![]() The main difference is that Android has gone through 3-4 significant updates in a year. how many at this point haven't received a significant platform update in the year since they came out? I think not many - very few of them have been around for more than a year, and at this point the bulk of those have received at least one update. Even there, though, if you compare us against another company that say releases a major platform update every year. ![]() I can more understand the issues from users, who want to be able to upgrade their current device to a newer version. Heck, if you are a web developer you need to consider different browsers and different versions implementing different versions of web standards. From the stats I have seen there are regularly two very active versions of MacOS X that users run. ![]() Windows developers have always needed to think about 3 or so active versions of windows. I honestly think that developers who are demanding there be only one version they need to think about are living in a strange fantasy world. For what you propose, it would either need to be QAed across all possible kernels, or require that all manufacturers upgrade to the newer kernel before it can go out to any devices. The QA for that version of the platform is done against that kernel on a small set of specific devices. However, pretty much every release of the platform has snapped up to a more recent version of the Linux kernel. Obviously, that is required because the kernel needs to talk with whatever their hardware is. Here's a very small example: you say that manufacturers would be responsible for the kernel. A core part of what makes our Android model work is that most products are owned by their manufacturer. Android just can't scale if that final productization and QA phase is not spread out to the manufacturers. There are currently > 50 such devices, and that number is growing exponentially. Every release of Android would need to be extensively QAed on every existing Android device before it could go out to any of them. This would also very greatly slow down the development of the platform. This would completely prevent very interesting Android devices like the Dell Streak (which due to its interesting design requires some customizations to the platform), and would significantly limit the ability of manufacturers to push Android into other interesting places. ![]() That would mean that every user, of every Android device, would be delivered free updates as long as they are using the device. This is not the case on Windows, it is not the case on MacOS X, it is not the case on any platform that is not uber-tightly controlled. See the wikipedia article for some good information about different versions.ĭevelopers should specify which API level their application requires or is known to work with.ĭianne Hackborn had this to say about fragmentation, after a developer complained about having toĭevelopers will never be able to rely on there only being one version to target. Low RAM improvements, sensor batching, full-screen UI, ART experimental test More screen resolutions, live wallpaper, MS exchange support, UI revampĭalvik JIT, USB tethering, voice dialing, V8 and javascript, adobe flash support The base release, with Android system, phone, camera, webkit-based browser, Google search, contacts, calendar, cloud synchronization, android market, etc.Ĭamcorder mode, video and picture upload to net, auto bluetooth connect, animated screen transitions The following different Android versions have been released: For a lot more detail, you should see the wikipedia page for Android version history
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