I have my game ready for release onto Google play. After some testing I have it running well on almost all devices I could get my hands on.
I released a Kindle Fire HD version, which was built to ICS, but which system should I target for the Google Store? I had intended to target HD tablets but I’ve had it working nicely on anXperia Mini running Froyo! I’d like as large a target audience as possible.
My main question, will the high end devices lose any performance by building the app to, say, Gingerbread (in an effort to target more devices) than building to ICS?
If you want to get as much possible users as possible then set the limit to lowest possible. Only problems for that could be that the people on older Android version (=usually slower/more bugged device) are more prone to complain about the app… Most users come from 2.3 → 4.2, so I would suggest to at least keep 2.3 if not any older.
Thanks, I think I’ll target 2.3 +.
The other problem is that aiming at lower systems means they may be Arm 6 devices. For best performance I need to build to Arm 7 on the latest devices, so would it be feasible to also release a version aimed at the lower end Arm 6 audience I wonder?
If your game runs on Armv6 devices, then you shouldn’t really be conserned about the performance on Armv7 devices (apart from some rare cases). And that doesn’t affect performance if I have understood the system right, I think it only adds more size to the apk as there needs to be Armv6 libs also. One version should be ok, you can still use OpenGL 2 for better graphics features.
I hadn’t realised that. Thanks for the info, I’ll run a couple of test builds on my devices and see how they compare. Hopefully my base build will be Arm6 with GingerBread. This will hopefully be ok for modern devices (Kindle FireHD, Nexus 7 etc) down to some early phones. Any more info or previous experience with this appreciated.
I have on my other game Android 2.1+ and OpenGL 2 and it works ok on old and new devices. Only thing I had to make different for newer Android versions is the navigation bar dimming for Android 3.0+, it needs to check api version or it will crash the app.