Is Fragmentation Hurting Android?

25 May 2012

Is Fragmentation Hurting Android?

A friend of mine sent me a link to this article on Android fragmentation. The article includes a pretty interesting info-graphic that shows 3,997 different Android devices.

Source: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669877/infographic-heres-why-designing-android-apps-is-so-hard

These are the 3,997 different Android devices that OpenSignalMaps users experienced the app with. How many devices do iOS developers have to worry about? Somewhere between four and eight (if you include older-model iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches). Even crazier: Out of those nearly 4,000 Android devices, “a staggering 1,363 device models appear only once in our database

The article itself is a good read, and the comments add a lot of value to the discussion. Like this one from CSX321.

Well-said. I’ve been a programmer for a long time, and the issues involved in writing for Android are no different than what we’ve been handling for literally decades on other platforms, and especially in Web design. I find Android to be one of the *easiest* platforms to program for that I’ve ever used. My game, which is in the top 100 in its category on Google Play, works perfectly on every Android 1.6+ device I’ve tried, no matter what the screen size.

As a relatively new mobile device developer, I’ll be the first to admit that building apps for Android seems a little intimidating.

Are you an Android developer? What do you think?

CoronaGeek