-touch?
For example... anyone who has played the free and open source game Replica Island ( http://replicaisland.net/ ) will know that how you control the game varies between devices because it supports multiple input methods. I think Chris and Genki have done a fantastic job here, but if you use touch screens you know that the game is much more playable on 5-7 inch devices than it is on 10+ inch devices. This is because the left-right slide control doesn't maintain the same physical size as the screen size increases - meaning that you have to move too far on large touch screen devices (such as Honeycomb tablets) to be comfortable.
These are the sorts of issues you only find out when you start using various hardware devices to do your testing on. Or you can wait until users do your testing for you and start bringing your app ratings down.
So after my long introduction, here are my questions to you:
What collection of hardware devices have you bought to use in your software development and have you found those choices to have been beneficial or detrimental?
Do you instead use 3rd party testing services and just tolerate the long turnaround times between test reports (hours/days instead of instant gratification)?

For me test devices are sort of like pickup trucks: I'll make friends just to get access to their phones ;-)
Seriously, I do tap friends and family as resources. I'm a small shop and can't afford to buy a lot of test devices. Yet even with this limited pool of resources I've go the following devices available and it seems to have served me well:
Original Moto DROID (seems like such a dog now).
DROID Pro (broken screen but still good for testing).
Asus eTransformer
Samsung Galaxy Tab (7")
HTC Rezound (my personal phone--it rocks)
Samsung Charge (my wife's phone)
DROID X (son-in-law)
HTC-something I can't remember right now (daughter & son)
Amazon Kindle Fire (father).
So, as you can see, without spending a fortune I've got a pretty good set of test devices, not counting all the friends I press into service as beta-testers. With all those I really haven't had many problems with platform specific issues. I hear a lot of grumbling about fragmentation (perhaps mostly from iOS developers), but if you develop your app intelligently it isn't a huge issue.

At this stage I'm just testing with two phones:
HTC Magic (3.5" touchscreen)
Samsung Galaxy S II (4.3" touchscreen)
There's a pretty big difference in the perceived density between these phones, so it's been helpful for comparison in testing my own games. The major omission at this stage is a tablet - just haven't been able to justify the cost yet.
I'm also playing around at the moment with LCDDensity for Root which allows you to change the screen resolution on-the-fly. Interesting to see what the same sized screen would look like with more pixels stuffed in (i.e. closer to Retina display)

I have own collection of devices:
tablet with 10" screen (Motorola Xoom);
Nexus S as reference smartphone;
device with hardware keyboard (Motorola Droid);
one device from HTC (HTC Desire HD). I need it because it has slightly different UI (HTC Sense) and HTC phones are quite popular in my country. It is the least useful device in the collection;
a pair of devices with non standard screen resolutions.

Is it OK to develop on a mid range android phone?

I want to begin development for mobile and android seems like a good choice (with iphone requiring a mac and WP7 not being that popular).
I have a question regarding the testing platform, I'm pretty low on cash and have been wondering if using a mid range phone would hinder my development? I have the ability to buy either a LG Optimus One, a Motorola Milestone or a Nexus One, all representing different segments of the market and each one costing more than the previous.
two concerns I had were screen resolution and CPU power, how much does these two variables matter to development?

Well:
Resolution - there are 3 main groups:
ldpi - Low Density - devices with screens 240 x 320,
mdpi - Medium Density - 320 x 480,
hdpi - High Density - 480 x 800, or 480 x 854.
Of course the bigger screen == the more expensive phone.
2 . CPU power - all currently available CPUs (besides a few low-end phones) will propably serve you well (of course, it depends on what do you really want to do)
I, as a developer, would like to add here a third element - which API level (version of Android) are you targeting? Nowadays, 2.1 - 2.3 rocks, and 3+ if the device is a tablet.
Keep in mind, that if you buy a great phone, you may develop application which will be running quite fast on it, but it will not on other low-end devices. Btw, you can always check if all elements will properly layout on the lower screen using built-in emulator(s). So, in my opinion, there is good to have mid-end phone, just to check sth(s).
PS : Nexus one - AFAIK this phone is a debug version (means you can do a little more than with a standard retail phone :) ).

If you can buy a Nexus One that will serve perfectly. Obviously it doesn't cover every form factor but its BETTER than a midrange phone.
If you come across issues on a specfic device you can always use a cloud debugging service like:
http://www.perfectomobile.com/ (they used to have 2 hours free when you register)
You can emulate the different screen sizes
CPU power depends completely on what you are coding, but most the time you should be ok.
Me Personally I've got:
a Nexus One running 2.3
a HTC G1 running 1.6 (flip out keyboard formfactor)
I also use perfecto for issues with the SonyErricson X10mini (ldpi)
I emulate Honeycomb 3.0 on the PC (altho hoping to buy a XOOM soon).

Putting on my MBA hat: From a product development perspective it's probably a good idea to make sure your product runs on the widest product segment of whatever platform you're developing for. If that happens to be a mid-range product, your development efforts are probably aimed at the largest market segment and potential customers might be more likely to own/purchase this device. Even better if there's a common platform across all segments. You should probably perform some sort of market analysis to prove this out.