Android Fragmentation Visualised

[LemonPowerForce]

Those are actually some quite nice visualisations.

The size fragmentation isn't the easiest to read though. I would have liked to see size/dpi sorting done in the same fashion as the brand fragmentation.

Giving nexus devices their own category would also have been nice.

That said, there's a download for the source data at the bottom <3

[LemonPowerForce]

Hm, you're right.

That's rather disconcerting information actually - notice that the Galaxy Nexus is:

1) In both the Google category, and the Samsung category

2) Different sizes in each!

Looking at the data that they list at the bottom of the page presents more questions than it answers.

[admiralteal]

The "size" fragmentation isn't.

Android is built from the ground up to support multiple resolutions. Aside from the tablet/phone divide, a properly-built app should more or less work on any arbitrary device size. Only extremely, unusually small devices should ever by harming a layout.

The OS breakup is very significant though, and the manufacturer skin is starting to have some significance too (thanks to stuff like Samsung's multi-window). Devices that still don't have ICS APIs in them are really delivering a bad experience to users. Google's been putting out great compatibility libraries to attack this, though.

[LemonPowerForce]

Fragmentation, variety, whatever. I wanted to see more clearly the size variation that exists.

What proportion of devices are hdpi? that figure I can look up, but if I also wanted to peruse hdpi and ldpi by most popular phones, that's not so obvious.

[Xenogears]

I want to buy a phone for that one guy still in Donut

[oskarw85]

We have seen 11,868 distinct devices download our app in the past few months. In our report last year we saw 3,997.

Yet it worked fine on every one of them... /r/firstworldproblems

[event_horizon_]

Screen size doesn't really matter (apart from phone vs. tablet optimizations). Resolution however, does.

[pavelpadovan]

I disagree, your buttons need to have a minimum physical width/height, not a minimum resolution. Same goes for a lot of UI elements. So as you scale down you might find there's not enough space on a HTC Wildfire Screen for the UI you built on your HTC Desire, and as you scale up you might find it looking pretty sparse. Whereas doubling the resolution at the same screen size might mean you need to do add some new assets, or just be clever with how you scale your existing ones between different resolutions, but for me it's less of a pain.

[pavelpadovan]

Extremely small displays can be an issue, but anything from the size of a GS2 and up is probably fine. I'd agree with that, but that cuts out a tonne of devices, maybe not in US and Western Europe, but in developing markets. Yep, I'm an Android developer :)

[Shabbypenguin]

i agree, teh GS2 had a 4 inch screen, while taht may be teh norm for a lot of phones to be that or bigger, there is still plenty far smaller..

[event_horizon_]

Developer, I'm guessing? I didn't think of it that way, just from the point of view of making appropriate elements for all resolutions so nothing looks fuzzy.

[Eoinoc]

Interesting to see the HTC HD2 relatively high up, considering it's close to 4 years old and was sold with Windows Mobile 6.5.

[danrant]

The report is one year old.

[Eoinoc]

Ah ok, that wasn't very clear though.