The fragmentation problem is mainly with the newest APIs, and applications taking advantage of them.
Official, or supported APIs barely change, and if they do, the older API is backward compatible. Take for instance the contacts API before 2.0 (Contacts.People), and the newest (ContactsContract) that supports multiple contacts sources (multiple google accounts syncing contacts). Using the Contacts.People API on newer versions (2.0+) still works, its just limited to display the contacts from the main account but it works, it doesn't break. However, when it comes to newer APIs, like lets say Text-to-Speech (introduced in 1.6), and Dock support (introduced in 2.0), it's a pain in the butt to make the apps backward compatible with "older" or outdated devices, and take advantage of those APIs in "newer" or updated devices, yes, there are ways to introduce these new features, but its very painful to keep those users that are on older versions of android happy, without errors and such. As of now it is an issue, not that big of an issue but it's there, and it can just become worse. Keeping track of 3-4 versions is not that big of a deal, but manufacturers need to move, because I would shoot myself if I had to keep supporting 5-6 versions of android (1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.1, 2.5?, 2.7?, 3.0?)... that my friends, will be extremely painful for MOST developers out there.
-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
