Android debug different devices

Question

Probably my question is very stupid, but is essential for us to understand what exactly is the investment we need to start for our development project.

We would like to deploy our application start from Android 2.1, so essentially we want to know if t debug on all devices available on the market we have to buy it or there is any different way to debug it on different devices.

Thank you.

Answer 1

Start by creating multiple AVDs of level 7 (android 2.1) with different screen resolutions:

• QVGA
• HVGA
• WVGA

Test the screen rotation (Ctrl-F11). If your application runs fine with these three emulators, you can be pretty sure it will run fine on level 7 and above with different screen resolutions.

If you want to go the extra mile, you can test your application on AVDs level 8, 9, 10 ... with different screen resolutions...

Answer 2

if you don't need camera or accurate GPS, use the emulator primarily, with testing on a few real devices

if you don't need cellular connection (if WIFI will suffice), get cheap devices from craigslist and have them in airplane mode while keeping wifi on

in general you need to test on the lowest end device, and a former flagship device. so just two or three devices

in android, you can also only enable your app in the marketplace for higher minimum SDKs (like api level 10 in the manifest, for 2.3.3) and after more testing you can push an update that allows minimum api level 7 for 2.1+ devices

can't do this on iOS