Apps What are the differences between Carriers versions of android?

[CodeMonkeyAlx]

Say for instance, I have a Cricket Wireless ZTE Score(X500) that I do almost all of my dev work on.

I am wondering what makes my phone different in the fact that the apps I develop will work almost flawlessly on it but on another phone it will fail miserably.

My phone is rooted, however the apps I make I double check on my fathers phone which is not rooted and running the same or a close to same version of the android OS.

What makes the difference and how do I ensure cross compatibly?

 

[jonbonazza]

It's not just the carrier version of Android. Android is open source, so it is free to modify and distribute. Almost all manufacturers will change the android code to add/remove features or simply modify code to suit their needs. During this process, it's not uncommon for the Android OS for a particular phone to work differently or have arious bugs introduced that are specific to a particular phone. Furthermore, the code needs to be made to work with each particular device that it is put on. Even thought he code s provided, every device is different and requires that the general purpose code be adapted to work with. This also introduces various bugs and misworkings (is this a word?) that aren't necessarily existent in the AOSP Android code base. Once the code has been adapted, built and loaded onto the device , only THEN does it reach the carrier where all they really do is test it and add their own apps and services to the system.

This is why apps work differently on different devices.

 

[CodeMonkeyAlx]

That actually helped me out quite a bit. I never really understood that all that well. I guess this is why in most cases something will work just fine on 98% of all devices but will have failures with certain models.

IE: Skype, I have seen it run great for some people but lame for a few others.

Thanks again!

 

[jonbonazza]

Yep, that's right. It's unfortunate, but that's just the way it is.