
Android No Longer Fragmented - andrewmlevy
https://www.apteligent.com/2016/06/may-monthly-data-report-google-io-edition/
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andrewmlevy
To be clear, there is still fragmentation among devices, this shows that 93%
of usage occurs on 3 operating systems vs on iOS where 2 operating systems
have 97% of usage. The gap has closed significantly.

~~~
th0br0
The OS version doesn't matter as much here. There is a huge gap in API
functionality betwen 2.3.x and >4.x That's the only thing that matters for a
developer as the official Android support libraries hide most of the remaining
>4.x API differences.

~~~
on_and_off
2.3 no longer matters. Nobody uses it anymore. With a few exceptions (maybe it
makes sense for facebook with its army of devs to still target it), all the
devs I know only have a legacy apk (no longer developed, just barely
maintained) for their few 2.x users.

The popular minSdk at the moment is 16 (4.1) . This gives a nice common API,
the biggest roadbump in most cases is that you have to handle pre and post
lollipop cases : with/without transitions, ripples, etc, ... It is nothing
compared to having to handle 2.x devices though .. the API were pretty
primitive and the hardware extremely poor.. you can't develop a 2016 app and
target these devices.

Of course there are exceptions. For a camera app, the Camera2 API added in
lollipop might be crucial.

In most cases, the support lib does hide most of the API differences.

Many new libs are also provided by Google directly unbundled from the SDK,
such as the design lib, RecyclerView or ConstraintLayout.

------
xbmcuser
Unlike iOS you don't need to update your OS to get updates in Android. And iOS
leaves many of he new features on older devices anyway. So the Android
fragmentation although a problem is not as a big a problem that it is made out
to be. Though I wish Samsung would start using its power and it does have some
with the carriers to stop them from putting in their bloat as system apps. And
it should start producing world phones instead of the hundred models they have
for each carrier and country.

