Say you are releasing an Android game right now and it will be popular.
What are the FIVE androids you would choose, that you want it to run on?
Assume it will run perfectly on those five, and won’t run on anything else.
I appreciate your expert advice! Hello from iOS land 
I would want to start from the Galaxy S2, followed by the S3 and S4 soon as well. The Galaxy line are by far the most popular android phones so you would want to make sure you cover that. The Galaxy S2 is still selling very good and is a powerful enough device in this day and age. The same goes for the S3 who’s shattering records. I expect nothing less from the S4 either.
So that would be 3 phones, all from Samsung. Other than that, I would go for Nexus 7 and the KindleFireHD. I’m just cherrypicking some of the most popular devices, to ensure the widest audience available.
If I would pick them based on debugging and troubleshooting my software, I’d go for the Galaxy S4, HTC One X (v2013), LG’s or Sony’s latest flagship, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10. I’m not really old-device friendly. But that’s mostly because of the type of games (memory/cpu/gpu intensive) I would make. Probably a device range between 1 and 2 years old.
Hi Shuji, it sounds like you know what you’re talking about.
So your list is:
Galaxy S2 S3 S4 Nexus7 KindleFireHD
Now the first there are PHONES (right?). And the final two are TABLETS right?
(Regarding the final item, as I understand it even thought the KindleFireHD has “Kindle” in the name, it is not like the usual Amazon “kindle” device … it is an actual Android device exactly like other android devices. is it correct that with the KindleFireHD customers buy things at the google android game shop, just as with other Android devices?)
Your second “developer oriented list” is:
Galaxy S4, HTC OneX, LG-latest (you mean phone?), Nexus 7, Nexus 10.
Once again, if I’m not mistaken, that is phone-phone-phone-tablet-tablet
Is my understanding generally correct in all this?
Would you say for games it’s not worth supporting anything before “ice cream sandwich”? or do people usually go back to “gingerbread”? Or is it hard to generalise?
I saw those words on here: Distribution dashboard | Platform | Android Developers
“I’m not really old-device friendly” I could not agree with you more. In the iOS world, you should hear clients scream at me in meetings 
very best and thanks
KindleFires use the Amazon AppStore. So there’s two potential incomes on Android.
There isn’t a real reason in particular for choosing 3 phones and 2 tablets. I just feel that both markets are rapidly growing and leaving one out for the other is only hurting yourself. I think supporting both will benefit you and your customer.
Supporting from ICS and up, would be the best start in my opinion. Even though Gingerbread is still listed as the biggest OS, people always forget that there are LOADS of free ‘gift-devices’ or very low-budget devices in upcoming countries that still use Gingerbread. So supporting ICS and up consists pretty much of devices released the past 2 years, which covers the majority of your game users to begin with.
Also, once you update to ICS, you won’t be going back to Gingerbread. Downgrading shouldn’t be something to care about.
Nice summary, I also was wondering this today - Does the SDK come with phone emulators?
@ Fattieee can you change your title to say 2013 or you forget we are in this year?
The SDK doesn’t emulate a specific phone, it emulates the Android environment with some adjustable parameters (for example 2GB Ram, 16GB space etc).
A related question for my Android-genius friends !!
Cheers …
I can share my statistics from Google. Top 5, with Nexus 7 FAR in the lead.
Asus Nexus 7: 14%
Galaxy S3: 9%
Mako: 6%
Samsung Galaxy Nexus (maguro): 4%
Samsung Galaxy 2: 4%
I don’t even know what a Mako is, but it’s a lot more popular than a Galaxy 2 apparently. Galaxy S4 and Nexus 10 don’t even make a showing in the top 10 for my app (unless that maguro is a 10), so I wouldn’t buy those devices right now. Kindle Fire is cool and it’s about to release to a bunch more countries. That’s a safe pick.
That’s a great info, thanks …
From a large client, this is www visits on android, it’s S3 / S2 / Nexus7 / Razr / Tab2 7
At about 7 / 3/3/3/2 %.
But I really want to know what the heck a “Galaxy M” is ?!