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Even the Animoca CEO who is cited in the article exclaims in the end that he is a fan of diversity and doesn't believe in an one size fits all approach[1].

In fact, nowhere do we find Mr. Slu complaining about the ecosystem. The only person putting forth the we are in a horrid state of affairs line is the author of the article.

I suspect that the picture from Animoca was taken as a statement of the company's quality, asserting that "Our company takes the time to QA on all these devices. You the consumer can be assured that our apps will work on your phone, no matter what you use." The picture, to me, is a statement of pride, rather than a display of frustration.

So it looks more like the author had an agenda, and tried to put a square piece into a round hole.

[1] “We like fragmentation as users prefer choice. We are not big believers that one size fits all.”

I completely agree. I was on a project to develop an extremely complex Android app and we survived just fine by testing on one tablet and one phone per developer (roughly 6 or 7 different devices total).

The developer tools do an excellent job helping test for and deal with errors on the different in the Android ecosystem.

I agree too.

On more data point here: we just ported our fairly complex app (a file manager) from Honeycomb back to Froyo. If we had access to that many devices, of course we would have tested it on all of them, but our experience has been that using a few devices and some emulator configurations you can do surprisingly well enough. Not a single complaint so far, although admittedly our user base only approaches about 20k.

I think these articles exaggerate the effect of the fragmentation. It exists, it costs us developers some time and money, but not even close to being a "nightmare".

When I heard developers complain about Android fragmentation first-hand, most of them complained about GPUs, and Animoca's home page shows games first and foremost. I wouldn't be surprised if the need for hundreds of devices differed very much across application types.

Hey, I'm the author of the article and I don't really have an agenda in the Android/iOS platform debate. Both are necessary platforms to build on at this point.

Yat also wasn't really complaining about the state of affairs on Android at all. He's happy to QA test with 400 devices and he thinks it's why his company performs well relative to other game developers who don't do as comprehensive a job.

I just thought it was a hilarious photo about the lengths that one Android developer will go to make their apps work. :)

Kimmai,

The way you wrote the headline suggests that you do have an agenda.

Unless you think Techcrunch should not be taken seriously, a lot of people would think that Android is such an awful platform to develop in and would stay away from it.

I've been an Android developer for 3+ years. I only test in 3 phones and my apps work in majority of devices. If a developer follow most best practices, a lot of fragmentation issues go away.

I understand that you are trying to be hilarious but it just contributes to FUDs on Android that has really not much basis.

Tks, it's a simple headline that gets a point across. I talk on a weekly basis with many of the top-grossing devs on both platforms so I try to listen to their issues.

This was not meant to be a warning for devs to stay away of Android, but doing more extensive QA testing is a reality of the platform.

What's your app? How many DLs does it have? How many DAU do you have?

The apps I built varies. Some have hundreds, some have 10K+.

But you know what's a better example? Netflix. They test on 10 phones & 4 tablets.

http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/03/testing-netflix-on-andro...

Netflix App has at least 10 million installs - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.netflix.me....

That's for basic testing. The post also says they still keep a long tail set of devices for more comprehensive testing.

"We figured out the optimal combination of devices to give us maximum coverage. We are able to reduce our daily smoke automation devices to around 10 phones and 4 tablets and keep the rest for the longer release wide test cycles."

Is it 400 devices? Or are you assuming that to justify your post?

"This was not meant to be a warning for devs to stay away of Android, but doing more extensive QA testing is a reality of the platform."

Your headline & picture suggest otherwise.

Honestly, is this a Techcrunch thing? Before you worked at Techcrunch, I can't remember you writing a post like this. Too much snark and mocking a platform (and hence, a community).

Then why not frame the article as "this is a hilarious photo that shows the length that one Android developer is going to in order to ensure maximum compatibility", rather than "this is what it's like if you want to make an Android app"?

You are not a blogger and that is not a viral headline. :) Joke.

No but seriously, I talk to a lot of the top free and top grossing developers and taking QA seriously is a big deal. It matters. Not everyone takes it seriously and it affects your user reviews. At least that is Animoca's thesis and that's why they use 400 devices.

In all honesty, there is an interesting debate here. A lot of developers are saying 5-6 devices is sufficient for compatibility testing. But Animoca argues that doing 400 is actually a competitive advantage for them.

Firstly, it's not the headline I'm talking about. The whole tone of the article is "this is what developing for Android is like." Having to test on 400 devices is NOT what developing for Android is like, AT ALL.

So you talk to many of the top developers. That's great, how about we hear from a selection of them? How many devices do most of them test on? Taking QA seriously is not the same thing as testing on hundreds of devices.

So when are we going to see the other side of the "debate"? Personally, I don't see a debate at all, just some pageview-bait article that takes a single developer and makes out like this is normal.

This is "process" journalism where we figure it out as we go. I do several stories a day and frankly, the economic model that supports tech blogging today does not sustain a content model where I can write one story per day and interview dozens of sources.

What I can do however, is do many stories per day, and consistently talk on background to multiple devs every week about their concerns. QA testing for Android has been an on-and-off concern for years.

Animoca has talked to me about it a couple times over the last 18 months, but this image for whatever reason happened to go viral.

This story hit a chord. I had some sense it would but I couldn't have 100% predicted it.

Hey, thanks for joining the discussion!

Now, hn, could we please not discourage authors from joining the discussion here? If you hit the down arrow and the post turns grey they really deserve an explanatory post. Even though it's "obvious".

Down votes are clearly out of control on HN, they are not working as a content filter anymore and should be disabled.

Actually the developer of two of the top-grossing iOS apps of all of 2011 just sent me photos of their QA testing racks too.

They have an overflowing safe that is no longer able to contain all of the Android devices they QA test with...

So I just had a look at the update, and I count 30 Android devices and 26 iOS devices. Obviously there's plenty of doubled-up devices in the iOS cupboard, but it looks like a couple of the Android devices are doubled-up as well.

My own app is tested on 4 devices (three phones and a tablet) and 2 of those devices were given to me by friends. I'm certainly not a top tier developer, but looking at a single developer who tests on 400 devices and saying "this is what developing for Android is like" is simply factually incorrect. Especially when another top tier developer is only testing on 30 devices. And ESPECIALLY when the vast majority of "normal" Android developers test on a handful of devices only.

Maybe it's a competitive advantage to test on 400 devices. But it's not REQUIRED, and it's certainly not NORMAL.

How many devices do the Instagram developers use? Since there's only one guy developing the Android version it's hard to imagine that he uses 400 devices. If he did, there would be no time for writing code.

> Hey, I'm the author of the article and I don't really have an agenda in the Android/iOS platform debate.

Either you are being dishonest about this claim or you are simply a bad reporter who wasn't able to convey her intention in her writing.

Your article is clearly biased against Android, whether you meant it this way or not.

When they say "all Android developers" you can be pretty sure they mean "most Android developers".

Working on several high profile apps here in Denmark I have felt the pain of not having enough real devices to test on. A bank just wont accept that you don't support one of the most common phone on the market because it has some problems with the camera.

Another project ran into the BigInteger.modPow is not thread safe issue way too late in the development process because we didn't test intensively on pre 2.3 devices.

After facing all these issues, my current project run automated test on 20 physical devices daily. It also helps us keep the UI looking sharp on all devices.

Isn't "not supporting one of the most common phones" a different order of magnitude from what they're discussing here?

Hell yes that app should be supporting the Galaxy S2s and HTC Desires of this world, but the majority of those 400+ devices will probably be used by < 0.0001% of your users, particularly if the app is targeting a Western audience.

I maintain a business app for iOS and my client fully expects me to reproduce and fix bugs for obscure versions of iOS that only 0.0001% of people might still use, even if those people can (and should) just upgrade their OS. If it was my own app I wouldn't care.

I totally agree that 400+ devices is pretty crazy.

By looking at device usage stats I would say that 20 devices will get you above 90% in one region but you have to use closer to 40 if you aim for 90% on the global market. (Of course it depends on your user base)

However, having 400 devices on the shelf for debugging when you get some strange error report might be very valuable. I would love to have a bucket of CDMA phones available since I can't just go buy one in the store. (I live in Denmark)

> but those problems are not something to complain about, and frankly, they're not any kind of showstopper.

Only if you want to try to make great apps instead of just good apps. As someone who has made both (i.e. really polish vs. just get it out there), if you want to make something really good it needs to be pixel perfect. Unfortunately that is something that is infinitely harder to do on Android than iOS. It is also why in general iOS apps look better than their Android counterparts.

Thanks for making pressureNET - there wasn't a reading from Christchurch, New Zealand... now there is :-)

Hey, if you're in Christchurch you should join us at our monthly tech dinner group, The Valley in Christchurch:

http://groups.google.com/group/TVIC

Second Thursday of every month, so unfortunately you've missed May's--but sign up to the mailing list now and you'll be reminded for June...

We had seventeen people turn up this month including a bunch of new people so that was encouraging. Apparently the quakes haven't done us in completely. :)

Same with me. I'm working with cross platform technologies for 15 years now. Python,Java,Ruby,HTML and now Android.

I don't complain that I have to target different systems. I use this stuff because I want to target many different systems.

Take a closer look at all these devices in the article, and imagine for a moment that every single one of these would be as incompatible to one another as iOS is to Windows Phone.

That is: Imagine you had to write a complete new App for every single one of these devices. Android is a defragmentation tool.

I don't know I you're being intellectually dishonest or are bad at reading comprehension, but the author said "many developers," not "all developers."

The article has been updated since that comment was posted.

Just so you know. You are absolutely in the minority of Android developers.

Most want their apps to work on ALL phones.

Sure, ideally you'd want your app to work on all phones.

But just as developing for any other open platform, attempting to reach 100% compatibility with every device combination is both insane and unnecessary. A range of 5-10 devices is usually sufficient for the 99% of users that most apps will be happy to support.

Which criterias would you use for selecting representative 5-10 devices?

1.) one with the minimum hardware you want to support (screen res, cpu, gpu).

2.) Min API level you want to support

3.) top spec phone with latest version (pref. a recent nexus)

That is for native platform apps, not Game ports.

From my experience, crucial to success is that you write your Apps according to the Android documentation, and not just "until they work on my device". Most "single device issues" happen because of this mistake.

Most of the issues developers have when they switch devices

This approach doesn't work on any existing mobile or desktop platform (web apps included). You always target a specific audience, that meets certain minimum hardware/OS requirements. (for example a modern GPU/RAM/OS for 3D games)

Wow.. fucking relax dude