Need for Backward Compatible Android Application Development

Infants and Android, for that matter anything freshly invented have some similarities. Just like an infant when Android entered the mobile world it offered limited scope for development, to be used for Android app development to further enhance hand held devices empowered with Android. When it was born into the mobile world it was Android 1.0 and the latest is Android v4.0.4 and there are 10 versions between them.

You might argue any Google Android application development should suffice the demand for Android applications. Well yes it should, however it should be remembered that Android is used as an operating system in hand held devices. It is not necessary that all Android phones will be installed with the latest Android version, different mobile devices are likely to have different version, some might have a newer version and some might have older version.

It cannot be expected that people will simply throw away their mobile devices just because an Android application developed using latest Android will not be compatible with their device. Hence the challenge for Android application developers is to develop games and applications which are backward compatible. Example Android game development done using Android v3.0 (Honeycomb) should also play perfectly on devices using Android v2.3 (Gingerbread).

Android app developers can use many different ways to make sure that the application or game they develop is backward compatible. These android application development tricks include wrapper class, reflection and minSdk Version. Using these techniques an Android developer is sure to have a backward compatible application but they do not guarantee that the application will work error free on all previous versions of Android.

Android application developers have the option to test the application entirely to ensure that it will work as expected on all previous versions of Android. Once tested, you can be sure that the application so developed will now work flawlessly on all previous versions of Android.