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Android 2.1 vs 2.2

I have been developing Android 2.2+ for most of the year. But when I look at the “Android Device List” on Wikipedia, I see a significant number of Android 2.1 devices. Many of them may never have received OTA updates, and some were released not so long ago. I have seen the readily available statistics about Android 2.2, which is most widely used, but I can't help but feel like I'm carving a large audience.

I saw several differences between 2.1 and 2.2 (e.g. with TabWidgets), but if I just dropped my SDK to 2.1, what differences should I know?

This is even less relevant, thoughts and experiences are welcome, or links to information sources

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android sdk version specifications
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As always, it depends on the features of your application. I do not want to tell you about support 2.1. Of course, I am not an expert . But you need to weigh how much work should make your application available for the last 20% of the market.

Although I like the idea of ​​supporting greater backward compatibility, I think it makes sense to maintain the “current and future market” more than spend a lot of effort supporting older devices. Of course, if your application works well with old API levels, which is great, and you should obviously install it as such. Who knows, maybe adding support 2.1 will take less time than it would take to print this. :)

You can view updated statistics directly on the Android Platform website .

I think a more interesting chart is the second one, which shows the "number of Android devices that have accessed the Android Market" recently. (current one is here). Therefore, if you support 2.2, it seems that you support more than 75% of the market (and this number will only grow).

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Another thing you need to pay attention to is performance. In addition to features that the pre-8 API does not support , older devices sometimes simply do not have the performance of newer ones. (Not always the case, because there are dozens of devices.) One test device that I used did not support Live Wallpapers, not because of the API, but because the device simply lacked power.

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I would probably tweak 2.1 to get the largest audience. The changes you need to know are not huge, but can definitely stick to you if you don't catch them.

A few things:

  • showDialog (int) cannot take the Bundle as an argument in 2.l. Call 2.2: showDialog (int, Bundle)
  • Another function is used to access the SD card (also note that the SD card paths are different in 2.1 and 2.2).

I suggest using the android dev link links page to filter by version. This will greatly facilitate coding 2.1.

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http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.2.html

Personally, I believe that you just need to use the lowest that you can support without damaging your functionality, features, or UX.

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