Android Co-Founder: Fragmentation "an Overblown Issue"

curtwoodward writes "Sure, developers might pull their hair out trying to keep track of all the versions of the Android operating system scattered across hundreds of millions of mobile devices worldwide. But a co-founder of Android says the OS's fragmentation problem is being blown out of proportion. At an event this week in Boston, Rich Miner — now a partner at Google Ventures — said some level of fragmentation is inevitable with Android's reach and the number of partners in the ecosystem. But things are getting better, he said, and in any case most consumers don't notice the difference: `This is a bit of an overblown issue, frankly.'"

Comments

Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

This just in: Guy with stake in product says nothing is wrong with product. Film at 11.

Re:Yeah.

[girlintraining]

This just in: Guy with stake in product says nothing is wrong with product. Film at 11.

Thing is, he's not wrong. Most consumers won't notice. But then, most consumers wouldn't notice if their computer ran on little gerbils inside and the internet was just a series of tubes. But that's no excuse for his handwave. Fragmentation is a problem. Maybe it's not a severe one -- maybe not yet. Maybe developers can muddle through. Maybe, even everything is fine. For now.

But complacency will always get you a kick in the ass by the next best thing in technology, and you can go from cutting edge to curdled milk in no time at all. Iconic brand names of even a few years ago are now nothing more than sign posts in the desert -- Compaq. E Machines. 3Com. They were once all major brands and now they're dust. If you want to stay on the leading edge, you have to push the boundaries. You have to innovate, improve, refine, create. You can't talk about "ecosystems" and "platforms" like they're going to just go right on existing on their own, like they're some timeless thing.

They won't. Android will die someday; Everything does. The only question is how long it'll last -- and if you want that question to be "For a long time yet," then you best listen to the people who work with it every day and say "This is a problem." And you'd better answer back with something better than "No it's not." Address the problem now, while it's small... because trust me when I say... if there's one thing computers are good at, it's multiplying trouble. Exponentially. Don't wait. Fix it. Fix it now. Before you're sitting on the ruined throne of a kingdom of dust.

Re:Yeah.

[viperidaenz]

He never said it wasn't a problem. He simply stated it was overblown - ie, it's an issue, but not as big an issue as people (read: Apple and Microsoft) are making it out to be.

Re:Yeah.

[mjwx]

He never said it wasn't a problem. He simply stated it was overblown - ie, it's an issue, but not as big an issue as people (read: Apple and Microsoft) are making it out to be.

This,

Fragmentation is a minor issue for developers, it only crops up when you're trying to do specific things. If you target Android 1.5 then it will work on versions 1.5 to current (4.2), however if you target 4.0, your application might not work on version 2.3.

Thats the extent of fragmentation technical issues. For the consumer, Google Play filters incompatible applications for them.

The big problem with fragmentation is that Apple and Microsoft have nothing worse to bang on about as Android eats their lunch.

Re:Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

You had me until the last line. I don't think Microsoft has a lunch to eat here and Apple is still the one making the vast majority of the money. Quantity is a quality all its own, but come on?

I saw this as someone who had an Android phone, liked it, but bought an Apple phone when it died. At full price (I was under contract with my carrier still) without a second thought. I'm not saying I'll never go back, but not at full price. And that's an important distinction, I think.

Re:Yeah.

[LesFerg]

Thing is, he's not wrong. Most consumers won't notice.

I certainly noticed when Google Chrome would not install on my android 2.3 phone, which LG refuse to provide any further updates for.
In fact Google seem to be the most inclined to produce apps which will only run on the latest version of android and bugger anybody who hasn't thrown out last years tech and bought something new.

Re:Yeah.

[aklinux]

I don't the fragmentation is any worse than what PC manufactures have managed to do with Windows. I can't speak to Apple products as I've never owned one. All PC products come with vendor specific apps we like to call bloat-ware. The average Joe often doesn't realize this is nothing more than bloat-ware or trial-ware and I have seen them get upset when it quits functioning after an upgrade. I saw one guy get real upset when he could no longer access his Sony Media Store app on his desktop. It turned out to be nothing more than a glorified web-link to Sony's media store, which required Internet Explorer to access. He thought it was an actual application installed on his computer. Some come with vendor specific tools required to update the hardware that vendor puts out. Some will run versions of Windows that others won't. Remember AeroGlass? We had hardware that was MS certified, some that was MS compatible, etc. It all meant something different and there were people up-in-arms because they didn't read the fine print in what they were getting.

Re:Yeah.

[macshit]

Apple is still the one making the vast majority of the money. Quantity is a quality all its own, but come on?

Are they making the vast majority of money? There's a great deal of hardware competition in Android phones, which means no one manufacturer does the kind of volume Apple does, but many Android phones seem to have very similar hardware specs and very similar prices to the iPhone, and the overall volume of Android phones is greater than the volume of iPhones; in places like Japan, the overall volume of high-spec (iPhone or better) phones is probably greater than the volume of iPhones. Apple can profit somewhat by taking advantage of volume pricing for components, but many of their competitors are very large companies, with significant sway of their own.

I think Apple thought they'd have iPod-like market domination in this market, i.e., no significant competiton. Despite the iPhone's obvious popularity, Android really threw a spanner in those plans.... [Thus Steve's fury...]

Re:Yeah.

[mjwx]

, but many Android phones seem to have very similar hardware specs and very similar prices to the iPhone

Not many.

A lot of Android phones have similar spec's to the Iphone of the same vintage, some have better specs. However few are offered at the same extortionate price point. Even Samsung and HTC flagship phones are $1-200 less, something like the Nexus 4 was half the price.

Re:Yeah.

[oursland]

Thats the extent of fragmentation technical issues.

No, that's not correct; the problem goes further. On some devices things display differently, even though they have the same version of Android. On some devices you have access to audio/video codecs that aren't available on others.

In the end, this lack of cohesion meant my company stopped developing their A/V application because there was too much variability, even when versions of the Android OS were the same. When this happens we lose out on a market, but the customers never get a chance to use and enjoy our applications.

Re:Yeah.

[__aaltlg1547]

Are you sure? Samsung has now overtaken Apple in smartphone revenue.

Re:Yeah.

[mjwx]

On some devices things display differently, even though they have the same version of Android. On some devices you have access to audio/video codecs that aren't available on others.

No,

This is when you target Android API's not vendor specific API's.

So you really have just re-iterated my point. If you target ANDROID 2.2 it will work on Android 2.2 and above, if you target a SAMSUNG API, it may not work on HTC phones.

Re: Yeah.

[tysonedwards]

The difference is that on a PC, if you don't like the bloat ware and uninstall it, you still have your warranty intact. If you do the same on your cell phone, you're SOL. That's the same in Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM's camp.

Re:Yeah.

[the_B0fh]

So close, yet so far.

Why do you think a developer would target 4.2 when he could get a bigger market if he targets 1.5?

So what are the main reasons he would *NOT* target 1.5? If all a developer has to do is target 1.5, then why are all the android fanbois getting a boner whenever a new version comes out?

Please sit and think for a while. There *IS* a fucking difference between 1.5 and 4.2. And the extra functionality is expressed by new APIs which make it simpler for the developer to write stuff, and interoperate with other stuff written to that set of APIs. What havoc would it be if everyone reimplemented their own SSL layer?

If you think really hard, you may finally understand why it's fragmentation.

Re:Yeah.

[the_B0fh]

You don't understand what is fragmentation. In context of the Android discussion, it's not about what kind of bloatware was installed or not installed, required, or not required. It's about the different versions of Android in use. If you want to target your app at 1/3 of the Android market, you can write towards Android v4.0.

If you want to target your app towards 3/4 of the market, you write towards Android v2.2. If you want to hit higher percentages of the market, you have to go down to earlier versions of Android.

Obviously later versions of Android have features and functionalities you can leverage, improved security, etc. Earlier versions of Android means you have to write those yourself, or just not use that feature.

Compare this to iOS. If you want to hit 99% of the iPhones on the market, you write towards iOS 6.0.

Re:Yeah.

[thesupraman]

Thing is, he's not wrong. Most consumers won't notice.

I certainly noticed when Google Chrome would not install on my android 2.3 phone, which LG refuse to provide any further updates for.
In fact Google seem to be the most inclined to produce apps which will only run on the latest version of android and bugger anybody who hasn't thrown out last years tech and bought something new.

Most people with smartphones are on contracts that subsidize a new phone every two years. This is a problem that solves itself.

Should Google force every builder of Android devices to commit to updates for years? If they did this three years ago no manufacturer would have built Android hardware. If you think Android is fragmented, imagine every phone maker building their own OS.

No, most people IN AMERICA are on contracts that INCLUDE THE COST OF a new phone every two years

There, fixed that for you.
When you would like to join the ranks of the thinking, not pay for a new phone every two years whether you like it or not, and therefore pay cheaper prices, feel free.

Re:Yeah.

[exomondo]

Fragmentation is a minor issue for developers, it only crops up when you're trying to do specific things. If you target Android 1.5 then it will work on versions 1.5 to current (4.2), however if you target 4.0, your application might not work on version 2.3.

That's only if you consider Android to be nothing more than the Android software provided by Google, but it isn't, because Android has to run on hardware and the variations of this hardware vary wildly in CPU architecture, cores and speed, RAM amount, speed and latency, Storage speed and size, GPU architecture, cores, speed, memory size, memory latency, extensions, GPS unit, etc... as such the experience of using even a program targeted at 1.5 will vary greatly across the devices running versions that support that API level.

Re:Yeah.

[Anubis IV]

I can't help but feel that you've been a bit out of touch with the market, since you've got facts wrong on both sides.

First off, a correction in favor of Android and Samsung:

There's a great deal of hardware competition in Android phones, which means no one manufacturer does the kind of volume Apple does

Contrary to your statement, Samsung's volume is FAR greater than Apple's, though it's also split up over a greater number of models. As of April, they ship almost 2x as much, in fact. I do seem to recall seeing that the latest iPhone remains the most popular smartphone with the major carriers in the U.S., but if we're considering all smartphones sold, rather than just what's the single most popular model, and look at it on a global scale, Samsung is well ahead of Apple in terms of volume sold.

And then, an answer to your rhetorical question that seems to be contrary to what you expected:

Are they [Apple] making the vast majority of money?

Last quarter (i.e. launch quarter for Samsung's flagship Galaxy S4) Apple only managed to bring in a paltry 57% of the profits in the global smartphone industry, with Samsung taking 43% (well, technically, LG came in at a hair under 1% if you look into the numbers carefully, but they got rounded out in most of the articles on the subject). Every other smartphone player is either break-even or losing money. The reason I call it "paltry" is because it's actually down from their high the previous year when they managed to capture 74% of the profits, leaving Samsung with 23%, HTC with 1%, and the rest at break-even or a loss. So, yes, to say the least, they are making the vast majority of money, though it's certainly not as vast as it was last year, since the gap has shrunk from 51% to 14%, mostly because Samsung has been doing very well and Apple has cut their profit margins by putting out devices with higher production costs (the iPhone 5 is notorious for being difficult to manufacture due to issues such as its micron-level tolerances during manufacturing and assembly).

Anyway, there's definitely an argument to be made that the cheaper Android phones are winning massive amounts of market share, but it's like the old joke about the shop owners who are losing money on every sale but plan to make up for it on volume. The only winners in this are the ones selling the "high-spec" phones. The rest are trying to buy their way into third place and are paying for it out the nose.

Re:Yeah.

[LiENUS]

interestingly enough there is a way to target 1.5 yet use 4.2 features if they are available, you just fall back to lacking functionality on devices without those features.

Re:Yeah.

[LiENUS]

Samsung S4, unlocked price: $699..

Strangely enough it's actually $649 you seem to have found a vendor on amazon who is inflating the price... (or perhaps thats a 32gb model?)
https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=samsung_galaxy_s4&feature=device-featured
the htc one is a mere $599 for their 32 gb model....
https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=htc_one&feature=device-featured

What in the world are you smoking, and why aren't you sharing? Also, do you understand that the Nexus phones are sold without profit, and even support costs built in? Google themselves have said that multiple times. It's the cost of hardware, and that is it. Have a think about it. Why would someone essentially do what an a "dump" of the Nexus hardware?

Interestingly enough the nexus phones aren't sold without profit, in fact the nexus 4 has ~$150 profit. They just aren't sold at ridiculous levels of profit... Note that price is based on a tear down and the price of components.

Re:Yeah.

[SuperKendall]

And just how do I target an Android 2.2 device when using BTLE?

Which hardware been shipping for a while in multiple Android phones but is only accessible via Samsung API's?

Even when the next version of Android with BTLE support rolls out, that doesn't exactly help much when so few older phones with BTLE will actually got OS updates for a year or more (if ever).

Re:Yeah.

[the_B0fh]

So, me using the first amazon link off a duckduck go search for samsung s4 full price is fanboyism, and you picking up some random aussie link is not. Got it.

And of course, your unsubstantiated claim that Apple will never drop the price on the iPhone 5 is full of shit, and anyone with half a brain can see that the price does drop, just as it did for the iPhone 4S, the iPhone 4, the iPhone 3GS, etc.

But go on, tell me more about how correct you are.

Re: Yeah.

[synthespian]

You mean, won't notice until they do notice, right?
Android has no updates for it.
The Google Play store will leave them dead in the water, sooner or later.
Google hasn't a clue about how to treat customers. Customers are just numbers they crunch on big data. Look how they simply pull out features people used everyday on their products (or how stagnant they are - or is there any other reason Evernote, Dropbox, etc were able to eat away at Google mindshare for niche products ?)
Fact is, Apple will give more return on your investment. That's why people remain loyal to that brand.
There's really only one brand name that you attach to Android (Samsung).
Android sells more because it's cheaper. It's the Windows 95 of mobile phones.

Re:Yeah.

[the_B0fh]

very good point, though it makes it harder to write the app. And god help you if you need permissions that are not in v1.5. I'm not sure if there's a way around that.

Re:Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except Samsung has:

1) A larger screen.
2) NFC
3) SD Card slot.
4) Removable battery bay
5) Larger battery

Say what you will about the utility or usefulness of said functions, but the important idea is that the hardware is there. All this hardware, for about $50 more?

Re:Yeah.

[oursland]

We developed during Android 2.2, when there wasn't all the support there currently is. Furthermore, the support we had access to involved playing URLs, well the transport stream we used does not have a URL. Furthermore, at times we may have to directly insert I-Frames into the stream, manually step the decoder, and insert discontinuities into the stream. The codecs did not support any of that.

Re:Yeah.

[AmiMoJo]

Last year's version of Android is 4.1, and Chrome runs fine on it. 2.3 is ancient. Yes, some manufacturers are still shipping it, but if you pay £40 for a phone do you really expect the latest and greatest?

At this point the majority of Android users are on 4.x.

Re:Yeah.

[rtb61]

Fragmentation is never ever going to be a problem for Android because 'specifically' it is a design feature, it's called choice. The only people who consider the choices available to manufacturers and customers in Android to be a problem are, tah dah, Apple and M$ and I'll let everyone guess why, with out bothering to state the obvious.

Yes , oh my god, Android will fragment because it was bloody designed to do so. However the will be the main 'hmmm' tine (one word as good as any other) as governed by Google in this case, around which other manufacturers will base their fork, drift away from and drift back to based upon customer feedback. Google also has the opportunity to include bits and pieces from the forks back to the main tine.

Choice, choice, choice, those choices the manufactures make with regard to Android and the choices in hardware it is used to control and how the customers alter their choices based upon product presentation, peer reviews and experience.

Fragmentation in Android is a problem, and it is a problem for Apple and M$ because it allows multiple development streams which can test consumer reactions for far more rapid product development and implementation, as well as of course providing customers far greater choice and of course individuality. Apple and M$ phones for people who wish to conform to their overlord manufacturers choices, who wish to look and behave exactly like their overlords designed market segments, for people who like to have the choices made for them.

Re:Yeah.

[Sockatume]

That's a clear disincentive for developers to bother with the APIs implemented in Android 4.0, no? Thereby a disincentive for Android apps to stay technically competitive.

It's bad. How bad is an open question.

Re:Yeah.

[julesh]

There is a difference between revenue and profit. Try not to let that make your brain explode.

Sure, but this article contains data showing that the difference in profit margin between Apple and Samsung phones is minimal these days, so you're clearly just making this shit up.

Re:Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think Microsoft has a lunch to eat here

Their lunch isn't up to much, but their breakfast and dinner are on the table for Android to grab as well.

Plenty of OEMs are unhappy about being shafted with W8 and the attempted shafting with Surface. They're adapting Android for desktop use, and putting VERY heavy resources into improving the Office-type apps. Windows is already in steep decline, and once enough people are off the OS lockin treadmill, they'll expect Microsoft Office to work with the documents they're producing on their tablets, laptops, phones and Android desktops.

Microsoft will be forced into a position of having to be compatible with other tools and having to compete on merit. Unless they have several rabbits to pull out of hats, they're screwed.

MS know this and they're fighting VERY dirty. Expect more SCO/SecureBoot/OOXML/WebRTC/Java/Stacker/IBM/etc etc antics from Redmond in the near future.

Re:Yeah.

[Bongo]

If you target Android 1.5 then it will work on versions 1.5 to current (4.2)...

Maybe Apple should tell devs to target iOS 3.

Re:Yeah.

[squiggleslash]

You left Android over an abstract concept? Seems a little extreme!

I can understand someone leaving Android because of something that's a part-consequence of fragmentation, but not of fragmentation itself.

Re:Yeah.

[Dog-Cow]

Except that doesn't really matter because most of those features are user-level features, and not a part of the SDK anyway. And Apple's support for backwards compatibility makes it trivial to handle missing features anyway.

Re:Yeah.

[thegarbz]

So your comment that was modded insightful is based on the knowledge of a platform that's 3 years out of date? Got it.

May I ask what stopped you from shipping your own codecs? My media player had no problem with this back several years ago, and to this day it comes shipped with its own codec pack.

Re:Yeah.

[AmiMoJo]

Your mistake was expecting a relatively young OS to provide you with a codec that could do some pretty unusual stuff. You could bundle your own codec, Android supports native code for performance.

Re:Yeah.

[AmiMoJo]

In reality no-body thinks like that. They say "what features does my app need?" and if that means they have to target 4.0 the do, otherwise it's 2.2. You don't even have to think about it, the IDE keeps track of what you are using and tells you. You can easily conditionally support newer API levels as well.

Also your numbers are wall off, the majority of users are on 4.x now: http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

Re:Yeah.

[Politburo]

Stock price is not relevant in a vacuum, one must consider the number of shares. This metric is called market cap. Apple is somewhere around $400b, Samsung is a bit below $200b. Investor confidence was recently downgraded for Samsung.

Re:Yeah.

[__aaltlg1547]

The context of the comment was smartphones. How much Apple is making on tablets and computers is separate. Do you have numbers the profitability of Samsung's smartphone business vs. Apple's smartphone business?

I look at data I have. http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2482816

There's also this: the leader in sales is likely to become the leader in profit in not many quarters.

Android Q1 sales are now up to 74% of the market, compared to Apple's 18.2% -- down 4% since last year this time.
Samsung alone has 30.8% of the market. They're increasing their dominance, beating out other Android phone vendors but ALSO taking market share away from Apple.

If I were working for Apple's iPhone business, I'd see Samsung unit sales running away from me and be pretty worried. I remember when smart phone users had to have a Blackberry. I remember when Nokia dominated the mobile phone business. I remember when Motorola dominated the mobile phone business. Where are they now?

Re:Yeah.

[__aaltlg1547]

You do know the difference between profit and revenue, don't you?

I'm one of those people who knows that if you're losing market share, you're headed down a dangerous path, even if your profit numbers still look healthy.

Re:Yeah.

[Kelbear]

When I search for samsung galaxy s4 on amazon I get 3 offers:
$613.49
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Galaxy-I9505-white-16GB/dp/B00BTCE734/ref=sr_1_1?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1373549604&sr=1-1&keywords=samsung+galaxy+s4

$605
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-i337-GALAXY-Phone-16GB/dp/B00CRO6QFA/ref=sr_1_2?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1373549604&sr=1-2&keywords=samsung+galaxy+s4

$619
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-i337-GALAXY-Phone-16GB/dp/B00CRNTDII/ref=sr_1_3?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1373549604&sr=1-3&keywords=samsung+galaxy+s4

Full price on T-mobile with no contract is $650, same for Google Play.

I mean, there's some dumbass trying to sell one for $1300, but that's just wishful thinking, not a market price. $650 is the standard price, anything below is a discount, anything above is scalping.

Re:Yeah.

[F.Ultra]

And if you where targeting Microsoft or Apple then stuff like this would be solved by magic?

Re:Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stock prices aren't a useful point of comparison.

1000 shares in the market x $10 share price = $10,000

Company issues a 2 for 1 stock split:
2000 shares in the market x $5 share price = $10,000

Stock price has dropped from $10 to $5...but nothing has changed.

Company issues a reverse stock split 1 for 2:

1000 shares in the market x $10 share price = $10,000.

Stock price goes up from $5 to $10...but nothing has changed.

You should be looking at market cap.

Re:Yeah.

[LiENUS]

Just thought I'd link to a tutorial on having fallbacks http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/07/how-to-have-your-cupcake-and-eat-it-too.html I don't think adding permissions not in v1.5 are an issue. Android 1.5 would just ignore them while newer versions with support for them would properly utilize them.

Re:Yeah.

[the_B0fh]

You do realize that Google has massaged the numbers, right? Go google for it... :)

Re:Yeah.

[the_B0fh]

Fanboism aside, you realize Samsung's stock price is 2-4 times that of APL? http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/ssnlf

Thank you for proving my point so eloquently.

Re:Yeah.

[the_B0fh]

Another person who cannot tell the difference between TOTAL NET PROFIT that company A makes is overwhelmingly larger than the TOTAL NET PROFIT that company S makes.

Not that S isn't catching up, mind you. They are.

Re:Yeah.

[cheesybagel]

Micron level tolerances and Chinese hand assembly of components don't mix.

The main issue is the unibody construction which requires expensive machine tools.

Re:Yeah.

[cheesybagel]

Yes mobile phone users are fickle and user retention historically has been pretty low. While this is bound to change with the entry into service of electronic application stores and the ilk, most of the time users don't spend that money on applications. I know I don't.

If their market share on the PC market is any indication Apple will eventually only have 10-20% of the smartphone market.

Re:Yeah.

[cheesybagel]

Yep. For example I cannot play 720p MPEG-4 AVC video properly with the bundled video player in Android Gingerbread which came with my Galaxy Tab. The playback stutters. However the video plays just fine using MX Player which comes with its own native binary codec.

Re:Yeah.

[Anubis IV]

Micron level tolerances and Chinese hand assembly of components don't mix.

You're making my point for me. I'm not the one claiming micron-level tolerances. Apple did.

Apple has a marketing video posted for the iPhone 5 where they talk about their process and how they achieve those micron-level tolerances. It basically involves photographing the phone with a high-megapixel camera and then computationally analyzing the image of the unibody frame to select a faceplate from one of 725 minutely different shapes, in order to choose the one that will best fit the frame. But if the unibody frames are not consistent enough, then nothing will fit at all, which has been leading to poor yields and expensive manufacturing. That's on top of the expensive frame that you're talking about, and I never meant to suggest that the micron-level tolerances were the only source of reduced margins; they were merely an example.

P.S. Interestingly when I was researching my facts for that last post, I actually ran across a number of people talking about doing machining by hand using techniques that had been available for at least 40-50 years in order to achieve tolerances of 1 micron. A couple of people even mentioned that their work involved having to go under that point, all by hand, and that they'd consider a single micron of tolerance to be a luxury, though it sounded like they were all working in scientific or engineering pursuits of a small scale that could afford to be done by hand, rather than mass manufacturing tens or hundreds of millions of devices. I'm sure other slashdotters would know more about that stuff, since I stick to software in my day job, but I found it to be rather remarkable to consider that someone could machine a product to a level of precision like that without having to involve a computer.

Re:Yeah.

[Dixie_Flatline]

The iPhone 5 will drop in price as soon as the new batch of iPhones is out this fall. This is how it's always been.

Re:Yeah.

[denmarkw00t]

The 5 will absolutely drop in price - hence, I could get a new iPhone 4 for $0.01 with a two-year contract. I doubt the carrier would be eating the full cost of $649 for a 4, because it doesn't cost that anymore.

Re:Yeah.

[mattack2]

Minor issue for developers maybe..

But what about the user? You can still buy(*) new phones running old versions of Android, and AFAIK, many of them will never get updates.

(*) I admit most of my knowledge on this comes from the CNET videos of phone reviews I see. TONS of the Android phone ones say "this still runs ", and only once in a while do they even mention that there will be an update available. (I am not inferring that if it's not mentioned, there WON'T be an update. I'm basing that part on real world examples of phones coming out and not ever being able to be updated officially.)

Re:Yeah.

[exomondo]

Actually you're wrong, on some devices things do display differently even though they have the same version of Android, one example is text and line rendering on devices with pentile displays vs non-pentile displays.

Re:Yeah.

[oursland]

You cannot decode 720p30 and 1080p30 on the CPU on these devices. The performance wasn't there. You need to take advantage of the bundled HW codecs like PowerVR and Nvidia Tegra, which were available but without a consistent API. Google said that fragmentation wasn't an issue, but you'd have to write the app for each handset you wanted to work with, while Apple had several applications capable of doing this.

Re:Yeah.

[mjwx]

So, me using the first amazon link off a duckduck go search for samsung s4 full price is fanboyism

No, cherry picking prices is fanboyism.

As multiple people including myself have pointed out, you had to look for that price.

and you picking up some random aussie link

Those aren't random, thats one of the largest WORLDWIDE mobile phone retailers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansys

And of course, your unsubstantiated claim that Apple will never drop the price on the iPhone 5

Only when it's superseded.

This is not a price drop, this is a stock dump.

Even then you're paying a lot more for a 12-18 month old phone then you would from any other manufacturer. Go on, tell me again how paying more for a 18 month old Iphone 4 is better than buying a current generation Nexus. If I wanted to get a Samsung S3, I'd be looking at half it's original retail price.

In 5 years, the price of a current generation Iphone has never dropped.

But go on, tell me more about how correct you are.

Done and done.

Feel free to keep embarrassing yourself with your obvious fanboysim.

Re:Yeah.

[LesFerg]

I found a hacked version of cyanogen that some lad put together, camera drivers were a bit suspect from all accounts, just haven't built up the courage to try it yet.
I guess my real gripe is with the LG support - if some teenager hobbiest can get cyanogen to work on the phone then LG must have technical people who could do something similar.
(and to the other dude, this is New Zealand, there are no cheap phones here. I think it was at least $200 when I bought it)

Re:Yeah.

[macshit]

I can't help but feel that you've been a bit out of touch with the market, since you've got facts wrong on both sides.

Eh, probably, though I'll note that I'm in Japan, where the smartphone market is quite different from the U.S...

Re:Yeah.

[the_B0fh]

"first amazon.com price off a duck duck go search" is cherry picking? Actually it was the first contract free price, but who cares.

Your original claim was, "The Iphone 5 is older and will never drop in price."

And when I show that you are wrong, you now claim it does drop in price but is a stock dump. Changing both your arguments and your stance. Very very shrewd debating methods. So, are you now rebutting your own claims as well then? Do you like to look in the mirror and debate yourself every morning too?

As for your claim "In 5 years, the price of a current generation Iphone has never dropped." - AND YOUR POINT IS? You *DO* realize that the price of the current generation of a Samsung Galaxy series phone has gone up and up and up during introduction? So SAMSUNG SUCKS NOW? What kind of a fucking moron are you?

Since Apple has very tight inventory controls, they don't need to dump stock. The fact that people willingly buy a one year old phone for $100 off the price it came out at shows that people value that phone.

And I do have a Nexus 4. I tried it out. It's a decent phone. I much prefer the iPhone.

Re:Yeah.

[Anubis IV]

Very true. Besides which, that comment of mine was a bit unfair, since the market is changing insanely fast anyway. As I pointed out, there's been a huge shift in the last year in terms of where the profits are going, and the year before that was almost just as drastic, if memory serves. I'm not even sure why I keep up with it.

BS

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is NOT overblown at all. There is a serious problem when there are apps that require a specific android version or device and the numbers are increasing.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a SHITTY APP problem, not an Android problem.

If your app only runs on one version/generation of the OS you should probably give up coding and get a job at Macdonalds.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

When you're pissing off your user it doesn't matter who's problem it is.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

So, tell me, Mr great programmer, how can I verify that my app will run on every Android device before I release it?
If you tell me that I need to test it on various versions of Android on several devices, I claim that fragmentation indeed is a major problem.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

And if there's one thing Android has, it's a lot of shitty apps.

Re:BS

[thegarbz]

Actually it really is. More than half of devices are on ICS or above. Most devices are on Gingerbread and above. NEARLY EVERY APP is capable of running on Gingerbread and above and those which aren't can opt to use a compatibility API or are likely trying to use a feature of the Android API to access a part of the phone that the Gingerbread user likely doesn't have (IR transmitter, NFC, hydrogometer etc).

I never came across an app other than Chrome that didn't run on my Gingerbread phone, and when I finally cracked the phone to run ICS Chrome ended up being incredibly slow on the old hardware so I didn't run it anyway.

As your "special apps" are increasing so are the number of users not using old hardware. As said the problem is way overblown.

Re:BS

[danomac]

And if there's one thing Android has, it's a lot of shitty apps.

Having owned both an iPhone and an Android phone, this is not a problem that is unique to Android.

Re:BS

[cheesybagel]

Yeah. I would also like to have more Metrosexual Windows 8 touchy feel apps. However the market only has crappy applications developed for keyboard and mouse Windows 7. The horror!

Re:BS

[cheesybagel]

There is this thing called emulation you can use to test how the application will look like in most platforms. For the rest you can just process user complaints. I guess you never did Windows development.

Most don't notice the difference

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they have no clue what they are buying. They just wanted a cheap phone than runs apps.

Re:Most don't notice the difference

[MrEricSir]

Is that really true, though? There's an unfortunate tendency in the tech industry to talk down to the "average user" as though they had never even seen a computer before.

Maybe that was useful at one point, but these days assuming your users are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with technology seems laughable.

Re:Most don't notice the difference

[Nerdfest]

Most people I know buy high-end Android phones that are either clearly the best phones on the market, or the best for the price (like the nexus 4). Perhaps that's just me though ...

Re:Most don't notice the difference

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that really true, though? There's an unfortunate tendency in the tech industry to talk down to the "average user" as though they had never even seen a computer before.

How to make sure you NEVER say that again: get a job working tech support.

What you will say instead: "My God ... I ... I ... I had no idea..."

Re:Most don't notice the difference

[Microlith]

these days assuming your users are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with technology seems laughable.

They know their uses are familiar and comfortable with it, but only on the most superficial of levels. They'll happily integrate a device into their lives but don't actually understand it past the outward facing veneer. What they do is discourage further understanding via walled gardens, DRM, and other lockouts.

Re:Most don't notice the difference

[Anonymous Coward]

Tech support rant time:

I did tech support initially. You will mourn for the human race (especially the race of your home country or country calling in) as a gestalt after a while after dealing with all the calls you get, day after day. To boot, a good chunk of these people have an attitude problem, as if they are proud of the fact they broke something and are getting a lackey to "fix" [1] it for them.

Here in the US, being a loud-mouthed Luddite is encouraged. STEM and computer literacy is for outcasts, people who will never make the football [2] team.

Of course, with the floodgates open for businesses to get cheap H-1Bs, there is never need for most Americans to even give a rat's ass about how something works or learning basic IT skills such as how not to get one's computer constantly compromised.

Of course, this means long term the country is fucked [3] when it comes to mattering in the global scheme of things, but most Americans care more about a Jersey Shore rerun than actually trying to learn relevant skills in science and technologies.

[1]: When I say "fix", I mean get in a state of acceptable use. This sometimes can never happen with some people.

[2]: US football.

[3]: I normally write fscked... but this case, the full vulgarity is the thing that works. I'd LOVE it if the us were fscked... that means we would have a consistent filesystem and working metadata.

Re:Most don't notice the difference

[exomondo]

Is that really true, though? There's an unfortunate tendency in the tech industry to talk down to the "average user" as though they had never even seen a computer before.

He didn't say that at all, but I do think the idea that the vast majority of Android users don't know what version they are using is true and no different to iOS users, the only reason iOS users are up to date is that they get an update notification and a button to press. If Android had a mechanism to deliver updates to all devices you'd see the same thing but the many individual carrier and OEM forks prevent that.

Re:Most don't notice the difference

[exomondo]

Most people I know buy high-end Android phones that are either clearly the best phones on the market, or the best for the price (like the nexus 4).

Same with me, but i don't know most people.

Re:Most don't notice the difference

[viperidaenz]

My wife recently bought a new phone. She didn't just want a phone that runs apps.
She wanted a white one.
It also had to play that god forsaken game The Croods (which works flawlessly on my 2.3 android, her 3.something tablet and her new 4.2 phone. What's this fragmentation problem again?).

It's not a user problem, its a developer one.

Re:Most don't notice the difference

[mjwx]

Because they have no clue what they are buying. They just wanted a cheap phone than runs apps.

Which is why high end Galaxy S# and HTC One phones sell so well huh?

Remember that a $350 Nexus 4 is in the same category as a $900 Iphone. So in that context, what you say is half true (I'd wager good money that Iphone buyers know less about phones than Android buyers), but a cheaper phone is not a crappier phone (in fact, between the Nexus 4 and the Iphone, you're getting more phone for less money).

Re:Most don't notice the difference

[AdamThor]

[3]: I normally write fscked... but this case, the full vulgarity is the thing that works. I'd LOVE it if the us were fscked... that means we would have a consistent filesystem and working metadata.

I understand that the government is working on the metadata thing...

Re: Most don't notice the difference

[tysonedwards]

I don't know about you, but on multiple occasions I purchased phones that were declared flagship devices that were left behind on updates within a matter of months. Need I mention the Samsung Galaxy S, LG Optimus 2x, or Nokia Lumia 800?

Re: Most don't notice the difference

[synthespian]

You gotta keep the global market in mind. Millions of semi-literate Johns, Huangs and Josés buying their first phone.
The clueless masses - yes, they're pretty real.

Re:Most don't notice the difference

[Starteck81]

Is that really true, though? There's an unfortunate tendency in the tech industry to talk down to the "average user" as though they had never even seen a computer before.

Maybe that was useful at one point, but these days assuming your users are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with technology seems laughable.

I'm sorry but you've obviously never had a front-line tech support position. I have provide tech support to several thousand individuals at this point in my career. I would be more than comfortable saying that at least 70% of smart phone users have no idea what version the OS of their phone is. They simply don't care, as long as their apps load. If a feature is missing they are often oblivious unless a tech savy friend, commercial, or corp IT support person tells them about it. They don't think about security consequences, how protocol enhancements can affect their life, what added enhancements they might be missing out on, no not one bit.

Sit outside Worst Buy sometime and do a random survey asking people what OS version they have on their phone. You'll quickly discover how unaware/uninterested they are.

Re:Most don't notice the difference

[PPalmgren]

On your comment about Iphone buyers being less knowledgeable than Android buyers, I think you're right but for the wrong reasons. People who get sucked into the apple garden have a different approach when buying a device. It becomes "which Apple product should I buy?" The distinction becomes clear if you ever read the comments in an Apple review. Its purely brand loyalty. I find it dissapointing to see intelligent people get stuck in the stockholm syndrome that is Apple, but think the reason is more behavioral than intelligence related.

Re:Most don't notice the difference

[PipsqueakOnAP133]

Phht, it obvious you've never experienced the sadness that is the Nexus 4 in Northern California.

1) When my apps fail to connect to the internet, I can't tell if it's the latest OS is bad, or it's the hardware, or if it's T-mobile. Or if it's all of them.
2) Charging via microUSB and inductive will fail from time to time. There appears to be multiple problems. One of which is the phone draining more power than some 3rd party inductive chargers can provide, causing the battery icon and charging dialog to flash on and off rapidly (and not charge). Another friend who uses the official Nexus 4 inductive charger found and filed a bug where after you use it, power management breaks itself and the OS refuses to return to low power states until you reboot.
3) Other mystery bugs in Android: notifications for some apps never show up in the drop down. Stock messaging app sometimes never notifies you of new SMS messages. MMS sometimes refuse to download. This sort of outage continues for days, and all of a sudden fixes itself only to rebreak later. (it's not T-mobile's fault as opening the app will reveal the un-notified message)

Given my experiences, a Nexus 4 is most definitely a crappier phone than an iPhone 4.

I disagree

[twistofsin]

And I'm just an end user who owns both Android and iOS devices. When I see the disparity in app quality on both platforms, especially in games, and hear developers explain why Android is so much more difficult to work with I'm going to take it at face value.

Re:I disagree

[Tr3vin]

The big issue with games on Android vs iOS is that Apple typically have very powerful hardware while Android devices for the most part don't. Then you have different GPU architectures, so what runs well on lets say a Adreno chip won't necessarily work on a Tegra one and vice versa. It really isn't all that different from what PC development is like if you are actually supporting Laptops & Desktops with varying chips and capabilities. I think you hear a lot of complaints from game developers because they are using prebuilt engines and those aren't always easily patched. They are great to put content together quickly but you are pretty helpless if you run into some technical issue. For example, I've seen issues with Unity and z-buffer fighting on some of my Android devices while my own custom built scene-graph renders content without issue. Inheriting other people's bugs sucks but I don't think it has anything to do specifically with the Android platform.

Re:I disagree

[Ark42]

As a developer, I can say hands down that iOS is WAY more difficult to work with than Android, for completely unrelated reasons. The whole fragmentation thing is more or less something I ignore. You have basically two choices: Program to a older API, and ignore all new features, or, Program to a newer API, and ignore all older phones. I've chosen to always target Android 1.6 and my apps always have no trouble running on new phones. I've seen a feature that only exists in newer APIs that I really can't live without, so I always code around anything that requires 2.2 or 4.0, etc. It's not a big deal at all, and all the documentation is very good about stating which API a function requires, plus the Eclipse IDE will automatically show warnings for anything you try to use if you declared a target API older than something requires.

Re:I disagree

[MarcoAtWork]

can you confirm what I heard about newer versions of xcode making it impossible to write software that would still work on iOS 3.x and/or Apple making it impossible for 3.x apps to be listed in the app store? from what you are saying it seems android is more lenient about allowing you to target old devices.

Re:I disagree

[alen]

why are you targeting iOS 3 when the iphone 3GS runs ios 6?

Re:I disagree

[BorgDrone]

As a developer, I can say hands down that iOS is WAY more difficult to work with than Android, for completely unrelated reasons.

I'm also a mobile developer (both iOS and Android) and I feel the exact opposite. What makes you say iOS is more difficult to work with than Android ? For me iOS gives me a lot more power to do what I need to do; Google made some design choices in Android in order to support low-end device, which make life a lot more difficult on Android than on iOS. On average I'd say it takes 2-3 times a much time to make an Android version of an app than the iOS version, while sometimes having to drop features because they won't work on older OSes or can only be supported on high-end devices, resulting in less polished apps.

Re:I disagree

[am 2k]

As an iOS developer, I can confirm this. However, the amount of devices running older iOS versions is negligible, see this graph (this was released by Apple at this year's WWDC, so it's quite current).

Re:I disagree

[Ark42]

Xcode is a pile of crap. I can't develop for iOS from Windows or Linux computers. I have to constantly buy new Macs just to keep up (My couple year old Mac Mini already can't be upgraded to a new enough Mac OS X to run the latest Xcode, so I basically dropped caring about iOS and stopped using the thing now), meanwhile any old XP, Win7, Linux, etc can run Eclipse just fine.
That's not even getting into how much Objective C sucks as a language.

I've never had to drop features to make my Android app target 1.6 either. The widgets that exist only on new versions are things you can quickly design yourself, or just ignore. I typically just ignore them because the regular widgets all still work just fine for 100% of anything I need to program.

Re:I disagree

[MarcoAtWork]

how do they know the amount of devices running older iOS versions? my itouch 1st gen hasn't connected to the app store for years (since it's useless) and I am assuming a lot of others are the same.

iOS5 is supported only on itouch 3rd gen and above (which go up until 5.1.1) so currently any itouch 1st gen and 2nd gen are SOL, and I really doubt that itouch1 + itouch2 is 1% of the total amount of iOS devices around, because it would mean that 99% of the iOS devices sold by apple have been sold in the last 4 years... yes, if they calculate 'devices running older iOS versions' by saying 'devices running older iOS versions accessing the app store' maybe, but as I was saying pretty much nobody running itouch1 or 2 would be accessing it as it's useless.

Re:I disagree

[markkezner]

You have basically two choices: Program to a older API, and ignore all new features, or, Program to a newer API, and ignore all older phones.

There is a 3rd choice that is usually ignored in these discussions: support the feature if it's present on the device, but do not require it. Continue running the app without the functionality if it is not available on the device. The term is graceful degradation.

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/uses-feature-element.html#required

Re:I disagree

[am 2k]

Why would a developer care about devices that don't connect to the App Store (and thus don't get anything bought for)?

Re:I disagree

[MarcoAtWork]

the would/should care from the perspective of 'hey Apple, there are millions of devices I can't sell to because of your arbitrary restriction on what versions I can support', not every app requires an iphone 5 to run and I think it's really misleading on Apple's part to say that they don't have fragmentation issues where their solution to the fragmentation is basically to just ignore all devices older than a certain amount.

Re:I disagree

[Jacob Moogberg]

Xcode is a pile of crap. I can't develop for iOS from Windows or Linux computers. I have to constantly buy new Macs just to keep up (My couple year old Mac Mini already can't be upgraded to a new enough Mac OS X to run the latest Xcode, so I basically dropped caring about iOS and stopped using the thing now), meanwhile any old XP, Win7, Linux, etc can run Eclipse just fine.

This is complete bullshit.

Even the Mac mini released in August 2007, almost seven year ago, can run OS X Lion, and thus Xcode 4.6.3, which is the latest version.
The March 2009 model is compatible with Mountain Lion, and Mavericks, as Apple didn't discontinue any model for upgrade this time.
Of course, there may not be enough RAM to run it comfortably, but the memory modules are standard and you can upgrade yourself.

Just for record, a "couple year old Mac Mini" would be a Penryn Core 2 Duo (2.4 or 2.66 GHz) sold between June 2010 or July 2011. It can be updated to Mountain Lion and Mavericks.

Looks like you didn't need to drop caring about developing on iOS. You just didn't start.

Re:I disagree

[Ark42]

Maybe that was the problem - I didn't want to keep buying newer and newer versions of OS X just to run Xcode, and the last version of Xcode refuses to do anything useful now as far as iOS is concerned. It is a 2007 edition with OS X 10.4 on it still. This is still quite the problem, as my Windows Vista computers from the same exact year (2007) and my copy of Visual Studio 2008 (from 2007) still function just fine for all programming needs. Even my older Windows XP computers and copies of Visual Studio 2003 are still usable. Eclipse runs on all these computers too, without paying for OS upgrades.

Basically, with anything Apple, you get into this perpetual rat-race of upgrades, and have to constantly spend money (on hardware or software) just to keep things usable from a basic functionality standpoint. You simply don't have to do that with Windows, Linux, or Android development. The things you buy still work just fine a couple of years later, and you're never forced to spend money on upgrades just to keep developing.

Re:I disagree

[Jacob Moogberg]

There's a big difference between Macs and PCs you should take into consideration.

Most of PCs are sold for businesses, and the main user has few privileges on what to install and update. Tech services handle the big updates.
In business, the rule is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and the same rule applied by contamination to many other PC users. When a PC is sold with XP, keep on using XP until the PC is broken, or when XP gets old, wait until Microsoft releases a new Windows version and we'll get new PCs with the new release.
That's why XP survived that long and PC sales were in trouble during the Vista era. Many companies didn't want to get new PCs running Vista. They stuck to XP and harrassed Microsoft to keep on selling volume licenses of XP. When W7 was released, business eventually realized it was a significant improvement and renewed their computer stock with new models running Seven. But few personal users felt the need to buy the upgrade disk for their shop. It's not much part of the Windows culture.

The situation is quite different on the Mac. Most of Macs are home computers that are administered by their main user. From Mac OS X 10.0 to 10.6, there were significant progresses for features and performances (10.0 to 10.2 were slow and not very comfortable), and zero piracy protection, so most of the people decided to upgrade, legally or not, as we got a new and definitely release every year or every two years. Mac OS X 10.7 was some kind of a departure, and it's much slower on some models, but Apple has resumed their policy of refining and enhancing up the OS major releases, this time with a new release every year sold for a pittance (less than $20) on the Mac App Store.
And that's why almost every Mac in use today runs on 10.6 (last satisfying release for early Intel Macs), 10.7 (for models that aren't fully 64 bit compliant) or, in majority, 10.8, while in the Windows world it took years for Seven to rise above XP. Mac users tend to take a chance on change and progress much more than their Windows counterpart, mostly as Windows is that much tied to businesses and businesses are usually on the safe side.

So, in the OS X developing world, nobody would care now for 10.5 Leopard, even less 10.4 Tiger. The oldest version commonly in use is 10.6 Snow Leopard, and it was released in August 2009 just a few weeks before Windows Seven. That's as if Microsoft could afford to drop all support on XP and Vista and introduce bigger changes in the architecture with a major release, knowing that developers and users would be quick to follow them. They actually attempted this with Windows 8 (and Windows RT) and it flopped badly.

On iOS, it's even simpler. 93 percent of the devices that go on the App Store run iOS 6. 6 percent are on iOS 5. If you want to develop on iOS, focus on the latest version, if you're on the cautious side, support the version that was released the year before, and you cover 99 percent of your users. No need for compatibility with older APIs. When new features and APIs get introduced with major releases, you won't lose anything for taking advantage of them. It will actually put you above your competitors.

I don't write this to say that Mac or iOS is better, especially for developers. It's just that the culture of upgrade on Mac and PC is significantly different due to their respective markets and traditions. If you want to develop (for OS X or iOS) on a Mac, you have to know how Mac users (and common developers) behave compared to their PC counterparts, and get an OS upgrade when the early bugs for a major release get eventually addressed.

Consumers may not notice ...

[0x000000]

but I as a developer sure do notice. The biggest issue I keep running into (developing backend software for my companies frontend software) is that testing on a mix of devices means learning the quirks for every single manufacturers user interface that they have bolted on top of Android. We've also had some weird issues based upon the Android version installed, across two devices with the same Android version number (4.0 for example) with the carrier/device manufacturers changes we have a bug on one but not the other.

This is highly annoying.

One issue that Android users hail as the greatest thing since sliced bread (alternate keyboards) actually meant having to write work-arounds because some keyboard implementations were simply broken, or actually caused issues with entering text in certain situations. An alternate keyboard shouldn't be able to have that sort of an effect!

Fragmentation is real, and it is an issue. Consumers don't notice because they only use a single device, developers and power users that may switch more often than the average user will notice and it is an issue.

Re:Consumers may not notice ...

[Ark42]

As if those older 2.x devices would ever get a 5.x upgrade anyway, so it doesn't really matter. Just target 1.6 or 2.1 and don't worry about it. If you're running into weird issues on certain phones, you're probably programming something too specific, and not doing things right because your code is sloppy or trying to be cute. Program in a more general manner and your app works just fine on all devices.

Re:Consumers may not notice ...

[hsmith]

Exactly. Anyone who says fragmentation isn't an issue clearly isn't doing Android development.

I find the platform a breeze to actually develop for. But, the issue is in testing and QA. The dearth of devices out there with hundreds of variations has created an unsustainable environment to deploy against.

Google really should be pushing any manufactures that want to license the Android name to properly implement the APIs. Failing to do so is creating quite the issue.

Re:Consumers may not notice ...

[urbanriot]

If you hadn't written about this issue, I would have. There's nothing more frustrating than writing procedures for Android phones and users complain that the same exact version of the OS as another person has a different menu system, customized by the manufacturer. Even Samsung phones of the same exact OS version have a different menu structure.

Fragmentation is entirely why we encourage our users to purchase iPhones as the documentation is easier to write and the phones are easier to support. The Blackberry 10 series has also proven easy to document and support.

Re:Consumers may not notice ...

[phantomfive]

In general I've found iPhone to have about as many quirks per device/OS as Android, but the problem is Android has so many more versions, there are proportionally more things that can go wrong. I don't think anyone is trying to fragment the ecosystem, it happens on accident. And it happens more often on Android (because there are more models).

My favorite example, which I've mentioned before, is the Kyocera Milano, which had a clock that actually went backwards from time to time.

Re:Consumers may not notice ...

[Musc]

I don't understand your post...

"The dearth of devices out there with hundreds of variations..."

A dearth means "lack of", but the problem here is more the opposite!

Re:Consumers may not notice ...

[Anonymous Coward]

As if those older 2.x devices would ever get a 5.x upgrade anyway, so it doesn't really matter. Just target 1.6 or 2.1 and don't worry about it. If you're running into weird issues on certain phones, you're probably programming something too specific, and not doing things right because your code is sloppy or trying to be cute. Program in a more general manner and your app works just fine on all devices.

This is a good example of the shit I hear Android apologist developers say. All you're saying is "if you walk on eggshells, things aren't so bad." It honestly sounds like a abused spouse explaining why things aren't nearly as painful as they look. Can you be a bit more specific about what the hell it even means to be "programming something too specific"? That's just a vague blame-the-victim statement.

Re:Consumers may not notice ...

[AmiMoJo]

You are doing it wrong. You should not be trying to fix OS or 3rd party keyboard bugs. You are making your life difficult.

If Dell shipped a computer where there was some flaw that made certain Windows apps not work would you try to code a work-around? Of course not, you would just say "this Dell PC is broken, ask Dell to fix it".

And really, what on earth are you trying to do that isn't compatible with certain keyboards? From the sound of your complaint about the slight variations in skins used by different manufacturers it seems like you are hoping to have a pixel perfect UI using your own custom widgets, which isn't how Android is designed to work. You can get away with it on iOS because they do things like make sure the screen is always some weird multiple of the original iPhone resolution, but that isn't how Android is designed to work.

Re:Consumers may not notice ...

[gl4ss]

it means code as if you were targeting desktop os.
you'll have to do the same on ios in two years anyways.
generic is just being generic, don't write things that assume the keyboard is going to be X pixels in height. that's just stupid since it will never be.

and fragmentation.. psshhhpleaaaase. j2me - now _that_ was fragmented. "yeah.. umm.. don't use floats when you write the code so we can port it to these other devices too".

Re:Consumers may not notice ...

[thegarbz]

Can you be a bit more specific about what the hell it even means to be "programming something too specific"? That's just a vague blame-the-victim statement.

Really you don't understand how programming something too specific works? Here's a hint. Don't assume a screen resolution. Don't layout your app interface as unscaled bitmaps. History is full of developers exploiting bugs or intricacies in the system they are developing for to make things work. *cough* IE6 *cough*. One example I saw was an audio app using some Samsung audio API. Naturally not very many 5 star ratings in the Play Store and those which were all said something like "Works fine on my Galaxy S#"

Programming is not about walking on eggshells. It's about reading the documentation of the API and not hacking your way around APIs doing it your own way. You follow the API documentation and it's unlikely you'll ever have compatibility issues. Unless you use a fancy new feature from a newer API, and guess what there's compatibility APIs that allow you to use new functionality on old versions of Android.

Re:Consumers may not notice ...

[Kelbear]

Samsung and HTC are trying to fragment the ecosystem.

They consider the "skin" they put over android to be a differentiating feature, and break things with it to replace good stock android features with their own clunky implementations. The Google Play Editions of their flagship devices were so warmly received because they got rid of the bloatware and the fragmentation that came with the hardware.

Re:Consumers may not notice ...

[Dixie_Flatline]

Seriously?

No, really, seriously?

I'm totally floored by this response. Your solution is to ignore new APIs with additional power and features? Why does Google even bother to update the OS, then? Are you saying that nothing that they've done is an improvement? If that's the case, they should honestly just give up this fight and work on patching older versions and unifying the market under an older system.

Re:Consumers may not notice ...

[Ark42]

What feature in API8+ can you justifiably say your app can't work without? You can still have the latest look and style by declaring android:targetSdkVersion="17" in your manifest. The end user still gets all the OS changes and upgrades. Almost any app works just fine with android:minSdkVersion="4" if you program with that in mind.

It's the exact same with Windows. Almost every normal program can easily be written to still work on Windows 95. There is almost no reason you have to exclude yourself to XP+ or only work on Windows 7, etc. There are new APIs, and your program exe will fail to launch if it tries to link to a function that doesn't exist, but you simply don't need those features in the majority of normal programs.

Straightjacketing of core Android

[presidenteloco]

Fragmentation also makes it more difficult, my guess is, for Google developers to upgrade core vanilla "Nexus" Android. They would have fewer options to change things as more and more phone vendor variants depend on particular feature sets in the core. Or conversely, variants will be inherently fragile and break / need re-engineering everytime Google ignores them and freely upgrades the core.

What improvements?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google marketing: you botched this one. First you claim the improvements are amazing, then you claim most users don't even notice? Either the amazing features arn't getting used, or they are not better. Either way, I don't see how thats a good thing.

Re:What improvements?

[thegarbz]

Erm have you even read any of the announcements Google has made about Android? All those wonderful new features that are amazing are system level changes that have nothing to do with the developers. You don't need to target API17 to reap the benefits of changes like Project Butter to improve UI responsiveness, or do anything at all for hardware acceleration to work.

Fragmentation helps the NSA

[jdogalt]

Google isn't responsible for the security of android OS phones. This results in many companies sacrificing the security of their users by not investing in real security maintenance for the devices. Hell, the NSA may even subsidize them financially for the 'work' of *not* fixing security issues.

Re:Fragmentation helps the NSA

[hedwards]

I largely agree, but Google could implement finer grained permissions. Permitting an app to place calls in case you might ask it to do so in the future makes little sense. If I'm wanting it to make a call, I can approve the call. I shouldn't have to install LBE to give me those choices.

Re:Catch 22

[CastrTroy]

How does Apple have forced obsolecense? They actually release upgrades for their phones. Even the 3GS can run IOS 6. For the new IOS 7 they're dropping support for the iphone 3GS, but that phone's getting pretty old now. Sure there will be problems with running programs that require faster processors on the old phones, but Android has the same problem. Android has the additional problem of developers having to support 3 or 4 different OS versions in order to support all the devices. Also, with Android, there's the problem that if your phone wasn't one of the popular ones, there's a lot of stuff that doesn't work with it, and finding accessories for them can be almost impossible. Even getting unofficial upgrades for unpopular phones using things like Cyanogenmod is impossible since they only support popular phones models.

Re:Catch 22

[Desler]

How exactly did Apple choose the latter? The four-year-old iPhone 3GS has gotten all updates from iOS 3 up through iOS 6.1.3. It is only until 7 that it will no longer receive them. Many Android phones haven't seen updates beyond what shipped with the device.

Re:Catch 22

[Desler]

Yeah, Apple continued to give it OS updates even after it was discontinued. That's pretty much the opposite of "forced obsolecense". I had the T-Mobile Galaxy S that shipped with 2.1 that was supposedly going to get the Android 2.2 update from Samsung "just around the corner" and yet that didn't materialize for over a year after I bought it. And then it never officially got Android 2.3 since Samsung had long since moved on to the SII.

Re:Master Key, anybody?

[Ash-Fox]

He's correct, the fragmentation issue is quite overblown, especially when compared to Android ‘Master Key’ Security Hole Puts 99% Of Devices At Risk Of Exploitation

Since this is to do with source signature verification which only the Google App store uses (other stores use alternative signature mechanisms) and from the article you linked:

Update: According to a report in CIO, Google has already modified its Play Store’s app entry process so that apps that have been modified using this exploit are blocked and can no longer be distributed via Play.

I have to concede, I agree, it is quite overblown.

Good

[horza]

I was happy with Android, I was even happier with the custom ROMs which got rid of the annoying quirks... then I found I was banned from downloading any adblock software from the Play store. I will shift myself and anybody I know off the Play store to an Android store that is not fatally crippled. Suggestions anybody? Amazon and the Samsung app store have nothing. I am really hoping this fragmentation with lead to some uncensored store that allows me to run software I choose to run.

Phillip.

Re:Good

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

why not just sideload?

Re:Good

[DMUTPeregrine]

F-Droid for open-source apps, including ad blockers. BotBrew for a debian-like package management system.

Re:Good

[viperidaenz]

What's the problem? What's stopping you installing any .apk file your want?

Re:Master Key, anybody?

[Desler]

Since this is to do with source signature verification which only the Google App store uses

Of which is the default store on the vast majority of Android devices and for most users is the only place they get their apps from.

More accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

More accurate version: "Android co-founder says that users don't notice fragmentation, because OEM customizations make the phones shitty no matter what version they are."

Re:Master Key, anybody?

[viperidaenz]

Since this is to do with source signature verification which only the Google App store uses

Of which is the default store on the vast majority of Android devices and for most users is the only place they get their apps from.

You forgot this bit:

Update: According to a report in CIO, Google has already modified its Play Store’s app entry process so that apps that have been modified using this exploit are blocked and can no longer be distributed via Play.

So it appears its a problem that effects the Play store, that has already been mitigated.

Serious problem

[kbg]

The problem is that most phone vendors (basically all except Google) never update the Android system after the phone is released. This means that there are millions of phones stuck on some ancient versions of Android but many apps for Android are targeted at specific version which are constantly getting higher and higher because Google keeps pumping out new versions of Android.

Re:Serious problem

[mypalmike]

> The problem is that most phone vendors (basically all except Google) never update the Android system after the phone is released.

Even Google doesn't keep Android up to date on older devices. The once-flagship Nexus One, introduced in 2010, only got official updates for about a year, taking it from version 2.1 to 2.3.6.

Re:Catch 22

[viperidaenz]

But your phone doesn't get slower and slower and the OS gets upgraded.

Re:Master Key, anybody?

[Desler]

No, I didn't forget it.

To everyone who thinks it is overblown...

[Fosterocalypse]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/195310/Video_iOS_Android_myths_dispelled.php Here is a post mortem from a game developer who released two mobile games on iOS and Android. He briefly explains that both of the games ran perfectly fine on all but 3 devices. They weren't targeting a specific version of Android. They're supported devices were over 1900 devices for each game. So the fragmentation isn't as big of an issue as Apple likes to talk it up to being. And after the T-Mobile announcement today the fragmentation should only get better from here.

Here is one thing that I do notice

[dudeman2]

As the owner of a non-upgradeable Android 2.3 phone (Motorola Defy XT) I find that most apps I care about work fine on the phone... with the exception of all the new Google apps and updates to said apps.

Google Maps
GMail
Google Now
Chrome
all of these apps are either not available, or are only provided in downlevel versions. You have to be running 4.x to get the latest and greatest apps.

Meanwhile, Google produces versions of their apps to run on iOS 6, which is available on every iPhone back to the 3GS from 2009.

Re:Here is one thing that I do notice

[jazzis]

GMail, Google Now, Chrome, all of these apps are either not available, or are only provided in downlevel versions. You have to be running 4.x to get the latest and greatest apps.

Meanwhile, Google produces versions of their apps to run on iOS 6, which is available on every iPhone back to the 3GS from 2009.

Quite ironic huh? I guess even Google knows where the app money (ad revenue) income is.

Re:Here is one thing that I do notice

[Aggrajag]

Defy XT does have an "official" update to ICS but it was only released in China. There is a guide how to flash it to your phone as well. Obviously I am not responsible if anything goes wrong.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1827338

Re: Here is one thing that I do notice

[synthespian]

This is a fine example of how retarded Google's strategy is.
I mean, does anyone even remember how Google Docs was supposed to be the Microsoft Office killer??? Nowadays, you'd best not lay all your chips on their shit. They might do some "Spring cleaning" or some shit, and your SOHO workflow goes BOOM!

Re:Here is one thing that I do notice

[thegarbz]

Consider yourself blessed. As someone who flashed a phone of similar spec to run ICS at the time Chrome for mobiles is not a browser you want to run on an old phone. In my case to free up enough memory Android would actually kill the home screen to make space for Chrome.

Much better than iOS.

[csumpi]

From the start Android was designed to support a variety of hardware, including screen resolution, screen aspect ratio, keyboards etc. On the other hand every time a new iDevice came out, Apple just made hacks to get them to work (eg. image for retina screen loaded by hard coded @2x at the end of the file name). There are 5 screens to support for iDevices, and it's a major pain in the arse. On android, hundreds of different screen configurations done very easily.

Re:Much better than iOS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Before iOS, there WAS no comparable phone system. Android had iOS to copy in terms of screen layout technology.

Anyhow, Apple didn't make a 'hack.' On a Retina device, there's 2 pixels per point. On a non-retina, there's 1 pixel per point. It meant very many hard-coded apps could be updated with literally no changes except adding higher-resolution images. That's 2 screens to cover (discounting the slightly annoying iPhone 5 - covered in the next paragraph).

By the way, if you update your copy of XCode, you'll find a nice thing called "Interface Builder" and Storyboards which make it extremely easy to support just 2 screens (iPads and iPhones - for most apps the extra .5" on the iPhone 5 makes no difference with the Interface Builder) with up to moderate complexity.

If I had a /. account I would mod you Troll.

Re:Much better than iOS.

[cheesybagel]

Surely you jest. iOS is based on MacOS X which is based on NEXTStep. NEXTStep had solved the problem of a resolution independent GUI back in the late 80s using Display Postscript. MacOS X has Quartz to do basically the same thing. That Apple chose to drop that from iOS is their own problem. Google knew better than that.

IOS has the same problem

[MarcoAtWork]

I have a still perfectly functioning ipod touch first gen where I can't basically reinstall any of the apps I own because the current versions of them in the app store are not compatible with my IOS version. If I decided to wipe it and resell it it would basically be a paperweight for anybody who purchased it as they would not be able to install anything on it.

In the end companies should be free to EOL old versions of their OS, obviously, but there should be an official way to get versions of apps compatible with your old OS if the app existed already in the first place. If I have app foowiz 1.3 that runs just fine on OS 1.0 and recompile it to have a minor enhancement and the toolkit now makes it mandatory that I can support only OS 2.0 and up, there should be a way for OS 1.0 users to keep downloading 1.3 while everybody else moves to 1.4 and above.

It would definitely be a lot more environmental to allow customers to keep using their old devices, or sell them (rather than tossing them) not to mention that it would make them more likely to buy more of your devices since they would trust that said devices would remain supported in the future.

Re: IOS has the same problem

[Anonymous Coward]

My exact situation. I have the 1st gen iPod touch and wanted to use it purely for a pocket calorie tracker for my father. Unfortunately after wiping it clean to give to him I hit this problem. The calorie tracking app I use (version available in the app store) won't install on the latest version if the OS for this thing. It is truly worthless to me now.

Stupid.

Re:IOS has the same problem

[Moof123]

Ipod Touch 1st gen came out in 2007, replaced in 2008 with second gen. So you have a 5-6 year old widget that is no longer supported, big whoop.

The truly shameful thing about Android is that you can still buy brand new Android phones sporting 2.3.7 that were will NEVER be offered an upgrade despite being a malware magnet out of the box. Most iOS devices get several major upgrades, for years after they have been replaced, before being put out to pasture.

I have a mix of iPods, iPads, and an Android phone, and frankly I have to say Apple does a darn good job avoiding fragmentation and avoiding the love'em and leave them feeling you get buying an Android widget. Apple is in real danger of being badly undercut thanks to their gouging for RAM and flash memory that has not budged over the time that prices have plummeted, and expectations of soared. I would like an iPhone, but frankly the level of gouging just goes too far for me to stomach.

Re:IOS has the same problem

[Paul Slocum]

This is definitely a really shitty thing about iOS devices. I think the best solution is to jailbreak and download old versions of your apps from pirate sites.

Re:IOS has the same problem

[the_B0fh]

There are websites that keep archives of older versions of software. One of them may be of some use, but you'll have to learn how to install it from your computer (delete the actual file from your hard drive, replace it with the older archived version, let iTunes sync and install the older archived version to your iPod, done).

Pain in the ass, but possible, if you had already owned that app.

Re:IOS has the same problem

[Blaskowicz]

Big whoop indeed. How often do you buy some expensive shit that doesn't work after only five years? A typical computer gets about a decade of support, that's what Microsoft does at least. Even then, once the official support runs out, you can still get software running on that computer. e.g. you can download tens of thousands MS-DOS apps and games, if that's what you want. That makes the 5-year-old gizmo less capable than a 386 which is a bit ridiculous.

Re:IOS has the same problem

[Anubis IV]

Two quick statements, and then the rest. First, I agree fully with your comment. Second, I disagree with your subject line entirely, since the OP was describing a completely different problem than the one you're addressing.

I agree that OSes need to be EOL'd and that there's nothing wrong with companies doing so, but that it would be far better if they wouldn't take steps to obsolesce devices before their time by making it more difficult than necessary to continue using a perfectly functional device. That said, wouldn't you agree that there's quite a big difference between EOLing your iPod touch almost two years after it was no longer on sale, and what we see with many Android phones, where they're effectively EOL'd while they're still on sale? That's the sort of problem the OP was talking about, rather than the one you discussed.

Your iPod touch:
  Last available for purchase in September 2008
  Came with the latest version of iOS at the time of purchase
  Capable of running the latest version of iOS until June 2010

Contrast that with T-Mobile's Android offerings, all of which are available for sale today, yet only two of them (the Nexus 4 and the Galaxy S4) out of the fourteen listed will be running the latest version of Android when you open the box of your "new" smartphone. Some of them support upgrades, of course, but not all of them, and many of those that do offer upgrades only upgrade as far as 4.1.2, which hasn't been the latest version of Android since last November. I'm sure if I went poking around hard enough, I could probably dig up some 2.3 phones that are still being sold as new today too.

So, yes, while both Android and iOS make it more difficult to use a perfectly functional, older device than it should be, the problem being addressed here is an entirely different one that Android bears.

Re:IOS has the same problem

[tlhIngan]

Big whoop indeed. How often do you buy some expensive shit that doesn't work after only five years? A typical computer gets about a decade of support, that's what Microsoft does at least. Even then, once the official support runs out, you can still get software running on that computer. e.g. you can download tens of thousands MS-DOS apps and games, if that's what you want. That makes the 5-year-old gizmo less capable than a 386 which is a bit ridiculous.

Yes, but will a system from 2003 be as useful, even though the OS is still supported? Remember, you're talking about systems from the Pentium III era, 750MHz or less, with 512MB or less of RAM.

Such a system is fairly useless today - even running a recent Firefox on Windows XP on something like that is an exercise in patience. If you can even install all you need, given the average size of hard drive is 20GB, and expansion via USB 1.1.

And thats trying to run modern software without flaws.

Now a PC from 5 years ago is still decent today - Core2Duo, 4GB of RAM, 250GB hard drive. Pop in an SSD and it'll still be fairly useful, but that's more a case of the user not being able to tax it than anything else - it's "powerful enough".

Of course, smartphones have evolved rapidly the past 6 years thanks to the iPhone - before 2007, I had a nice smartphone - it had a 200MHz CPU with 16MB of RAM and ran some apps. Post iPhone though, with CPUs ramping up from 400MHz to nearly 2GHz, single to quad+ cores, RAM going from 128MB to 2GB, and from nonexistent 3D to practically console quality graphics on screens that were Half-VGA to full 1080p displays or higher.

Of course, smartphones have now matured quite a bit and there isn't much growth left, so a smartphone from 5 years ago is fairly useless, but a smartphone from 2 years ago is pretty damn useful today. And most likely, in 2 years, today's smartphones will probably work just fine as improvements have been slim.

Re:IOS has the same problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Name one personal mobile device that has ever gotten anywhere near a decade of support.

The very practice of multiple software updates for personal media devices is barely more than a few years old. The number of PocketPCs, PDAs, mobile "smart" phones, music players, tablets, cameras, and other pocketable crap that I've bought that received either zero (most) or one significant post-purchase vendor update is astonishing.

And calling an iPod touch "expensive" is a great big pile of nonsense. For $300 at the high end, it's nothing of the sort.

Re: IOS has the same problem

[synthespian]

True, but that happens A YEAR AFTER you buy an Android phone.
Apple is durable. Hardware is better, to begin with.
Android is a retarded business proposition, when you think about. But retarded and cheap always win, generally speaking.

Re:IOS has the same problem

[AmiMoJo]

Google support doing this via the Play store. You can have multiple versions of your app for different OS versions, so if you do decide to start requiring newer features you can just leave the old version available too. The Play store automatically picks the right version based on the user's device.

Re:IOS has the same problem

[Omestes]

So you have a 5-6 year old widget that is no longer supported, big whoop.

So, its okay for your DVD/Bluray player to stop playing movies after 5 years? For your TV to stop playing new shows? For your camera to stop being able to take pictures? For your PC to be obsolete?

I'm typing this from a 5 year old PC which runs pretty much everything almost as well as it did when I built it (it wasn't bleeding edge then, just high-mid-range), sans some games; so I should be happy if it just suddenly stopped working, for no reason other than someone decided to stop supporting it, just to force me to buy another one with slightly higher specs?

I always find it odd when people compare Apple to Android... Since you're comparing a brand name to a multi-platform OS, it isn't a very useful metric since it is Apples to oranges. Apple avoids fragmentation by being monolithic and holding a monopoly on their hardware and software. I'd rather have the fragmentation, than to only have one vender and only one set of hardware. Android is healthier for consumers in the long run, than iOS, since I can pick what flavor I want, and what hardware I want to pair it with. Android is closer to the PC market, where I can stick Linux, or Windows, or BSD or Chrome, or... on my Intel or AMD, or ARM box, with my Intel, NVIDIA or AMD graphics...

Re:IOS has the same problem

[Kelbear]

Your post isn't making sense.

You've quoted the GP as saying:
[QUOTE]So you have a 5-6 year old widget that is no longer supported, big whoop.[/QUOTE]

Then you cite DVD/Bluray players. Which work fine with no internet connection, no patching.
TV, again, they work fine with no internet connection, no patching.
Cameras, again, they still work just fine.

I have a "5-6 year old widget" too that is no longer supported. It's the first-gen ipod touch that GP is referencing. I still use it for it's intended purpose and it works just fine. It can't make use of any of the new shinies in the itunes store, but I don't really expect to still be adding new features onto this 5-6 year old device with no problem.

Hey I've got a PC too. I've upgraded the internals as far as it can go. Every 2-4 years, new features are coming out that aren't supported on my hardware, and I accept that. If I want those new features, I need to buy the new GPU, which often needs to be paired with new CPU, which needs to be paired with a new motherboard, and new RAM. Hell, in my last upgrade, I found that even my computer CASE doesn't support the "new" SSD dimensions. I didn't bother upgrading the case so I just propped the stupid thing up and left it loose inside the case.

Yet all of these things continue to work just fine with their original functionality, it's just that they don't always work with new functionality. That's a risk of tech products, you gotta buy them for what they provide today, and you can't place all your bets on what they /might/ provide in the future.

And FWIW, the ipod touch is the only apple device I have, the other 2 tablets and 2 phones I bought this year are android devices. Up until this week I was using an HTC droid incredible on android 2.3. It's about 3 years old and was still working fine in terms of the software I'd loaded on it when it was still new. Just because subsequent development left it behind doesn't mean it stopped working at the end of it's product life. I just kept using it and I would still be using it if I hadn't decided to switch carriers.

Re:IOS has the same problem

[tom229]

Exactly this. I think this propaganda campaign has started to confuse itself. The fragmentation in Android has always been due to the various manufacturers creating their own "brands" of android that re-arrange the user interface so that app creators have to make a Samsung version, an HTC version, a stock google version, etc. The differences between the versions are largely trivial and cosmetic but they still exist, and therefore require testing and certification on each platform. It's a pain, but not a huge one.

I don't understand how this fragmentation argument got confused to the newer versions of an operating system not being exactly 100% backwards and frontwards compatible with all older versions. You could apply the same criticism to literally every hardware and software platform ever created.

Re:IOS has the same problem

[danomac]

Yes, but will a system from 2003 be as useful, even though the OS is still supported? Remember, you're talking about systems from the Pentium III era, 750MHz or less, with 512MB or less of RAM.

Uh, maybe not such a good example. The first Pentium 4 was released in 2000 and in 2002/03 it was very common to have a 1.6 GHz P4. These are still usable today. Sure, XP (which most of them would have come with) is only supported until April of next year, but there are alternate OSs out there that can still be used on them. I still know someone that still uses their P4 from 2001. It still works, nothing is wrong hardware-wise, and with what they use it for it's still fine.

Re:IOS has the same problem

[phoenix_rizzen]

You're missing the point. The point is *not* can the device still be used with the latest and greatest software. The point is that you *cannot* get the older versions of software that run just fine on the device!

Very big difference!

At least with Android, old versions of apps are still available in the Play Store, and the Play Store will select the latest version supported by your OS version automatically for you. Factory reset your device, and you can still install apps on it and keep using it.

On iOS, only the latest version is available in the App Store. And if your OS version is too old to support that app, tough shit. Factory reset your device, and now you can no longer install any apps, thus making it a paperweight.

Grab a PC from the 90s, download an OS from the 90s, download apps from the 90s, and everything will work.

Grab an iPhone/iPod Touch from before 2010 ... and nothing.

Do you see the difference yet?

Apple has people move forward.

[SuperKendall]

from what you are saying it seems android is more lenient about allowing you to target old devices.

They are, which is why software quality on Android lags iOS.

Apple at the moment does not let you submit to the app store anything targeting anything under iOS5 (a somewhat recent change after 6.0 had been out for a while).

This may mean some older devices drop out - but at this point the only devices out are some 1st gen iPod touches and the very first iPhone (not even the iPhone 3G which can run iOS5). That is not unreasonable and means that applications generally make use of new and advanced system features sooner rather than never.

In a world where Android developers pretty much have to target 2.0 devices as a base, you lose some ability to use advanced features to make a better app. That is dragging down quality all over and is only going to become more of an issue as iOS framework features advance...

Re:Catch 22

[Desler]

Hurr hurr. Do you have an actual argument to dispute my statement? Can you name an Android phone that has had 4 years of updates, including updates even after it was discontinued, from it's manufacturer to match what the 3GS has gotten? Just so you know that would mean it's gotten updates from Android 1.6 (released 3 months after the 3GS) all the way 4.2.2 (released 1 month prior to the 6.1.3). I won't hold my breath, though.

Re:Catch 22

[Desler]

*Its* manufacturer, obviously.

He's right

[RubberDogBone]

He's right. I've got five different Android devices, no two of which run the same version of the OS. But it doesn't matter to me for two reasons:

When I browse the Play Store on each device, it filters the list for me and only shows me the apps I can run on that device. Problem Solved.

Alternately, when using the Play Store web interface, it will tell me which of my devices can run a given app and let me fling the app to the device. Problem Solved.

Maybe this is an issue for developers or people who are anal and like having only one way to do something. Never understood the appeal of that thinking.

What does that mean

[tuppe666]

> The problem is that most phone vendors (basically all except Google) never update the Android system after the phone is released.

Even Google doesn't keep Android up to date on older devices. The once-flagship Nexus One, introduced in 2010, only got official updates for about a year, taking it from version 2.1 to 2.3.6.

That is a strange way of measuring time. It was launched January 10 and only had its operating system replaced 13th Novemer 2012...so Almost 3 Years, more than say an iPad.

Re:Master Key, anybody?

[Ash-Fox]

Of which is the default store on the vast majority of Android devices and for most users is the only place they get their apps from.

And resolved for 100% of them.

Android has much worse problems such as...

[Anonymous Coward]

...crashes, reboots, horrible bugs that render your device unusable.
So, yeah, he's right, that one problem is not significant when compared to these.

Re: Android has much worse problems such as...

[synthespian]

Right. Early Androids shipped with critical bugs, for instance, serious memory leaks.

He is disconnected from the real world

[Stan92057]

He is disconnected from the real world as most rich people are. They dont experience the world as people who make say under 50,000.00 bucks a year. Something doesn't work get a new on done deal.

It is noticed.

[Anonymous Coward]

in any case most consumers don't notice the difference

That is bull, they do notice.

When it comes to "why can't I load this application" we notice.

We notice when a phone can't be upgraded.

Re:It is noticed.

[SuricouRaven]

Most consumers are ignorant of technology. They don't know what firmware is, or even an OS.

They'll notice 'Oh noes, my new game won't work!' But they won't know why. Even if the phone is upgradeable, they won't realise this is an option. That's why many phones include some form of automatic updater.

Most consumers don't look at upgradeability, or even specifications, when deciding on a phone. They buy on two criteria: Does it look cool, and is it fashionable?

OS fragmentation vs many different OS

[codemachine]

Sure, Android fragmentation is a real issue. However, before Android, just about every phone manufacturer had its own operating system, and it was difficult to do development for.

It isn't like if Android didn't exist, everything would just run iOS. If Android didn't exist, we'd likely have a situation where every vendor has their own entirely different platform. That'd be real fragmentation in the phone industry.

Right now, Android is much like Windows. You don't know exactly what version a user will have, and what hardware and configuration they'll have, but at least there is a set of common APIs you can rely on. Thanks to majority market share, you can develop an Android app and get a massive chunk of the market, even if that app needs some code to deal with specific versions of Android.

Sometimes the bare bones API is insufficient

[tepples]

So what should one target when Android 2.x completely lacks an API that does close to what is needed?

Re:Sometimes the bare bones API is insufficient

[ArsonSmith]

If you don't know, then perhaps a different career is what you should target.

Re:Sometimes the bare bones API is insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple of years ago I had a conversation with an Android developer on why he wasn't targeting the (then) latest Android version. He showed me the graph on http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html and explained that if he went for the new API's he'd be missing out on a potential 75% of the total android base (per chart data).

If you look at that chart today, you'll see that if you target for the 4.0x (Ice Cream Sandwich) API's you can reach over 60% of the android base, counting ICS and JB...and it's a bigger pie today. Granted, if you use an API that did not exist on 2.3.3 or earlier you'd be missing out on about 37% of the base.

* API distribution may vary by country.

Also, screen size is important. You're pretty safe covering "Normal" size at "mdpi" resolution or higher. Anecdotal evidence, my wife could not install Whatsapp on her Sony Xperia Mini Pro even if we both had the same Android version, and I could, my guess it was due to screen size.

Re:Sometimes the bare bones API is insufficient

[Xest]

The same thing we've always done when developing on Windows, Linux, and even the web with browsers all of which have even greater degrees of fragmentation than Android even though we've never made much of a fuss about it on these other development platforms.

If you can't deal with this problem and think it's somehow unique to or worse on Android then you shouldn't be programming because your knowledge is insufficient to the point of being dangerous.

Re:Sometimes the bare bones API is insufficient

[thegarbz]

Umm code up the solution yourself? You sound like the GP whining that he doesn't know what video codecs are available. Guess what, that's the same on Windows too, and it's the reason why many media players ship with codec packs.

Re:Sometimes the bare bones API is insufficient

[tepples]

Umm code up the solution yourself?

Some of these cases involve limitations of the API to access peripherals. Coding up the solution oneself would mean the user would have to root the device first.

Re:Sometimes the bare bones API is insufficient

[oursland]

You misunderstand, there needs to be HW support in order to decode 720p30 and 1080p30 on these embedded platforms. Your CPU cannot perform the task. Luckily, most of these devices ship with the associated hardware. Unfortunately, Android chooses (or chose in 2010) not to make this available to developers.

No discount for paying up front

[tepples]

AMERICA is the home country of both Google and Dice Holdings. And the big three carriers IN AMERICA refuse to give a discount on service for not taking a subsidized phone.

Re:No discount for paying up front

[internerdj]

I seem to end up paying money out of pocket for my "free" phones when I upgrade. I don't replace every two years. I replace when my battery is shot or I drop my phone in the lake. My carrier, AT&T, seems perfectly happy with taking my money on a month-to-month basis until I tell them I'm ready to renew my contract. I'm not getting a discount for keeping an old phone, but I am avoiding all the renewal costs.

4.2 broke Wii Remotes

[tepples]

And there's a developer problem when the upgrade from Android 4.1 to Android 4.2 broke every game that can use the Wii Remote as a controller through Bluetooth. It's just one that's impossible to work around from user space.

He's wrong

[kilodelta]

You should be able to at least upgrade the O.S. on your given device. To me this is a very big deal.

expectation of free

[tepples]

The problem with games is that they're more difficult to develop on a (DFSG) free software model than applications that are not games. Creating assets other than code costs money, and you have to recoup expenses somehow. The problem with paid apps on Android is that Android got launched in a lot of countries that didn't have Google Checkout yet, meaning the only way to get an app in front of users in those countries was to offer it without charge. This set an expectation among users even in other countries that apps would be $0.00.

Re:expectation of free

[Anne Thwacks]

Since 90% of the Android apps are worthless, this set an expectation among users that apps were not worth paying for.

Personally, after over 4 years of installing free apps, I have paid for several, because the free version worked properly, and i wanted an upgrade, or donated cos I wanted the developer to keep supporting his nice app.

There is no way I would buy an Android app I could not test first ever again. If i test it, and it does not work (anything with WinPhone in it) I still won't buy it!

Not all devices are in your lab

[tepples]

It would have made more sense to say "dearth of devices available to in-house testers compared to those in the field".

No gamepads on iPod touch 4

[tepples]

Apple is also dropping support for the fourth-generation iPod touch, which was the current model nine months ago. Because gamepad support is new in iOS 7, and game developers who haven't been able to get into Nintendo's far more selective developer program will be itching to finally have access to physical controls, watch games get quickly updated to be incompatible with the iPT4.

If you care about a product...

[agapeton]

...then express the problems with it. True Anti-Android people show more apathy than anything. I love iOS, THEREFORE I complain about resolution fragmentation (and the lack of 16:9!) I love Google, THEREFORE I complain that they robbed me of Reader, Talk, and Latitude. I love Android, THEREFORE I hate love-child, impure devices that aren't pure.

Consumer don't notice the app never offered ...

[perpenso]

This just in: Guy with stake in product says nothing is wrong with product. Film at 11.

Thing is, he's not wrong. Most consumers won't notice.

Its more of a developer issue. The effect on consumers is secondary, ie an app they might want is not ported to Android or it is not available for the Android version they have.

Re:Consumer don't notice the app never offered ...

[Anne Thwacks]

If you are a consumer and you have a 4 year old version of Android on your phone, you will not exactly be shocked that it wont run apps that need a new phone. If you cared, you would upgrade. People with 2.1 are not going to buy your app.

Fragmentation would be if people were launching products with wildly different versions of the OS: eg with HTC or Samsung's own APIs. Yes they do have manuf specific APIs. just dont use them and you will be fine. The generic APIs will be there and work.

Can you get Cyanogenmod for your iPhone? I thought not.

Re:Consumer don't notice the app never offered ...

[Omestes]

If you are a consumer and you have a 4 year old version of Android on your phone... if you cared, you would upgrade.

Unless you're using Verizon. They basically refuse to update, or at least they refused to update my Droid X past 2.3.

The biggest problem with the phone market is that someone else is in charge of updates. This killed my ASUS TF101, and killed my perfectly functional Droid X. The phone market should aspire towards the PC market, with open platforms and open updates. This, obviously, will never happen, since we're supposed to throw our phones in the landfill after two years, buying a new $500 bit of hardware.

Re:Consumer don't notice the app never offered ...

[tlhIngan]

If you are a consumer and you have a 4 year old version of Android on your phone, you will not exactly be shocked that it wont run apps that need a new phone. If you cared, you would upgrade. People with 2.1 are not going to buy your app.
Fragmentation would be if people were launching products with wildly different versions of the OS: eg with HTC or Samsung's own APIs. Yes they do have manuf specific APIs. just dont use them and you will be fine. The generic APIs will be there and work.

You do realize that... you can get Android phones shipping with Gingerbread today, right?

These aren't ancient Android phones running Gingerbread because the user hasn't upgraded (in fact, most people upgrade phones when their contracts expire - because if you're taking on a new contract, you might as well get a new phone!). They're running ancient Android because that's what they shipped with! And what carriers are pushing out.

Basically, the Android phones that move are the free ones (++ Android Fragmentation - for making phones available in a wide range of pricing, -- Android Fragmentation for making crap-droids with crappy UXs possible), and why not? Featurephones cost just as much as a smartphone these days (i.e., free), and the lower end free crap-droids you don't even need a data plan for.

The problem is the coupling of hard- and software

[Casandro]

You buy hardware and are supposed, often even enforced, to use the software (operating system) the vendor chooses for you. The PC, for example, was made to run different operating systems. All you had stored inside of it was the BIOS which loaded the bootloader from disk, and executed it. You could just pop in another diskette and run a different operating system. This still is the case and the reason why you can still run the latest and greatest operating system on a 5 year old PC, while a 5 year old smartphone is heavily outdated.

Until...

[mitcheli]

A remote root exploit is discovered in in Gingerbread and Sprint refuses to fix the issue because they don't have the resources to address the issue and then every smartphone on Sprint running that version turns into a spambot with a dead battery. ... Not that that would ever happen...

Well, I can tell you're not an Android developer.

[Max Threshold]

Fragmentation on Android is a huge problem. Each device manufacturer has their own slightly different version of the OS, each with its own set of issues and incompatibilities. Sure, they only crop up when you try to do specific things... like, say, open a Bluetooth socket.

(I am an Android developer responsible for testing my company's product on dozens of different tablets.)

Re: Bugs!

[synthespian]

What about XCode? It rocks. Its code analysis rocks. Fuck Java.

Not a problem? Please update my HTC Phone

[billstewart]

I've got an HTC Aria. Haven't been able to get HTC Sync to work on Win7. Can't upgrade the phone OS without HTC Sync, and it's a custom HTC version of Android instead of vanilla Google. And as far as I can tell, I need to update Android to get it to talk to the newer HTC Sync?

Backwards attitude

[Coward Anonymous]

Most RAZR users in 2005 were perfectly content with their phones and didn't notice the difference between what they had in their hands and what was possible when Apple was hatching the iPhone.
Users should not be expected to "know the difference" as that is not their job. It's your job, as the technologist, to know the difference and improve the user's experience. The user's sole task is to reap the benefits and reward those who provide the most benefits.

Re:Backwards attitude

[gl4ss]

Most RAZR users in 2005 were perfectly content with their phones and didn't notice the difference between what they had in their hands and what was possible when Apple was hatching the iPhone.
Users should not be expected to "know the difference" as that is not their job. It's your job, as the technologist, to know the difference and improve the user's experience. The user's sole task is to reap the benefits and reward those who provide the most benefits.

appearance of android and iphone cut down fragmentation in the mobile space by 90%. pretty much all android phones are more compatible with each other than j2me phones even from same vendors were.

the point is that users of android phones don't need to really care all that much about fragmentation.. they open the play store and download an app and use it.

Re:Well, I can tell you're not an Android develope

[AmiMoJo]

Simply not true. Compatibility issues are almost always down to differing hardware/drivers. That's the same on any OS except for iOS where Apple tightly controls the hardware too.

I've done Android development for an industrial product using Bluetooth. Didn't see any issues, the API is stable and just works. If I ever do discover a device that has issues I'd first assume it was down to crap hardware, not the OS.

Re:Catch 22

[thegarbz]

That's a T-Mobile problem. The Galaxy S did have an official Gingerbread release and it wasn't more than a few months late (good for Samsung at the time).

Nope, that's not true.

[Anonymous Coward]

" but that happens A YEAR AFTER you buy an Android phone."

WRONG!

That's not true.

Now, yes, SOME carriers ***IN THE USA*** have managed to get the power to lock you out of your phone so that you cannot update it. Google can't stop them. You can, however, NOY BUY THEIR SHIT, ***and you can STILL buy yourself an Android phone***.

If you want to buy an iOS phone, however, and crApple don't want to let you own the device you want, then you're SOL. Nobody else is allowed to do it.

Re:Master Key, anybody?

[skapaft]

Good thing some of us kept the count then. The grand total: 0 times. You however...

It's a problem, but one Google has been working at

[Skythe]

Things Google have done recently to combat fragmentation:
- Announced the release of the Android PDK, a preview-esque version of the new OS available to manufacturers before the official release hits source
- Begun de-coupling official Google apps from the OS and therefore from the update cycle (e.g. Google keyboard, IIRC Gmail and Maps, etc)
- From a 'smoke and mirror' perspective, kept the Android codenames the same across Jellybean (4.1 and 4.2)
- Most recently, "updated" Android completely without actually updating it via pushing updates to core apps and services like Play Store, Music player, sync APIs, etc.
- Adding to above: Held off on releasing a numbered Android update to let the natural cycle for replacing handsets to continue (so people with Android 2.1 phones hit the end of their contracts and buy 4.2 phones)
.. and certainly much more. I'm thinking the #1 point on the PDK will be significant as we have yet to see the real effect of this. Previously the source code for new Android versions would be released to both the public and manufacturers at the same time, so you'd have teams like Cyanogenmod quickly port and do their own QA on releases using stock Android, while manufacturers had to update their custom UI's against the new version, go through their own rigorous QA processes, go through telco QA processes and timeframes, etc. The end result was updates being released by community teams (excluding Nexus devices) long before manufacturers did, leading to much discontent.

Re:Not a problem? Please update my HTC Phone

[Politburo]

Sounds like an HTC problem, not a 'fragmentation' problem.

Re:Catch 22

[F.Ultra]

The Galaxy S most definitely got 2.3, mine does. But even then you should try out a modded rom like Cyanogen, thanks to that I run 4.2 on my Galaxy S without any issues.

Re:Master Key, anybody?

[Dixie_Flatline]

I dare say you're a bit overconfident in this regard. If it were so easy to convince people to only get things from trusted sources and not sketchy links, Windows security would be rock solid.

If there's anything that I've learned over the years, it's that people will go to extraordinary measures to unwittingly sabotage themselves. They'll disable protections and allow anything to be installed. You think that you can't trick an Android user on an unpatched system? I've got a bridge to sell you.

Maybe this particular exploit won't ever be a big issue, but what we're looking at is hundreds of millions of people buying into a system that is remarkably hard to patch properly because it relies on organisations with a vested interest in either selling you a new phone or keeping costs low by not updating old systems. It's no big surprise to me that Samsung is the only manufacturer so far to patch its phones (though as far as I know, they only patched the latest OS anyway).

If it's not this one, it's the next one. That's the true issue with fragmentation. You can't really EOL these products because the source is out there and easy to fork, and so as long as you allow new apps to run on old phones, you'll have this.

Re:Catch 22

[danomac]

That was your carrier. I had the Galaxy S and it was upgraded twice and was running 2.3.

Re:Master Key, anybody?

[Ash-Fox]

I dare say you're a bit overconfident in this regard.

Well, let's see. It only effects packages that can be downloaded from the Google Play store, a fix was placed in the Google Play store, to block 'malicious packages'. Killing the ability to use the vulnerability.

They'll disable protections and allow anything to be installed.

Which wouldn't be anything to do with this exploit then.

You think that you can't trick an Android user on an unpatched system?

The fix was done by fixing Google Play to block it, not through a software update to the handset. I don't see an issue, since this exploit is only for packages distributed through the Google Play store.

what we're looking at is hundreds of millions of people buying into a system that is remarkably hard to patch properly because it relies on organisations with a vested interest in either selling you a new phone or keeping costs low by not updating old systems

Indeed.

You can't really EOL these products because the source is out there and easy to fork, and so as long as you allow new apps to run on old phones, you'll have this.

Didn't stop rooted versions of iOS from existing that are unpatched and not updated. Nor did Apple bother to update their older generation of iPhone hardware. Then when they presented their statistic of fragmentation, they decided to not to show the statistics of older iPhone hardware they didn't wish to support in that but completely forgot to do the same for the other mobile phone manufacturers representing Android. Now, regarding forking, the mobile phone producers aren't using "Android Open Source Project", they are using a commercially licensed version of Android from Google that has very specific terms and conditions attached to it as well.

I'm not really seeing this being a unique issue. Companies are going to stop supporting handsets when they want and unless the platform is open (which a lot of Android handsets are not, they are locked down), there is little the end users can do about it other than spending their money else where.

No, by support

[SuperKendall]

And if you where targeting Microsoft or Apple then stuff like this would be solved by magic?

Here's a thought - Apple and Microsoft ship devices with OS updates that support the hardware in question.

On any Apple hardware that includes BTLE I can use the system frameworks to make use of BTLE.

You can consider that "magic" all you like, but frankly to me it's just common sense.

Re:No, by support

[F.Ultra]

So your new software that requires say IOS6 in order to support BTLE will work without any problems on a IOS1 device that was made several years before the BTLE interface was even though about?

Re:No, by support

[SuperKendall]

So your new software that requires say IOS6 in order to support BTLE will work without any problems on a IOS1

It works without problem on any iOS device that supports BTLE.

DUH.

End of conversation, you can keep talking but the door has closed.

Re:No, by support

[F.Ultra]

Well you where the one that asked how to use BTLE in devices that run Android 2.2 so which device with IOS 4 (ot whatever IOS version that does not support BTLE) will work with your app and BTLE without magic?

Re:Master Key, anybody?

[Dixie_Flatline]

Actually, no. It affects any signed package that would normally be found on the play store. If it weren't a more general problem, then Google wouldn't have released any patch at all, and Samsung wouldn't have applied the OS patch and distributed it. It makes applications look like they're signed by Google, and normally those come through the play store.

All you'd need to do is trick someone into downloading the app from some source other than the play store, perhaps claiming that it's an upgrade to an app that they already have. Or by releasing a paid app for free.

iOS doesn't really have the same issues, though whether that's good or bad is a matter of some debate. To wit, if you have an old device that isn't supported anymore, and you wipe it or are forced to restore from backup, you can't download old applications any more because they aren't available on the AppStore. You're left with a device that's not really terribly useful. Apple's got a much harder line on how it EOLs devices.

More to the point, though, Apple doesn't sell devices that aren't up to date. You can't buy a phone running iOS 5. In a few months, you won't be able to buy a phone running iOS 6. You certainly can't buy anything with an OS that's 2 or 3 or 4 years old. New phones don't come encumbered with the problems of old phones. That's a big step up. Android's current fragmentation woes come from a lot of new phones as well as old ones.

Re:Master Key, anybody?

[Ash-Fox]

then Google wouldn't have released any patch at all, and Samsung wouldn't have applied the OS patch and distributed it.

I don't see why they wouldn't. They stopped the exploit from working on the play store, but the exploit is 'technically' still there, just not usable.

It affects any signed package that would normally be found on the play store.

It wouldn't because signature checking is only used with the play store.

All you'd need to do is trick someone into downloading the app from some source other than the play store

Which wouldn't work if "install from unknown sources" is enabled and if it is, you could install software regardless. The unknown sources option checks which application is launching the installer too (in other words: only the play store can launch the installers in this mode).

perhaps claiming that it's an upgrade to an app that they already have. Or by releasing a paid app for free.

You could do that regardless, just ask the person to enable "install from unknown sources". Android won't let you install packages downloaded through other methods otherwise.

More to the point, though, Apple doesn't sell devices that aren't up to date.

I don't know many people who buy things directly from Apple, Sony, Samsung. They usually buy stuff from places like mobile network stores like 'carphone warehouse' (which sell second hand, first gen iPhones still).

New phones don't come encumbered with the problems of old phones.

Because I'm having a problem right now with my Xperia Z, right?

That's a big step up. Android's current fragmentation woes come from a lot of new phones as well as old ones.

As an Android user and iOS user. I can tell you that I don't have 'problems' on Android.

Re:Well, I can tell you're not an Android develope

[Max Threshold]

That doesn't change the practical realities of developing a non-trivial app that runs on more than one device. And I'm not even sure it's true. Dozens of companies have sunk billions of dollars into Android, and Google still doesn't seem to take it seriously. Case in point: the official API docs contain crap like, "upon completing the dispatch, the object must make a cup of tea, return it to the caller, and exclaim 'jolly good message old boy!" And their official developer support policy is "go ask Stack Overflow."