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Comment by ktothemc | Hacker News Reader

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. :)

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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.

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