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Comment by jlgosse | Hacker News Reader

If you have ever developed for Android or BlackBerry you would quickly realize that having different screen resolutions and sizes, as well as having different OS versions, isn't that big of a deal. A tiny bit of extra work goes a long way when it comes to working with these platforms.

Also, the sheer volume of Android phones means that supporting 2.1+-only is not that big of a loss (You still hit 60-70% of Android users), and dropping support for older BlackBerry devices (pre-4.5) isn't a big deal either.

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If we where looking at 1920x1200 vs 1620x1020 then resolution is not much of an issue. But, at lower resolutions you need to know where each pixel is to produce a really high quality interface.

Also, if limit yourself to a subset of Android phones that have the features you want, it's harder to justify supporting them. It's one thing to think 10 million users of this App store it's another thing to say well 6 million is still enough to go for. etc.

Or you can just use the resolution-independent features of Android, including their 9-patch image/button system for generating a UI that scales with the device's resolution.

The Android SDK includes a lot of simple ways to mitigate differences between various devices: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support...

There is no way to show an arbitrary 20x20 image in a 19x19 or 21x21 pixel box without it making some of them look like crap. So, yea you can make a generic app that works ok in on most Android devices but you are sacrificing both looks and functionality to do so.

PS: The minimum screen size is (240x320) but if an image has 1 pixel height or width, it may not be shown on the screen due to rounding issue. So they actually force you to waste a fair amount of space on a very limited device.

It's not always as easy as dropping support for older devices/OSes. When you have to support older systems (for client requirements, as an example), it goes from a "tiny bit of extra work" to "a tiny bit of work and a whole lot of extra testing". Just adding a single different type of device (i.e. supporting Blackberry Bold and Storm) almost adds twice the testing effort.

I'm not trying to say that developing for resolution independence is extremely difficult... but it's no walk in the park; it takes time. You truly have to ensure that your application can run on a wide gamut of devices and that the user can interact with it appropriately.

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