Picking a version
Now that I have most of the application developed for my handicap game, I'm look at testing in multiple phones/displays. I need to see if my app icons still look good on a QVGA screen as well as a WVGA screen. I also need to make sure my app will work the same on an Android 2.1 as a phone running the 1.6 version.
Google will occasionally release stats on what percentage of phones are running a specific version of Android. The most recent chart shows that android 1.5 is running on 37% of phones, 1.6 is on 29% and 2.1 is on 32% of phones. It's clear that if you want to release your app to the largest audience you should develop for the 1.5 version of Android.
Then again Sprint will be upgrading their android 1.5 phones to 2.1 soon and European Hero's will be upgraded this summer as well. These upgrades should shift the majority of phones to the 2.1 android platform. I'm currently building my app with a minimum api of 1.6 because by the time my app is done these upgrades should have occurred.
Supporting multiple screen resolutions is probably my biggest concern. There are six variations of screen now supported on android devices with different screen sixes and screen densities. What this means for me is the icons and text I display will look different on the screen. Thankfully the emulators included with the android developer kit allow me to test all these resolutions.
Comments