Which Android Devices

Getting Started Newbie Questions
#1

If you are an experienced developer, which Android devices are you buying to test your apps on. 

How do you determine which of the devices will suffice so you don’t have to buy them all for testing (which for most, is unrealistic)?

I will be developing mostly stories and games for the iPad, so it seems to make sense to get Android devices with similar screen sizes but is it necessary to get a Galaxy, Kindle and Nook, etc.

What is your experience with this?  What device purchasing shortcuts are you taking that have proven to work over multiple Android devices.

Thanks for your advice.

#2

I have a Nexus 7, and it’s a good device for testing Android apps. The only problem I’ve run into is that it doesn’t have a camera. 

#3

I’ve got a Galaxy Player 5.8 (Android 4.0.4) and a Google Nexus 7 (Android 4.4.2).

I also have a Galaxy S1 Player (Android 2.3.6), but I’ve recently stopped supporting anything below Android 4.0.3 (API level 15). 

The reason being that Android 4.0 is the first version of Android that requires a GPU that supports hardware acceleration.

Many features of Graphics 2.0 uses the GPU extensively and I’ve noticed performance issues on devices that don’t have GPU-enabled hardware acceleration.

It might seem like you’d be missing out on a lot of devices, however looking at the statistics from Google Play over 80% of the devices downloading games are running Android 4.0+. Losing 20% might seem relatively high, however if your app doesn’t run well on lower spec’d devices you’ll just end up with a lot of negative reviews. So I opted to take the hit. Also, as time goes by the percentage of devices running 4.0+ will only increase.

#4

Thanks for the replies.  

Interesting no mention of the Kindle HD models.

#5

I’m in Asia, and I’d say that no mention about Kindle could be based on the fact that the Kindle models/services are very much US centric.

#6

Game is tested on Galaxy S4 and Samsung Tablet 10 inch.  We also have a Kindle and nook to test on but have not actually done that yet - soon!  For the spec of the game we are recommending running on Android 4.0+ or above only!   We are going to be honest and let people know the game was designed for larger high-resolution screens - better to not have someone download the game and have a crap experience.

#7

Due to the fact that most of us are not made of money… We generally stick to “one of each type”. By this we mean: one old slow device, one new fast device, one larger screen device + whatever else is laying around.

So we have: Kindle Fire HD (7" afaik), Google Nexus 4 (newish device, running 4.x), Sony Xperia Play (old device used for performance testing, if it runs good on this old dog… Then you should be ok :wink: )

Also have a Samsung Galaxy SII knocking around.

We employ the same system for iOS: iPhone 4, iPhone 5s, and iPad 4.

You can pick up testing devices really cheap on ebay if you don’t need to test anything cellular. For instance our testing iPhone 4 had a corrupt gsm (something), and we got it for $60. Can’t go wrong there!

The “one of each type” system has worked well for us over the last few years. Also getting a small beta testing group never hurts. Pre-apps (service) allows you to put builds out to beta testers pre-launch also. So thats something to consider.

Hope this helps.

#8

Excellent!  Thanks for the replies.  The “most of us are not made of money” is exactly the sentiment of this thread.

Thanks for the advice as well to search ebay for devices without cellular capability to save $$.

Is it common that when one device performs well but another device doesn’t, that the project gets saved separately?  

For instance, if my app runs very smoothly on Android devices, but not so well on iOS devices, would it be common practice that you do a “Save As” and start tweaking/de-bugging for iOS separately from the stable performing Android version?    I get the impression this isn’t how it should work, but with my first app I imagine this is how it could play out.

#9

would it be common practice that you do a “Save As” and start tweaking/de-bugging for iOS separately from the stable performing Android version?

If you ever need to do that it would be better to use the same code-base and just inject if (system.getInfo(“platformName”) == “Android”) then … else … end where you need to make any tweaks.

if my app runs very smoothly on Android devices, but not so well on iOS devices

In reality you’ll see the opposite. You rarely have performance problems on iOS.

#10

Thanks for that, ingemar.  Very helpful advice.

#11

“If you ever need to do that it would be better to use the same code-base and just inject if (system.getInfo(“platformName”) == “Android”) then … else … end where you need to make any tweaks.”

We are really going to have to look at this next week since we are starting to test on Nook Color and Kindle Fire HD.  From Rob: “Barnes and Noble has gotten very picky about apps that don’t use the full screen. Apple encourages iPhone 5 support to not letterBox the extra space (though they have to allow it because of the shear number of legacy apps).”  So we are going to have to come up with a good config.lua file that does it all (stretch full screen, etc).  We found a good reference here from Rob: http://coronalabs.com/blog/2012/12/11/device-detection-on-steroids/

For people first time developers like myself, it would be nice to know what each store expects from the app from people who have expereice with this.  i.e. I would have never know about Barnes and Noble being picky about full screen apps unless I had seen it in an obscure comment on a web page.  Suggestion: It would be nice to have this knowledge in one concise location. 

But then again is guess that is what google is for…  Corona has done a good job of posting articles about these subjects…

#12

You can still use letterbox mode as long as your graphics are oversized to cover the extra space.

#13

“You can still use letterbox mode as long as your graphics are oversized to cover the extra space.”

Our scene graphics are 960x640 so they don’t look too bad with letterbox…

Letterbox is okay for Barnes and Noble?  Thanks!

#14

As long as you don’t display any black borders anywhere! Your background graphics must cover the whole screen.

#15

Thanks ingemar! 

#16

I have a post that describes a technique how to do this.
It’s a bit old (2 years), and hasn’t been updated but I think it should still work with Graphics 2.
http://www.swipeware.com/backgrounds-with-no-black-borders-on-appleandroid-devices/

#17

Very good - it is useful information - thanks for sharing!

#18

I have a Nexus 7, and it’s a good device for testing Android apps. The only problem I’ve run into is that it doesn’t have a camera. 

#19

I’ve got a Galaxy Player 5.8 (Android 4.0.4) and a Google Nexus 7 (Android 4.4.2).

I also have a Galaxy S1 Player (Android 2.3.6), but I’ve recently stopped supporting anything below Android 4.0.3 (API level 15). 

The reason being that Android 4.0 is the first version of Android that requires a GPU that supports hardware acceleration.

Many features of Graphics 2.0 uses the GPU extensively and I’ve noticed performance issues on devices that don’t have GPU-enabled hardware acceleration.

It might seem like you’d be missing out on a lot of devices, however looking at the statistics from Google Play over 80% of the devices downloading games are running Android 4.0+. Losing 20% might seem relatively high, however if your app doesn’t run well on lower spec’d devices you’ll just end up with a lot of negative reviews. So I opted to take the hit. Also, as time goes by the percentage of devices running 4.0+ will only increase.

#20

Thanks for the replies.  

Interesting no mention of the Kindle HD models.