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Here's How Bad Android's Fragmentation Problem Is [GRAPHIC] When Google first launched Android, the open-source operating system came with the promise that it could power almost any device. That's created a proverbial cornucopia of mobile devices that consumers have to choose from, but it's also led to the issue of fragmentation — there are so many devices running different versions of Android with different capabilities that can alter experience. Just how bad is the problem? The site Open Signal Maps studied fragmentation in detail, gathering data from 195 countries, and it put its findings in easy-to-discern graphics. The main takeaways: Yes, fragmentation is huge, with 3,997 devices, but it's also a blessing that has led to the platform becoming the No. 1 mobile OS in the world by far. From the graphic above, it's clear Samsung is the king of the mountain among Android devices. The graphic below shows that the Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone is the most popular device, making it the world's most popular Android phone.

Google Play Developer 8-Step Checkup Posted by Ellie Powers, Google Play team Google Play gives you tons of options on publishing your apps and connecting with users. But as you get started with new features like beta testing and staged rollouts, it’s a good idea to do a checkup and make sure you’ve covered the basics. 1. Boost your developer account security If you take just one step today to protect your Google Play apps, enable two-step authentication for your Google account, and encourage the rest of your team to do the same.Next, many developers first set up their Google Play account with their personal gmail account, but it’s actually a good idea to transfer your apps to a separate account. 2. In order to publish an update to an existing app, you’ll need to sign it with the same keystore every time. 3. As a developer, you are responsible for checking two important email addresses: 4. We recently launched some new guides and examples for Google Play’s Developer Program Policies and Developer Distribution Agreement. 5.

Maps - Android Fragmentation Visualized The many faces of a little green robot August, 2012 Fragmentation matters to the entire Android community: users, developers, OEMs, brands & networks. It's a blessing and a curse. The Blessing. The Curse. The Study. Some of the Android devices we use to test OpenSignalMaps Model We've spotted 3997 distinct devices. One complication is that custom ROMs can overwrite the android.build.MODEL variable that we use for the device model. Brand Android brands are almost as fragmented as device models, indicating just how much easier it has become to source electronics. Some highlights: 2 tablets have been spotted sporting the ill-fated FusionGarage brand, 7 with Polaroid's smart-camera. The clear winner is Samsung again with 270,144 devices - or 40% of the market as seen by us. API Level API level - or Android version (e.g. Resolution Each point represents a particular resolution e.g 480*800, note the constancy of the line that represents the most common aspect ratio 5:3. Scale 2:7 <3 Fragmentation?

Signing Your Applications The Android system requires that all installed applications be digitally signed with a certificate whose private key is held by the application's developer. The Android system uses the certificate as a means of identifying the author of an application and establishing trust relationships between applications. The certificate is not used to control which applications the user can install. The certificate does not need to be signed by a certificate authority: it is perfectly allowable, and typical, for Android applications to use self-signed certificates. The important points to understand about signing Android applications are: All applications must be signed. The Android system will not install or run an application that is not signed appropriately. Signing Process The Android build process signs your application differently depending on which build mode you use to build your application. When you build in release mode you use your own private key to sign your application. Eclipse Users or

The shocking toll of hardware and software fragmentation on Android development Android fragmentation is a huge problem. The fact that there are hundreds of different hardware devices running over half a dozen different versions of Google’s OS makes it annoying for users, but makes it an especially devastating issue for developers trying to make a business out of the Android ecosystem. This was highlighted by the recent release of Temple Run on the Android platform. A previously (very) successful game on iOS, it was brought over to Android in order to take advantage of the huge number of devices that run the OS. 99.9% of support emails are complaining their device isn’t supported. Natalia Luckyanova of Imangi tweeted out that most of their 1200 emails over the past 12 hours of release had been devoted to the fact that the app just didn’t work on one of the hundreds of devices owned by those users. But then Developer David Smith replied to her, saying that he had some 1443 unique devices on the logs for his Android app Audiobooks (also Free).

Using Google Maps in your Android Application In short, the following needs to happen to enable your application for Google Maps : The Android SDK needs to be setup to support Google Maps.A MapView component needs to be added to your layout, containing a valid Google Maps API keyThe Activity that will be responsible for showing the map needs to extend from MapActivityThe application manifest needs to be setup with the android.permission.INTERNET permissionThe application manifest needs to be setup with the com.google.android.maps library Some basic setup is described in the Android Hello Mapview tutorial, but I’ve noted down some addtional items. Setting up our Android SDK for Google Maps. If you want to do anything with Google Maps, you’ll need to ensure that your Android SDK has the necessary components installed. is an extension to the Android SDK development environment that lets you develop applications for devices that include Google’s set of custom applications, libraries, and services. Setting up our project for Google Maps.

Android Development: In practice, how bad is Android fragmentation for developers that are targeting multiple devices Quick Tip: Customize Android Fonts Every Android device comes with a collection of standard fonts: Droid Sans, Droid Sans Mono and Droid Serif. They were designed to be optimal for mobile displays, so these are the three fonts you will be working with most of the time and they can be styled using a handful of XML attributes. You might, however, see the need to use custom fonts for special purposes. Font Style Attributes In the following section we're going to examine the different XML attributes that you can use to style components with text. Typeface As stated in the overview, there are three different default typefaces which are known as the Droid family of fonts: sans, monospace and serif. In addition to the above, there is another attribute value named "normal" which defaults to the sans typeface. Text Style The android:textStyle attribute can be used to put emphasis on text. Text Size android:textSize specifies the font size. Text Color You can also reference a color declaration using @color/color_name. Text Shadow

porting - Effort due to Android fragmentation Generating a Signed APK Using a Wizard Some features described here are available in Ultimate edition only. To deploy and run an Android application on a physical device, you need to sign the application digitally . With IntelliJ IDEA, you can have your Android Application Package (.apk file) signed with an existing release key during the package extraction. IntelliJ IDEA also incorporates a release key generation tool that can be invoked during packaging. Generated keys are saved in a keystore binary file. You can have as many keystore files and keys as you need and use either previously created keys, or create new ones in existing keystores, or even create new keystores. If you use the Generate Signed APK Wizard, IntelliJ IDEA signs the package during extraction. On this page: On the main menu, choose . Open the New Key Store dialog box by doing one of the following: On the first page of the Generate Signed APK wizard, click the Create new button.