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which phone for the most of Android versions? [closed]

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Im developing an Android app and I would like to test it on a real device so that I'd like to get a phone, on which a different version of Android can be installed, upgraded and downgraded.
Which phone can run most of Android versions? How should I choose it ?
Thank you.

[This answer applies to official Google releases of the Android software, not to alternate distros like Cyanogen.]
There are very few devices that even support more than one or two versions of the Android system. Carriers and OEMs seem reluctant to upgrade devices at all, and when devices do receive major upgrades, they rarely get more than one.
Of course, Android is open source, so you can build whatever version you want, right? Not really. Although the base OS is open source, OEMs have no obligation to release the actual source used to build the kernel and userland for any particular device. With a closed-source device, upgrading is out of the question. The best you can hope for is a downgrade, if you can find the right binaries.
As one commenter noted, Nexus devices are in general a good choice. They are usually supported for at least three OS revisions, and can be upgraded and downgraded easily. With few exceptions, they run 100% open source software.
If you're willing to get your hands dirty, the device that supports the most versions is the Panda board, which for many years was the standard test board for the Android Open Source Project. It was recently replaced by the HiKey board, which is more powerful and less expensive. If you don't mind building a device out of raw components, the combination of a HiKey and a Panda will cost less than a single Nexus device and likely remain valid for years to come.

I recommend you to go with the emulators but if you want a real device you should test on a Nexus device, but even nexus devices can't cover all the platforms
You can find most of the Android official versions here
Also you can find custom ROMs for different phones here
Note
Even if you flash ROMs on some devices, you still might get into different issues on different platforms because Android is customized by each phone manufacturers. For example, the Android that runs on the Nexus devices is the official Google version, but is different than the one that runs on a Samsung, HTC, Sony, etc.

Is it required to use android mobile to develop an android application [closed]

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I wonder that is it necessary to use android mobile to build an android powered application.
Actually i'm developing an android music application. I used emulator only to test the app. Is there any changes happened to the app when i test that with real device or it works same in the both??

No, you can use the default emulator or other tools like Genymotion.
You should just consider that a real device might be handy as you get a better feeling of your app when you have it on a real device.
Also there are limitations based on the emulator you use. For example the graphic power might be way slower than on a real device. Also other stuff like battery, camera etc is basically just emulated as well, so it might work on the emulator but not on a real device.

It is the same answer if you switched Android for iOS.
It is not required, but it is a very big advantage.
Android and iOS come with emulators for their platforms in the software development kit. So if you want to do quick testing then you don't need a device.
However, if your application relies on any hardware component (for example the accelerometer) these functions are not available in the emulators.

No, you can use android emulators instead..
check the below link for more info:
http://developer.android.com/tools/help/emulator.html

It is not mandatory for development and deployment (publishing to google play store) we can use emulator.
But I strongly recommend to use as development time would fair increase while debugging with actual device rather on emulator.

How can we test android app in all devices? [closed]

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In real world , no can test his App in all android devices available in market.
Is there a tool to test my app to check performance and etc.
Or, What is the best way of testing android apps.
Update:
best way is to create emulators and test it. But we don't know all devices with models.
Can you share your valuable thoughts. Thank you

If you need to test for specific devices, Samsung has a remote test lab, this way you can test real devices virtually and a large variety of devices.
Or else you can go for
http://www.keynotedeviceanywhere.com/mobile-testing.html
http://www.perfectomobile.com/
https://www.lesspainful.com/
Got this answer from Other SO, Just combined some answer.

I would like to answer your question from an automation point of view -
There are some really cool tools in the market to help you perform automated testing for Android, iOS & Windows phones.
My personal favorite of them all will be SeeTest (by Experitest). There are others like FoneMonkey, MonkeyRunner, Meux-Test, Robotium etc.
These tools are very advanced - they provide good reports, have image recognition & cross device support. Suppose you write a automation code for Android App, you can find ways to reuse those for iOS. This will save a lot of your time in SDLC.
All these tools have a CLOUD based testing model also. The way this works - buying and testing across many devices is a costly and a time consuming process. These automation tools - have a remote cloud system, which you can leverage for a fee. They will have almost all the devices that are there in the globally accepted markets. Once you have written your automation test codes, you can run them on any device from their cloud system.
So to test across so many devices, its NOT possible manually - you have to use an automation tool. The automation tools today are building this kind of a framework to capture the QA market.
This is the best way to test an App across a wide variety of phones (like in Android).
I hope this helps.

This may help http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/device.html.
If you're on Windows you will need to install the USB driver. Then, on your Devices tab (Window->Show View->Other->Android->Devices) you should see a new row appear when you connect your device to your workstation with a USB cable (although LG handsets are problematic in my experience).

Android Development Device [closed]

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I'm looking to get a device (phone, tablet, etc.) for developing Android applications. I know I can use the emulator to get me started, but I feel like that will only get me so far along. I'm looking for something reasonably priced, and I don't want a phone contract, data plan, etc. Anyone have any suggestions?

I would recommend either a Nexus One or ADP2 ( you can get via Market once you sign in as developer. ). Other option is ebay. All attendees of google i/o got moto droid as a gift. And several devices are on ebay, priced around 350-400.
I wouldn't buy G1 for a reason i think it close to end of life. I'd also avoid devices alternative homes and ui ( blur, touchwiz, sense ). You want to clean google experience phone.
Advantage of Nexus of Dev phone - you'll have engineered bootloader, which let you to install custom roms and you can get root access which among other things allow you to use awesome tool hierarchyviewer ( from SDK ) on the device .

As a registered Android developer you can get an unlocked phone for $399. However, I am sure if you keep an eye on ebay you can find something that will suit your needs at a cheaper price. I see a bunch of Motorola Droids listed for a little over $300.

While the Nexus One and ADP2 are great because you can load custom builds of Android on them, that doesn't really sound like what you are most interested in. In fact, doing so will preclude you from running the Market application. For application development, you really just need any phone that lets you load non-market applications over ADB. You may want to consider getting a phone that has a keyboard to ensure that it works properly for your application. Finally, take into consideration which version of Android you are targeting. Newer phones run newer versions of Android.

If you plan developing something that might take an advantage of a hardware keyboard, get Motorola Droid/Milestone or a G1 (which you can turn into ADP1). I'm using the latter as my apps are targeted at 1.5+. Nexus One is the other option.

Is it worth purchasing Google Android Dev phone? [closed]

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I've been intrigued by all the android world since I first learned about it and would like to get my hands dirty developing for it. The question that comes to mind is if it's worth buying the unlocked phones that Android sells directly or not.
Those phones (link) quoting the Android page:
Run and debug your Android™
applications directly on a device.
Modify and rebuild the Android
operating system, and flash it onto a
phone. The Android Dev Phone 1 is
carrier independent, and available for
purchase by any developer registered
with Android Market™.
Please note that this device is
intended for development purposes, and
may not include certain features found
on consumer Android devices.
So will it be worth it to purchase one of those as a tool for app testing as opposed to developing and testing just on Eclipse or one of the other IDEs and emulators.
-Have you tried it, do you own one?
I'm assuming they have the same specs as the HTC Dream and the HTC Magic, since they look exactly the same although they have a 'developers edition' custom black design not that I really care about the design for this particular item.
All comments are welcomed,
Thanks in advance.
Update:
I'll leave it open until tomorrow to see if there are any more answers, then I'll just pick the most voted since it's really a subjective question with no good or bad answer.

It depends what sort of applications you wish to develop. I find that the emulators very accurately reflect how things work on genuine devices; you can seamlessly connect to either an emulator or a dev phone using the command line tools, the Eclipse tools, the debugger etc.
Also, while you can flash your dev phone to a new OS version, HTC often lag behind (e.g. there's still no 2.0 image available) and it's much easier and faster to just use the emulators. The emulators also allow you to create and test with different screen resolutions, whereas the two dev phones available are only "standard" resolution.
I find it's quite rare that I need to use my ADP1 dev phone for development -- my rooted consumer HTC Hero works fine for most of the development I do.. allowing me to pull files from the device etc. Though the only reason I use my Hero rather than an emulator is because I've been working on an app that uses audio recording functionality.
However, where having a physical device would help is where you need to do specific stuff regarding the camera, audio hardware, orientation and compass sensors, GPS, wireless network access and so on. Should you need to connect a debugger to work on hardware-related issues like the above, then you would definitely need a dev phone.
Overall, it's definitely worth buying an Android phone for testing and demonstration purposes, but whether it's a development phone is up to your requirements.

If you plan on developing apps that you intend to put on the Android marketplace, it's absolutely critical to test on real hardware. You can get away with developing on the emulator for quite a while, but at some point, you'll want to use a real device.
That being said, you can use any android phone for development. There are some restrictions on locked devices, but if you're simply developing against the SDK, any phone will work. With android, you can install an apk directly on the phone without special permissions, so the only real advantage to a dev phone is that you can install new roms without having to root the phone.
Personally, I'd hold off on purchasing one of the older dev phones. From what I understand, they only support up to SDK 1.6, whereas the Droid and some of the other new phones are supporting SDK 2.0 ++.

Wait for the release of the Nexus One from G. The latest rumors are that it'll be released on Jan 5th. So it's just a week or so.

I think that you need a real android device whether it's the dev phone or another handset but a real phone is primordial. The emulator is great but you can't get an idea about the execution speed of your app until you use it on a real phone.
As said before there are a lot of rumors about the nexus one so wait and see!

As for which phone to buy (assuming you're going to get one) I think ablerman is right. I'd wait until January to see if there is going to be some new hardware available.
With regards to the more general question of should you buy one, I think it depends on what you're doing. For the most part, the emulators are fine. They can emulate GPS (you can even load KML to simulate a path), SMS, phone calls, etc. They cannot however emulate acclerometer/compass/orientation sensor data and actually will crash (actually I believe it hangs...) if you try to run code that relies on it. Also, it's difficult to actually debug phone-call related functionality without the dev phone.
They're good phones, I've used the Dev phone 1 (the G1/Dream) and it's nice. It also is a bit faster than the emulators and if you're writing something like a game, it would be really good to test it on the actual hardware.
All in all, it just depends on what you're writing. They're definitely fun to play with regardless as you can do pretty much ANYTHING you want on them.
Good luck with the decision!

I've been developing with the emulator since June. I've found it to be a very near substitute for the real deal, and it's easier to switch between handset configurations/versions. However, not knowing how quickly my apps will run is a concern for me.
The reason I've personally held off buying a handset is that 2009 was the wrong year to buy one. I have a feeling 2010 will very much be the long-awaited "Year of the Android".

+1 to Christopher and I will add - the emulators are great but having a physical phone will give you instant access to the Android Market to verify publishing, statistics and user comments. I also believe using your own app on a physical phone will help you to develop a better app. You do not need a development phone - but at least one physical phone - absolutly.

FYI. Belgium is one of the few countries where it is possible to buy any mobile unlocked. Indeed, the Belgian regulators forbid the forced bundling.

One more Pros for buying a real developer phone :
HierarchyViewer does not work on user builds (i.e. with devices
available in stores.) This is for security reasons.
See the original thread
Hierarchy viewer can be very useful if you have problems with layout being slow, although I don't think it would worth buying a real Developer phone only for this.
As some people made workaround for that problem : https://stackoverflow.com/a/7801475/62921.