@L. Spiro I don't know why everyone hates Android development. The libraries are awesome and the whole hardware fragmentation thing isn't too much different from what we have to deal with on Windows.

I have written posts that were 45 paragraphs long about what is wrong with Android development.

On Windows you are using the same OS for everyone, and the differences are trivial in most cases. Everyone is running the same build of the same OS (barring service packs), and the OS looks and works the same.

On Android, you are using an OS that has been modified to VERY different ways by every device manufacturer. This breaks almost every app in very strange ways. A lot of people are blind to this problem because they run popular apps on very popular devices, and the bugs have been worked around, so those users get a good experience. It's fun when an app or game that cost 10$+ breaks because the author optimized it for the newest NeXus device and broke it on several others!

I have 7 android devices here. It's hilarious comparing app compatibility between them. Even simple little apps. Even apps running on similar hardware with the same OS versions (Even then, those OS versions are so modified, the only clue they are both on Android 4.03 is that it says so in the sys info screen lol). Even then, all my 4.3 devices are running their own custom 4.03 builds. Similar in name only!

App will run great one a few devices, black screen on others, screen full of garbage on others.

The Lenovo tablet re-skinned the bottom bar (which takes the place of the physical buttons on older devices), to fit a custom button in the center, and the bar is taller as a consequence. A lot of apps get messed up with graphic placement and touch tracking because the aspect ratio of the client area is now off.

For example: Square released Chrono Trigger on Android this week, and is having tons of similar problems. Especially with the graphics corruption. They have taken some of those devices off the compatibility list, leaving those who already bought it screwed with an unusable app!

Review
First review ever couldn't stay quiet about this. Bought this my Galaxy S3 and it works ok on that. However on my Xoom it is unplayable, same as others, quarter of the screen used and can't download the rest of the game. This is the best game of all time Square should be ashamed of themselves for putting this out like this, and for 10 bucks no less.[/quote]

Review
Prompted that additional data needs to be downloaded but can't actually say OK because i can only see a quarter of the screen, then stuck. unacceptable for a paid app. ESPECIALLY for $10. transformer tf700
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Review
This is a great port of a great game!
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Review
Like many others this only loads in half the screen and i am unable to click any further. Pretty terrible for an expensive app. Not meantion of compatibility issues in the description. Patch or money back please.[/quote]

Review
After installing it, the screen asks if you want to download the additional content. Unfortunately, on my Xoom, this screen is unusable and I can't install the content. For that matter - the game starts with a 34mb download just to get it from the market, why in the world does it then need MORE content? Sloppy. (11/1) - How cute, they marked it as not being compatible with my tablet. This, of course, does nothing for the people they robbed beforehand due to Google's refund policy.
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It's gotten so bad that the marketplace was modified to add an option to let you see only reviews from the current build and/or your specific device.

At least with iOS and Win8 you get one OS build that provides a baseline for quality and functionality. Everyone will have the same builds of these OSes, that will all look and act the same. There should have been one, closed, build of android, and these problems wouldn't exist! Everyone would have the exact same OS with the same quirks, and everything would work nicely for everyone.

If they want to let people customize their android products, there should be ways of skinning it and adding vendor stuff without having to rebuild it, and break it. Everything should just work, all the time.

I have WP 7.5 HTC HD7. I'm just waiting for the HTC HD8 with WP8 I just don't see me buying either an Android or iPhone. For me, WPs take the best of both worlds.

[quote name='Alpha_ProgDes' timestamp='1351831389' post='4996426']
I have WP 7.5 HTC HD7. I'm just waiting for the HTC HD8 with WP8 I just don't see me buying either an Android or iPhone. For me, WPs take the best of both worlds.

I'm waiting for the HTC X8! I'm using a Lumia 800 on t-mobile, so I'm stuck with the edge network which is pretty painful.
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I'm on T-Mobile too. But I'm able to get 3G where I live. I'm hoping that the HTC 8X is not the HTC HD8. I would be pretty sad (For no reason, other than I like the name, lol)

@L. Spiro I don't know why everyone hates Android development. The libraries are awesome and the whole hardware fragmentation thing isn't too much different from what we have to deal with on Windows.

You might want to take a look at for example MeeGo and compare (It is very sad that it didn't become the dominant opensource mobile OS instead of Android)

i agree that Android isn't "that" bad for games, it is far worse for normal apps (The differences between platforms and versions get a lot more painful when you're using the standard Android GUI libraries).

And then there is Tegra 2, whose GPU is riddled with faulty OpenGL ES 2.0 implementation points. However portable you think your shaders are, they don’t work on Tegra 2 out-of-the-box.

I've noticed strange issue with Tegra 3 as well when things run butter smooth on PowerVR GPUs and others. I actually took a Tegra 3 tablet back because I was so completely disappointed. UI lag extreme as if the phantom fifth processor was not waking up the other cores fast enough. Why should the additional cores go to sleep only to cause android VM to run all GC threads on the reduced performance fifth core. Paid the same amount as iPad but the product was clearly inferior. I felt robbed.

Apple is just as fragmented in some respects. Dealing with "fragmentation" on my side really wasn't that bad. But maybe that is due to the screen formatting conventions I decided to use. Android has taken root. If I were to choose a game engine I need to be flexible and move left or right. So I chose an engine that supports both from a unified codebase. In that respect i think you need to support android. But then again, it's your engine and you can do as you please!

The number one fragmentation issue for android is frame rate. I really wish they enforced 60 fps hardware from the start but they may not have even been aware that that was a necessity for a smooth phone experience.

I really should have included Windows Phone as an option. But in another sense it isn't quite relevant to me because my game engine does not support it yet but they do support Windows 7. Once they do support 7.5 and 8, I would image porting to windows mobile would take the same amount of effort porting to android required from iOS. Three days and nights.

Correction: Actually less time this time around because the file operations are implemented in c (listing directories, mkdirs -p, etc) for android which means only the root path defined for application home needs to change.

I have in total three Android devices, old HTC evo, galaxy nexus, kindle fire (to support that other android market place. I find it quite slimy that amazon created their own market place to complete with google and offer what I consider to be an inferior product). Two iOS devices, iPad and iPod. All necessary for cross platform development. I like to test directly on real devices. I will own a windows device when that time comes, but it ain't now.

Something that absolutely stinks on android is the emulator (shame on them for that)! When in today's world of virtualization, why not provide a real OS that runs on i386.


Despite being objective c and objective c++, getting a functional app running in Xcode and iOS has been far faster than android due to the difference in speed at which you can launch the app and test those 40 lines of code you just added.

I seldom write more that about 40 lines of code before testing unless I am working on a refactoring. I'll even test one line of code particularly when dealing with screen formatting changes.

I am truly surprised that windows on phone did not take off. Particularly in android's stage of development windows phone was far supeior in smoothness and smoother than even iphone with the zune ui, but thats all different now:

I attribute this to a few reasons:

A) microsoft charges $10 per phone to use windows phone.
Now considering the razor slim margins these companies work lets assume 10 dollars to 100. Ten percent can be the difference between profitabilty and losing money.

B) windows live tile ui layout. Not enough space to view your background.
We like our backgrounds. One of those easiest to do personalization things
to the phone that seems to add so much to make it yours.
Mostly solid color block tiles renders the phone home screen bland to me.
I like seeing my icons glide across my background. Windows tiles robs too much background
viewing space

C) Screen dimensions. Android was supporting all sorts of sizes. Atbthe time of launch windows support one rather small dimension atleast for me cause i have big hands.

D) the microsoft brand among consumers like me and you.
Obviously not as strong as google or apple.

E) lack of creativity (probably should have listed this first)
Smart phone existed before iOS. Infact it was windows mobile as the dominate
Smart phone OS. However they replicated the desktop experience and did not innovate at all

So credit where credit is due for apple to usher in that new experience.

Credit where credit is due to google to so rapidly respond with adaptations to android.

Microsoft you were just too slow. And inthe world of consumer electeonics the game is not with suppliers and OEMs but us.

In the future i want to see that 15 or 17 inch only touch tablet. I am finding i can create equally on it provided more thought goes into ui development.