The Problem of Fragmentation on Android

Android is open for apps. If you write an app once, it should run on all Android devices, in theory. In practise Android application developers are facing an increasing fragementation problem caused by different OS versions, hardware form factors, OEM specifics, device types (car computers, set top boxes, routers, ..), etc. Building apps that run on all (or at least most) Android devices is getting extremely difficult and expensive, thus the reach of apps is significantly reduced. The fragmentation problem is just starting and most certainly it is going to grow rapidly as more and more devices, firmware images, device types and OS version will enter the market. Fact is that fragmentation is there and that will be there always. What can we do about it? Embrace it!

AndroidFragmentation.com - a tool for developers

The basic idea of AndroidFragmentation.com is create an Open Android Device Knowledge Base, free of charge and open for contributions from anyone. The more developers share their insights, the more value is created for the community. At the heart of this site there'll be an open device capabilities database which will contains exact, very detailed and specific information about each device & firmware version. We'll go beyond the usual form factor OS version stuff but present detailed information such as supported video/audio codecs, bluetooth stack info, camera info, etc. Developers will be able to look up details for a particular device (and firmware version) or compare capabilities of different devices. We hope that this information will help developers in their effort to write apps with the widest reach possible.

Android Analyzer Open Source Project

To feed the Open Device Database with as much data as possible, we started the open source project Android Analyzer on Google Code . Android Analyzer is a little app that reads out detailed information from a device and feeds that back into the online database. This way we hope to cover information about as many device and firmware version around the globe. You are welcome to join the project! There are many other ideas that we aim to add, take a look at "Coming Soon" and stay tuned!