Netflix talks about what it’s like developing and testing their Android application. Biggest surprise? They pay specific attention to making sure the applications runs well on popular custom ROMs such as CyaogenMod. Pretty awesome. Now, if only Samsung, HTC, and so on, could do so as well.
didn’t samsung hire the main cyanogen developer a while ago to assure that all their devices will run cyanogen without problems?
I think you have it backwards semantically. He’ll help CM run on Samsung devices, with Samsung’s support. I doubt he has the ability to dictate hardware requirements.
yeah that’s what I mean
Would be cool if we got a handset manufacturer who would release a device with CyanogenMod instead of stock/reskinned Android one of these days.
Just one decently specified phone a year, coinciding with CM releases. Full compatibility, no skinning, no carrier bloatware, possibly even an app for the (rumored) upcoming CyanogenMod Store included.
Of course, Google could always f*ck it up for them by not releasing source code like they did with Honeycomb.
Edit:
Oh, I suppose a phone that comes with CyanogenMod wouldn’t qualify for “Google certified device” status… or would it?
Edited 2012-03-15 02:33 UTC
If the device makers can get their own mods certified, why not cyanogen? The underlying software isn’t further away from stock than most of those, so I imagine all it would take would be for someone to put a specific release through the process.
Not sure I would want hardware manufacturers making sure custom Android ROMs work on their hardware. They have enough problems making sure their own stuff has no bugs.
I think releasing the drivers would be about all I’d care to see them do, let the ROM developers make sure their stuff works with their builds of AOSP.
If Netflix can put in the time to make their app work on any and all flavours of Android, including the custom ROMs, what are all the other developers complaining about? Sure, the individual guy putting out a “connect three” game might not have the time and budget to bug test on every platform, but there are plenty of commercial developers who do nothing but publicly complain about this so called “fragmentation” of Android.
The biggest problem with developing for Android, from my perspective (can’t code a line, just owned a lot of Android devices) would probably be the manufacturer crapware, weighing the device down so the spec sheet means fuck all.
Netflix is a very different company then most software companies. They charge a monthly fee for access to content which is higher then most consumers are willing to pay to own even a great mobile app for their lifetime. Very few commercial software companies are not brining in $800 million a quarter. High quality software shops are much closer to “the individual guy” then most people realize and are far from the scale of Netflix.
It all comes down to simple economics. If the expense to support any platform cannot be justified by the income from that platform then a company can’t afford to support it. For many software companies Android falls into this category. Until sales of Android software rise this is going to be the case.