Is Android tablet development as easily done on ICS?

Question

My future employer keeps telling me to make sure I have a Honeycomb tablet to develop a 'Mag+' tablet magazine on — and on the website it says, "Publish to both iPad & Android Honeycomb tablets" which may just not have been updated.

My employer doesn't know heaps about Android (he's an iOS guru) and I'm just wondering if I were to buy a new Toshiba Excite or something that comes stock w/ ICS if it's backwards compatible and would work as it needs to.

I am not sure I understand. Do you mean that you have a app built on HoneyComb and wondering if it runs on ICS? Or that you have an ICS app but wondering if it runs on Honeycomb. Case 1: Forward compatibility is somewhat guaranteed in Android(But you should test thoroughly) but Case 2: Backward Compatibility isnt. — Vrashabh Irde, May 10 '12 at 06:09
It's an application I still actually haven't used yet but it says that it is for use with Honeycomb. I'm looking at the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime Android tablet which apparently is upgradable to ICS(?) But more if an app that says on their home page is built for use with honeycomb and iOS will work the same with ICS- I think I understand that you're saying that it will though, yes? — westport, May 10 '12 at 06:59

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered May 10 '12 at 06:16

1

As it is very hard to get stock HC tablets, I suggest you just do most of your test and development on ICS tablets.

In your project setup, make sure you choose Android 3.0 profile, and target SDK to 11. This can (almost) guarantee that you are not using any feature that only available in ICS, and do most of your testing in Hardware ICS device, once you ready to publish, you can use an 3.0 Emulator to help make sure it works.

answered May 10 '12 at 06:16

xandy

27,357
8
59
64

Thank you- I'm not a high enough lvl on SOF to upvote you yet but that definitely helps, and i was hoping that was the case but more in a 'of course it'll work" kind of way (hah). But yes, I would always develop in 3.0 (in eclipse for instance) but was I guess just wondering if it would be a sure thing that it would work on ICS as well. p.s. the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime Android looks like its still shipped in honeycomb but you can upgrade to ICS if you like. Maybe that'd be the best way to go? – westport May 10 '12 at 07:02
I guess i should have said, the issue right now is particularly if I actually need a honeycomb tablet.. even from ebay or craigslist or something if need be. – westport May 10 '12 at 07:07
lol, If you need to convince your boss that it works on HCs (suppose he really know what HC is, and how low is the popularity), you should; if you need to convince yourself, you don't have to. 90%+ of stuff is the same in HC and ICS, especially for tablets, you just need to make sure you don't hit higher sdk level features. – xandy May 12 '12 at 00:29

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 10 '12 at 06:23

Compatibility on Android mainly depends on the following factors

Affiliation to Google - Google certified devices ( ones with the play store) have the official Google Android codebase and Google keeps all features going forward generally - so if you develop an app for honeycomb using its features it should generally run on ICS. But reverse might not be true - ICS is a newer advanced version of Android and might have new features and packages that are not supported by Honeycomb. Many device makers customize the Android codebase and have their own Android OS's . Ensuring any kind of compatibility on such devices is pretty risky.
Calling private API's - Private API's are sometimes not guaranteed to support all flavours of Android - so when you are building make sure you understand how they work with different flavours.

The best thing to do then is as Xandy suggests - but the disdavantage here is that you might build the best possible app for Honeycomb but not the best possible app for ICS (since you are not using new features for that tablet)

Is Android tablet development as easily done on ICS?

2 Answers2