Android fragmentation not so serious, says study

[Richard Gaskin]

Alejandro Tejada wrote:
> Read the article here:
> http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Localytics-Android-usage-study/
>
> "According to study, 73 percent of Android handsets tracked by Localytics
> run Android 2.3 ("Gingerbread") and 23 percent still run Android 2.2
> ("Froyo")"
> "Addressing the concern that Android developers must write code to fit
> varying screen sizes and resolutions, Localytics said a resolution of
> 800 x 480 pixels accounted for 62 percent of resolution specs."

Thanks for that, Alejandro.

I also liked this line from the article, which chimes with the anecdotal 
comments from friends and family who use Android devices:

     ...it's not common to hear consumers complain about
     having too much choice, and still relatively rare
     to hear complaints about apps that work on one OS
     build but not the other...

The difference between "fragmentation" and "diversity" depends on which 
marketing team is speaking at the time. ;)

The importance of resolution-independence became clear to Microsoft back 
in the '90s, and by now most OSes support it.

Every OS provides features not available in previous releases, and every 
OS has a cutoff on supported devices such that older devices will not 
have access to those new features.

Neither of these factors is unique to mobile development, and certainly 
not unique to Android.

Any platform vendor encouraging developers to assume that 
one-size-fits-all solutions will satisfy an ever more diverse audience 
would be making a critical mistake.

Fortunately we're not seeing that, not even from Apple.

Screen size, resolution, and OS features will vary across the devices 
for any platform.  This has been true since the earliest days of 
consumer computing, and there's no reason to believe it will ever be any 
different.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
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