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Google Preps Devs For One-Size-Fits-All Android

Posted by Soulskill on from the ways-in-which-operating-systems-are-like-sweatpants dept.

alphadogg writes "Google is preparing Android developers for the latest edition of its Android mobile operating platform that will work the same on both tablets and smartphones. Scott Main, the lead tech writer for Google's Android Developers Blog, reminded developers on Monday that the newest edition of Android — dubbed 'Ice Cream Sandwich' — will 'support big screens, small screens and everything in between.' Main also emphasized that Android would maintain 'the same version ... on all screen sizes' going forward."

4 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Biggest thing is SUPPORT by Xest · · Score: 3, Informative

    To be fair everyone whinged and whinged and whinged about the HTC Magic on Vodafone in the UK not being updated from 1.6.

    Then they updated it from 1.6 to 2.2 and it turned out that yeah the hardware really was a bit too shitty to support the new version decently. The same has happened with iOS where the oldest supported model tends to run shit with the most newly released update.

    I sympathise with some as some phones really can and should be updated, but sometimes there's also good reason not to update phones too. I spoken to someone at Vodafone outside of their official work setting where they could be a bit more frank and he said they were damned if they did, damned if they didn't - by not updating they got tons and tons and tons of flak, but then when they finally updated the Magic they then got loads and loads of flak from people complaining their phone was slow, and couldn't run some of the newer 2.2 only apps very well, the net result being post update they actually saw a higher burden of complaints. I know Vodafone et al isn't blameless when it comes to updates, far from it, their messing around with the Desire was just silly, but hearing this other side of the story was interesting. There are very real concerns for carriers if they allow any old update on any old phone - because they provide the phone people go to them for support when things go to shit.

  2. the phone reports it by jDeepbeep · · Score: 2, Informative

    Are they just going to have a few hardcoded presets(phone, tablet, TV?) that use the same architectural foundation? Will it be a single 'windowing' mechanism that follows certain layout rules that result in different effects based on screen size and DPI?

    Android has been doing this for a while, choosing at runtime which resources to serve up based on DPI. The source tree of an Android app has 3 'drawable' directories under res/ (drawable-ldpi, drawable-mdpi, and drawable-hdpi) and it picks the best one for each situation.

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    Reply to That ||
    1. Re:the phone reports it by JAlexoi · · Score: 3, Informative

      Don't forget drawable-xhdpi and other -ldpi, -mdpi, -hdpi, -xhdpi, -nodpi, -tvdpi, -large, -small, etc...
      FYI: The guide has been recently updated http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html

  3. Re:CM7 users have to warez the Market by kidgenius · · Score: 3, Informative

    Seriously? CM tells you how to do this, as does rom manager, etc. Google and Cyanogen came to very nice terms quite some time ago about gapps. Cyanogen can't include it, but they are allowed to provide it as a separate package. So here you go: http://goo-inside.me/gapps/