Elephantsquared. » platform

Android 2.x handling the ‘F’ word

George T — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 20:07:04 +0000

Google’s latest platform versions breakdown came out 3 days later this time. The expected time was last Tuesday. The good thing though is that Android 2.x now seems to handle well the ‘F’ word (aka ‘Fragmentation’). Since mid-June, Android 2.x has grown from 50.3% to 54.9% outgrowing earlier Android versions like 1.5 and 1.6.

In addition, on a post about a month ago regarding Android platform versions, I mentioned it would be nice to have a historical analysis of this data. I was glad to see that the latest platform versions stats came along with a nice stacked line graph providing a history of the relative number of active Android devices running different versions of the Android platform.

Each dataset in the timeline is based on the number of Android devices that accessed Android Market within a 14-day period ending on the date indicated on the x-axis.

It looks like that Android 2.x is taking over control. What version are you running?

Almost half Android devices out there are running Android 2.1

George T — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 22:09:56 +0000

As suspected, Google’s latest platform versions breakdown came out ~2 weeks after the latest report. Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that the platform versions report will be updated on a more steady frequency from now on, that is every 2 weeks. If so, it would be nice to have a historical analysis of this data.

Note: This data is based on the number of Android devices that have accessed Android Market within a 14-day period.

Today’s platform versions report shows Android 2.1 gaining significant ground on other platform versions, rising from 37.2% to 45.1%. Incredibly, now almost half Android devices out there are running Android 2.1. It is also notable that Android 1.5 dropped from 34.1% to 27.6%.

But I guess that the Android “fragmentation” problem will probably be there for quite some time yet. Especially now with the forthcoming Froyo release possibly coming this or the next week.

Update: There has been some interesting buzz on Android “fragmentation” since Reto Meier made a post about it. Read more here.

Twitter: Project Code Swarm

George T — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 22:50:46 +0000

Twitter Code Swarm is a very interesting visualization of the explosive growth of Twitter as a development platform. The video below illustrates the amount of work it takes to build something as seemingly simple as a website that lets you publish 140 character status updates.

The “recording” period starts in April 2006 and ends in January 2010. Enjoy!

Did you noticed the music playing? Have you played the Braid game?

P.S. Project code_swarm is also available on Google Code and github.

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