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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.'"
This just in: Guy with stake in product says nothing is wrong with product. Film at 11.
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.
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.
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.
cat
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.
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.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[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...
-- "Oh. This guy again."
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.
-- the cake is a lie
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.
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC