A programmer needs to be equipped with 20,000 devices to wake up to sleep.

According to OpenSignal's latest research report, there are currently over 24000 different types of devices that support more than one andriod version, but they differ in screen resolution, specifications, keys, processors, available memory size, and so on.

Well, to be honest, this number bird startled, I think the 20,000 devices inside, most of the equipment should be many years ago the elimination model. But the number of new listings this year is also impressive, with data showing close to 2000 models.

Device fragmentation is not just Android patents, the iOS platform will be exposed every year a negative optimization scandal, that is, Apple in order to sell more equipment, whenever new equipment released, the performance of the old device will become worse. In fact, this is a bit too much, in fact, the fragmentation of the machine is the cause of the equipment slowed down, the culprit of more and more bugs.

Most of the bugs occur in 3 of these areas:

A wide variety of screen sizes, which makes it difficult for developers to create a UI interface for all devices;

Different hardware performance, such as processor, memory and so on;

Fragmentation also has an impact on the version of the operating system.

As Conner Forrest at TechRepublic: After a few months of the release of the Andriod 5.0 operating system (LOLLIPOP), only 3.3% of the users were installed and, worse, Even new devices are now often installed with older versions of the operating system.

What are the common compatibility issues?

Size problem: This problem occurs not only in graphic elements such as keystrokes, but also in text elements;

Missing visual elements: some elements that should have existed might disappear, which would make the corresponding function unusable;

Position problem: The element shows a certain deviation in position, in other words, may not be centered;

Impact function Use: button on the screen display, there is a common problem, it is possible to hide some of the UI elements, so that the corresponding function is no longer available, such as: Hide the Confirmation input button, or even the input box.

The biggest problem with fragmentation is that some of these bugs will only appear on specific devices, not everywhere, making it difficult to locate these bugs.

Google has been trying to solve Andriod's fragmentation over the years. Because Google App service was introduced, the new version of Android was reduced in usage. But to cure the app's compatibility test, you need to use third-party testing services like Testbird.

The app can be run automatically on more than 2000 devices and tested using a real-world carrier network environment. Testbird also retains and logs during app testing, which makes it much easier for developers to locate problems.

A programmer needs to be equipped with 20,000 devices to wake up to sleep.