I'm looking at market stats here for sdk distribution:
http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html
saying that 31% of marketplace users are still running 1.5. Is it true that an OS update went out for G1 and myTouch users? I'm wondering why so many people are still running 1.5 if so? Just curious because I'd like to use th setView() method introduced in 1.6 for TabSpec, but not if so many people are still using 1.5, I might have to roll my own control,
Thanks
Many devices are being announced with 1.5 but will be upgraded before or soon after launch, as I see it many rooted phones that came with 1.5 or lower are almost all at 1.6. Some $100 devices announced will never go higher than 1.6 because of performance issues unless Google actually optimizes newer versions of Android.
The htc Magic(Mytouch) and htc Dream(G1) here in canada only officially have a 1.5 update and no 1.6. But in the USA they now have 1.6. I have a Dream and I rooted it and have firmware 1.6 but I have run 2.0, 2.01, 2.1 on it but performance is not too great on it. With 1.6 I can play apparently slow games on it at a decent speed.
Google also stated that they will update most android devices to have 2.1. So I would think that All Htc and Motorola phones will end up with 2.1. Just give me a moment to find the source of this.
All US Android phones to have 2.1
Devices that have a custom ui are: (These are the devices that I know of but there are more)
Sence UI
HTC Magic in canada
HTC Hero
MotoBlur
Backflip
Click
Click xt
There are custom roms that enable sence ui and motoblur for motorola phones and htc phones. For example I have run sense ui and motoblur on my Dream.
Reports suggest that most devices will be upgraded to 2.0 in the coming months and those that aren't will be running 1.6.
So you have to weigh up the advantage of using the setView() method over the potential loss in device compatibility.
strangly enough LG is just releasing a new phone based on 1.5
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2010/03/17/review_phone_lg_gw620/
I'm one of the users running 1.5 on my HTC Hero, this is not because I don't want to update but because they haven't released it yet, fortunately 2.1 is being released in April for Orange customers in the UK.
Furthermore the reason some devices take some time to upgrade are mostly due to HTC improving and upgrading the SenseUI, it's what I was told when I asked them anyway.
HTC Hero being upgraded to 2.1 on 26th April in Taiwan, a day or two after rest of the world
Source: http://www.androidcentral.com/htc-hero-gets-21-upgrade-april-26th-%E2%80%93-taiwan
Related
I am about to port my application on android. Since I am new to this system I would like to ask for tips on android phones for testing my app. The number of phones is pretty huge so it is pretty hard to choose the right one. Also I wasn't able to find some kind of official chart of system distribution.
I know that it really depends on hardware and how much my app demands from hardware. It is pretty basic app and I am able to run this app at 30fps on iPhone 4S.
I did some research and people are talking about the latest phones but I think that it is not necessary to buy the newest one. Also, is there option to buy for example tablet and emulate android devices on this tablet?
So my goal is to focus on devices people have the most.
Thank you for any advice.
You can run many of your tests on the Android emulator. Using it together
with the DDMS will allow you to simulate several real life situations
(arriving call, arriving sms, change position...)
You can use BlueStacks which is an emulator put on steroids.
TestFairy and UTest are awsome communities for crowd testing were you can test ~any device you can think of.
Still, it is a good idea, especially if you plan your run at Android to be long,
to maintain a small stash of real devices.
Which devices should you buy? Which OS version should they run?
The Android dashboard is the official source for answering some of these questions. It gives an
up to date statistics of worldwide distribution by OS version, svreen size/density and more:
OS Distribution
Screen type Distribution
So, true to July 2014 you would want devices running Jelly Bean, Gingerbread & ICS and you screens of types normal/hdpi, normal/xxhdpi and normal/xhdpi. This list can grow but even this will provide you with a good sample of the Android device ecosystem.
As for manufacturers, the picture is clear: Samsung is the winner. Exact number &
distributions are harder to find here, but a Google search might help.
If my memory serves me write some 65% of all Android devices are Samsungs made with
Galaxy S3 taking 15% (of ENTIRE Android market) and Galaxy S4 = 10%.
Device screen features:
Galaxy S2 is normal/hdpi
Galaxy S3 is normal/xhdpi
Galaxy S4/S5 is normal/xxhdpi
These will probably be your best bet. You will do smartly to install on them 2-3 different OS versions, at
minimum Jelly Bean and ICS.
The Android Development Tools in Eclipse and Android Studio both have emulators that can be used to emulate different devices, including tablets and phones. You don't need to buy anything to be able to test your app on an emulator. The emulators run on your computer.
For more information
As for what devices most people have, while I don't have official statistics, looking at my own applications' downloads, most people are using either a Nexus 4 or Nexus 5.
I'm very curius about one thing:
Is it possible that for instance, Jelly Bean on HTC differs from Jelly Bean on Samsung, or Sony, Motorola..etc? If "YES" why?
Actually this IS programming question because, some apps that i'm testing are working on HTC, but not (not fully working, or with "bugs" ) on Samsung, or vice versa.
Is it possible that for instance, Jelly Bean on HTC differs from Jelly Bean on Samsung, or Sony, Motorola..etc?
Absolutely.
If "YES" why?
Because they can. Android is open source software, meaning that anyone can modify it as they see fit.
Devices that legitimately have the Play Store app on them must meet certain compatibility criteria, including passing a test suite designed to ensure that the Android APIs are not horribly broken.
Although any "Jelly Bean" version is based on the same ASOP core there are a bunch of reasons why things could differ. The inclusion of Google Mobile Services (on Nexus7 for instance, but not Kindle Fire), chipset level changes that are developed by TI or Qualcomm etc to support the hardware platform as well as customizations and optimizations my OEMs and ODMs (eg a custom launcher or inclusion of Dolby Digital to the audio pipeline) are going to mean potentially different behaviors, though mostly they should not change core API functionality
Within any given major release there are also fixes and changes for the point releases which may show up in your tests.
Do you have examples of the sorts of things you are seeing
Yes, because some companies all vary, and it takes time to get the next Android Version into their devices. Say for instance when Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie comes out this May, Motorola will be the first to have it with the Motorola X, but it will take other companies such as LG some time to get to it. My LG Android device doesn't even go to Android 3.0 Honeycomb yet.
I am beginning Android app development and I would like to know which device would give me the most comprehensive testing environment. I would like my app to be compatible with the most number of devices without breaking the bank by buying a dozen devices. Just testing on the emulator is not an option because it runs at 1/10th of normal speed.
OS Version
Should I purchase a device with the most common OS? As of now, 2.2 is the most popular. Obviously, a 2.2 device wouldn't be able to test run an app made for 3.0. But is the reverse also true? If I buy a 3.0 device, would that allow me to test all lower versions?
Tablet or Phone
Given that my app won't be dealing with phone calls, should I be buying a phone or tablet? Are the two sufficiently the same except for resolution? Has your app ever worked on a tablet but failed on a phone? The Apple iPad has a neat emulation mode for iPhone apps. Is this feature also available on Android tablets?
Price is also a big consideration when choosing a tablet over a phone. I'm not going to sign up for another cellular plan, so most phones would have me fork over $500+. That would come out to be the same price as the Motorola Xoom. But arguably Android phones are much more popular than tablets, so a Xoom wouldn't let me see what most of my users would be seeing.
In general it's up to you, I suggest you Google Nexus S, because of NFC module in that phone (only that phone nowadays as I good know have NFC), besides that it has everything you need. Big plus for screen.
Android 3.0 is made generally for tablets but of course you can write application in 3.0 and run it on 2.2 or 2.3 just look for backward compatibility, and use reflection.
Also good to know that it does not depend of your phone which version you have it's up to SDK ver which you choose during creating project, in general you can set 7 as min SDK and test it on phone with 9.
If you are creating applications which requires a lot of custom drawing/animating such a game, then a slew of devices would be ideal to test against resolutions, DPI, RAM, CPU power, etc.
If you are using more of the native components then you do not have to worry as much about the different screen types and sizes as these tend to scale very well.
This question was brought up at GDC's Android Developer Day, you may be able to find the video online. Basically, it boiled down to trying to get one of each kind of device, low end, mid, high. It was also recommended that you built for the newest SDK, then start building against older ones, fixing, testing, rebuilding.
Therefore, I would personally recommend the Nexus S.
The company I work for does Android development on the original G1, HTC Hero, Samsung Epic 4G, and HTC Incredible.
My boss recently gave me an HTC Wildfire phone for doing an Android version of one of our mobile apps, which is all fine and good, except that the app requires API level 8 (ie Android 2.2), and the phone itself only has Android 2.1 installed. After much googling, I discovered that this phone does support Android 2.2, and carriers will be rolling out updates over the air for this model phone "in the near future".
Since I'm not entirely certain what our lazy carrier's definition of "near future" is, it would be nice if I could download images for particular releases and install them on my phone. Coming from the world of the iPhone, it seems that this should be something rather necessary in order to successfully develop an Android app.
Yet, it doesn't seem that Google offers any Android OS updates themselves. Have I no choice but to wait for the carrier to release an update?
Edit: Thanks for the suggestions regarding the emulator, but I'm asking about testing on hardware only. I already have a working 2.2 emulator image, but I need to test on hardware now, since the emulator does a very poor job of things like video playback and audio processing.
There's a few ways you can test your application on Android 2.2:
1) You can use the Emulator provided by Google in the SDK. It is possible to create a virtual machine of any version of Android with various hardware options. However, the emulator does have some limitations such as not supporting certain hardware options (such as bluetooth) and it's also dreadfully slow to boot.
2) If you have to use an actual phone with 2.2, you can root your phone and flash a custom ROM. I'm not particularly familiar with how to root the Wildfire, or what custom ROMs are available for that specific phone, but Cyanogen Mod has pretty good ROM support for HTC phones, as well as an active forum with tutorials.
No, it's not possible to download images before OTA. You could check CyanogemMod from time to time - they're working on Wildfire support. Also you could use an emulator.
If you are wanting to bounce around with newer versions, I recommend the Nexus One as a dev phone if you can get your hands on one. Or, if you can deal with the constraints, start with a built-in AVD emulator with API 8 until your phone gets the OTA update.
The Motorola Droid is also getting/has 2.2 on it. At least in the States, in seems that most of the phones on Verizon already have it (non-scientific, just from talking to people I know). So if that phone is available, it may be a decent choice.
I just uploaded my first app to the Android marketplace and one comments says, "It force closes on G1". What version of the Android OS does the G1 use?
Originally the G1 shipped with 1.0, then upgrades were released to update the phone to 1.1, 1.5 (Cupcake) and 1.6 (Donut).
So you would expect most users to be on 1.6. However, there are a couple of extra things you may want to consider.
Firstly, some users will be running custom firmware. A quite a few G1 users - me included - run community firmware on their devices, such as CyanogenMod. Often these releases are 1.6 releases with 2.x functionality ported from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) tree, so you could consider them as a hybrid release, putting the phone somewhere between 1.6 and 2.x. I wouldn't worry about the people running custom firmware since they are so many different firmwares and builds of each firmware, and people who put custom firmware on their phone usually expect to fend for themselves. I only mention it in case you get some weird bugs you really can't replicate which might be caused by this.
Secondly, I'd recommend looking at the Android Device Dashboard as this shows what fraction of users of all phones are running each release:
At the time of writing 31% of users are still on Android 1.5 and I would guess quite a few of these are running G1s.
So my advice would be to test your application on 1.5 and 1.6 if you want to support G1 users.
The latest should have been Android 1.6, but originally it was shipped with Android 1.0 (Source).
The latest update they've pushed out to the G1 is Android 1.6. They're supposed to be working on trimming down 2.0 to make it fit on the G1 but so far it hasn't been available without hacking your phone.
Currently 1.6 (Donut), this is most likely the last OS version that will be on the G1.
Originally it was shipped with Android 1.0. Now it uses Android 1.6